These people have just had a great day at Iguazú Falls National Park. Now they're getting on their tour bus for a ride to their hotel.

A score of buses full of Porteños visited today, as they do every day during the high season. Seeing a parking lot full of freeway cruisers presages one of the park's biggest problems: lots of visitors.

They come from Buenos Aires, more than 1,000 KM away. The ride takes 20 hours. They spend a day or two in Iguazú and then return to the city. The whole package costs $1,000 pesos—about $300 US. They sign up a year ahead and make payments of $100 pesos a month until it's time to depart.

Affordable and then some, these excursions are very popular. Iguazú Falls is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And that means crowds.

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The entrance to the park is a couple of miles from any actual waterfalls.

"Let them walk," you say. "If they want to see nature, they should be willing to work for it," you say.

Well, high season temperatures are high, as is the humidity—over 100º and 50% the day I was there. And visitors have to walk for hours once they get to the falls, so they'll be working plenty for their nature outing.

Can you imagine this lot being required to walk? Check out the sandals on the guy in the yellow baseball hat. Great hiking gear.

So a tram transports visitors to the trailheads. Private vehicles are not allowed, avoiding the smog and traffic jams overwhelming places like Yosemite.

At first, I thought we'd be sightseeing from the tram. Only later did I realize it was just a utilitarian conveyance. Good thing too, because it was crowded and uncomfortable.

The open air coaches have benches across the width of the narrow cars. Just enough room for three people. Everyone clambered on board. Then a man came along yelling ¡cuatro por ciento! Four percent? Even the native Spanish speakers were saying ¿Qué?

Then someone got it. Cuatro por asiento. Four per seat!

Bad news indeed. We spent the next half hour in groups of eight jammed into facing benches, outboard people leaning to make room for the pairs suffocating in the middle. The benches were so closely spaced we had to interweave our knees like the teeth of a zipper. And you thought tourist class was bad.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Forty-five years ago I used to hike the John Muir trail with a 50-pound wooden frame backpack for two weeks at a time. No complaining then. So why am I whining now? The tram was indeed a luxury.

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Yesterday I posted photographs of people-free vistas.

I lied.

I deliberately chose images conveying a false sense of solitude and nature, because I wanted to show the incredible beauty of the place.

This is another view of what it was like:

There's a couple hundred people on that catwalk, elbowing each other out of the way to get that honeymoon photo of Eugenio and Yulupa in front of a waterfall.

A group of kids monopolized the end of a catwalk that reached within a few yards of this cataract. Otherwise nice kids, their extended turn at the front meant that a hundred people got no closer than I did when I shot this.

A portion of our visit involved riding on a four-wheel-drive sightseeing truck through the jungle. Hot, dusty, uninteresting, except when the driver ran over a mammal of some sort.

At Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, they call trucks like these "shake-n-bakes".

I have a problem with the idea of nature as theme park. As would, I'm sure, John Muir or Ansel Adams. But there's an element of Disneyland here. About a dozen boats like these took groups of visitors to experience the falls up close.

There's no way someone could get so close unaided. So as distasteful as this seems, it's an ride not to be missed.

The boat crew gave me a drybag. I put my cameras inside, and within minutes, I was soaked. The boat goes into the cataracts. Suddenly equilibrium and vision are gone. The lurching world contracts to stinging white wetness.

—§—

People want pictures of their vacations, and not all are skilled at taking them. I saw a couple dozen guys like this one, ready to help out for a price.

A large tour group posed for another fotografico profesional at La Garganta del Diablo.

The lens hood had fallen off his Nikon long ago (a weakness of the brand) so he's using a magazine to control lens flare. Just like I do. What he'd really like is something to control the yahoos posing for him.

Hours of walking, lugging cameras, and elbowing Italians left me exhausted. I took an hour out for a snack and a rest under an old fig tree.

Later, walking on a trail called the upper circuit, I ran across the highlight of the entire day. This girl was touring the falls with her parrot.

Of course. Why didn't I think of that? Next time I'll bring Chiapas. He'd love it.

The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite—all must deal with the problem of large and increasing numbers of visitors. Iguazú Falls National Park does an excellent job of handling them. Yes, the E rides had godawful crowds. But a few steps away from the catwalks and paved trails, you're alone with the toucans, the jungle and all that water.

Busloads of Chinese gamblers and Japanese tour groups and Germans in rented Class C motorhomes converge on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Go to the North Rim, and you've got the canyon to yourself. There's plenty of wilderness to experience. Just takes a little planning, a little thinking, and a little more effort to get to it.

You can't get to the primeval subtropical rainforest in a tour group. Tours are good only for a quick but useful survey.

But what a survey! Even with the crowds, Iguazú is one of the wonders of the world. The roar of the water and the eye-popping views take you away from the mobs, even as you're hemmed in by them. And there's always someplace you can find that gives you a little space.

I'll go back by myself next year or the year after that, in the off season, and spend some quality time at the falls.