Round 1 of our inaugural Bucket List Battle is in the books. The first round featured Venice, Italy vs. the Panama Canal. The Italy package included two weeks in the old city with unlimited access to a vehicle for day trips. Experiencing the Panama Canal was on board the luxury cruise ship Seabourn Sojourn on an 18 night cruise from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Los Angeles, California.
The winner of round 1 with 67% of the votes was Venice. Round 2 features Iguazu Falls againt Mt. Kilimanjaro. Both are natural wonders that are in environmental hotspots. Exploration of both areas can be dangerous, but for completely different reasons.
Iguazu Falls
Native for ‘Big Water’, the massive waterfall is named Cataratas Del Iguazu on the Spanish Argentinian side and Foz Do Iguacu in Portugese on the Brazilian side. The waterfall is located on the border between Argentina and Brazil with about 80% of the action on the Argentina side.
In 2011, Iguazu Falls was named one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature. The longest drop is 269 feet. In comparison, Niagara Falls drops just 165 feet. The crest of Iguazu Falls is a whopping 2.7 kilometres or 1.7 miles long. However, the waterfall is broken up into around 275 individual waterfalls as the Iguazu River fights to reach the Atlantic Ocean.
Both Iguazu National Park in Argentina and Iguacu National Park in Brazil were designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the 1980’s. Although Niagara Falls has the greater annual waterflow, Iguazu is massively greater when it comes to maximum recorded water flow. The highest rainfall comes in October while the lowest rainfall typically occurs in July.
Often featured in movies, the latest and greatest flick to include Iguazu Falls was the 2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In that movie, the aliens were camped out beneath the falls and when they left the planet, the pretty much left Iguazu in ruins.
Mt. Kilimanjaro
The highest mountain on the African continent at 5,895 metres or 19,341 feet above sea level. Kilimanjaro is located in Tanzania on the border with Kenya. This is a volcano that has the potential to erupt again. However, it is estimated that Kilimanjaro has not erupted over the past 150,000 to 200,000 years.
The first ascent was recorded in 1889. However, you gotta think over 1000’s of years that some form of human being got to the top first. Kilimanjaro is more than a bit deceiving. It is not overly technical and not a lot of climbing skills are necessary. Death surrounds the mountain each year, however, due to altitude sickness, hypothermia, falls and rock slides. The Tanzania National Parks Authority has regulated a minimum 5 to 6 days, depending on the route, to allow for the human body to deal with the elevation change.
A victim of global warming, Mt. Kilimanjaro is predicted to be ice free between the year 2022 and 2033. Back in the 1880’s, the biggest obstacle to reaching the summit was the glaciers.
