Belmond Hotel das Cataratas

This is the best place to stay in Iguazu, and the only hotel right next to the Falls. So when the park closes at 4pm guests have the entire Brazilian side and the best of all views to themselves: at sunset, under the moonlight, and at dawn.

And the hotel is itself a beauty – the kind of stately 1950s grand dame hacienda where you’d once have bumped into Orson Welles or Ernest Hemingway. Rooms are discreetly luxurious, the restaurant is the best in the region and the pool sits in extensive tropical gardens fragrant with jasmine and fluttering with parakeets, toucans and hummingbirds.

The Falls are literally 100m from the lobby. Trails lead from a viewpoint through the forest to the base of the Devil’s Throat. Jaguars and pumas are seen frequently after dark on the road leading to the hotel and the rainforest stretches wild and pristine all around.

Foz do Iguacu town is a twenty-minute taxi ride away, but with a setting like this and the best restaurant in the region, why would you leave?