Foz do Iguaçu- Brazil and Argentina

On wednesday we packed up our stuff and said goodbye to Roberta, we then made our way down to the bus station. We double checked with the bus conductor which bus we should get to the bus terminal, he confidently pointed over to the one we should get. So off we went with an hour until our 4.30 coach departure. We began to realise that we didn´t recognise any of the sights we had seen on our way here, the bus then pulled into the bus terminal....but the wrong one.(Rule no. 1, always get a second opinion when trying dealing with your travel arrangements in two different languages!) We needed the international terminal, and still we have no idea where we were taken. Unfortunately no one could speak English or tell us where we were, as I was getting in a panic, my phrasebook turned to a big blur (we now had 30 minutes until our coach departure!). Luckily a young brazillian girl came to our rescue and translated for us where we wanted to go, helped us buy our tickets and told us which bus to get, at this point we just had to trust that she was sending us in the right direction! We arrived at the International bus terminal with about 5 minutes until our coach departure, we still hadn´t actually picked up our tickets so we then had to run with all our stuff! Interestingly after all this stress and rushing, we were the first people onto the coach...rule no. 2, brazillians don´t do anything on time! We were also told that we would have to change over at Curtiba, this change never took place and the later it got the more we started to think we were on the wrong coach travelling deep into the amazon....at about 1am we tried to speak to the coach driver, he looked our tickets and just waved us away probably thinking we were crazy.

So 14 hours later we arrived in Foz do Iguaçu. We then had to get three buses and walked down a 400m dirt track to what felt like the middle of nowhere, we persevered as we had a personal recomendation to come to this place!. We were glad we did as Hostel Natura really was beautiful. There was a lake in the middle, surrounded by trees, hammocks, a swimming pool, cats, a cute dog and a pony!!! :-). After such a long night we decided not to visit the hydroelectric dam (which seems to be a place tourists tend to visit and as a science teacher I really should have gone to investigate) but instead we opted for lying in hammocks in the sun listening to reggae music all day! The weather really was like a perfect hot summer´s day, so we planned to visit the falls the next day.

On Friday we woke up to a storm! We had already arranged to go to the Argentinian side of the falls, so we got ready to leave. The rain didn´t stop til late that afternoon. Rob opted out of buying a poncho, against the advice of the guide....subsequently he got totally soaked, I wasn´t that far behind even with a so called ´waterproof´jacket! Anyway, we were driven down to the border, got stamped out of Brazil and into Argentina and then driven right to the park. Our guide stopped on the bridge in between the two borders and explained how we now were bang in the middle of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The whole day cost about 95 Rials, which is about 30 pounds and included our entry to the park, the train, the guide and the transport so not bad! We were guided around the park and saw many waterfalls, racoons and turtles. The waterfalls were bigger than anything we had seen before and the grand finale was being taken by train up the the river Iguaçu which leads to the ´devil´s throat´, nothing could prepare you for how monstrous this volcanic eruption of water could be! Was a great day and the we were accompanied by a mixture of dutch, german and new zealand folk who were all really nice. On returning to our hostel we were told that a group of german lads had moved into our dormatory room so they had moved us to our own room for the same price! We chilled out that night with an all you can eat brazillian BBQ, we really need to go on a diet now...

On the Saturday, we were pleased to wake up to the sunshine again! We made our way by bus down to the brazillian side of the falls. As it was a sunny day we saw a lot more wildlife, it suprised us that no matter how many times people were told not to touch the racoons as they can be viscious and even carry rabies, people still persevered to try and stroke and feed them. We saw a lot of them try and scratch people when they tried to do this and saw them rip open people´s shopping bags to run off with food which was quite funny! We were also warned not to touch the bark of the trees as they have camouflaged caterpillars on them which have spines which hold toxic chemicals to humans....so no tree hugging. The falls from this side were much more panoramic and you could see lots of rainbows in the water, really stunning.

After an amazing sunny morning at the falls we wandered over to the bird park, we weren´t sure whether to spend our money on this but we were glad we did. We saw many varieties of endangered birds, mainly from Brazil. We went into an Avery of toucans and red flamingoes, the toucans were very friendly and posed for lots of photos! They have a very comical look about them and one took a particular shine to Rob´s toes in his flip flops so he had to be very careful of their enormous beaks! Whilst in the park we went into a parrot avery, these can be quite agressive but they left us well alone, it seemed like they were all shouting at each other in there! To top the afternoon off we got to hold a boa constictor snake in the reptile area, this is something I have always wanted to do but always chickened out. It was quite heavy and when it decided to curl around my wrist I kindly asked the keeper to take him back, wanted to leave with my arm still in tact! I didn´t know that flamingoes like looking at themselves in the mirror too, they seem to run up, pose in the mirror for a bit then run back into the water, very bizarre behaviour!

Today we are making our way to Bolivia, we fly into Santa Cruz via Sao Paulo...looking forward to heading south to Tupiza and the solar de Uyani!