Iguaçu Falls

Finally our time here in Foz is coming to an end. We have had three full days here and that is plenty. We can´t wait to leave. It´s a really odd place, a typical border town with very little to do in it. In fact the place is deserted on the evenings. Mind you, that didn´t stop us finding the "International Disco Club" on Friday night (more of that later).

So everyone who comes to Foz, and who is travelling, comes for one main reason - to see the impressive Iguaçu waterfalls (which apparently put Niagra and Victoria to shame, not that I have seen either of those). I won´t bore you with too many of the stats except to say there are about 275 waterfalls, dropping 90 metres, with something like 13k cubic metres of water falling each second.

The falls are divided between Brazil and Argentina, with Argentina getting best deal. On our first full day here, which was last Friday H and I went to see the Brazilian side. This side offers the best panoramic view of the falls, but you get a lot closer to them on the Argentinian side. Anyway, we arrived via local bus and spent a few hours walking around. The views were stunning, and not being a bit waterfall expert, I was blown away..not literally, but I did get a little wet. There´s one part of the falls, called the Devil´s Throat, which is unbeleivable. You can see it in this picture but of course it hasn´t done it any justice at all. It is the part just left of centre. You can see the Brazilian viewpoint in the lower left hand side of the picture below, and the Argentinian viewpoint in the top right.















The photo below was taken from the Brazilian viewpoint. There are a few walks you can take on the Brazilain side, into the jungle, but some companies have privatised them and you can´t go on them without paying. It was a bit of a shocker really, but we had heard there were a few free walks on the Batistuta side. So after seeing the falls from the Brazilians side, and drinkng beer next to them, we went back to Foz in the afternoon.















This was also taken from the Brazilian side.

The picture below is the last one from the Brazilian side, I promise. You may already be bored of them but between us we took over 400 pictures of water, and it falling. And it is hard work uploading photos this on this crappy PC (and I am having trouble putting them where I want them to go).

Right, where was I? Oh yes, back in Foz on Friday afternoon. I think I killed some time emailing. So that evening we hooked up with the other gringo´s who were on the bus trip here (Jimmy and Inigo (his parent´s are hippies, and live with Morrocan and Algerian buskers) and Tom and Ellie). We headed out into the empty streets in search of food and nightlife. After a very cheap churrascaria and a couple of caipirinha´s, we found ourselves going to the opening night of the "International Disco Club", which is attached to the only 5 star hotel in town. After intially refusing to go in because they had put the prices up (well the flyer did say it was cheap until 00:45, and we arrived at 2am), the bouncers decided to let us in for cheap cheap (having gringo´s in the place is a good thing). It was a pretty good night, and very interesting to see how the Brazilian´s go clubbing. The guy who looked like he had just come out of traction (he still had the metal pins in his leg) drinking from a bottle of whiskey was particularly amusing. We eventually turned in at about 4.30am. This meant Saturday was pretty much written off. Well I did drag H to the worlds largest hydroelectic dam (Itaipu), and one of the seven modern wonders of the world. I can tell you are as bored as H was. Sam, being an engineer and all that, you would have loved it. Mind you, we did get a good view of the Paraguayan city of Ciudad Del Este on the trip (tick!).

So today we went to Argentina. We had planned to go via public transport but when we looked into it we realised that the public transport to and from Argentina, and then onto the falls did´t run as often as we had hoped. It would have taken 2, maybe 3 hours each way. So we decided to go via an overpriced tour. Well it wasn´t even that, it was a guy in a minibus who took us there and brought us back. At the border we had to get out and wipe our footwear in disinfectant - something about foot and mouth prevention. This was a bit odd, especially as the Brazilian mat was dry and hadn´t got any detergent on it.

Anyway, we had a great day. Because we had the whole day there we managed to do all three of the free walks around the park. You get a lot closer to the falls on this side, and the highlight was getting really close to the Devil´s Throat, as you can see below.

We leave for Florianapolis tomorrow, which is back on the south coast of Brazil. It´s another 15 hour, overnight bus journey, and we are hoping for a decent bus this time. We are going to spend some more time enjoying the beach life and I am hoping to go surfing again. From there we head into Uruguay, most probabaly sometime next weekend. We will then be at the end of our fourth week, and there is now talk now of going to Bolivia after spending some time in Buenos Aires as we don´t really need to spend four weeks in Argentina. It could be a real mission getting there but it is supposed to be really cheap and we are getting through our cash really fast, but I guess we will see how it goes.