Thursday, 24 June 2010

Iguassu Falls, Argentina & Foz de Iguassu, Brazil

As I mentioned in my last post, we'd been in Salto, Uruguay which is up in the north west corner of Uruguay, so a taxi drove us about 40 minutes across the Uruguay - Argentina border and dropped us off at a bus station, where we proceeded to get on a yet another night bus for 10 hours.  This night bus however, was not nearly as nice as the buses in Chile, it was cold & they did not offer blankets or pillows.

10 hours later we arrived into the bus station, where a mini bus picked us up and drove us to see Iguassu Falls from the Argentinian side.  (they are half in Brazil & half in Argentina)  The cool part about this side of the falls is that you can walk out on these metal walkways so that you are "on the top" of the falls.  It's a great view and you can feel the mist everywhere you go, because the force of the water is so high it almost feels like it's raining.

After a few hours exploring there, we drove across the Argentina - Brazil border and spent the night in Foz de Iguassu, Brazil, which is just the Brazilian side of the falls & since they speak Portuguese instead of Spanish, the name changes a bit.  The following morning we went to see the Brazilian side of the falls, which I think I actually enjoyed more, because you see the falls from further away and you can see how wide & vast they are.  I mean the Argentina side is great, but if I had to chose just one, I'd chose the Brazilian side.

On our second day in Foz de Iguassu we decided we'd take a day trip over into Paraguay.  It took about 20 minutes to get to the border and about 2 seconds to cross it cause nobody checks at all, which just amazed me!  We hung out there for about 3 hours, walking around the shops and street vendors before deciding we really wanted to see the Itapu Hydro Electric Dam which is on a river which divides Brazil & Paraguay, so off we went to see Itapu.  If you've never seen a hydroelectric dam, it's pretty darn cool!  It was the world's largest one, until recently when China's new dam was commissioned.  We ended up there at noon, which would have been a fine time, aside from the fact that the English version of  the movie & tour are only at 11am and 2pm . . . we didn't have time to wait till 2pm, so we took the Portuguese tour & luckily the guide spoke English as well and translated for us.  That evening we took another night bus, this time for 17.5 hours to San Paulo, Brazil and then changed buses and rode from another 5 hours until we arrived in Paraty, Brazil.  More on that another time . . .

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