Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

We just spent 4 days in the theme park that is Iguazú Falls. Brazil is nice, but it was not easy to get here.

It all started on Wednesday morning when we took a bus at 7.30 in the morning from Encarnación, in southern Paraguay, to Ciudad del Este, in eastern Paraguay. This part of the journey took 6 hours and was far from comfortable - the ride was bumpy, there was no air conditioning and the bus was packed with people. Had it not been for the lack of livestock it would have been your perfect South American bus nightmare. Next we had to take a local bus in Ciudad del Este from the bus terminal to the border. This was another long, bumpy and hot ride in a bus packed with people while hardly moving at all due to the enormous traffic jams in town. When we got off the bus, we discovered that we were, in fact, not quite at the border at all, and so we had no choice but to take an exceedingly overpriced taxi to take us there. Ciudad del Este may be the ugliest city in Paraguay. Maybe even in the whole of South America. Maybe even in the world! That's how much I hated it. There is nothing to do there except buy stuff tax free, so the streets are covered with people selling all sorts of crap and greedy Brazilians hoarding it. What commenced was a kind of annoying bus hopping game. From the taxi we walked to the Paraguayan border, got our exit stamps, hopped on another bus, got off at the Brazilian border, filled in the necessary documents, got our entry stamps, hopped on yet another bus, and got off at the local bus terminal in Foz do Iguaçu. We had no Brazilian money and there was nowhere to get it, so instead of paying for a bus we had to walk 12 blocks to our hostel in the now-familiar humidity. I was absolutely exhausted after that day and I don't care how cool it is - I am never doing that again and fully intend to pay the necessary tour operators to take care of these border procedures for me in the future.

Once in Brazil, though, we ended up having a nice evening. At the risk of sounding cliché, Brazil has a nice 'vibe'. We ordered some caipirinhas and went to bed early.

The next day we took a bus to visit the Brazilian side of the Iguazú Falls. I believe that this side is generally considered to be the lesser side, but I liked visiting it because you get a nice overall view of the waterfalls. The only downside was that the day had, quite suddenly and inexplicably, turned from hot and humid to windy, rainy and downright cold so we had to work a little harder to stay warm, but the views were amazing!







The next day we were so happy to see blue skies and sunshine, that we decided to stay at the hostel, enjoy the pool, and just relax.

On Saturday, then, we went on a tour with our hostel to the Argentinian side of the Iguazú Falls. The great thing about visiting Brazil's side first and Argentinia's side second, is that you move from the grand overview into detail. In Argentina we got incredibly close to the Devil's Throat, which is a massive wall of thunderous white water - very impressive.





The downside here, though, was that it was Easter weekend and this meant: crowds. Lots and lots of crowds. Although we came here during Easter on purpose because we figured that no one would ever close such a sight as the Iguazú Falls no matter what God thinks, it seemed like every parent, grandparent and baby had decided to come as well. Like this, Iguazú Falls starts to feel like a visit to Ikea on Easter Monday, which is less than ideal. Also, I got a little sunburned. But it was still amazing. Argentina has done a very good job exploiting every possible angle of these breathtaking waterfalls, so there's a lot to do in the area - enough to keep you occupied for days. We took a train through the jungle to reach the Devil's Throat, walked around a lot and took a little thrilling boat ride. I have discovered that I have a ridiculously good time in fast boats, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a boat that goes straight into this waterfall:



It was very exhilarating because you don't know how far the boat will go into the waterfall and you can't see and you feel the force of the water on you. There's no way not to get completely drenched, but this is actually quite nice on such a hot day.





Today, on our last day here, we made a visit to the Itaupú Dam, which is blissfully on both the Paraguayan and the Brazilian side, so that I did not have to go back to Ciudad del Este to see it. The Itaupú Dam is the second biggest dam in the world and is quite impressive in its sheer size. But, I must admit, I felt that I had seen enough of the circus in this area to really appreciate it. I kept thinking about the environmental consequences of the dam and how much wildlife has been destroyed to make it possible. I did enjoy the views over the Rio Paraná, and the blossoms, and the capybara, the biggest rodent in the world, just grazing away on the shores of Lago de Itaupú.







Often you could also find me in one of these two positions:





And now our time in Brazil is already coming to a close. Brazil is such a big country and there is so much to see, but if I fall in love with yet another South American nation I will never get myself back to Europe by early June. It's time to move on. We're taking a 6-hour bus back to Asunción tonight, which leaves at the inconvenient hour of 12 'o clock at night, probably to avoid the crazy masses that we encountered at the border just 4 days ago. We decided not to spend any extra time in Paraguay, even though we love it there, but to travel straight to Bolivia. Our time is running out and there's still so much left to see and do. Gotta keep moving!

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!