Advertisement
Published: August 6th 2007
Edit Blog Post
View of Devil's Throat from Brazil
Can you see the rainbow?I (Jen) believe I last left off with Andrew & I on a bus to Sao Paulo... We arrived in the Sao Paulo bus terminal with just enough time to buy 2 of 4 remaining tickets on the last overnight bus leaving for the Iguacu Falls that night. Given our first 2 short haul buses in Brazil were relatively nice, we though it safe to assume that an overnight bus would be acceptable. We were wrong. The bus was nothing special at all and very cramped, and given our late ticket purchase, we weren't even seated next to each other. Luckily, the other passengers were very accomodating and we ended up sitting together, which was especially nice since Andrew started off sitting next to a woman with a child who had well outgrown the sitting-on-mums-lap stage!
After a very long night, we arrived safe and sound in the town of Foz do Iguacu. While the town itself is nothing special, it is uniquely located where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet.
On our first afternoon, we visited the Brazilian side of the waterfalls. The falls are shared by the
Overview of Argentinian Falls
Taken from the Brazilian side Iguazu National Park (Argentina) and Iguacu National Park (Brazil). The waterfall
Overview of Argentinian Falls
Taken from the Brazilian sidesystem consists of about 270 falls along 2.7 kilometres of the Iguacu River. Some of the individual falls are up to 82m in height, though the majority are about 64m. The Garganta del Diablo, or Devil's Throat, a U-shaped 150m wide and 700m long cliff, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil. Most of the falls are within Argentine territory, but from the Brazilian side you get a more panoramic view of the Devil's Throat. Rather than bore you with detailed description of waterfalls, I'll let the pictures do the talking...
That night, our last in Brazil, with both of us feeling very healty (and hungry), we decided to have a nice dinner at a type of restaurant called a "parilla". A parilla is a meat-lovers dream restaurant! After filling your plate at the salad bar (which in itself is a meal), you simple sit at your table while the waiters come around every few minutes and offer every type of meat you can imagine - beef (all different cuts), chicken, lamb, pork,
fish, etc. (including delicious grilled pineapple - yum!). You can eat as much as you like, and you never
Us With Devil's Throat in Background
From the Brazilian Sidehave to get out of your seat. It was an amazing meal!
The next day, before leaving Brazil, we snuck in a trip to the Itaipu hydroelectric power plant. The Itaipu Dam is listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and it really was something to see (sorry, we forgot the camera so no pictures... this will have to do http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Itaipu.jpg). The dam is the largest operational hydroelectric power plant in the world. The dam suplies roughly 95% of the energy consumed by Paraguay and 20% of that consumed by Brazil. To put it into perspective; the dam is 196 metres high (equivalent to a 65-story building), the amount of concrete used to build the power plant would be enough to build 210 football stadiums the size of Maracana (where we saw the Brazilian football game), and the iron and steel used would allow for the construction of 380 Eiffel Towers! Andrew was especially impressed by the fact that the flow of 2 generators is roughly equivalent
to the average flow of the Iguacu Falls (and there are 18 generators in total!). Needless to say, it was very impressive!
After our trip to the
Argentinian Detail
dam, we packed up and jumped on a bus to cross the border to Argentina. It was quite funny at the border as the customs officers were far more interested in a group of Argentinians who had purchased a bunch of electronics in Brazil, than they were in a couple of backpackers. As our bus driver was getting impatient (it was simply a local bus), they just waived us through without asking any questions or looking at our packs and we left behind the Argentinians to sort through their purchases!
The next day, we caught the views of the falls from the Argentinian side. One thing I will say is that Iguazu is apparently rivalled only by Southern Africa's Victoria Falls, however, while Iguazu is wider and very impressive, I'd have to say the Niagara Falls rank higher in my books (no Canadian bias of course!). I guess we'll just have to visit South Africa to see who the real winner is!
After having our fill of water-wonders,
we boarded our first Argentinian bus, having heard that they were the best in South America. We splurged and bought "cama suite" tickets - these are buses with seats that
Heron at Edge of Falls
will go recline completely flat - with Andrew very excited to try the flat seats. The first couple of hours of the trip, however, Andrew sat bitterly as our bus was not a cama suite. Thinking we'd been taken by the bus company who had assured us the seats went completely flat, our bitterness was removed when we changed buses and this time we indeed had beds for the night! What a difference (especially on a 15 hour bus trip)!
The best part of our bus ride to Buenos Aires was meeting Ancrum and Kate, a great couple from Perth, Australia. They had met another traveller earlier in their trip who had recommended an apartment rental company in BA, so after getting along famously on the bus, we decided to try and rent an apartment together for our week in BA!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.242s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 71; dbt: 0.1148s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb