Heading to Argentina

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Iguazu falls

It took about 30 hours on a total of 5 buses, with a lot of waiting around in between to get from Paraty to Iguazu. I have to say at this point how amazing the Argentinian buses are - like being on a first class flight - huge reclining seats, movies, dinner, wine, breakfast, blanket and a pillow. I have actually started to look forward to the long journeys! And to top it all off, I managed to acquire a copy of Harry Potter no 7 to keep me company :-)

So this was the first (of many) stint at camping in South America. Quite a nice campsite - pool, barbecues, though no hot water (was so hot there though that it didn´t really matter). The Argentinians are very friendly and the barbecue area becomes the social hangout for the evening. We tried our best to converse with them but this was our first real immersion into the Spanish language so feeling a bit rusty and having a few troubles understanding what´s being said, though you can get the gist......hopefully that will improve! They were also v keen to bestow their barbecuing knowledge by offering lots of helpful hints an tips; apparently their techniques are quite different to those of the Australians´, but I´ll let Russ fill you in on the details if you´re interested...... In the name of sticking to a budget, we opted for a 50p bottle of red wine; not quite the strawberry cordial of Brazil but not brilliant, so we threw caution to the wind and upped it to a whole one pound the next night :-)

Since were staying in Argentina we visited the Argentinian side of the falls first. You get more of a close-up view from the Argentinian side. The biggest and most powerful part of the falls is called ´Garganta del Diablo´(Devil´s throat), and they have built a walkway which passes within a few metres of the top of it - it´s quite breath-taking to see it so close up (though you obviously get a little wet!). There´s loads of wildlife in the park too, including poisonous butterflies (something else to add to the list of scary animals). The next day we visited the Brazil side (some slightly naughty behaviour since we entered Brazil without a stamp so we were illegal immigrants for the day he he he). From the Brazil side you get an overall view of the whole falls, worth seeing but not quite as spectacular as the Argentinian side. There are two theories as to how the falls were created. The first is something to do with volcanic activity. The second, which I personally believe, is that a father was due to sacrifice his daughter to the god of the river, when she was kidnapped by her lover. He was so mad, he thumped his fist on the ground, cracking it open and so creating the falls :-) Also went to visit a bird park (Parque des aves, no less) since we had time to kill, which was actually a lot better that I´d expected it to be, though they had to spoil it by putting a tarantula in there.

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Comments

[Jenner]

Brazilian Wine
Cheap Brazilian wine is made from wine, grape juice and sugarcane alcohol. Some decent Brazilian red wines come from Miolo. Try Miolo Lote 43.