The waterfall to end all waterfalls

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We started our trip in the wee hours of the morning and after 12 hours driving we´d had enough and stopped for the night.
The next day we drove to Foz do Iguazu and with a little help from one of the locals, Jose, found a hotel. It had been raining all morning, but the afternoon cleared up so we decided to go visit the Itaupu Hydroelectric Power Plant. It is the biggest in the world and it took them 25 years to build. It was a free one hour tour, and being the cheap asses that we are, we jumped at the chance.
Our friend, Jose, helped us to aquire tickets for the boat ride that takes people up the river to the falls. There is a sixty Real (brazilian currency) difference in price between the boat ride on the Argentinian side and the Brazilian side, even though they take the same course. So, of course, we chose the Argentinian side which was cheaper.
Day two we set out to cross the border, and to our amazement, we found that there is absolutely no check of documents of any sort to leave or enter Brazil. After crossing the river and a short wait at the Argentinian checking gate, we had our passports stamped and were in.
When we arrived at the Argentinian Iguazu Park it was raining buckets, but we decided to press on and take our boat ride anyway.
With the rain and the spray from the falls we had water coming from above, underneath and both sides. Having said that it was an awsome experience, because it had been raining for a month there was ten times more water going over the falls than usual (normally is 1.2 million litres per second, but 12 million per second while we were there). A couple of the trails where closed because the water was so high, even so we got to see some amazing sights.
After camping the night we went back into Brazil, pulled up at a set of lights and who should be tapping at our window? You guessed it! Jose! So he helped us to find a hotel and organize our trip to Paraguay the next morning.
Paraguay is crazy! As soon we got close to the border the population seemed to double. We should tell you that the products are tax free. It´s like buying everything at whole sale price, so a lot of Brazilians go there and come back loaded with electrical goods, shoes, CDs and a lot of fake products as well. We had not planned to buy anything, just check it out, but seeing as we filled our memory card with photos the days before we decided to buy another one.
After three hours of having 5 people at once trying to sell us all sorts of things we´d had enough.
The next day we went to the Brazilian side of the falls. The weather was perfect, warm with blue skies. The Brazilian Park has only one continuous trail, and in two hours we were done, but walking back to the bus we saw that one of the trails on the Argentinian side that was closed when we were there, was now open. The trail to the part of the falls known as The Devil´s Throat, which is the best part and has to be seen to be believed.
Once back at our car we hightailed it over to Argentina. This time with the weather on our side, the falls were a lot clearer. We spent the whole afternoon there, walking to the Devil´s Throat and rewalking the trails we had already done. We even got to see a monkey.
We can honestly say we saved the best for last.
We camped again and drove home the next morning.
All in all, an awsome trip.

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Photos

And the journey begins
The start of our 15 hour drive across Brazil.

Banana Road
One of the many roads side "markets". There´s a lot of banana plantations on the first half of the drive.

Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant
Itaipu is the biggets Hydroelectric Power Plant in the world. It generates enough electricity to provide power for 95% of Paraguay and 5% of Brazil.

Crazy Barrel
It´s a 9 metres thick surge of water. Pipeline has got nothing on this barrel.

Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant
This is the main part of the power station. The white tubes that you can see are big enough to fit 4 semi trailers and each tube passes 700 million litres of water per second.

View from top of spillway
It´s 400m wide and 500m long, and passes 67 million litres of water per second. Anyone care for a ride on this slippery dip?

Spillway
We were really lucky because the spillways (there are 3) had been closed for months and they had just opened one a week before.

A very wet day
Our first day at the falls and we took a 30min ride through the jungle on the top of a truck before walking down to the river and jumping in a boat that took us right up to the foot of the falls. 5 min into our truck ride the sky opened up and didn´t let up all day, we got soaked through and through.

Boat ride
The boat ride was awsome, we went trough rapids on the way up the river and they took us so close to the falls that at times you couldn´t see through the spray.

Argentinian side of the falls
A view from one of the many walks on the Argentinian side. What you can see is less than half of the whole Iguazu Falls.

Axe in awe
We had never seen so much water in our lives!

Muita água (lots of water)
Water, water everywhere and soaked from head to feet!

Who likes a strong shower?
This shot was taken from the lower trail and is a tiny section of the falls. Are you getting an idea of the overall size?

Lonely Traveller
Trying to hitch a ride on our walk back.

Tucans
We were very lucky to see tucans on our way out of the park.

3 countries in one sign
After being in Argentina for two days we decided to check out Paraguay.

Paraguay
We spent half a day in Paraguay which was more than enough. The place is freacken crazy.

Three frontiers
We are in Brazil, and behind Tom on the right is Paraguay and on the left is Argentina.

Native Brazilian Woman?
The have remarkably hairy chins! Yeah, this photo is a bit creepy.

Brazilian side of the falls
Looking from the Brazilian side to the Argentinian side.

Comments

[JK Rach]

That really was a silly dance Tom
Hey guys, glad to see you are seeing heaps of cool shit!! Good work. Love the blogs keep them coming. Take care!! Hopefully see you both soon....in good old London town!