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Published: February 20th 2014
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Spending a week in Puerto Iguazu, which is so close to the Brazilian border town of Foz do Iguacu, we decided it would be a shame not to take a wee trip across to see what Brazil has to offer. Any people we spoke to told us that it was worth the visit, that it was a nice little town and that it was pretty enough. Given that people told us not to go next nigh or near Paraguay, we trusted that it must be worth the visit, if even only to say that we had been in Brazil given that we didn't have the time of the budget to travel further in Brazil to any of the more noteworthy cities like Rio or Porto Alegre.
It is well connected to Puerto Iguazu, and you can take a bus from the bus terminal for just a few pesos. It's only about 20 minutes away, and the buses that go there are comfortable enough. You do have to go through immigration leaving Argentina and coming back in. As we were only going for the day and weren't leaving Argentina for good, we didn't have to go through any immigration on the
Brazilian side - slightly devo as I was hoping for a stamp on my passport!
Crossing over the border we began to see the makings of the town of Foz do Iguacu. It seemed fairly spread out and when we stopped at the bus station not everyone got off as we didn't yet seem to be in the centre of the city. So we continued on another bit and found ourselves in what appeared to be more of a commercial area with shops and restaurants. It would be fair to say that the bus driver was a bit of a 'boludo' or asshole... and left us in 'la lomo del orto', rough translation, in the arse end of nowhere. When we got off the bus and wandered around for a minute, immediately being annoyed by pushy street sellers trying to force us in to buying clothes and other crafts, we realised that we had made a grave error not getting off the bus at the terminal. We walked around for a bit to try and determine if there was anything more to the place, but it appeared that there wasn't so in the end we thought the better of
it and decided it would be best to try and work our way back to find where the bus home would take us from. This took a while and I was very much aware of people staring at me, the white gringa, glowing in the midday sun, a definite tourist!
What shocked me about this place was that it is a town that literally has bus loads of tourists coming in and out everyday as it is one of the towns of the Triple Frontier, and yet there was no real development or well planned out town centre, with no restaurants or bars or touristy type shops. There was just a random mish mash of street sellers and small little kiosks with tables and chairs outside. I felt very much like we had stumbled across a very 'local' area, which bemused me as it is bookmarked as a touristy place to visit while in this part of the country.
I can't really put into words what exactly it was about this place that we didn't like, I guess it's one of those instances where you get a bad vibe about somewhere and you have to go with your
gut and get out of there. But I was really disappointed. It did not withstand any of the connotations of Brazil that I had in my mind before coming - I wasn't expecting Rio de Janeiro but I was expecting more than than what greeted us when we got there. Coming back on the bus we took the pictures that I attach below, we didn't feel safe enough taking out our camera while we were there. There was just a very different feeling to how it is in Argentina, poor area or otherwise. The favelas that we passed by on the bus looked even worse than the villas here in Buenos Aires (which are pretty bad to say the least), and in general the people looked a lot poorer than the poor people I have seen here too.
Short and sweet as the visit was though, I am glad we went. It was nice to experience something different to Argentina and see another perspective of South America. I hope one day I go back to Brazil to see the real beauty that I know it has to offer.
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