Rio de Janeiro and Iguazu Falls

This week has been one of heavy travelling, leaving Colombia for Rio de Janeiro, and tearing through the south-western corner of Brazil to enter Argentina.

Leaving Colombia was a sad moment. I had spent so much time there, and had managed to forge real friendships and ties with the country, Medellin in particular, that it felt homely and familiar. However, going to somewhere as iconic as Rio helped soothe the melancholy feelings. I arrived in Rio via Lima at dawn on Monday morning, and had to sleep on my rucksack in the lobby of my Rio hostel until the staff arrived for work three hours later. Incidentally, the name of the hostel, "Stone of a Beach" - so called due to its proximity to Copacabana beach - is probably the most laboured pun in the history of words. Met friends Mike and Kelly there a few hour later who have flown over from London for a three-week holiday.

Rio is everything you expect it to be. Fun-loving, scorchingly hot and punishingly humid, full of beautiful people and scandalously rich high-rollers. Rio must be one of the best locations for a city in the world. It sits in a natural harbour, Guanabara Bay, surrounded by magnificent, vertical hills, and is blessed with some perfect beaches, towering surfs and great restaurants. And forever looking down on the Cariocas (Rio residents) is the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue, with arms outstretched. We only spent three days in Rio, shamelessly ticking off the touristy musts on any short stay here. Yes, we went up Sugarloaf mountain, peered at Jesus on the hill, sank cairprinhas in Ipanema and had a look at the Maracana stadium, where Brazil play all their international matches. The best moment was the afternoon we spent on Ipanema beach, which lives up to all the hype. Had a coconut with a straw in it, got battered by some of Ipanema´s violent waves, and saw the sun set behind the mountains. Blissful.

Having Mike and Kelly with me has galvanised me to get moving and sort out my priorities. And they were to see Iguazu Falls, on Brazil´s border with Argentina, and then get back to a country where I can understand what people are saying. To see Brazil properly you need months - it is the fifth biggest country in the world - so maybe another trip in years to come would be a better time to see "the rest", ie the other 99.99999% of the country.

On Thursday we got a 24-hour bus to Foz do Iguacu (via the vast Sao Paulo, the biggest city in South America) on the border with Argentina and Paraguay. We paid 666 reales to arrive on Friday 13th. And we were followed to our hostel by a black dog. The fact that nothing happened to us that day should convince any superstitious types that it is indeed a load of medieval nonsense. Iguazu Falls are the most powerful and awe-inspiring waterfalls in the world, described by my guidebook as "making Niagara look like a dripping tap". It is surrounded by miles of lush national park, teeming with wildlife. If you are lucky you will see howler monkeys, and if you are even luckier, a jaguar. We saw neither, but we did see a caiman; a huge iguana type lizard; feisty, food-grabbing racoons; big spiders; and millions of beautiful butterflies as big as your hand. Well, maybe Jeremy Beadle´s hand, but impressive enough. The falls on the Brazilian side are spectacular and offer a better photo opportunity - you get a nice view of La Garganta del Diablo (´Devil´s Throat´), the biggest and most fearsome waterfall - and the 250 other falls. The next day we crossed the border into Argentina, and visited the falls from that side. There you get to stand very close to the big one. The amount of water you see is unimaginably vast, and any figures you hear about the amount of cubic centimetres of water a second is meaningless, just like imagining what a trillion pounds looks like in pennies. As well as being deafening, staring at the Devil´s Throat actually makes you feel a bit dizzy. It was so worth an arduous day´s travel, and another absolute must-see in South America is complete.

Tomorrow we are flying back to Buenos Aires, some 17 hours by road to the south, where we will stay at the hostel I first arrived at on the start of my trip, nearly seven months ago. After a week there we are off to Mendoza in the west to get stuck in to some of the continent´s finest vino...

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