Iguazu

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31 December, Sunday... Arrived in Puerto Iguazu at around midday. First things first we headed for the police station where we were told we could file the report for Thom's stolen bag mañana, not too convincing but seemed like a nice enough chap. Onto the internet for Thom to try to sort out some of his things and then a quick trip to the supermarket to stock up on booze for NYE. We met some guys we'd met in BA at the hostel and I promptly fell asleep in the sun (luckily for me it quickly turned to shade). Waking up in time for the end of happy hour I was introduced to a new drink called caiprinha, a sugary limey strong brazilian drink which in actual fact I have had before - thank you Denis. There was a sweet BBQ (as in sweet as not cakes on the barbie) with two bottles of wine for me and unlimited caiprinhas. Needless to say I was nicely wasted for the party and wasn't even too bothered being given a free pina colada in the 'club' we went to. A good NYE.

1 January, Monday... Woke up feeling a little hungover, sat by the pool, burnt, went to the police station and muddled through with my excellent Spanish.

2 January, Tuesday... OK. Time to do something. We headed over to the Brazilian side of the falls on the hostel minibus. It was nice and sunny so we got a nice view of the falls. You basically wander about a set path which takes you past waterfalls of increasing sizes until you get to the main vista at the end. Even though I've seen photos I was blown away by the sheer size of the waterfalls. Really would recommend it to anyone.

3 January, Wednesday... Apparantly the Argentinian side is better than the Brazilian so that's where we went today. We walked along the top of a few different falls then it started to rain. A lot. No really, it absolutely chucked it down and did not stop. After about 20 minutes of rain we decided to bag up our electricals and Thom's choice of a white shirt proved to be ill advised. Oh well, at least there would be more water to fall.

You do get a bit closer to the falls on this side and you can see a whole cascade which isn't visible from the other side. You can also get wet from the spray which wasn't necessary for us but would have been nice, I imagine, if it was a sunny day. Switching our boat for an earlier one so we didn't have to sit in the rain was a simple task and we had great fun riding the speed boat under one of the falls (actually I don't think you go that far under but you certainly do get wet). This was followed by a speedy ride along the river in the rain which means the rain drops sting your face something chronic. Then a ride through the jungle where we saw trees such as rosewood but no animals as they were all too scared of the trucks. Back to the hostel to dry off and I don't think I even had a drink. No wait. There was a samba show which seemed to just involve girls in bikinis and headdresses shaking about until the audience participation started. I was up for a little dancing (badly) and skipping but chickened out when the limbo started.

4 January, Thursday... Spent the whole day arranging transport to and travelling towards Florianopolis in Brazil. Another day another country.

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Photos

Me again
hello

Wet
It did rain a little too