Coatis, Rainbows, Water, Water, Everywhere

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Even though multiple travel agents had told us that we could not go into Brazil without paying the US $100 for a visa, and multiple cab drivers had told us they would ¨sneak¨us in to Brazil for US $50 each, we found out from a simple conversation with an agent at the bus station in Puerto Iguazu that, yes, for a day trip to view the falls, a United States citizen could go in to Brazil by paying the US $1 bus fare. So, we did not have to risk sneaking into Brazil after all, and it was defenitely worth seeing the falls from that side to do it. Something to know is that Portugese and Spanish sound nothing alike, so don´t assume that you´ll be able to understand Portugese if you speak Spanish (although most of the Brazilians I talked to could understand Spanish). From the bus station in Puerto Iguazu we went to the bus terminal in Foz do Iguazu, Brazil in about half an hour. From there, we caught another bus to the falls for about US $1 and another fourty minutes. It cost US $10 to get into the park, and the Brazilian park has a double decker bus that takes you to different points in the park. The waterfalls were gorgeous and different from the Brazilian side- it was definitely worth the small hassle. There is a walkway out onto the waterfalls, and there were rainbows wherever we looked. The only bad part of the park was when a coati jumped up onto our table and ran away with the parts of our lunches that weren´t smashed onto the floor. The rafting trips were much more expensive on the Brazilian side.

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