Foz do Iguacu - Itaipu dam

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After surviving the 17 hour bus ride from Sao Paolo we finally made it to Foz Do Iguaçu. Maddy who I'm traveling with is at uni in Brazil and managed to get us accommodation with some students for the 3 night we're staying here. They picked us up from the bus station and drove us to their place. Very studenty house, looked a little bit like an American neighbourhood. Its quite a big bungalow and they got a pool table out back which is cool. It's nice staying with locals as you really do get a different view of a place.

We arrived just after 1pm and didn't want to head straight to the falls as we probably wouldn't appreciate it as we were really tired. Instead we went to a place that I'd never heard of but maddy was really excited about. We went to a hydroelectric dam. The Itaipu dam is the second largest in the world behind the Three Gorges Dam in China. The river that powers it runs through Paraguay and Brazil, so the 2 countries teamed up to build it. It cost something like $18 billion and had 40,000 people working on it. The energy produced is split between Brazil and Paraguay. Brazil receives around 90% of the energy which provides the country with 20% of its power. The 10% that Paraguay receives translates to around 90% of the countries energy. Paraguay sells its surplus energy back to brazil.

So yes, a dam. We took the 'special' tour which took us around the dam and then down into where everything happens. Funnily enough this wasn't my first trip to a hydroelectric dam. But this place was pretty impressive. It has one of the worlds largest stores of fresh water in the reservoir, we were driven up to it and it went as far the eye can see. The turbines that the water turns to generate water are enormous. Apparently 2 of them have the equivalent volume of water flowing through it per second as the Iguaçu falls. There are 20 of these turbines. We ended up in the control room which is in the middle of the damn, right on the border of Brazil and Paraguay. There's a line down the middle of the office which divides the 2 sets of teams, on the left are 2 Brazilian engineers who monitor the turbines of their side, and on the right are 2 dude from Paraguay doing the same. There's a desk in the middle for the guy in charge, which alternates between someone from each country every shift. Yes, of course I took a photo with one foot in Brazil and one in Paraguay.

The dam is listed in the lonely planet as worth visiting, if I was by myself I probably wouldn't have gone because, well it's a dam. That being said it was a really interesting trip and would recommend doing it! A pretty interesting day considering I hadn't heard of the dam before and got to step foot in Paraguay.

Really not much to do in Foz do Iguaçu. At all. We went to a large shopping mall which was actually quite nice. Finally got to eat at a kilo restaurant. Went nuts piling the plate with chicken, steak and pasta. Turned out pretty cheap too.

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