Carnaval to Iguazu

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It´s been a while in travel time since the last blog, we have done alot and not so much...
It all began with Carnaval.
The unfortunate dampner of the rainy weather in Rio, which actually forced my jeans out of my pack (regrettably mind you, I mistook rain for cold) did not take any sort of toll on the celebrations, and celebrate the Brazilians can!
Carnaval is like nothing we have ever really experienced before, the city basically shuts down for 5 days so everyone can dress up, get drunk and samba!! So thats what we did.

Basically carnaval in Rio is like heaps of street parades all over the city, they have a starting point and an ending point, you can join in any parade (called a ´bloco´), and follow around a truck with a huge sound system playing the same song on repeat for about 2-3 hours (so if you are there for the whole thing, despite not knowing the language you can learn the song!). Once one finishes then you can just go and find another...which is quite easy to do. Meanwhile there are guys following the truck with styrenefoam eskies full of beer and smirnoff. The blocos do all have meaning behind them but we never really found out many of their meanings!
So we joined a few of these blocos, but the thing was they were all in the day, and Brazilians like to party until the early hours 5am/6am, so it was a really long day if we went out at night as well...
We tossed up the idea of going to the Samba Dromo for a few days (which is Carnaval, the floats, the costumes, the real deal!) it was bloody expensive, but when most people from the hostel were going we thought we would regret it if we didn´t.... and we would have. It was an incredible experience, I now know why they work on their floats for a whole year, the costumes, floats and performances are so ellaborate, unfortunately my words will do it no justice, so I will just leave it at that...truly amazing! It pissed down rain while we were there, so we didnt stay to see the last two schools, which ended up going until 7am....starting at 9pm mind you!
That was Carnaval in a nut shell.
The rest of our time in Rio was spent sleeping in after late nights, laying on the beach (for our last two days the sun came out!) partying with the hostel crew, and doing a couple of touristy things like seeing christ the redeemer, which was definately a highlight...he´s a big big man....said a couple of prayers for you all dont worry!
We left Rio on Friday, which we were pretty ready to do, it was hectic, so its nice to get a break from the big smoke.
We took the bus to Foz do Iguacu, which was a mere 22hours, to be honest it really wasnt that bad... apart from when the bus drivers got pissed off with us for taking too long at one of the stops! We were just trying to enjoy our dinner, when the driver looks through the window clapping his hands at us.... everyone was waiting!

We saw the Brazilian side of the falls yesterday and at the first view point I was like, oh yeah thats alot of water falls, then as we walked and walked and saw more and more and more falls, I was beginning to get quite impressed, but then when you could walk out onto a platform maybe 5m from the bottom of one of the falls and on the edge of another ( its literally like a staircase of 700 different water falls), I was really impressed!!! You get soaked on the platforms, people wear ponchos
Apparently the Argentinian side is better....so we have very high expectations!
We are now in Argentina and the price difference already is a relief...
We are going to see the falls tomorrow and do a boat ride underneath...very excited, we´re then going to pop over to Paraguay apparently there are cheap electronics there and I need a new ipod!! And then its off to Buenos Aires, which is also very exciting.

So that´s Adios for now...Lots of love Linz and Troy

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