Now that´s a lot of water

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After 22 hours on the bus we arrived in Foz de Iguacu, on the Brazilian side, and made our way to our Hostel ready for some time by the pool rather than rushing into our sight-seeing. Luckily Cherie insisted on a cab to the Hostel because although it looked close on the map the walk would have taken rather longer!
With perfect blue skies it was a perfect day to relax by the pool and recover from Rio. We met some Swedish guys we knew from Rio but it was coca colas all round.

The following day we headed into the National Park to see the waterfalls. The waterfall forms a natural border for Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The falls are up to 80 metres in height and there are over 200 waterfalls in total. From the Brazilian side there is a walk that takes around an hour and is on the bank further from the falls themselves and give an awesome sense of the scale and power of the fast-flowing waters.
Cherie again wished she had a panoramic camera to capture the enormity of the falls, so took numerous photos so that she can try and recreate the panoramic view by sticking them end-to-end. We had expected it to be big but it was amazing the impression that just a bit of water can leave.

There is a walkway out across the water towards a part of the falls called Devil´s Throat and the roar of the waters and the soaking you get from the spray allows you to experience more of it´s power. It was also at this stage that Cherie began experimenting with black and white photography so we will attach one of her favourites!

We then walked up to the highest viewpoint of the Brazilian side and you can look out and down over the falls and also see the Argentinian flag on their side of the falls. Andy also nearly had a heart attack when Cherie pointed downwards and Andy realised you could see through the gaps in the metal flooring to the water below...

We had signed up on a tour for the 2nd part of the afternoon. The tour was billed as a cycling and kayaking nature spotting day and Cherie was keen to see a toucan and more monkeys.
The cycling was good but to see wildlife you need to keep quiet and our group had 2 families with kids and the kids were more excited to be riding the bikes than seeing any animals and with our guide not appearing to know much we decided our best bet would be to leave them behind so we could see animals before the kids scared them off.
This worked well to begin with, with us spotting some monkeys and numerous big lizards. However, the element of surprise worked against us when we had stopped to look at something and there was a sudden thrashing of undergrowth next to us to which Andy cycled off and Cherie nearly fell off her bike!
We decided it must have been a huge snake but it was apparently more likely another lizard.
We saw a number of bikes abandoned along the 10km route and all became clear later as all the fat parents ended up ditching their bikes to sit on the "support crew" jeep.

The next part of the day wasn´t quite as we had anticipated. The boat ride was rather lame and we were then directed to applaud the dare-devil driver who had taken one mini wave.
We were then lowered into kayaks and this was equally lame but rather funnier. It was essentially drifting down the stretch of water that leads to the waterfall, far enough away to be completely safe but the water moved quick enough that we had absolutely no control of our kayak and so whenever we tried to paddle we simply span in circles. Looking across to the other kayaks we saw everyone suffering the same fate, so we decided instead to do the usual trick of splashing one another with our paddles whilst the bemused cayman looked on.

We had a final short walk down what should have been named mosquito alley and then we jumped on the bus and headed for home for beers by the pool.

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