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Published: August 19th 2008
It's nice to finally have some warm weather! Its a balmy 22 (and more) degrees here 24 hours a day which is awesome.
We arrived at the airport and asked for a transfer to the hotel. I scoffed when they told me it was 210 pesos ($80AUS) but the assured me it was 55km. Anyway, I didn't realise our hotel was actually in Brazil!!! So we had to cross the border from Argentina to Brazil. It's a really strange feeling just crossing over a bridge and knowing you're in another country (
actually you can 3 at the same time, Argentina Brazil & Paraguy), not something we get in Australia.
This hotel, Das Cataratas, on the brazilian side was our treat for the trip. It's the only hotel on the falls on the brazilian side and is gorgeous. The rooms and furniture are something straight out of the 1920's, with beautiful dark wood cupboards and floor boards. They have a cigar smoking lounge, cards room and even the room where the ladies used to socialise when they weren't allowed in the bar.
We checked out the brazilian side of the falls on the first afternoon which was pretty impressive!
Lots of spray and we came away pretty wet. We played tennis in the afternoon which was great. I hadn't picked up a racket since I was a kid and I really enjoyed it. Something to get into back home.
Our driver had told us before he dropped us off that he would take us to the argentine side of the falls tomorrow for 200 pesos round trip. We kind of scoffed and said ¨yeah right, leave us your number.¨
We asked the hotel how much it would cost to get a taxi across and back from the hotel, and they said it would be $160REA ($100) each way!!!! We quickly learned that eveything in brazil is really really expensive and it was actually much cheaper for us to get a guide to come across the border and pick us up.
We called our guide and asked him to come get us, so we checked out the falls from the Argentine side on Monday. We powered through, covering all the trails in about a quarter of the recommended time (
apparantley we were racing someone, i´m not sure who, but i think we won). If you'd gone at
tourist pace, there's no way you could do the whole lot in a day. The falls from the Argentine side are much wider but I think the experience on the Brazilian side of being able to be under the spray made it more impressive. Never the less, great day out and good to get some exercise as well!
Whitewater rafting was on Monday afternoon but because there had been heaps of rain, there was no rapids :-( wish they had told us this before we'd paid! But we can now say that we have swam in the Amazon which is pretty awesome! The water is not actually the dirty brown colour it appears- it's actually really clean and that's the red clay sediment giving it that colour. We had an american kid in our boat and when we were swimming, I said
¨make sure you don't pee. These bugs swim up into you, lodge their barbs and feed off the nutrients when you go to the toilet. Eventually you'll end up losing your johnson!¨
He asked Danyane what I said, and she repeated. He said ¨That's what I thought, is he joking???¨. Danyane said unfortunately I think
not.
It would have been a pretty good trick to play on the kid, but it is very very true!
Wed decided to hire the driver again to take us to the casino that night, which was back over in Argentina. I was pretty keen, being able to gamble in pesos and all! I went and changed a 100 peso note and only got 3 chips. After thinking for a second, I realised the gambling was in USD only. On the upside, this meant I could win more!
Played pretty well at blackjack but kept getting bled chips by Danyane sitting next to me! She does remind me off the time she saved my but at star city though :-p
We meant a yank there who happened to be on a paediatric gastroenterology conference. Bloody medicine, we can't avoid it anywhere.
Anyway, it's Tuesday morning and time for breakfast and the Argentina/Brazil game! We're off to Rio this afternoon, will update with all photos soon.
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Looks Awesome
Hi guys, looks like a fantastic trip! Can you believe I just figured out that I had to subscribe to get the updates?! Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say. Work is sending me to Singapore for a 4 day "Junket" on 14/9, I just have to pretend I'm enthusiastic about a product we're considering! We look forward to the next installments! :)