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Igaçu Falls

Our final stop in Brasil, and this time at one of the world's greatest natural wonders, the Igaçu or Igazu or Igassu (depending what language you speak) Falls, sitting on the Igaçu River stradling the border between Brasil and Argentina. We took an overnight bus from the coast and arrived in the city of Foz do Igacu at around 6am to an absolutley stunning morning, which has stayed that way for our entire stay here. Kinda ironic for us, as apparantly this area gets over 2000mm of rainfall every year. Anyways, it was great to see the sun again, and it certainly belts it down here - mercury hitting high 30s each afternoon.

The falls were truely spectacular, hard to describe them in words. Over 275 individual falls apparantly, and a well developed network of paths and viewing platforms along the river to get good views of all of them.  There is even a somewhat precarious elevated walkway that heads out into the middle of the river and perches the platform right over the top of one of the falls - I'm still not convinced Penny got right to the edge though. Some great kodak moments and the best thing is that we get to do it all again from the Argentine side in a couple of days.

The other main tourist attraction in Foz, is the massive Itaipu Dam which is on the seperate Parana River about 15km north of the city. This dam is a joint venture between Brasil and Paraguay and we think it is the world's largest hydroelectic dam, though no doubt the Chinese are dreaming up some monster that will dwarf the Itaipu. Itaipu provides enough electicity to supply 25% of Brasil's national demand and 95% of Paraguay's.  The full dam length is 7km of which 5km is an earth embankment and the final 2km the concrete structure that supports the penstocks. At its peak, 40,000 workers were involved in the construction which lasted 14 years in total.

We originally signed up and paid for a 2hour tour that took us right inside the dam so Penny could get excited about the engineering aspects of it all, but just as we were about to start we were told the bus had broken down and tour cancelled. So we were then shunted onto the 'Panoramic' tour, which was nothing more than a half hour self promotion video and then a 45minute bus tour around the dam, with one oh so brief 10minute photo opportunity at a lookout they had created opposite the dam. These trips very much cater for the tour bus crowd which roll through in massive numbers every day, and out again just as fast, so for us very disappointing, but still an impressive beast all the same.

Vegetarians, look away now. It took us till our second last night in Brasil, but we finally managed to visit a Chascuarria - which is a BBQ restaurant that is an all you can eat. Now it might not sound like much, but how it works is that the waiters walk around to each table almost continuosly throughout the evening with these massive skewers of beef or chicken or pork or lamb piping hot and dripping flavour straight off the grill and they skillfully cut you a piece of meat straight on to your plate. It is seriously meat lovers heaven, and you could eat and eat and eat until you couldn't eat any more (and then they showed you to the desert bar...). Great way to finish our time in Brasil, and also sets us up for the steak capital of the world that is Argentina, where we are off to next. 

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