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Other entries in Foz do Iguassú

Brazil, Baby!

Our next stop after Sucre was Santa Cruz which is Bolivia's largest and wealthiest city, situated in the hot n'steamy east of the country in the Amazon basin near the Brazilian border. The options for the journey are a 10 hour bus ride in a crappy Bolivian bus or a 30 minute flight in a crappy Bolivian plane... don't talk to me about Sophie's Choice, she had nothing on us. So we duly pitched up to quite possibly the most laid back airport on the planet. They didn't weigh our bags, they didn't check our passports and they didn't x ray or manually check either us or any of our hand baggage. As we said though, who's going to blow up a Bolivian plane?! Anyone who's looked into the matter will have realised that if they wait long enough they're so crap they'll just drop out of the sky of their own accord. The flight lasted 33 minutes and the pilot spent 31 of those wrestling with the controls for the wing flaps, we could hear lots of rather alarming grinding noises coming from the wings and we could see the flaps sticking up and vibrating madly but over 20 minutes into the flight we were juddering along with big holes in the wings where they wouldn't go back down. It was almost enough to make me wish the Georgian missionaries were on there so I could make a last ditch attempt to pray for some divine retribution before the wings just fell clean off or they realised they'd put in petrol instead of diesel or something.  

In the event though we made it to Santa Cruz and had a very pleasant day and a half wandering around in the sun and trying to visit every one of the seemingly thousands of ice cream parlours in the city. On the second afternoon we had to be at the train station by 3 to catch the train to the Brazilian border. Not just any old train though, oh no, it's called the Death Train. Not though, fortunately, because it's in the habit of crashing, but because the journey takes is very long and it's hot and extremely slow, rickety and rattly. It was a bit like sitting in a tumble dryer on full heat and full power but slow spin. For 15 hours. Evidently though this alone isn't suffering enough so they also show the crappest movies ever made on rotation for the first 8 hours of the journey. They had one dvd with 3 movies on it, all 3 were straight to video releases about gang warfare in New Orleans and all 3 were truly, staggeringly awful and they played two of them twice. It was so bad it was funny and made even more so by the fact that in an attempt to mask the utter rubbishness of the films' stories and dialogue the director had made full use of bad language, sex and violence and we were sharing our train carriage with a group of 12 nuns. I'm assuming that now they've had a chance to go to confession since the journey God really does know what they were thinking.

The following morning we emerged from the train probably looking like it had crashed and fell into taxis for the 5 minute journey to the border where we were duly stamped out of Bolivia and into Brazil. I swear we could tell immediately, the first town we came to looked and felt like it was on a different planet to most of Bolivia let alone just over the border in the neighbouring country. We really felt it when we went into a supermarket and the first thing we saw was a huge stand of Havaianas flip flops and the second thing we saw was that everything was about 4 times the price of the exact same stuff in Bolivia. We didn't have long to grab a few things as there was an open truck waiting there to take us into the Pantanal wetlands for our 3 day stay there. The Pantanal is the largest wetland on earth, about the size of France and is also one of the world's best wildlife spotting areas so we were rather excited to be going there even if we were (and still are) a bit shell shocked that we'd just crossed the border into our last country on the trip. We set off on the open truck along very bouncy, rutted, dusty tracks and before long we could see the wetlands beginning ahead of us. We crossed a river by boat and picked up another truck which took us to our first stopping point at a bridge over another river where we were put to work with fishing lines to catch that night's dinner - piranha. We were also able to go swimming in the river and I still can't quite believe that I went back to the truck with some of the girls to change into my bikini, came back to the bridge and saw that someone had just hooked out the first piranha, looked at it and then went and jumped off the bridge into the river anyway. It was a great afternoon, we survived our swim with all limbs unchewed and then we all had a go at fishing. I caught 2 piranha and we got 18 altogether so not a bad catch. On the way from the river to our Fazenda (big ranch/farm type thing) we saw cayman, capybara, 3 giant anteaters and so many types of birds I lost count including vultures, parakeets, macaws and a toucan. On arriving at the Fazenda we were shown to our accommodation... a shared dorm with mozzie nets for windows, a thatched roof and hammocks instead of beds. Much hilarity ensued, the possibilities for lifting, rolling, flipping and tipping people out of hammocks are seemingly endless but I think we covered most of them.

The following day we were back in the truck at 7am to go to the neighbouring (20 miles away) ranch to go horseriding. It was brilliant, me and my trusty steed, Patch, had a ball and the experience of cantering through the wetlands with exotic birds all around us under an endless blue sky isn't one I'll forget in a hurry. We saw loads more birds, another anteater, more cayman, a snake, lots of coatis (cute furry raccoon like things), rheas (South American ostriches), and best of all, two armadillos. These were the best because they afforded me and the other Brits in the group the opportunity to shout 'Arrrrrrmadillos... crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside!' and then laugh ourselves stupid. Oh yes, we're crazy kids. After the riding we watched from a respectful distance as one of the ranch workers called about 15 cayman out of the big lake outside the house by clapping his hands and then we thought sod it and all went up to get our photos taken patting one of them on the tail. In the afternoon we had a walk through some of the swamps and forest on the ranch and then it was back to our Fazenda for dinner, campfire and hammock time. The following morning was another walk for wildlife spotting then we were on the truck to take us to our transfer point to catch the bus to Bonito, our first proper town in Brazil.

Bonito is famous for ecotourism, it's extremely popular as a holiday destination with wealthy Brazilians because of the huge amount of eco-themed activities in the area. We only had a day and a half there but we made the most of it. We took the option of a full day's snorkelling trip on the Rio da Prata and it was just amazing. We got our transfer to this beautiful ranch where we sat in the sun for a couple of hours then we walked 1km through the jungle in our wetsuits to the river itself and wow, the water was 24 degrees and it was like being in an aquarium, I've never seen so many fish. We'd hired an underwater camera and it was well worth it, it was fantastic. We spent 2 hours floating (the current just sweeps you along) along for 2km in the warm water watching the fish and generally having a grand old time. The following day we were leaving in the early evening to catch a night bus but we had a lovely day at the municipal swimming area in Bonito which is a big green park surrounding another stunning stretch of the river with restaurants, volleyball and football pitches, barbecue areas etc. We took food to have a barbecue, cooked and ate way too much, had way too much ice cream, went swimming in the crystal clear water with the fish, watched monkeys jumping around us in the trees and just lay in the sun relaxing. I've definitely been to worse places than Bonito.

After a mercifully unrickety night bus ride we arrived the following day in Foz do Iguazu which was simultaneously really exiciting and really sad for us. Exciting because we were all dying to see Iguazu Falls, one of the highlights of the trip and sad because the fact that we were there meant that our trip is almost over. We spent one day on the Brazilian side of the falls, which was utterly spectacular and the following day we crossed the border to Argentina and spent the day on their side of the falls which was even more spectacular. The falls are immense, 7km long and it really is an awful lot of water. We took a helicopter ride over them first of all which was pretty amazing and then in Argentina we did the boat trip which took us right under one of the falls which was like being blasted on the top of your head by about 100 water cannons all at once. Again, it was an amazing experience. The falls are utterly spectacular and we saw them from every conceivable angle and I took about a million photos. The scale of them is impossible to describe or to convey in a photo so we took videos as well. The noise, the scale, the views... they were mind blowing and most definitely a once in a lifetime must see before you die experience. The other mind blowing experience in Foz was the fact that there was a huge... wait for it... shopping mall! You would think we'd never seen a food court before the way we fell on it like a pack of vultures, even the extortionate Brazilian prices didn't dissuade us. Brazil is by far the most western of the countries we've been to on this trip and I swear if it wasn't for the fact that we still have to put the toilet paper in the bin rather than flush it I would think that somehow the death train had delivered us up to the States or to Europe rather than us still being in South America. Everything is unutterably cool as well, it's just so Brazilian... the weather, the people, the food, everything; I could very happily live here, they have it all.

After Foz we headed to Curitiba, one of the wealthiest cities in this wealthy area of Brazil and again, can we tell that the folk here have money. The prices are the same, if not more, than at home which has been a bit of a shock to our Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia softened systems but hey, we can't complain because we're in Brazil, baby and it really is just too cool. We catch another night bus tonight which is taking us to a harbour near Rio to catch the boat to our 3 day island getaway on Ilha Grande which is one of the most beautiful tropical islands in Brazil... the weather is good and we're off to paradise, catch y'all in a few days!

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