Iguazu Waterfalls

Having spent a couple of more days than we could actually afford in the mining hills of Brazil we decided to speed up our journey and sat on an overnight bus to Sao Paulo, from where we sat almost immediately on another night ride to the Argentine-Paraguay-Brazil border.

We arrived in the morning like papermashees to Foz do Iguazu, the Brazilian border town. After a warm welcome in our guesthouse by our host who seemed to step out from one of Pedro Almodovar's movies we headed to visit the Iguazu waterfalls. Luckily we passed by the bird park right next to the entrance of the national park and encountered the most lovely creatures of the sky we have ever imagined. There were parrots in all possible striking colors, some of which greeted us with a big 'hola' or 'ciao'. Than there were toucans, with their huge colorful beaks not at all afraid of humans, moreover sitting quite close to us every once in a while pinching us. And we saw butterflies from the jungle with hummingbirds flying around us, turtles chilling right next to crocodiles and other curious creatures of the Amazon.

But the real attraction were the continent's biggest waterfalls, which we approached both from the Brazilian side and from Argentina. On the Brazilian side we took an independent trip in the form of a lazy walk to the Garganta del Diablo, which is basically an iron catwalk from the shore over the river right to the edge where the water bed breaks and the water crashes down to the abyss. To be precise a multiple crashes, as the falls cover a vast area on both the Brazil and Argentina side. Besides the unbelievable energy with which the water explodes when landing in the deep you experience the most perfect permanent rainbows over the water clouds. The noise is so strong you have to shout on top of your voice to make yourself heard and of course you need not to hope to survive the experience without getting absolutely and totally wet just from the water in the air around the falls. We happened to see the falls at the nicest part of the day just before sunset and concluded the long day with an excellent dinner and a couple of cairpirinas, this time with strawberries, not lime, jummmm!

The next morning we decided to accept the lead of out host to the Argentinean side to see the falls from a different perspective, which for me was even more mesmerizing than the other side. We spent almost the whole day walking zig-zag in the park approaching the river from different points and visiting various individual falls and devil's throat from the other side.

We hardly finished the tour when we headed to our next destination with a 5 hour bus ride to cut our journey to Salta a bit shorter. So we arrived at 10 pm to San Ignacio, right next to Pousadas, which are famous of the biggest Jesuit-Guarani missionary 'reducciones' in South America.

Ouro Preto

It was lately hard to find a place to write a post. Somehow internet cafes are not everywhere... One way or the other we made it to Ouro Preto. A small beautifuly preserved colonial town around 10 hours east by bus from Rio de Janeiro. After walking for a bit we found what could be described as one of the loveliest accomodations in quite some time. It was bed and breakfast place run by a lady who served us great breakfast (small papayas that Rita loved) and made a very cosy place for her visitors...we stayed there for two days wandering around the place. Rita bought herself a very nice ring and we found great places to eat and enjoy the hilly scenery. Together with Malgo they have also spent times visiting lots of jewlerry stores and learning about local precious and semi-precious stones like topaz imperial (I am not sure about the spelling though).

We have also visited a gold mine some 40 minutes by bus from the town. It is not in operation anymore but we were told that all together during its years of operations over 30 tons of gold were brought to the surface - quite an amount. The scariest part of the visit was the ride down with a small train - it kind of felt like sitting on a train taking you right down to hell - and we were the only ones on the small wooden train car as right now is not exactly the high season for tourists in Brazil. On the way back we took a wrong bus so it took us two hours to get back to town - due to that we had very little time to see the Gems Museum...the girls were not happy with that...



We have also had a night out since some of the bars are just perfect for a great caipirinha. Rita found a very nice looking bar where we spent the night enjoying this Brazilian specialty. We ended up in some sort of local gay bar together with locals celebrating the local municipality elections which took place the same time. For us the highlight of the elections was the sky train between two buildings where the results were announced.

All in all the ride to Ouro Preto was our first night bus ride and right after it we have actually made 4 more such rides almost in a row. Thanks God that the buses are comfortable so it is not that bad as it sounds. Brazil is beautiful and great to explore this even this way but we already got committed to our next trip to Brazil - this time all over the country but on motorbikes. This is a perfect place for it with lots of small lovely places and extremly friendly people. Probably the most friendly we have ever met. Anyway we will try to get the motorbike driving license before although we were told that here it is not a must...

Rio de Janeiro

Jesus - was the word of the day - and we have seen the biggest in the word art deco monument of Jesus The Redeemer - a bit pricey as to the costs of getting up there but the view of Rio de Janeiro was spectacular. It is certainly true that city is located in one of the nicest settings in the world...

Our adventures started at the bus station where we arrived - I started by fighting with the taxi drivers who wanted to rip us off. Actually we almost missed the bus to Rio because at the last minute in Paraty we decided to rent bicycles and see waterfalls. Unfortuntaley the trip was very much uphill and on the way back we decided to stop at a great restaurant by the road and almost missed the bus to Rio...anyway we arrived in Rio, I had a fight with the taxi drivers and then we eneded up in the hostel in a 9 bed bedroom paying in total EUR 60 for this pleasure...as we have not eaten we decided to get to know the locals a bit more and ended up in surreal place selling hotdogs under the bridge near our hostel. It was purely for real locals but we were so amazed that actually we spend around one hour looking at the people dinning there... We were not brave enough to take out our camera to take some pictures. We were also sure that we will in the end poison us with those hotdogs but somehow it did not materialize.

We have been all around the city and found it beautiful from the point of architecture and little cafe´s - it is a heaven for Rita's constant desire for chocolate cakes. We spent quite some time in them. Of course we had to visit the famours Copacabana beach - and it lived up to its expectations for a beach in a huge city - it also made us understand why the Brazilians always win all world soccer and volleyball competitions. Basically the whole beach is lined up with fields where kids play and train those two sports. Actually what they can do with the ball is quite astounding. The last night Greg and Rita decided to have a coconut drink and both loved it - as you can see below...


As to Brazil - it is still quite a surprise as to how organized and developed this country is. For some reason we expected one more shanty country struggling to put toghether a couple of nice squares and we found something amazing though expensive. This is actually the only bad thing about Brazil - it is expensive to travel around and the places to stay though very nice are also way too expensive in comparison to many countries we have so far visited. It can though be also scary - last evening we took a city bus from Copacana to the bus station where we were to depart for Ouro Preto...the bus took us through neighbourhouds that made as speechless and we prayed that the bus driver does not kick us out...leaving the bus would mean quite interesting problems for us and somehow after all those posh districts we have visited we were not prepared for districts from "Mad Max" movie.

Once more BIG thank you for all donations. We have also created a blog for our BrucePeruCusco center - have a look here and read about our culinary event fundraising...