Foz Do Iguacu

Getting to Foz Do Iguacu meant catching two long haul buses - one from Paraty to Sao Paulo and then from Sao Paulo to Foz Do Iguacu. We thought we had been pretty smart and pre-booked our bus from Sao Paulo leaving from the same bus station as we arrived at, but when we got there we soon found that the websites are not full of truth and we had a short window to make it across town to the other bus terminal. The subway in Sao Paulo was something else. We had seen pushy subways before but the rush to get on was probably the scrappiest we've encountered. A bit of rugby-like body position, though, and we were able to maul our way off with our backpacks and all was good.

We had our first day of rain for the trip in Foz, but given the forecast we headed straight to the Iguacu Falls on the Brazilian side. The falls were just as spectacular as we expected, and the flow rate was especially high given that it had been raining for ten days straight. Most of the trail provides a panorama of the falls, and at the end we were able to get right up close and got completely drenched.

A few snaps from the falls:

The quatis (or coatis) were terrifying the kids around any parent carrying food, which was pretty entertaining:

We headed to the Itaipu Dam, which is the world's second largest hydro scheme after the Three Gorges scheme in China (not that the Brazilians or Paraguayans acknowledge this). The dam is located on the Parana River, on the Brazil-Paraguay border, and is 50% owned and operated by Paraguay and 50% by Brazil.

The two countries are incredibly proud of the dam and they run a pretty slick propaganda machine. They even mention how fantastic the dam has been for the environment because they were able to relocate some animals from the flood zone to create a new national park, and point to the new technology university that they are building (which looks like construction was abandoned five years ago) as another example of their success.

Due to the heavy rain, the spillway were in partial operation which made for a pretty spectacular sight.

We took a special tour of the dam which meant we made our way through the inside as well as the outside. The scale of the engineering is immense compared to what we had been working on back in NZ, with the dam walls being 20 m thick concrete near the base.

Just a wee penstock:

The control room is split by a line down the middle - Paraguay on one side, working in Spanish to produce electricity at 50 Hz and the Brazilians working in Portuguese on the other producing electricity at 60 Hz (this produces more power than Paraguay need, so they then sell it back to Brazil who convert the voltage). The single supervisor works in six hour shifts, alternating between a Brazilian and a Paraguayan supervisor to keep things fair.

The control room was reminiscent of Sector 7G:

A Brazilian technician about as hard at work as Homer (looking at pictures of vans):

Cat with a foot in both camps:

We were the only guests in our hostel that night and so we went with the owners to a local restaurant for dinner, where we sampled some of the local steaks with onions and garlic, and some mandioca (cassava) fritas. All pretty delicious.

Word is that you have to see both sides of the falls, so we made our way across to Puerto Iguazu. The transport was part of a tour group but we decided that the tour wasn't going to be for us so we split and just met up with them again for a ride back to Brazil.

We stopped at the Tres Frontiers where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet and the Parana and Iguacu Rivers meet. It was relatively unremarkable. Here is a view of Paraguay, our next destination:

Exploring the falls on the Argentinian side was quite different to the Brazilian side. We spent a lot more time up close with some spectacular views along the falls, and some wildlife to boot. We finished with a wander along the lower level of the falls where we managed to get absolutely drenched by the falls again and had a great time, after which it started to rain which no longer mattered.

On our last morning in Foz we made our way to the bird park which houses birds rescued or bred in captivity from across South America and a few from elsewhere in the world. We were able to get incredibly close to heaps of the birds which was really cool. We took around 500 blurry photos, and a handful of good ones:

From the bird park it was time for us to leave Brazil and head to Paraguay. We caught the public bus to the border and then walked across the bridge into Ciudad Del Este. The view along the Parana River was really interesting, as was the arrival in Ciudad Del Este itself, where we found a political rally, an infinite number of market stalls, and a similar number of moto taxis. We had read that the walk across could be a bit dodgy and that robberies were common so we didn't take any photos unfortunately, but we also didn't find any trouble.

We had an awesome time in Brazil, so it was sad to leave (we will have to return), but Paraguay presents an entirely different adventure.