Foz do Iguaçu

By the time I had arrived to Foz do Iguaçu and sorted everything out it was a little too late to go to the falls, so I decided to go explore the town a bit with some Irish guys I met at the hostel. We took the two necessary buses to get to the city and walked around trying to find a place to eat. We finally had to settle for a fast food place that only had burgers. The idea was to eat for cheap.

Being rather pleased with ourselves for finding such a cheap dinner, we decided that we should celebrate in the traditional Irish fashin: several beers (bought from the supermarket to stay in keeping with the thrifty philosophy of the night). All that was left was to get back to the hostel and celebrate. Never under-estimate the over-confidence of four men in the middle of the night in a foreign country where none of them speak the language needing to get back to a place they had only ever seen once in broad daylight. It did not take us long to realise that the first bus we took was taking us the wrong way, but still it was a long walk back to the main road.

Thankfully we did not make the same mistake the second time, but when we finally got to our stop, we discovered - to our dismay - that the second bus necessary to take us to our hostel had stopped running hours ago. it was only a 10-20 minute walk, but all the delays were enough to have made the beer go warm. What a disaster! No need to worry, though, we drank them, and somehow still managed to have a good time despite this.

The next day we got up early to go see the falls from the Brazilian side. The only difference between the two sides is that Brazil is slightly farther away offering a more panoramic view - which is nice for photos - and Argentina is a closer to the falls - which, for me, was a much nicer personal experience.

Along the path in the forest we came across a family of some kind of wild animal. The Irish guys thought that it would be a great photo opportunity for their little stuffed leprechaun Larry. They set him down on the ground, and of course one the animals picked him up and dragged him away. Everyone watched in horror as Larry was being mauled by this beast. Would he ever be the same again? The monster quickly understood that Larry was not food and left him on the side of the trail with nothing more than a few bite marks and dirt stains.

Once we had taken all the pictures we could take of the magnificent falls, we made our way to the Itaipu dam. It is the largest hydro-electric plant in the world and we were told that they had a free tour. The tour was indeed free, but there was also and option of paying 20 reais for a tour which takes you inside the dam. Maybe I am missing the point slightly, but I want to see the biggest dam in the world from the outside. On the inside it would look like any other building. The free tour took us by bus to see the dam with a recording being played over the speaker system giving us and endless array of pointless facts, such as: ¨The construction iron and steel used at Itaipu would build 380 Eifel Towers.¨and ¨The rate of construction at Itaipu was equivalent to a 20 storey building everyon 55 minutes.¨