Cataratas...Spanish for waterfalls. The Iguazú falls really are amazing, and the travel guides are correct...see the Argentina side one day and the Brazil side another day, as they are completely different experiences. Both are magnificent, though. For anyone who has not yet checked out the site, check it out NOW! http://www.iguazuargentina.com/
The climate is a little strange - it´s not really all that hot...about 28 or maybe 30 or so, but I´ve been soaked ever since I got here, with sweat coming from everywhere. So THIS is what they talk about in Toronto in the summer!
As instructed, I spent day 2 of Iguazú on the Argentina side. I chose not to sit in the boat underneath the falls, but I was pretty wet anyway so it might not have made a difference. I just thought it was sorta dumb to spend $30 to go pounding up the rapids with our bums absorbing every bump, do a couple of u turns through the spray, back down the rapids, and then through the jungle in a 4x4, again with the bum pounding. My deal was a little more casual...park train out there, and a relaxed little float down the river and a walk through the jungle on the way back. Saw a croc or an alligator, which was kinda cool. Resolved any inclination I might have had for a bit of a dip. And the funniest ´beware of snakes´ sign ever, which must definitely keep people on the trail and out of the woods.
Today, I booked a tour (3 countries in 1 day!) that took in the Itapu dam - the largest hydroelectric project in the world, and apparently the largest man made project completed in the 20th century. (Interesting from a marketing point of view, but the skeptics might like to enquire about the hundreds of billions of dollars, what was where the lake is now, etc). Anyway, it provides 95% of Paraguay´s power, and 25% of Brazil´s. Big ass dam, about 7 kilometres long in total.
Afterwards, a little trip into the border city in Paraguay. Now I really hope that this place, like Tijuana, Mexico, is an embarassment to the whole country, rather than indicating what the rest of the country is like. What a hole. A slimy, squirmy hole of street markets and very aggressive vendors selling the wierdest crap and kids walking up and down lines of traffic selling socks. And pens. And model cars. And whatever other crap they had on their hands. That´ll be 90 minutes of my life that I´ll never get back.
THE GOOD NEWS is that we got the dam and Paraguay out of the way first, because things really picked up after that. Back to Brazil for lunch...a genuine Brazilian BBQ! (We have one of these in Vancouver, which I was supposed to go to for the ex-GTM survivors Christmas party - for anyone uninformed, I spent 19 days of my life there between April and June last year as they evaporated from 45 staff to bankruptcy. Wierdest place I´ve worked ever! But I did not go, because I was with other friends, having a wonderful time, and it seemed a little negative to leave them and go to a party based on not much more than people´s common loathing of GTM. Back to the story...)
ANYWAY, before I was interrupted by that side bar, I was getting a wee bit stressed by a pretty lame tour by the time we got to the restaurant. The initial few moments in the restaurant didn´t help, because they had hot and cold food on the salad bar (or buffet, I guess). So considering how things had gone so far, I figured that was it for lunch.
BUT I was wrong, and became more wrong by the minute as parades of waiters wandered by our table with skewers of meats of every kind, from which they would cut off hunks and chunks until we could take no more. Chorizzo, chicken, various hunks of cow and pig....awesome...a carnivore´s delight. There were of course, a few hunks of things that were a little less appetizing, as not every part of the animal is called ´meat´, really, but to each his own. I declined the squiggly bits.
After lunch, off to the falls. Amazing. Check the website.
And then back to Iguazú. I didn´t bother to get a visa for the day, which had me a little concerned, but it turned out fine. US citizens don´t get the same courtesy.
All in all, it´s been nice here. Not nearly the same value for $ as other places I´ve been, but nice nonetheless. I expect the economy is much more influenced by tourism $ than in other places, so prices tend to be higher. (As an example, I was paying about 40 cents an hour for the internet in Mendoza and Salta, but it´s $1 here. Fine, but obviously more.) Time to go though.
