Adventures of Bernadine

February 27th - 28th, Argentina and Brazil 

Woke up at 7 am so we could get to Iguazu falls early morning but we got delayed by a new friend in the bathroom - a tarantula! Now Bernie is quite a scardey cat when it comes to spiders, so when he calmly told me that there's a large spider in the bathroom, I was like whatever. Then he insisted I look at it and oh my god, it was HUGE! It wasn't moving though, so we went on packing and trying to get out quick. Then it moved into the room so we tried our best to work around it. Finally we checked out and told the hostel staff about it. They rolled their eyes at us but when they saw it, they were also shocked! Very soon all the people who'd woken up early for breakfast came to inspect with their cameras. But no one went close enough to touch or move it. Adventure before the adventure!

We finally got onto the local bus to the falls, very excited about the day ahead. It's funny but Bernie and I have become quite the hikers! We really like walking so it was quite perfect as Iguazu park has 3 trails that lead you to the different viewing points. The falls are in Argentinian side of the river Iguazu, so you can see them up close and feel the ever present spray. The first point we went to was the main one 'Devil's Throat' and it was just so impressive. Bernie's been to Niagra Falls and said that this was much more impressive. Pictures can't do it much justice, but it's better than me explaining the view. 

The other two trails took you past different falls and views, through lush greenery (we saw a croc/alligator) and we decided to do a boat ride that takes you near the falls so you get wet in the mist. We were soaked to the bone by the end of the short ride but I can actually say that I've bathed in the Iguazu! I had known we were going to get wet so I took flip flops and after the ride, as I was changing back into my other shoes, a coatis came running up to me and grabbed my bag as I sat there helplessly screaming! Luckily a nice man ran after it into the jungle and retrieved it for me. Phew! 

We then took the bus back to our hostel to pick up our bags and leave for Brazil. We had to finish our remaining Pesos so we ate an unhealthy amount of ice cream :) After that, got on to a local bus, like Baba Dylan in Goa, and within 10 minutes were at the Argentina border. 5 minutes later, we were in Brazil and got off at immigration. At this point, our bus continued on abandoning us and 3 other Japanese tourists. So we sat on the grass at the side of the road waiting for another bus from the same company to pick us up. We sat there for about an hour in the hot sun and finally our bus showed up.

We're now in Brazil!!! 

After all those Spanish classes and speaking so much Spanish, I cannot remember any Portuguese. Simple things like gracias automatically comes out of my mouth instead of obrigada. I blame my Pops for not teaching me the language.

After we checked in to our hostel 'Katharina's' in the town of Foz de Iguacu, we went to a hyper market and bought loads of crisps and chocolates and Bernie bought around 20 different flavours of Tang which he's now addicted to. There are so many flavours here! Then we went to a chorasqueria for dinner which is a buffet and meat restaurant where Berns ate all the meat as they brought it around on skewers and I ate rice and crazy amounts of feijoada and lots of salad. It was a very satisfying meal. 

This morning, we went to the Brazilian side of the falls, where you have a panoramic view. Iguacu Park is very large and a bus inside the park drives you up to the falls where you walk a bit to see the spectacular view. As impressed as I was in Argentina, now I could really appreciate the scale, power and see the number of waterfalls. We took many many pictures, I hope we do something with all of them. It was really very awesome to see this World Heritage natural wonder. We though about doing a helicopter tour but decided that we saw two days worth already so got back to the town. 

Now we are at the airport waiting for our flight from Foz to Rio de Janeiro! I can't believe it's happening, Viva Carnaval!