The "Caminho" to Iguaçu

  Today, we went to Brazil for the first time in our lives. Brazilians speak Portuguese (which we do NOT speak) so getting around was definitely a bit more difficult.  Portuguese has many sounds and words that are similar to, but not quite like, Spanish.  Oddly when people speak Portuguese we catch the majority of words they're saying, and when we speak Spanish the Brazilians can follow the majority of what we're saying... we just can't speak in each other's language.  The difficulty lies in communicating anything with nuance.  For example, when we were inquiring about tipping at a restaurant, we couldn't tell if the waiter was saying the bill included the tip or *did not* include the tip.  We just knew we were talking about tips... lol.

  We had one minor hiccup crossing the border: after getting our passports stamped by the Brazilian authorities, we couldn't find our taxi driver. He had reclined his seat all the way down to take nap in the car while we dealt with border control... so when we went looking for our taxi and peeked in his car, we thought it was empty and therefore, not the car we were looking for. Finally in desperation we looked closer and found him.  We hadn't left anything of value in the car, and we hadn't paid for the taxi ride, so it just would've been really weird if he had abandoned us.

  Karen read some helpful tips online that really paid off. We got there bright and early, and while more and more people lined up to buy entrance tickets, we waited at the self-service kiosks, which turned on a full 5 minutes before the regular sales opened. We bought our entrance tickets, along with tickets to the all-you-can-eat buffet, and were almost first in line. The Brazilian park is much smaller than the Argentinian park- the latter has many kilometers of trails, including an upper circuit, a lower circuit, and a trail specifically to the "devil's throat," all with different views of the falls. The Brazilian side has one, 1km-long trail. You board a bus at the entrance, and the first stop is where you get off to ride a boat through the waterfalls. The second stop is the beginning of the trail, which takes about 30 minutes to walk. The third and final stop is also where the trail ends, and has the restaurant and the main lookout point. 

Got our tickets!

Practically the first people here!

The face of victory! The waterfalls all the way in the back are the Devil's Throat from yesterday.

The Brazilian side only has one short trail, but the views from it are amazing.  If you look closely you can see a double-rainbow in this photo.  (It looked better in person.)

  Thanks to Karen's research, we cleverly did NOT get off at stop #2, where everyone starts the trail, and instead rode on to stop #3, where we had the lookout almost entirely to ourselves for 15-20 minutes. Then we walked the trail backwards to see the rest of the viewpoints. Though there are fewer trails, the views from the Brazilian side are probably more beautiful than the views from the Argentinian side. You can see more of the falls at once, making for a striking, otherworldly panorama.

It started to fill up soon after we got there.

Another view of the boat ride we went on yesterday

Lunch and Other Attractions

  We got lunch at the all-you-can-eat buffet.  Normally, we'd avoid park buffets, but this one has a particularly good reputation, serves Brazilian food (which we have little exposure to and sounded exciting), and offers seating with views of the waterfalls.  It's also a bit pricey and upscale, so it's actually not over-run with people.  One of our favorite dishes was the feijoada, which is very tasty and satisfying. They also had very good chicken, steak, and oxtail. Then we left the park and crossed the road to the second biggest attraction in the area: the Parque das Aves (bird park). The park itself is beautiful- integrated with the surrounding jungle to feel like a walk through the woods. It is a mix of traditional large animal-only enclosures, and larger enclosures where we were walking among the birds. The biggest hit was of course the toucans. One flew right up to us! They're pretty intimidating when they're flying towards you- like knives with wings.

The woman next to us spoke Portuguese, but this moment prompted her to say "so beautiful" in English.

These delightful plants all had blossoms in a nice assortment of colors.

  After Parque das Aves, our taxi driver met us promptly at the agreed upon time (3pm) to head back into Argentina.  We didn't buy a Brazilian phone plan, so it was like time traveling back to the era of no cell phones :0  Originally, our driver had proposed picking us up at noon.  When we asked to push it back to 3pm he gave us a funny look... I guess most tourists spend 4 hours at the falls/bird park.  Instead we asked for 8!  It was no problem for him, he just thought we'd be bored, but we were not!

  That's about it for today. We made one last stop on our way back, at Aripuca. The Aripuca is a Guaraní cultural center.  It features about 6 different wooden structures, all made from reclaimed wood and designed with an artistic bend.  Some feature stores with items that are local to the area: crafts, wooden furniture, and of course foods!  We got to taste a local specialty called "Dulce de Madera", which is claimed to be the only edible wood in the world.  It reminded Karen a bit of hearts of palm rods... only more fibrous and soaked in a maple-like syrup.  Matt bought some to share with his coworkers.  We also had "Rosella" flavored ice cream, which is a flower petal that tastes a bit like raspberry.

  Other than stores, some buildings are just fun spaces.  This particular building is modeled after the "Aripuca" bird trap that Guarani's used to construct.  It is made from approx. 30 different species of native trees, all of which had fallen naturally.

  Inside, each log is labeled.  There's also a neat spiral staircase that is in the center of the space and leads to a walkway down the perimeter.