Iguazù Falls, 26th February -1st of March

After a very tiring 23-hour busride from Rio to Foz do Iguazú in Brazil, we were more than ready to get to our hotel and relax for a bit. But when we went to a taxi driver and showed him the little information we had gotten from our travel agency, he looked at us and said "That's in Argentina"..! So we were not even in the wrong town, but also the wrong country!! BUT, luckily it was only a 40 min. drive, and the taxi driver helped us cross the border.

We arrived to Puerto de Iguazù - in Argentina, that is! So for dinner we had - of course - a steak and red wine - yummy!!

Well, here are some facts about Iguazú: It is higher than Niagara Falls and wider than Victoria Falls - beat that! You can see the Iguazù Falls from Argentina and Brazil, and the Argentinean side is definitely the most exciting side! You get a lot closer to the falls - you can even sail almost into one of them!:-D Iguazú is old native language and means "Big Water".

Anyway, on Friday, the 27th, we left our hotel at 10am to go see the Brazilean side. The guide left us to do the 2 hour walk along the river. It was.. well.. beautiful but not very exciting.. On the path, we saw a racoon - apparently there are a lot of racoons in the area who have gotten used to the tourists feeding them (even though it is forbidden! Bad tourists!), so they prefer burgers for their "natural food", and are actually getting too fat, the guide told us..

After seeing the water falls, we went to a Bird Park where we saw all kinds of different birds, parrots, butterflies and humming birds - even anacondas, too!:-S You could get quite close to the birds, and it was a bit weird to be walking along with birds that you normally only see on TV.

In the evening, we went out and had an "asada" - basically that´s a barbecue, so we had a looot of meat. Again... After that, we went to a small café called Tango Bar, where they played "live play back music", but it was really good. And an older seemingly Argentinean/caucasian couple were dancing tango; the man was teaching the woman how to dance the tango. It was very sweet and very cosy:-)

On Saturday, the 28th, we went to see the Argentinean side of Iguazú. First, we went to the big waterfall that is called Devil's Throat. The mists that came up from the depths felt like rain, and we were soaked!

After that, we went back the "catwalk" to get to some small boats that would take us on a calm boat ride on the river - on a safe distance (250 m.) from the falls. We didn`t see a lot of animals, but it was nice anyway:-) We did see a spider, though, that has golden spider webs - I have never seen that before!

Then we saw some other waterfalls - there are seriously a lot of waterfalls, in all shapes and sizes! We had lunch, and after that, Lasse and I were going on a speed boat that would take us VERY close to 2 of the waterfalls!! After a 25 min.s long guided truckride through the jungle - where we saw more, actually a LOT of, "golden web spiders", a small deer, a yellow and black woodpecker and one of the biggest butterflies of that area (about the size of a regular size hand) - we arrived to the "harbour". We stripped down to our swin suits (our guide had warned us that we would be absolutely soaked, so we came prepared), got our life jackets on, and got great seats on the boat (up front)! We went up the river to some smaller waterfalls (heading towards the Devils Throat, but it is too big to reach) where we got a taste of the powers of the water - it is amazing to be that close to the falls. You realize that even the small waterfalls are very dangerous if you are not there under controlled circumstances. After the smaller waterfalls, we went to a bigger one, and got up really close, twice!!:-D It was soo much fun, just like being at a wild Water World:-D

You see the water fall in the back ground? It doesn't look like much, but it was CRAZY!:-D That's where we went!

After that, we went to see even more waterfalls (!) up close, but from landside. At one of them, you could see a rainbow from the mists - it was stunning!

The next day, Sunday, Lasse and I had planned to be very international and have breakfast in Argentina, lunch in Paraguay and dinner in Brazil (we were leaving to catch our plane in Sao Paulo). So after breakfast, we went to catch a bus to Paraguay (only about an hour away). Since it was Sunday, almost everything was closed and there weren't too many buses either.. BUT, we got on a bus and met a Dutch guy and some American girls who were doing the same thing as us - we were stamp hunting:-). We didn`t know where to get off in the city in Paraguay, so we went on to the bus station. But we soon realized that NOTHING was going on that day - it was almost like a ghost city - so we just wanted to catch a bus straight back to the border to get our entrance and leaving-stamps. BUT, Lasse and I also had a mission to have lunch in Paraguay, so first we went food-hunting, and finally found some empanadas. So we had lunch in Paraguay! Then we went back to the border to catch a bus back to Argentina, but because it was Sunday, nobody knew how long we had to wait..... After 15 min., a nice cab driver told us that if we crossed the bridge and went to Brazil, there would be more buses. To we did that (a 20 min. walk), but when we got to the Brazilean side, it started to rain. Heavy rain! And we couldn't find the bus station with the directions that the cabdriver had given us. And since it was Sunday and NOBODY was in the streets, we got kind of lost... In the end, we realized that the bus station was too far away, and ended up catching a cab back to Puerto de Iguazú in Argentina.. So much for our Hollywood-imagination about a fab lunch in Paraguay...:-S

The Iguazú-trip was our last stop on our trip before going to La Serena. It had been great to be able to travel so much, and even though we wanted to travel more and not have to go to uni, it also felt good knowing that we would soon get our own homes and not have to live in a backpack.