What a busy day we had yesterday - i managed it all even with a hangover!!

We got up earlyish to head for the Brazillian side of the Iguaçu Falls, situated within a national park. From the Brazillian side you get a wonderful overview of the hundreds of waterfalls. We were expecting alot, but the falls still managed to blow us away - so beautiful and so much power within them. We walked up to a viewing platform by the Gargantua de diablo (devils throat) and were suitably soaked!! We think our photo's are quite good, but it impossible to do something like that justice within a photo - senses of scale and noises are lost. Tomorrow we are going to see them on the other side - in Argentina - here you can get really close to them and possibly end up even wetter!!!

In the afternoon we went to see one of the 7 wonders of the modern world - the Itaipu Binacional - a MASSIVE hydroelectric dam co-owned and run by Brazil and Paraguay. They actually own the dam 50:50 however the 14,000 MegaWatts of power is split up, with the Paraguayans taking about 7% of the power which suppies 90% of their power demand. The Brazilians take the other 93% which in turn provides 22% of their power, this just shows how big the Brazilain economy is. One problem they have is that because the power is split 50:50 the Brazilians have to buy-back some of the power that is produced on the Paraguayan side - one problem with this is that the Paraguay grid works on 50Hz whereas the Brazillians use 60HZ, so all this power has to be converted into the correct frequency after it has been produced.

As you can tell - i very much enjoyed seeing this and found it absolutely fascinating - the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world - They took great delight in telling us that it will still be the biggest and best dam, even when the 3 gorges dam opens in China!! We also went around a museum looking at the environmental and ecological impacts the dam has had - it appears that they really want to look after the environment too.

To give you some idea of the size of this thing - here are a few facts;

1) At the hieght of building, they were in effect building a 20 - storey building every 55mins, 24hours a day. 2) The volume of concrete used could create 15 channel tunnels. 3) The steel used could make 380 eiffel towers. 4) The overflow from the reservoir can carry the same rate of water as 40 Iguazu falls!! 5) The energy created is the same as burning 434 million barrels of oil a day!

As you can tell Sarah loved my explainations of how generators work as we took the tour - i managed to give her a science lesson, she was thrilled!!

Well I could continue but i am probably boring all the non-geeks to death!! Last few hours in Brazil now before we head onward to the land of tango, evita, maradonna etc.

Love to all The mighty Atom and Sarah xxx