The trip from Sao Paulo to Foz do Iguacu, the closest town to Iguacu Falls on the Brazilian side of the border, was our first long-distance bus journey, and we were both quite relieved when it was over.

Tuesday we arrived late morning and, since we didn't have a lot of time there, immidiately headed off (with all our stuff) to the bird park on the Brazilian side of the falls. Its really cool and we got to walk though these huge, open aviaries and see all these amazing birds, including quite a few tucans, who seemed quite tame and liked having their photos taken! Afterwards we caught a local bus to take us near to the Argentinian border and ended up walking the last few hundred meters. Customs was quick and soon we were on our way to Puerto Iguazu, which is the closest town to the falls on the Argentinian side. After mistakenly arriving at the wrong hostel :-/ we were relieved to find that our proper one was just round the corner - and it had a pool! We had a quick swim and walked into town for dinner.

Wednesday morning we woke up early, quickly ate breakfast (cut up french loaf, jam, caramel treat, coffee, fruit) and then headed off to the falls. We arrived a little before 10h00 and already there were loads of people there. Iguacu Falls is made up of a number of waterfalls and we deciced to go to the main one (called The Devils Throat) first. The falls were enourmous, and the noise from the falling water was incredible. We could only tale a few photos at a time before our cameras got soaked from all the spray. We also did some other walks to some smaller falls and different viewing points. Its clearly very touristy - eg. a 500ml bottle water cost 20 pesos (about R40), a 1.65 litre bottle costs 8 pesos (about R16) outside the park, but we did have a great time.

Wednesday afternoon involved going to see the Itaipu hydro-electric dam, which we heard about from Roderigo & Marilia. We were really pushed for time so rushed around in the rain getting busses but managed to arrive on time - we think the bus driver drove faster because we smelt so bad after our hiking at the falls. The dam sits on the border between Brazil and Paraguay (there is actually a border line down the middle of the main control room) and is really REALLY huge. It was the biggest dam in the world until the Chinese recently went larger (To give an idea, the materials used to build it could build 5 Hoover Dams.) We got to go right inside the wall and see the control rooms, generators etc. Really interesting. That night we made friends with the bus driver on our way back to Argentina, and enjoyed chatting even though we could hardly speak Spanish and he could hardly speak English :-)

Thursday we got to sleep in a bit (yay!) and enjoyed a late breakfast chatting with some Ausies. Then we headed into town to try and get some washing done and found a place that did a huge pile for 25 pesos - money well spent! We packed our bags and went to wait at the bus station for our long trip to Montevideo.