From Sao Paulo we took a 20 hour -something buss ride to Foz du Iguazu.

Foz de Iguazu is a city that boarders to an impressive waterfall which stretches across both the Argentinean and Brazilian border. The main part of the falls, however, is located on the Argentinean side and when we booked our tourist activity on our hostel in Brazil we were heading across the border to the Argentinean side. The most close up view of water falls in this park is called the Garganta del Diablo (the devils throat), and when you stand on the outer look-out bridge you end up looking straight into the converging waterfalls. The proximity of falls results in occasional showers of what seems like rain, but actually just is the wind and water clouds of the splash. It is also possible to see the falls from other angels, as well as seeing a lot of other smaller falls which also runs in the region. To get the chance to see the falls from beneath you would also need to pay for a boat ride, which almost drives you into the fall. It was an exciting experience to see the falls from beneath and we got ourselves a good shower of dirt water as a bonus (For other tourists that are going to do this I would recommend flip-flops and a swim trunk, rather than trekking shoes and cotton shorts as I was wearing)

As you probably have figured out after reading this, In essence, the whole complex is build to give tourist a 360* view of the falls. Speaking for myself I would have been satisfied with the boat ride and the devils throat to get the feeling of having visited Iguazu Falls. But as good spectators of our decently paid guide, we were following the trail of other backpackers looking at the endless number different sized falls from their different angels. It was however worth the while, and even if the whole thing offers less unique cultural experiences (we actually ran into three different Norwegian groups on this excursion after only meeting two Norwegians on our trip until now) it still is a really impressive sight of nature and I would recommend those who travels to Brazil or Argentina to pay the falls a visit.

Our plan after Iguazu was to take the night bus heading to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. We had booked a ticket trough our hostel in Iguazu and the bus was scheduled for 0100 in the morning. When we went to the bus-terminal 20 minutes before the departure time, however, there was no bus there. From the little Brazilian-Portuguese we had picked up earlier on our trip we could understand after talking with one of the guys that were working on the terminal that there was no more buses going for Asunción and that the last one left at 2400/ 1200 pm. Naturally we wanted the hostel to take the blow for this one and grabbed a taxi back to the hostel to sort things out. The guy who was manning the reception however insisted that we had mistaken and said that we had to be at the bus-terminal when the bus was leaving at its scheduled 0100/ 1 am departure. After our hasty back and forth trip, this suggestion gave us a 5 minute time space before the departure time. In spite of heavy arguing he insisted that we were wrong, and I understood that we would not get any refund if I could not prove him wrong. Naturally I was angry with him, and yelled before we went into the newly booked taxi that he would have to pay for this one if there was no bus at the station.

We went of to the terminal once again and arrived 4 minutes passed 0100 to find… Surprise surprise… the terminal to be all closed. This time, however, we borrowed the taxi driver's phone and let the guy in the reception talk to the different taxi-drivers who told him that there was no bus that left for Asunción at 0100 but apparently the guy was pretty insistent and he did not cave in his mistake before he had talked to the same representative from the bus terminal as we had been talking to when we left the first time from the terminal. After what seemed to bee an age of time things seemed to be sorted out and we headed back to the hostel around 0145.

When we arrived at the hostel for the second time, our receptionist met us with open arms and a couple of Brazilian Reis to pay for the cab-drive. He had shifted his attitude and had prepared a statement in English, by using google-schoolar, to make sure that we would not misunderstand his explanation. He could nevertheless inform us that the mistake was neither ours nor theirs. The mistake, apparently, was that the time on the ticket was set to Paraguayan time, which due to the time-shifts in Brazil that took place two days earlier, gave us the wrong time on the ticket. We obviously accepted the apology and the free room he gave us to correct the unfortunate mistake that nobody wanted to take the blame for.

To us it was however clear that the problem was rooted in their greed to make extra money in booking service by charging Brazilian prices for a ticket that was bought and printed in Paraguay and brought over the border the day of our reservation. I guess the `smart middle man` had forgot to change the time on the ticket, and the next day we received two new tickets for Asunción (which most logically was not refunded by the bus-company and headed of for Asunción, where we due to the delay only got one evening and a roadside lunch stop before an early morning riser to reach the flight who sent us towards Ushuaia, the south-most city in the world.