Days 4, 5 & 6 - Rio and Iguazu

In a nod to cliches I'm writing this on the back of a paper-bag, which half an hour ago was holding this mornings breakfast, and will transcribe to email later, I'll get to why...

The next day Rio really brought it with the weather, a couple of tiny white clouds to show just how blue the rest of the sky was. I walk the gorgeous beachfront again, heading to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain. This time I take the easy way and pay for a ride on the cable car, ignoring the rock-climbing option. The view from here is breath-taking, and there are little paths to viewing points and cafes around both of the stops on the cars. Quite possibly the tastiest steak I've ever eaten follows, perfectly cooked and spiced Picanha, which they loosely translate as "rump-cap", it comes with a strange little side dish called farofa, a mixture of cassava flour (which looked like breadcrumbs) spices, fried eggs and bacon, which added to the flavour quite nicely. While sitting there I have a look at the step counter app on my phone, which has been counting away quietly while in my bag, an average of 27km per day since arriving in Rio, unsurprisingly my pants do feel just a touch looser as I head for the airport the next day.

The different attitudes to time they Brazilians have strikes me as I wait outside the breakfast room at the hotel before heading to the airport. I'm down there at five minutes to seven, and can feel the staff trying not to look my way as they take another 15 minutes to have their coffee and chat before reluctantly unlocking the door and starting work for the day.

Iguazu

I'm spending 3 nights in Iguazu, 2 on the Brazilian side and one on the Argentinian side, so I can see both National Parks, which are quite different despite only being 100m away from each other at some points. Arriving at lunchtime, I head to the bird park, planning to save the falls for tomorrow. The scale of the place is impressive, as is the variety of the birds, I spend ages watching the macaws and toucans, though occasionally the guano smell is overpowering and I quickly change my mind about having lunch there, opting for a small packet of chocolate biscuits from a roadside stand a couple of hours later. From there I head to Itaipu Dam. The tour is a little heavy on the spin for my liking, but there's no denying the impressiveness from an engineering perspective. The forced relocation of 49,000 people and the flooding of 1200 square kilometres of, now quite rare, atlantic subtropical rainforest and farmland under up to 200m of water is summarized as "25 cities lost some of their land". Yeah, I know I used to work in oil and gas, but still, this is laid on a bit thick. 3500 people work for Itaipu, half from Paraguay and half Brazilians. The energy produced is also split evenly between he two countries, Paraguay sell 90% of theirs to Brazil (third party sales are prohibited under the agreement) and the remainder still provides 80% of the countries electricity.

There's a university and some research facilities on site,

I catch the bus back to town with some of them, the older staff all hopping in cars or on motorbikes, which are really common in Iguacu. A quick bite to eat in town and I'm on another bus towards home. Official stops for buses appear to be just recommendations as knock-off time approaches, the driver asking the two remaining passengers where they're heading and bypasses the rest of the route, and after letting me off, immediately does a u-turn and heads back to town.

If it wasn't for the awesomeness of the falls I'd have said Thursday was a day that would have been better spent in be. Awaking early, I surprise the receptionist, who seems astonished that I willingly got up with the sun (at 6:30) on holidays, and I walk around the farm that's attached to the ecolodge for a bit. I hear, but don't see the roosters, and walk past dairy cows and goats, bananas, papaya, mango, passionfruit and mandarin are some of the fruit trees I recognize along the way. I thought of you Karyn while wandering around, and how much you'd love it.

I don't know if it's still called Montezuma's revenge this far south, but it struck this morning (start counting, that's 1). It settles enough to go to the park at 9, and be one of the first people on the bus inside the park. There's only maybe 10 passengers, and mostly by virtue of walking the boring parts faster than the others, I've a few prime viewing platforms all to myself for the 5-10 minutes I stop there. The layout if you hop off at the hotel, and follow the path along provides a nice build up to the falls, teasing you with minor falls, rainbows, white-water and what I assume are kites surfing the thermals. So, when you get to the big falls, the devil's throat, you're softened up. I don't know that I completely buy the whole positive ions hippie thing, but I'm yet to ever see someone unhappy standing in the spray of a waterfall.

Leaving the main falls, I walk towards Macuco falls, and a Boat-ride upstream and into some of the larger falls. However, Citibank strikes again (that's 2). Some time between entering the park and attempting to pay for the cruise, they'd decided that accommodation for the international holiday I told them I was taking was "suspicious activity", and put as hold on the only card I had on me that day, my other cards hidden away in the room safe with my passport. An hour of stomping and swearing and I call the Sydney number from my mobile and suggest their error to them, the stop is removed and I walk the hour back to the tour and try again, successfully.

The tour is well worth the frustration. I pay for a locker and change into my bikini and sarong. The boat-ride is amazing, the powerful boat struggling over sections of white water, which changes over time as the power of the water and the erosion it causes forces sections of the cliff face to collapse and the falls to retreat. The photographer changes into a full dry-suit and tells those of us who brought cameras to hide them now! The captain surges forward towards the falls, drenching one side of the boat at a time. After half a dozen dunkings it's over and we make the journey downstream.

After changing back into my long pants and t-shirt, I head for the park shuttle to take me to where the food is. That's when some sort of insect bites me on the outside of my right mid-thigh, it hurts enough that I want to cry, two days later I still have a big lump there (that's 3).

Now for 4, the big one, despite being very careful, my iPhone dies after my day at the falls. That's the loss of half my photos, most my internet (my kindle has a crappy "experimental" browser that crashes every third click), and my copious planning notes with days of searches into great restaurants in each city, and a suggested itinerary.

I console myself with the idea that it's temporary (so far it's not) and look forward to the dinner I've booked at the hotel. There are some other guests tonight, 2 German guys, and we're all there for the dinner tonight, and have a chat, over a VERY large meal, I feel bad for the chef over how little of it I've eaten. Dinner includes, crumbed pork chop, farofa, rice, salad, feioja, steak, and my favourite now, a half of a squash (about the size of an avo), filled with pork mince, some sort of salsa, topped with cheese and baked. Then dessert of candied sweet potato in sugar syrup with yoghurt.