Foz du Iguacu - Brazil

Day 7

After a little bit of drama with mixed up dates for buses we happily boarded a Nordeste bus from Florianopolis to Iguacu, our next port of call. It's hard to happily board a 15-hour overnight bus but we did anyway. The alternative being rescheduling a few days on our itinerary or fork out lots of money for a flight so we wouldn't miss a tour starting in 2 days. Luckily, the private buses here seem quite well equipped. We had to sit separate at first but a nice young man allowed us to share a row together. The seats are really cushioned and can recline a long way back making it possible for people to sleep almost laying straight. That is if you’re not 6 foot 3 and carrying a backpack at your feet. That's not to say I didn't sleep, but I'd say El found it much easier than I did. There was a toilet on board, and lots of stops were made, each time picking up new passengers and 2 times for extended breaks of 20 minutes. The food was service station quality or slightly better; it did the job until morning. We shared some chicken skewers, another pastry, a drink, some chocolate and got some apples for the morning. This came to only 30real (12aud). I kept my self-occupied, writing blogs and diary entries and Ellie read to make the time go while we weren't sleeping. In the end, it wasn't that bad, considering it was over 15 hours on a bus. We arrived in Iguacu not too tired just a little weathered.

We took a taxi from the bus terminal to our hotel, no Uber in Iguacu. Taking a taxi gave us the day to attend the Parque Nacional Do Iguacu (Iguacu National Park) to see the famous waterfalls that are one of the 'New Seven Wonders of the World'. We couldn't check in when we arrived at Hotel Colonial Iguacu as our room wasn't ready, so we prepared a day bag for our visit to the park, had some breakfast at the cafeteria in the hotel, which is more like a resort and then went to the falls. Ellie had picked a place near to the park, so we could walk there easily and purchase our tickets (64 real each - 27aud) to enter the park. There was then shuttle buses from the tourist centre to several stops in the park, which included bike trails, nature hikes, river boat cruises, waterfall viewing trails and another boat that took you right up into some of the falls, ensuring you were soaked by its downfall. We only opted for the viewing trails to begin with and would decide later if we would do more.

Exiting the bus with a hoard of other tourists, we stumbled across a group of Quatiz, which are small raccoon like animals. Cute and small, capable of transmitting rabies if they bite you, we were told not to pat them, but people did anyway. Anyone who knows me well already knows I wouldn't pat them in the first place. As well as the quatiz we stepped of the bus to the view of some huge waterfalls in the distance. From two viewing platforms people snapped photos of the gushing water from all different directions. Photos will explain better than I can so I will leave it there (or see the video), but we spent around 2-3 hours going through different trails and pathways. Some of the paths went out over the rapids to get good views of the falls which were giving off a spray of mist, sometimes more like rain. It was nice to cool us down on a very hot day. We saw a few more animals in the park, such as spiders, lizards and birds but didn't see any jaguars, which are known to the area. It was a good day exploring the falls on the Brazilian side of the border with some great photos and a fair bit of walking. We decided that we had seen enough and wouldn't do the boat tour that went under the waterfalls as it was 230 real each, which is about 70 aud. As we were heading to the Argentinian side of the border tomorrow we hoped it might be cheaper as the experience looked to be a good one; people were coming out soaking wet from driving under the waterfalls on the boats. This concluded our time in the park, taking the shuttle bus back to the tourist centre and walking back to our resort.

Having the afternoon free was great after having the overnight bus the night before. We checked into our room and soon after headed to the pool area that had 3 pools and slide, of course I used it. Just kidding. Maybe. The rest of the afternoon was simply relaxing and getting photos and videos off the camera before having an early dinner at the resort and an early night to bed.

It was our last night in Brazil, an amazing country. We had many highlights, all have been mentioned in my blogs, from hikes, landmarks, history, food, drink and culture, it has all been fantastic. I must say, the people have been extremely friendly which has made our time here even better. A great start to our trip, for now we say, seeya later Brazil.