Rio de Janeiro

Well, my flight schedule to get back home to California was a little strange and complicated, so this gave me a very short opportunity to see Rio de Janeiro, which was one of my top places of interest for this trip. For the first day, I booked a tour to see the infamous Christ the Redeemer Statue at Corcovado and then to take the tram car to the top of Sugarloaf mountain. Lucky for me, the day was sunny and fairly clear. I could see the entire city of Rio from both of the mountain top, everything from Copacabana and Ipenema beach to downtown Rio to the favellas on the hills. It's definitely worth the trip. The tour was kind of fun because I met some people that spoke English and had a nice lunch, but if you go, you can probably more easily hit these 2 destinations on your own.

Later on in that evening, I ended up meeting up with Christine from the Itaipu damn tour. We had a bite to eat at an all you can eat place where they keep bringing more and more meat until you explode or say no more. Christine and I had booked a favella tour for the following day. The favella tour was awesome, and the guide -- a german girl who had come to Rio to find work as a translator but ended up paying the bills as a tour guide -- was lots of fun with tons of great stories to tell. I was feeling a little nervous about the favella tour at first because of what people had said about being a voyeur of poverty and how shameful that is, but this tour was one of the most interesting ones I have been on and I highly recommend it. The guide told us stories about the history of favellas, and the life and culture of the residents favellas, the drug and organized crime culture, and the efforts to help them. They are basically a lawless part of the city run by drug lords who are fighting amongst themselves to increase market share and make more money. It sounds a bit like corporate America, but individuals trapped in the middle can have a quick and painful end. The favellas are not patrolled by police, who stay at the side of the favella towns and only venture in when told to go find the drug sellers. Since the groups doing the selling don't generally like this, they keep a tight ship and the favellas are pretty much petty crime free. They are more effective at this than the police are in any of the other parts of the city. It's a strange irony. What was really interesting is that the favellas can border some of the nicest houses in Rio. On one side of the street there is a mansion and on the other side of the street, there is a medley of construction grown from poverty and despair. The construction is very interesting too. People build wherever they want and mostly to make room for a growing family or new tenants. There can be a window of one house with a view of the entire city of Rio and then your neighbor comes by and builds a taller building about 1 foot away from the window and completely blocks the view. Nobody minds because they are all in this community together for the rest of their lives, and they share in understanding of the life of the favella.

In the afternoon after the favella tour, I soaked in the beach of Ipanema for a couple of hours before having to head to the airport for my flight back home. Rio was an excellent adventure and I long to go back soon.

Iguazu Falls

This weekend, I went to Iguazu falls with Jim. I was able to convince him to join me a couple of weeks ago, and we were off to see one of the best waterfalls in the world.

Friday at Itaipu Dam

Like all flights in Brazil, the flight to Iguazu was running late. On the flight, we met some fun Canadians (plus one Brazilian) that we ended up hanging out with on Saturday night, but more on that later. As soon as we got to Foz, we took the nearest taxi to the hotel and then to Itaipu Damn. I think that they said this was the biggest damn in the entire world at the moment. It was built in the 70s to harness the power of the river and provide electricity to 90% of Paraguay and a good deal of Brazil. Looking at the damn is spectacular. It is a mass of concrete that spans as far as you can see to either side. Off to the left is the spill way, which is a huge slide of cement ready to fill the river below if there is a heavy rain. In the center, there is an office building that sits on the border between Paraguay and Brazil. We took a tour of the damn and saw the turbines spinning and the control room inside the office building. We also met a woman named Christine that we ended up having dinner with and talking with for a couple of hours. She became my travel buddy in Rio a bit later.

Saturday in Argentina

You can spend the whole day on the Argentinean side of the Falls because there are so many great views to see and so many hiking trails in the park. After learning how to use the bus to travel to Argentina, we made it to the park a little after 10 am, or so we thought. We didn't actually figure out that there is a +1 hour time change as you go over the river coming from Brazil. We couldn't figure out why everything was closing so early until late in the day.

The first view of the falls was amazing. It is a very wide falls with a huge amount of water flowing over it, but when it rains it gets even more massive than my pictures show. Most of the ridge is stepped so there are two main levels of waterfalls and there are waterfalls absolutely everywhere. See all the pictures I took, because describing the view doesn't give it any justice. Needless to say, I was very impressed. We were advised to do a boat tour from the Argentinean side, and it was well worth the money for the hour long tour. It started out with a close up view of two main sections of the falls, and then a really really close up view of them. By this I mean that they take the speed boat practically under the falls to make everybody complete soaking wet. Later, you take the speed boat careening down the river and over some rapids before getting off and taking a truck ride through the jungle in hopes of seeing some animals.

The best views of the falls are from an island called San Martin in the middle of the ridge. You can take a small ferry over to it and hike to a view point where you sit right at the base of one of the falls.

We ended up seeing the Canadians that we met on the airplane in the afternoon. After texting them throughout the day, we were finally able to meet up with them later that night. When we got back to town, 2 of them (Marilia and Rebecca) came out to party a bit with us. We had a great time, talked for hours, sang Brazilian songs, and partook in some of the bar's specialty mojitos. We didn't get to the next hotel until about 2:30 in the morning. This was a bit of a shame, because this was one of the nicest hotels that we've been to and it was in the national park on the Brazilian side, right next to the waterfall.

Sunday in Brazil

This was sort of a relaxing day. After sleeping in a bit, Jim and I got up for breakfast and then a short hike to see the Brazilian park. We had spent the night at Hotel Das Cataras, which is an extremely nice hotel right in the national park and sitting on the ridge which overlooks the Brazilian side of the falls. Though you can see many of the same waterfalls from the Brazilian side and the Argentinean side, the Brazilian side differs in that you have a larger wider view of the area. Plus, this is the best place to see the most dramatic falls called Gigante do Diabo. There is a walkway that goes out to just above the lower falls to see the whole area and it provides a terrific panoramic view.

In the afternoon, we checked out this bird park where we got to see a lot of the native birds included small parakeets and large macaws. It wasn't too exciting after the falls, but a good way to spend the afternoon.