Saturday, March 31, 2007

Brazil!




We have arrived! And we don´t understand a damned word of Portugese which is making it slightly harder! So they let me into Brazil and my first ever border crossing was smoother than dulce con leche. Incredibly surreal though to cross into one country from the other by taxi and just get down, walk across, get your passport stamped and Bob´s your uncle. You get the drift.

However we are just across the river from Argentina in a town called Foz do Iguacu, the answer to Puerto. So it doesnt feel like Brazil just yet. This is a large city though with 250,000 people in comparison to the Argentine side which only houses 40,000. This is thanks to the huge Itaipu Dam that Brazil built out of the Falls and that brought in several thousand Muslims, Japanese and Koreans, weirdly enough.

The Brazilian side of the Iguacu Falls which we visited with our new English buddy Lexi, was much much better purely because there so many less tourists and the walkways took you to spitting distance of some of the falls, making them so much more humungous and thunderous! Though there were alot less butterflies too. Will post pictures shortly.

The hostel we are staying in is lovely with a pool and delicious caiparinhas - that is all we have been drinking since we got close to the border. We have met a cool Brazilian from Sao Paolo who has been giving us some super advice on our upcoming journey. Lee and I have decided to head to the beach as we are itching for some surf and the beach bum lifestyle that is calling us. We are buying a hammock on Monday, renting a car and heading for an island called Ilha Santa Catarina which is by a town called Florianopolis... it is supposed to be a pristine beached island with great surf and tiny bays with many undiscovered beaches. Whooo flippin hoooo!!!!

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