Day 9

Wednesday 10^th November 2010

Look at it!! All plump and juicy dressed in bacon and red wine reduction, a cut of beef so fine I almost had a “when Harry met Sally” moment in the restaurant. With a helping of mash, a leek tart and a lovely bottle of red for company mmmmmmmmmmmm!!! (it would have been a great picture too if Suz was awake)

Ok well that’s enough bovine back slapping, let’s get on with today’s adventure.

We woke early (again) to a breakfast of, …erm…. Like pastry things, and was picked up to go to the Brazilian side of Iguazu. The national park itself was created in 1939 (I think that they mean it became a national park rather than some bloke going round planting tree’s and collecting animals) and boasts over 600000 hectares of trees, birds and big cats like the Puma and Jaguar. We didn’t see any big cats but the chances were slim, our guide has been doing tours for over 10 years and has only seen two Pumas and one Jaguar, which was dead.

The Brazilian side offers panoramic views of the falls and showed us just how vast they are, we didn’t really get a sense of that yesterday as we we’re right on top of them. The weather was a lot better today and we could see the abundant rain forest as far as the eye can see.

It was only a half day tour as there isn’t that much to do on the Brazilian side apart from take some pretty amazing pictures.

Although at the end of the trail you do get to go right up close to “the devils throat” and again we got soaked!

We met some Irish people on the tour that had come up from Buenos Aires, they told us about their time there which wet our appetite for our visit. They had also done the Inca trail, the bloke had been to the jungle beforehand and had somehow got parasites of the intestines. He ploughed on and did the Inca trail regardless but said it was really hard work, vomiting every few hours. This gives us hope that if a guy who was hospitalised for three days afterwards can do it, we should be fine.

They also took the helicopter ride over the falls which they said was amazing, she spoke of the views and the unbelievable amounts of forest, he said “woo hoo! I’ve just been in a helicopter, I feel like I’m in the A-Team”. We really wanted to do it, but we can't do everything or else we'll be home before Christmas!

We went into the centre of Puerto Iguazu for some lunch and happened upon and restaurant. They didn’t speak a word of English and although our Spanish is improving, we struggled. I asked for what I know, a pollo sandwich (chicken). Then the waitress asked me a few questions and I said “si” in a few different ways to pretend I knew what she was on about. I ended up with a fried chicken, ham, cheese, egg, lettuce and tomato sandwich. At least we can order beer!

We’ve just packed our things up as we are heading for Lima tomorrow. We’re not sure when the next time we will have an internet connection will be, so this may be the last post for a few weeks. We will keep a diary and post the lot next time we find wi-fi.