Days 514-530: Brazil and Iguazu Falls
Brazil: Sao Paulo, The Pantanal, Bonito, Foz do Iguaçu
Argentina: Puerto Iguazu
We barely scraped the surface in southern Brazil, but it was great and we got to see a lot of amazing critters and one heck of a illustration of how cool water and gravity can be when they get together.
How are the Brazilians such a friendly bunch? What a pleasant country to visit. There’s a lot of diversity to the Brazilians and the place seemed to be free of tension. There wasn’t much English spoken, but they appreciated our attempts at Portuguese and could figure out our hand guestures. One morning, we were trying to tell the hotel dude that we wanted to stay another night. He didn’t speak English and so Marc asked him, “Habla español?” He replied “Si.” and Marc turned to Kelly and said, “Well, shit….” realizing that he hadn’t learned Spanish yet.
We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in Sao Paulo and picked a classy hotel to stay at. The top line on the sign reads “Fraction of 3 hours: 25 Rial” (about $12). Sweet!
One of the first things we noticed about Sao Paulo is it’s liberal attitude towards sex. There were sex shops everywhere, porn on display at every magazine kiosk, and a whole lot of skin showing.
You’ll note the “Central do Suco” shop next to the sex shop. No, it’s not what you might think from the name but actually a fruit juice shop. There is an incredible variety of fruit on offer in Brazil – things we’ve never even seen before. And they taste great and cost about a buck for a huge glass.
The folks in Brazil make really good food. Every other restaurant is a “per kilo” self-service place with a bunch of chow to choose from, which is really good when you can’t read a Portuguese menu. We even found a fake meat Brazilian/Chinese/Japanese place that was amazing. Who would have thought to make mango or strawberry maki rolls? We also discovered dolce de leite (aka dulce de leche and soft caramel) as a breakfast condiment used like jam. At every restaurant there is a thermos of coffee set up for you to take a cup on your way out.
And speaking of coffee, they make an interesting cappuccino. Most of the places froth chocolate milk rather than regular milk and dump a bunch of chocolate and cinnamon on top. But Marc’s favorite place used stunningly rich whipped cream instead of milk and it was heavenly.
Sao Paulo had a few sights other than the sex shops. We went to the top of their tall bank building “based on the Empire State building.” That might be a bit of a stretch, but it sure had a nice view.
We felt unclean after hanging around so much debauchery, so we went inside that cool church in the picture above. Nice colors from the stained glass.
A different church in Sao Paulo, not so nicely treated.
After a few days of Sex and the City, we went to the swamp. Yep, the Pantanal is a huge swamp in southwestern Brazil that is chock full of critters. We spent five days and four nights in the swamp trying not to get eaten by piranhas, jaguars, anacondas, or mosquitos. The lodge was good and rustic and we had rats running races on our roof, frogs in our shower, and a bat doing laps over the beds. But it was all good fun.
The swamp.
The bus stop for the part of the Pantanal that we were headed for was in the “town” of Buraco das Piranhas (burrow of the piranhas?). It had all of three structures and a lot of pretty little cardinals.
There were loads of birds in the Pantanal. Marc’s favorite were the ground hawks that looked like they were wearing toupes and would throw their heads back and cackle.
The most populous critter in the swamp had to be the capybara. They are the largest rodent in the world and literally the size of a full grown dog. They look like guineapigs on steroids, and if that wasn’t cool enough, they can swim under water.
We took a couple of boat trips along the twisty, jasmine-scented Rio Miranda. It gave us a great vantage point for viewing caiman. We don’t know if there is a difference between caiman and aligators, but these guys seemed to be scared of people. Didn’t really matter since we were more scared of them.
Our guide wasn’t scared of the caiman; think Steve Irwin. We were brave enough to pick up a slightly smaller caiman though.
We didn’t find any anaconda (darn) but the guy in the next room had a snake come out of his sink drain. Nice. We also didn’t see any of the incredibly weird giant anteaters that live in the Pantanal. We did find giant river otters, howler monkies, and gnarly iguanas.
This guy was easier to take a picture of than some of the other critters.
The coolest animal we spotted was a big ol’ jaguar that gave us a show for an hour. She hung out, cruised along the river bank while we tried to stay out of pouncing range, and occasionally ate baby caiman (not terribly nice). We didn’t know how lucky we were until we heard our guide bragging to the other guides at the lodge. What a gorgeous animal she was.
We went to pretty Bonita, which is renowned for snorkelling in its clear rivers with loads of fish. However, we’ll probably remember it more for the golfball-sized beetles that kept flying into Kelly’s hair at dinner.
Marc making a call on the fish-phone in Bonita.
Bonita was a pretty touristy town. Half the shops sold souvenirs and the restaurants had English menus (and prices to match). So rather than take one of the pricey snorkel tours, we walked down to the municipal swimming hole. We knew we were going swimming and prudently left the camera behind. Of course, this guaranteed that we saw incredibly cool animals. Yeah, the clear water and fish were neat and the big monitor lizards let us get closer than any in the Pantanal, but the wild macaws took the cake. There was a blue-and-gold couple (go Bears!) that hung out in the trees and flew down onto one of the restaurant tables that “happened” to get covered in sunflower seeds by the proprietor. These birds were stunningly beautiful and completely unaffraid of the gaggle of camera happy tourists (or in our case, cameraless tourists). They even ate sunflowers out of our hands with gnarly black tongues and scary beaks. We were a bit worried about catching bird flu from the one that kept sneezing and picking its nose with its claws.
One of the last critter sights we had in Bonita was a very large dog attempting to be amorous with a tiny chihuahua. He gave up when he figured out it was logistically impossible. Hilarious!
We left Bonita and it took us 6 buses and about 24 hours to get to Foz do Iguaçu, but it was worth it.
The falls straddle the Brazilian/Argentinian border and were awesome. There were thundering torrents of water spilling over The Devil’s Throat, lots of linear trickles, tiered cascades, and smooth sheets. If a waterfall could do it, it was on display at Iguaçu. And unlike Victoria Falls, we could actually see it.
We visited both the Brazilian and Argentinian sides of the falls to be thurough. Besides the waterfall, both sides had really cool critters.
Lots of amazing iridescent butterflies in different colors. Here’s a purple one.
This blue butterfly would just sit on your hand and try to lick the salt (or whatever) off and it was pretty hard to get them to leave.
Don’t know if this orange thing was a fly or a moth, but it had an incredible blue underside.
There were big ol’ monitor lizards that made sure the tourists stayed on the path.
It may not surprise you to hear that having a millipede walk on your hand is incredibly ticklish.
There an incredibly fierce animal called a coati that is adorable but harrasses unsuspecting tourists (in a very cute way). There were signs warning tourists – and this is the literal Portuguese translation – not to serve coati thin hamburgers (supersize only please).
Despite the fact that every other tourist at the Brazilian border was either yelling at the immigration officials or crying, we exited the country without any trouble. Remember to hang on to those “arrival cards” folks. Brazil was charging about US$85 if you didn’t have it when you left.
We honestly liked the views of the falls better from the Argentina side. Lots of cool trails and they even had a minature train. What we didn’t count on was viciousness of the coati attack. Kelly barely survived her encounter while trying to protect our lunch.
A parting shot of the falls from the Argenina side.
We got on an 18 hour overnight bus to Buenos Aires the next day. We chose the middle class option and didn’t count on what we would consider first class on an airplane. Lots of room, nearly fully reclining seats, pillows, blankets, toilet, food, drinks, movies, and champagne. Travel in South America is pretty rough.
Tags: Argentina, Brazil
Kelly & Marcus
October 22nd, 2006 at 11:16 am
We need to get onea those Fish Phones for the Beach House!
October 22nd, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Very “colorful” adventures you’re having – love it!
October 22nd, 2006 at 5:16 pm
I hope you now know enough Spanish to say “Uno mas noche”…may not be ‘good’ Spanish, but it would get the message across. I cracked up. 🙂
Loved the preview of the Falls too.