Day 68 - 11 Feb.2012 - Foz do Iguaçu

After breakfast we left San Ignacio towards Foz do Iguaçu. The road RN12 was well but with a lot of hills and by lunchtime we were at the park entrance to the waterfalls. We paid “gringo” citizenship entrance fee and set off on foot into the park.
The Argentinean side of the falls is indeed quite spectacular. We first went for the Lower Circuit, which leads to the lower part of the falls, and then the Upper Circuit where you can get right to the edge of the falls along steel gangways. The views are truly spectacular. We can see below in the water speedboats going with tourists right into the water spray of the falls. These guys must get completely soaking wet. We decided to miss that part of the visit of the falls and continued on foot.
The last and probably the best bit of the visit is a walk towards the “Devils Throat”, the part where most of the water falls into the deep creating a lot of water spray, which in turns creates beautiful rainbows. To get there, we first went on a train to get closer to the upper side and then a couple of hundred meters of walkway across the upper part of the river right towards the Devils Throat. It was definitely wise to leave this part of the visit for the end of our visit, as compared to this all previous sights would appear insignificant.
The visit was well worth and we were quite impressed with the infrastructure and organisation the Argentineans created here.
We went back to our boiling hot car and drove towards the border to Brazil. This was by far the best border crossing we ever had. The Argentinean side was quick and efficient, we did not even had to get out of our car, and the Brazilian side was non-existing for us. As there was a bit of a queue, a Brazilian Border Car drove past the queue collecting all Brazilian cars and guided them right through the border without any further checks or controls. As we had as well a Brazilian number plate, we were part of the group and before we realised what was going to happen, we were driving happily on Brazilian roads towards the city centre of Foz do Iguaçu.
As today was Ania’s birthday, we stopped at the nice hotel Bella Italia and had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant where that evening they also had some life music.