We are going to double blog for the next few days to try and catch up with the days we have missed, I am starting with Friday 4Th October and Grace will publish Saturday 5th October. Valeria (head of the department) told us we will have Friday off at the museum so we could go and see the waterfalls, we did not have much choice about not coming in, they told us to go. But this also meant we did not have to polish the hammock!
After 17 LONG hours on a so called “sleeper executive” night bus that smelt of port-a-loo (My friends and family will know how this was 17 hours of “character building”) from Sao Paulo the evening before, we were very pleased to have arrived in Foz do Iguacu. Foz do Iguacu is a Brazilian town that is on the boarder of Argentina and Paraguay and hosts one half of one of the natural wonders of the world – The Iguacu Falls.
The bus arrived 3 hours later than expected into Foz do Iguacu around 1:30pm, so we got a taxi to the hostel we were staying in, a wise option following our track record for getting lost. While driving to the hostel we realised we were very far away from the cosmopolitan life of Sao Paulo and we had reached a real Brazilian town. Foz do Iguacu is a large town around the size of Ipswich for the Southerners or Chorley for the Northerners. Our hostel the highest rated on Hostelworld but was not near the town centre or the waterfalls but along an average street, it looked like a Swiss chalet but painted a forest green colour, no sign signifying it was a hostel, only a hammock hung outside and a large Brazilian flag was hung between the front windows. We were welcomed by two dogs a bulldog called Thor and a Terrier type dog called Einstein, who were both very friendly shall we say. We got to our room an 8 bed mixed dorm, showered, changed and headed towards the bus stop to go to Ipaitu Dam recommended by Giselle our hostel owner. This was our first time using a normal bus in Brazil and it was quite exciting, for a bus journey that is, each bus has a driver and ticket attendant who sits at the front next to a turnstile, you give him your money R$2.85 or £0.78p and he lets you through; quite unusual in our English world of ridiculously priced tickets and no ticket attendants because of Oyster and travel cards.
We were very unsure as to what to expect as we did not even realise there was a dam there! When we got off the bus we decided the best plan was to follow other people, so we did and that lead us to a control point with lots of police men who pointed out this was the route across the border to Paraguay and that the dam museum was on the other side of the road, quite confusing as there was no obvious signs. At the dam museum a kind man spoke to us in English about the Queen and explained what there was to do, we only had time to complete The Panoramic Tour, an open top bus tour of the dam. We paid and headed for the restaurant to eat, on the bus we only had crisps and bread so we were desperate for normal food, but there was only a sandwich selection -more bread!
After our food we headed for the complimentary movie about the dam, this was spoken in Portuguese and had Spanish subtitles it was very hilarious and cheesy (side note – cheesy does not translate very well into other languages, we have tried many many times to explain but it does not make sense), lots of slow motion shots of exceptionally happy people. Facts we did not know about the Dam, they have a university, research centre, educational centre and a very big dam that produces energy for Brazil and Paraguay.
On the panoramic bus tour the guide spoke fluently in three languages Portuguese, Spanish and then English just for us – very impressive, unfortunately we had to sit next to two large Brazilian tourists who thought it was necessary to take photographs of everything in sight and take up two sets of seats so they could get the window seats, tourists are the same where ever you go in the world! The bus stopped for two photo opportunities and at one stop we saw a massive lizard happily walking around the perfectly manicured and landscaped land. The management of the dam plant a tree for every member of staff who retires in their memory; there are currently around 1500 trees.
The dam its self is very interesting for a dam made from concrete, my Dad would have been in absolute heaven!
A few facts about the Dam:
- It produces energy for Brazil and Paraguay, but only 9% goes to Paraguay the rest is sent to Sao Paulo and Rio.
- The Parana River is the natural boarder Brazil and Paraguay.
- The iron and steel used to make the dam is enough to build 380 Eiffel towers.
- The earth and rock excavated at Ipaitu was 8.5 times greater than that of the Eurotunnel
- The volume of concrete used is 15 times more than the Eurotunnel (Dad fact)
- If Brazil was to obtain the same amount of energy from oil fuelled thermo electric plants they would have to burn 536,000 barrels of oil a day.
- The highest point of the dam is the equivalent of a 65 storey building.
- The Ipaitu spillway is 40 times greater than the average flow of the Iguacu falls!
Overall we were both surprised at how interesting a dam that we did not even realise existed could be. Ipaitu dam certainly created a tourist attraction, mostly for bus tours.
On our return to the hostel we took a bus, but it didn’t stop where we asked and wanted it to so we got off in the town and went to a restaurant, what we did not realise when we went in was that it was a Churrsoco or BBQ restaurant, great for a vegan and someone who does not eat red meat! The kitchen staff stared at us because we were English, couldn’t speak Portuguese and then didn’t eat meat! We were certainly a novelty for them.
We tried to get a bus to return to the hostel, but after 20 minutes of not being able to find a bus stop we decided to take a taxi, then waited 20 minutes for one to arrive at the taxi stop on a main busy road! But taxi driver did not know where Hostel Manga Rosa on Rua Florianopolis was, so after he asked for directions we did make it back, it was very amusing and at least he now knows where Hostel is. Once we arrived at the hostel we met the other people staying that night, 4 Mexican’s and 1 Peruvian, who all went to Cutiphia University and decided to also travel to see the waterfalls that weekend. They invited us to go with them to the Argentinian side of the waterfalls and we accepted their kind offer seeing as we did not have a clue how to get there otherwise.
We slept very well in a lovely horizontal bed readying ourselves for the excitement of the waterfalls.
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