The town Foz do Iguacu lies on the brazilian side of the Parana and Iguacu river, on the other sides, there are Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and tiny Puerto Iguazu in Argentina. In the 4 days we've been here, we visited all three countries, although we only got stamps from two of them as day visitors in Paraguay don't need to get their passports stamped.
On our first day we visited the brazilian side of the falls and on our last one we went to the argentinian side, which was unfortunately very crowded due to Easter holidays.
View from the brazilian side
Devil's throat from the argentinian side
A few advice for everybody who wants to come here and visit the Cataratas: 1. The bus to the brazilian side of the Cataratas costs 2,90R, do not ask for the tickets in spanish (especially not with argentinian accent) if you don't speak portuguese, otherwise you might end up paying 50R like that couple from Buenos Aires. 2. Go to the brazilian side first, as they give you a large overview. 3. if you want to go on a boat ride wait until you're on the argentinian side, it's cheaper there and you get just as wet as on the brazilian side. 4. on the brazilian side, everything exept one walk costs extra (about 140R), so plan well what you want to do. (If you want to do something quieter with less people around you, I'd recommend the poco preto-trail instead of macuco safari) 5. when being on the argentinian side, go to Carganta del Diablo first and then do the other walks, as most people do it the other way around. 6. plan about half a day on the brazilian side but a whole day on the argentinian side, as there are much more free activities.
Apart from the waterfalls we went to check out the market in Ciudad del Este which gets invaded by Brazilians and Argentinians who seem to be crazy about woollen blankets (ok, winter is coming, but it was still 30°C outside and everybody was buying these thick blankets as if it was -20°C) and any electronic device you can imagine including Labrador-size Rolls Royce cars with remote control. I wouldn't really say that we saw anything of Paraguay on that day because this market is really just full of tourists and people who try to sell you all kinds of things, but it was still nice to be able to communicate without problems for one day. The first girl I talked to said: "Thank god, finally somebody who speaks spanish" and that's exactly how I felt as well.
The next day we went on a tour at and inside the Itaipu dam, the most powerful dam in the world. The three gorges dam in China is actually still bigger, but the Parana river has more power so that the power plant can produce more electricity than the one in China. The project itself is very interesting especially the fact, that Paraguay paid half of the dam, but only needs 9% of the produced power to cover 75% of all the electricity needed in their country, so they sell the rest of their 50% to Brazil which with these 91% of the produced electricity only covers 17% of their total. But on the other hand Paraguay has only 7 million people while Brazil has about 200 million. But it was a very interesting tour which made me wonder why we still have only about 10% of renewable energy while so called "less developed" countries like Brazil and Paraguay cover 75% and 100% of their energy by renewables.
We then crossed the border to Argentina, our first official border crossing with control and stamps in the passport. I was very nervous before but it was much easier than expected and unlike other people in the bus at least we knew that we had to get out at the brazilian customs first and then take the next bus to the argentinian checkpoint.
We stayed one night in a hostel which again reminded me why we normally don't stay in hostels. One shower for about 30 people, one working toilet (there was another one in the same bathroom as the shower, but it didn't flush. As people used it anyway, you always had this nice smell of urine while you were taking a shower. delicious!), breakfast consisting of two tiny croissants and a small pack of butter, internet - of course - not working for longer than 2 minutes before you had to restart the router. We were very happy to leave after one night. Luckily the rest of cure little Puerto Iguazu was beautiful so we could enjoy our stay there and are now heading south to Rosario.
-Sandra
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