Iguazu Falls

 Friday August 27

As yesterday was mostly a travel day, we'll cover two days in one posting.  Remember the adventure travel comment a few days ago?  On Wednesday, our 4.5 hour drive to Campo Grande became a 6 hour drive because a local indigenous tribe closed the only east-west highway in the state to bring attention to their concerns about land use legislation being discussed in the Brazilian Congress.  The only alternate route would have added another 2 hours, so we sat and waited and watched a bit of their dancing.  An unplanned cultural experience. 

We drove south, but mostly east, from Caiman to Campo Grande, crossing through the red sandstone rim that holds the rain inside the Pantanal. But the rim is very irregular, resembling the buttes of the American Southwest in some places.  After an overnight in Campo Grande, on Thursday we flew to Foz du Iguacu, Brazil, to see the Iguazu Falls. "Foz" means "confluence", in this case of the the Iguassu and Panala Rivers (yes, Iguazu really is spelled differently in different contexts, in part because the confluence is also the intersection of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina)>

The falls themselves are upstream on the Iguassu, and form a very long horseshoe of individual falls, up to 350 feet high. The number of falls depends on the water level, but 275 is a good working number.  The sheer magnitude of this natural feature is overwhelming, and even hundreds of pictures can't do it justice, but we'll try!  Our hotel faces onto the northern edges of the falls, most of which are on the Argentine side of the river.  We also had the opportunity to see the falls from the air on a helicopter ride today.  And we were treated to an amazing sunset over the falls for our last evening in Brazil,

The weather here is very different than in the Pantanal -- lows in the 50's, highs in the 70's and enough rain that everything is green. After 10 days of 100 degrees and dust everywhere, it is quite a relief. We have taken advantage of the weather to be out walking as much as possible. We have seen a few new species, including a type of swift that actually nests on the cliffs beside and behind the falls, flying right through the sheets of water.  We also re-met some creatures that were elusive in the Pantanal but have adapted to humans here, particularly the coati,  who run right past people and aggressively beg for food. 

Pictured: Iguazu Falls from helicopter, sunset over the falls, Burrowing Owl, Violet-capped Woodnymph, Great Dusky Swifts.