After having spent 10 amazing days in Paraguay, I headed up to Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil, to visit the famous Iguazu Falls.

The Iguazu Falls stand at the border between Brazil and Argentina, while Foz do Iguaçu is close to the border with Paraguay, where the border actually lies on the Rio Paranà between Paraguay and Brazil.
I took a bus from Encarnaciòn to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, from where I took another bus to cross the border to Foz do Iguaçu. Here’s a fun fact: the border between Paraguay and Brazil is on the bridge that crosses the Rio Paranà. When you take a bus from Paraguay to Brazil, you have to stop on the Paraguayan side to get an Exit stamp on your passport and at the Brazilian side to get the Entry stamp.
When I took the bus to cross the bridge, it didn’t stop at the immigration, so for a while I was an illegal immigrant in Brazil 🙂 After checking with my hostel, they advised me to re-cross the border and get the proper stamps. So I took a bus from Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil, stopped at the immigration in Paraguay, got my Exit stamp, crossed the border on foot by walking on the bridge (quite fun to do) and properly entered Brazil 🙂
Now back to the interesting topic: Iguazu in Guaranì means “Great Water” or “Big Water”, and indeed, it’s great… You can see them from both the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. I went on both side, first one day on the Brazilian side where you can have a better overview of all the falls, and the second day on the Argentinian side where you can get to the “Garganta del Diablo” (Devil’s throat) that lies right above the falls.
Both sides are really amazing, and to get the full experience it’s really worthy to go on both side!
Actually it’s difficult to find words to describe how it feels to be there, you can see the beauty of the falls, feel the power of the water and hear the deafening sound of the water crashing down… All of it is surrounded by a beautiful forest, you feel like you’re in the middle of a jungle, and some views seem to be taken out of an Indiana Jones movie 🙂
Sure there are a lot of tourists, and you often have to queue to get to the panoramic points of view, but that is totally worth it!
Enough with words, here are a few pictures!

Another attraction near Foz do Iguaçu is the Itaipu dam, the second biggest dam in the world, located on the Rio Paranà. Itaipu in Guaranì means “The rock that sings” and Paranà means “The river that looks like the sea”. Yes I’ve made some research and I know a few Guaranì words now 😉
Indeed it’s impressive, the size of the dam itself is crazy, and it’s a marvel from an engineering perspective.
During the visit you get to see a video of how great the dam is, generating 15% of Brazil’s electricity and 80% of Paraguay’s, how they created a scientific park to promote new technologies and protect the environment. What they tend to omit however is the global impact on the climate and the surrounding environment, where lots of species actually disappeared. And all the Indigenous people that used to live there where gently asked to leave or basically killed. But curiously that doesn’t appear in the promotion video of the dam 🙂

I’m currently on my way to Florianopolis, a city on the South-East coast of Brazil where I’ll stay a few days, and from them I’ll get down to Uruguay!