Foz do Iguaçu

Sunday 15th May 1988

I crammed down a couple of corned beef sandwiches as we packed up our gear. At the Bus Terminal we took the bus to Brazil for ₳5 Australes. Buses left every twenty minutes from 07:00 hrs. We had to get off the bus at Argentine Customs to get our exit stamp, take the next bus to Brazilian Immigration, which was very relaxed, for our entry stamp, and then take a third bus into town.

A young hotel tout took us to a few expensive hotels before we took a triple room at the San Remo Hotel for 1,500 Cruzados. The cruzado was the currency of Brazil from 1986 to 1989. It replaced the second cruzeiro (at first called the "cruzeiro novo") in 1986, at a rate of 1 cruzado = 1000 cruzeiros (novos) and was replaced in 1989 by the cruzado novo at a rate of 1000 cruzados = 1 cruzado novo. This currency was subdivided in 100 centavos and it had the symbol and the ISO 4217 code BRC.

Above: Hotel San Remo.

Everything in the town of Foz do Iguaçu was closed but luckily Hugo had a load of Brazilian money to pay for us today. We took a bus to the falls which cost 50 Cruzados plus 160 Cruzados for entry to the park. The Brazilian side offers a fine, panoramic view of the whole range of waterfalls.

We walked along the narrow path adding to our already significant collection of waterfall photographs. Several brown furry animals with long striped tails (coatis) foraged by the path, another target for photographers.

The final catwalk led through wind-blown spray to the Devil’s Throat which hurtled, roared and tumbled into the mist below. Solid looking rainbows spanned the river between the cliffs.

Above: Steve and Hugo at the Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil.

We took a bus back to town and I went back to the hotel for a kip (sleep) while the Swiss boys tried in vain to get a bus to the huge Itaipú Hydroelectric Dam Project. The Itaipu Dam (Portuguese: Barragem de Itaipu, Spanish: Represa de Itaipú) is a hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay.

They got back at 17:00 hrs. after a long chat with a German migrant in the town centre. We lay about and wrote while listening to Paraguayan Radio Stroessner on the transistor radio. At 20:00 hrs. we went out to get something to eat.

We went to a churrascaria on Avenida Brasil which offered as much as you could eat for about $4 US dollars. We took a table in a vast wooden hall while a local trio of musicians played live music. It was set up as a serve-yourself carvery and we got stuck in with a vengeance.

Plates of beef, chicken, pork, exotic salad and rice was swept down our gullets with red wine. A night of overindulgence that had us tottering back to the hotel to lay on our beds with stomachs gurgling and struggling to digest the unexpected excessive volume of food and drink.