El gran viaje 2007

It took me three days at the beach to get a real sunburn, a record for me I think. Anyway, it´s just as well because after three days of perfect, clear blue skies it´s rainy and cool today in Florianopolis.

Before leaving Brazil´s sunny coast in a few weeks to head inland for Bolivia and the Andes, we needed to take advantage of our best chance for a few days at the beach on this trip. It´s been a lazy few days for us. We´ve got a little apartment in Barra da Lagoa, a little fishing village on the island of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. Having a kitchen and being near the beach gave us an excuse to do basically nothing for a few days. But after an intense visit to Iguazu, we needed a vacation from our vacation.

After miraculously getting our visas for Brazil in about an hour in Puerto Iguazu on Wednesday morning, we headed to the waterfalls. We started out our tour with a boat ride that took us close enough to the spray to completely soak us and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the park, checking out the falls from different angles.

On Thursday we headed back to the park to do the Macuco Trail, a 4 mile easy walk through the subtropical rainforest where we saw giant spiders and ants, more butterflies, strange unknown birds, lizards, a monkey, and a deer. The hike ended at a little waterfall where we went swimming. Then it was one last look at the falls before heading back to our hot and crowded hostel.

On Friday we crossed the border into Braziil and after buying our bus tickets to Florianopolis and stashing our backpacks in the bus station´s lockers, we headed straight for the Brazilian park. The views from the Brazilian side were amazing, but visiting this side wasn´t as exciting as the Argentinian side, where you´re pretty much actually in the waterfalls.

Brazil is very beautiful, at least from what we´ve seen so far. The beaches here in Floripa are surrounded by low, green mountains and the water is clear and blue. But we´re feeling anxious to get back to speaking Spanish, and Brazil is expensive. The plan now is to zip up to Rio and then head West.