Argentina, Curitiba, Twilight, and a Snake Museum

For day 2 of our time in Foz de Iguaçu we went to the Argentine side of the waterfalls. Without meaning any disrespect to Brazil, I have to admit the Argentine side was a lot cooler. The first thing we did was go on a catwalk that takes you right up by the Devil's Throat, which is where the waterfalls make kind of a circle and all dump into one place. (As a side note, why is it that really cool things are so often named after the devil? That kind of reflects badly on human nature.)

After that we went on some paths that take us along the whole length of the falls on the Argentine side. Basically the format of the falls is like a long hall with waterfalls on either side and at the end of the hall is the devil's throat. I don't know how well that explains it, but you can always look it up on Google Earth or something. It's probably worth the 30 seconds of effort.

(Pause for half a minute......)

The highlight of the day was a boat ride we took. The boat went right up next to the falls. We obviously couldn't go underneath the falls themselves, but the water hitting the surface of the river splashes up enough to create a kind of cloud that's almost like a secondary waterfall (this is really hard to describe, sorry) and we went into that cloud and got absolutely soaked. It was really fun.

After that we bought some souvenirs and stuff, then went to the Three Corners area where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet. We couldn't jump back and forth because the boundary is actually at the intersection where two rivers make a kind of T shape, but over the course of the weekend we did go to all three of those countries, so I'm up to 5 countries I've been in now (thank you Canada!).

Saturday night we went to a really nice churrascaria called the Búfalo Branco. After eating more meat and grilled pineapple than was probably wise, safe, or legal in certain countries, I went to try and take a picture of the kitchen where they have a bunch of meat roasting on spits. The people in charge saw me and let me go back in by the grill and get a picture with a big chunk of meat on a spit. It was pretty cool.

Sunday afternoon we left for Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná. It's one of the cleaner, more modern and European cities in Brazil. We spent most of the day Monday visiting parks and stuff. Monday night we went to a mall and they had a booth set up where if you buy a can of some Coke product you can play Rock Band as much as you want, so a couple of us hung out there for a while. We absolutely dominated.

On the ride back from Curitiba to São Paulo the girls kind of revolted that we'd been watching mostly guy movies and somehow convinced Gustavo to turn on Twilight. Since I had nothing better to do I watched it. It was hilariously terrible, and I laughed pretty hard during most of the "serious" parts.

Yesterday we played soccer for a few hours. I got schooled. I also got a huge blister on my left foot. It was a lot of fun.

Today we went to the Instituto Butantan, which has a snake museum. They had a mini-zoo with a bunch of exotic snakes and frogs and stuff. They had 3 or 4 anacondas in one of the tanks. They weren't full size yet, but were still pretty big. They also had a huge Indian Python, and at one point got out some false coral snakes and were letting people touch them. I felt kind of stupid because most of the people in line were little kids. On the other hand, how many times do you get to touch a Brazillian snake (without getting strangled, poisoned, or robbed by it I mean).

This Saturday a few of us are going to Hopi-Hari, which is an amusement park. From what I understand it's supposed to be "better than Lagoon, but not as good as Six Flags." We'll see how that goes. It's only 75 reais for a day pass and the bus ride to and from the park, which seems pretty cheap to me. It's supposed to be lousy weather on Saturday, which will hopefully translate to shorter lines.

That's about all the latest news so I'll go ahead and close this post.