Ciao Rio, Oi Foz!

Up at six thirty today for showers, more packing, a rushed breakfast of açai and grenola and we said goodbye to our Buddhist apartment to board a taxi to the airport.
I'm sitting aboard a plane to Foz as I write, where we will see the Iguaçu Falls in all their splendour (I hope). My time is being nicely spent jotting and eating a hot sandwich of turkey and an odd tasteless cheese...
Ooh my ears are beginning to hurt intensely, the plane must be descending in Foz! Leg 2 of the holiday commences!

A short trip in a taxi-van brought about our arrival to our first hotel of the trip - Florença. A great little hotel with the luxury of a vast breakfast, food on tap and a pool (with slides - hooray!). The only downside comparing it to apartment living was the inability to spread out and we all must wake and retire to bed at the same time. Still, our body clocks are now set to that of a child's so it works out okay.
The children spent the rest of our daylight hours in the pool (vastly superior to the beach in my opinion) and then it was a light meal and an early bedtime.

The next day's plan was our long awaited trip to Iguaçu Falls. A short bus ride from the hotel delivered us there and soon we were traversing the mountainside with hoards of other tourists on a paved walkway across to the falls. Very shortly you are rewarded with impressive waterfalls of which you don't see a great deal in the UK but this was nothing. Within half an hour we had reached the biggest and most amazing fall of which I am likely to see. A walkway is built across it's front so that a refreshing spray (or cold shower) hits you from the force of the falls crashing down to the rocks below. Being a Saturday we had to share this spectacle with hundreds of other people from different nationalities - but this was the only downside.

I think the highlight of the children's day was their first glimpse of Quatis - red badger/foxlike creatures with long noses which venture out from the forest in search of the tourists leftover food. The girls named two such animals Barry and Frederick - obviously.

Lunch was soon calling us and as we had been advised on the bus by two very friendly Brazilians, Sergio and his son Gustav (who were keen to try out their English on us) that the food at the falls was very good. A sumptuous (yes, I hate that word too) buffet awaited us and gave us the opportunity to try out many Brazilian foods. It was certainly worth the money, even after my accidental experimentation with stewed pigs ears (I thought it was mushroom...). The restaurant overlooked the top of the waterfall which was surprisingly calm before it tumbles down over the rocks.

But the day was not over, flagging but hopeful we entered the next-door bird park which displayed many native birds in an amazing array of colours. But the star of the show was the Toucan - even though seen before in books and TV, it is still amazing to think that such a creature exists in nature.

Now completely exhausted, the return bus brought us back to the hotel to a meal in our room of odd Brazilian crisps and biscuits and fruit stolen from breakfast. Still full from the falls buffet, even these were hard to consume. I have issues with 'all you can eat' - one feels forced to intake unnatural amounts of food into ones body to the point that even the consumption of fluids is impossible and I'm also uncomfortable with the waste. But occasionally, it must be done. And so to sleep...(at 8pm).