Crossing borders, Iguazu falls and São Paulo

It's about time, right? Well, I have good excuses: a swedish visitor, a cold, hotel rooms without wifi, ect. But since you've been waiting quietly, I'll reward you with loads of pics. Some good ones too. (Too much empty space between them? IE sucks, use Firefox instead!)

We'll start our journey in three countries at once. This is taken from Argentina, Paraguay is on the left and Brazil on the right.





This is in Foz de Iguazu where I took long walks and waited for my visitor trapped in deep thoughts...










Then it was time to get pretty. Sometimes it means getting very ugly first. Hightlights for long hair for the whole head were 10€ in Paraguay.










And as soon as my visitor arrived and told me he had just cut his own (previously beautiful long) hair, I forced him to get to know Paraguayan hair dressing services too. Hair cut with nice layers under 2€.






You can't go to Ciudad del Este without visiting a power plant. No, seriously. Free guided tour at Itaipu hydroelectric dam, which supplies 90% of the energy consumed by Paraguay and 19% of that consumed by Brazil, was pretty cool.



Next to the dam it's like everywhere in Brazil; termite nests all over. They all look abandoned but when I stood in one place for about a minute to get my settings right for this pic, I suddenly found about 20 of them crawling on my feet and legs. Not too nice.








One of my favourite things about this part of the world is that there are beautiful butterflies absolutely everywhere, the sort I've never seen before.












Some of my old friends back in Finland who collect these thing could be slightly jealous...
I settle for admiring them and taking pics for you guys.








Because building of the Itaipu dam caused some serious damage to the surrounding nature, they have protected nature reservoirs, museums and a zoo type of animal park to make it all sound better. Not nice, but I have to admit we enjoyed visiting them.









This old fellow just didn't want to sit still for the photo so it's a bit shaky. Bad tucan!?











This little monster on the other hand was very helpful and wouldn't have minded taking a few shots himself.
Sorry, babe, losing one camera per trip is enough.







After a few days of lip tango and waiting for the rain to stop on the Paraguayan and Brazilian side of the falls we got a room on the Argentinian part (which is the best and cheapest accomodationwise anyway) and finally headed off to the falls.



On an early Saturday morning we filled our backpack with picnic food and drinks and started wondering around the beautiful trails. Between 8 and 9am we pretty much had the place to ourselves, but only by resisting the temptation to visit the most spectacular falls first, which is what most visitors do.







No need to say much, right? Sweeeeeeet views and getting better...
I'll shut up and let you enjoy the show for a bit.





























































Besides the magnificent falls the Iguazu is also full of cool wildlife, some of which I managed to catch on my memory card.

























































The Ecological rubber boat tour (5€) with a guide rowing the boat, pointing out animals right next to you and telling you cool stories about the surrounding nature was a nice and peacefull way to end our day at the falls.











Instituto Butantan was our next and pretty much only stop in Sao Paulo. Erik suffered from a cold and I had the lazy bug which I cleverly disguised into nurturing him...

But this institute was pretty cool. They've been around for over 100 years, research venomous animals and create antidotes for people who've been bitten by them and vaccines for many different diseases. Providing thousands of visiting schoolskids information about all these exotic snakes and spiders that actually can live on their backyard is important too .


























Street mosaic Butantan style; according to Erik there's no need to motivate throwing that in any further. Boob pics are always welcome.
I'll keep that in mind...





In our food section:
a small Argentinian barbeque with a few dozen whole chickens





Tasty Paraguay corn bread, chipa. They are sold everywhere but the best, fresh, warm ones you get from the sellers on buses for about 0,2€.




I love avocados and having HUGE ones growing in peoples' gardens where they can't even be bothered to pick them up (kind of what happens to apples and berries home in the North) is just... too much. Have to go have an avocado sandwich or two to forget.