December 8, 2010

Time to see the waterfalls from the Brazilian side. We very very happy with the view we had of the falls yesterday and found it hard to imagine that it could be much different from the other side. However, both Lonely Planet and people here said that it really is different and worth a second visit.

The weather forecast was not very good and we made double sure we had our rain ponchos easily accessible.

We took the local bus over to the falls. Our attempt of paying to the driver was futile. There was a guy with a small counter inside the bus, whose job was to sell tickets.

In hindsight we should probably have taken a taxi. Children over 6 paid full price, so the bus cost us about the same as a taxi and used a looooong time to get to the falls.

Once there we bought tickets to the national park. There was a bus inside the park to reach the falls.

We noticed that here in Brazil the quality of English on signs was nowhere near that of Argentina or Peru. It seemed like Google Translate was used a lot. There was a small exposition about the earth and the enironment at the visitors center at the entrance to the park. It was very well done and had lots of good information. Unfortunately the English text, elaborately printed with beautiful letters on the wall, was close to unintelligible. As another example, this was the sign on an elevator door:

A counter at the visitor center:

I would like to purchase one small waterfall and a historic building, please. 🙂

It all reminded me of what is supposedly a quote from a safety brochure from a Japanese rental car agency. The English text read:

“When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.”

It is surprising that there is not better quality control of these signs, everything else at the national park was clean, thought through and well done.

Once we arrived at the falls the weather had turned bad. There was fog, lots of fog. Ouch. There is a waterfall out there somewhere:

Luckily the fog drifted a bit away, then came back, then drifted again. We did get some relatively good views during the day.

There was a ramp that brought us to a place with falls on all sides:

It did make a big difference to see the falls from this side. On the Argentine side we could get much closer to some of the falls. On the Brazilian side we could see the falls more straight on and we could see more of them at the same time (Right click and select “View Image” to see a larger version):

We could get fairly close to one of the big ones also:

I did some experiments with the zoom of the camera:

We wore rain ponchos for most of the day. In addition to the drizzle from the falls it also rained on and off:

We saw the standard butterflies and lizards, and the rain also brought out the snails:

We were glad we had also seen the Brazilian side, but it does not take a whole day to see everything there. With a few hours to spare we decided to take a look at the bird park which is just next to the entrance to the national park. Viktor was a bit disappointed that we had not seen more colorful birds in the Amazon. He certainly got to see many here. The park was very, very well done. It consisted of some cages, but mostly of large aviaries where you walked freely together with the birds. The park is immense and packed with beautiful birds of all kinds and sizes. Here´s the inside of one of the aviaries:

Here are some birds:

And here are some kids with birds:

Another great day, in spite of the rain. Tomorrow we venture further east to meet our good friends Dauro and Lauro and their two boys in Florianopolis.

Eirik

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