August 27, 2015: Water, Water Everywhere!

Just one of the hundreds of beautiful waterfalls at Iguazu.

Cintia and I have spent the last few days in Foz do Iguazu at the junction of the Iguazu and Parana Rivers and the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. This is an important region for trade between the three countries and a huge tourist destination due to the incredible Iguazu Falls. Listed as one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature it truly is a wonderful experience to visit here. Coming from Australia, where water is such a scarce and precious commodity, it was almost impossible for me to comprehend the amount of water that is charging over these falls every second. It felt like the entire flow of all the rivers in Australia combined. I don’t have the facts and figures at hand but it was very impressive. The raised walkways through the forest were delightful with thousands of butterflies as well as birds, turtles, monkeys and lots of coatis.

We enjoyed a boat ride which took us right underneath two of the smaller falls. It definitely felt like a place that humans and boats are not supposed to go. For a second or two I thought the force of water was going to completely swamp the boat and wash us all overboard into a river that would be almost impossible to survive. But we did survive and it was actually really fun in a death-defying sort of way. We came out excited and completely saturated. To cap off a day of water and more water, we had a huge thunderstorm in Foz last night and our top-floor room sprang a serious leak. Luckily it was away from the bed so we weren’t too worried about it and none of our stuff got wet.

We’re hurrying right now to catch our flights to Buenos Aires so I will leave you with a few more photos from this amazing place. I’ll get back to writing about sustainable buildings next week when we get home.