The Iguazu Falls form part of the border between Argentina and Brazil. We'd decided to explore from the Argentinian side and after another five star bus trip had found ourselves nice blissfully airconditioned room in Puerto Iguazu. The next day we set out early to beat the heat and headed for the falls. They form a long quarter circle stretching away from a remarkably broad placid and fish filled river and none of the falls are particularly high volume but there's a good 20 metre drop and at least a dozen individual waterfalls making the site pretty spectacular. We walked for a good 4 hours through the various trails above and below the falls, and waded in the shallows of the river when it got too hot.

Wildlife-wise I lost track of the number of lizards we had scuttle away from us on the oaths and we saw a whole mess of vultures, but most worrying was the signs advising you to stay on the path because of snakes, and the snatches of other peoples converstaions about rattle snakes followed up by actual rattling noises as we wandered some of the less crowded paths but I am at least half convinced that it was merely man-eating cicadas.

We crossed the border the next day and with it ended any semblance of competence with the local language. Foz do Iguaçu like all Brazil speaks Portugese which is really not as similar to Spanish as you may think, so we were back to miming, smiling and hoping for people that spoke english. We spent half a day in Foz and managed a visit to a big bird park (I got outvoted on visiting the worlds longest hydroelectric dam). I would like to reiterate that Toucans are entirely awesome and quite intelligent to boot. We were highly entertained by the professional photographer trying to keep them from chewing his equipment while waiting for a bird to sit on his prepared scenic stick. Like a toddler anything that isn't boring old tree gets a good chewing from their ridiculous beak.

Nothing reinforced the you are not in Argentina anymore vibe as much as our return to lame buses. In Expensive over-airconditioned uncomfort we crossed a fair chunk of Brazil to Florianopolis gateway to beautiful Ilha de Santa Catarina. We immediately got on a local bus to head to the beach and try and track down one of the affordable hostels we had labouriously extracted from the internet. But instead we got off the bus at the last stop and were swooped on by a local tout. Normally we ignore these people but this guy had a lot going for him, he spoke tourist grade spanish, and he told us what we would get and how much we would have to pay for it. Its amazing how many touts just can't work out that having a price for something is quite important to making a sale. So three minutes walk along our first beautiful white Brazilian beach we arrived at a beach bar, walked through the middle of it to a courtyard where our luxury, double bed with fan, private bathroom and kitchen apartment awaited us. The beach was literally no more than 10 metres away and if you craned your head right at the wrong end of the bed you could see the waves crashing from inside, and all for NZD40 a night (I love off season).

The next few days were spent going for several swims a day, and wandering around the beach and the local towns. Brazil is quite developed so it was much like going to the beach at home except with good public transport. Although the system they use in Brazil where you board the bus, pay a conductor (not the driver) then mangle youself through a turnstile part way down the now lurching bus leaves something to be desired.

The two great food things about Brazil are the tropical fruits and the 'per kilos'. Brazil has juice bars everywhere where for cheap (<4NZD for 500ml) you can get anyone of 30 something different fruits you've never heard of, murderised, and in a glass for your drinking pleasure. King of these fruits is açai. Which is an amazonian berry you can get in NZ but here it is ubiquitous and affordable and always served in an ice cold smoothy. Yum.

The per kilos are buffet restaurants where you wander up and fill your plate with what you want and then pay for it by the gram. We've been to three different grades of these and they are all well priced for what you get and terribly terribly satisfying. Even better is the ice cream buffet where they let you loose with a scoop on some quite good icecream and sugary condiments and then charge you about NZD2 per 100g. Great for a hot afternoon snack.

Next is Rio de Janeiro, where we actually are now, both determindely catching up on our blogging/letter wrtiting before we catch a plane to Portugal this afternoon. South Rio has some incredible natural beauty, blocks of high rise apartments seperated by jungled clad mountains, and edged with long white beaches. The best things we have done here are just getting up somewhere high and looking around. We ascended the sugar loaf on our first day, which is a particularly steep rock pointing out into the bay from which you can see almost all of Rio spread out before you. Same goes for our visit to Christ the Redeemer set inland further but higher the view was spectacular, but then so was the crowd. The platform was so packed it was hard to move at times. Especially with people posing with the big fulla, copying his pose.

The hostel we are staying at is pretty average but we have had lovely dorm mates, and have been enterained by the family of Marmosets living in the trees of the cul-de-sac, much to the chagrin of the hostel cat.

We've explored Copacabana and Ipanema but it hasn't been particularly sunny while we've been here so they haven't been particularly busy. We did wander around the center of twon the other day which wasn't terribly exciting but we caught a tram up the hill to Santa Teresa which could indeed have been described as exciting if it wasn't at first entirely terrifying. We were just about the last folks on the tram and while jacquie squeezed into the standing room at the back I was left hanging off the side which seemed like a good idea at the time, but as we took off I realized this was not going to be the smoothest of rides, and we took off over the remains of the old Rio agueduct with my shoes occaisionally catching on the concrete skirting going past, and the rusty chickenwire siding, requiring me to push myself inside the car a lot of the way. Just as I felt I had some mastery of the art of avoiding tram-side obstacles we reached the first station and I was able to squeeze inside.

Well thats all of it for now, for the first time since I left I am all caught up on blogging. I will even get ahead and predict that for lunch today I will do my best to consume as much Açai as humanly possible.