The Not Quite as We Planned Brazil Trip, Day 1

Well, tomorrow (Thursday) we head back to Montevideo. It has been a good trip although most things have not gone quite as we planned. We've had a great time and the students have been great with rolling with the changes.

(SIDE NOTE: Aunt Marti, if you read this, you won't like the 5th picture.)

Sunday morning we got up and headed to the bird park. There was rain forecasted for the afternoon. Our guide David said he had talked to St. Peter, so we should be ok. The bird park is a preserve that tries to rehabilitates birds and re-release them into the wild. It gives us a great chance to get up close and personal with lots of the birds. One of my favorites was a parrot that like to laugh with us. We'd laugh and it would laugh back. Its friend in the cage would say, "Hola!"

We could go into enclosures with some of the birds. I think the toucans were as interested in us as we were in them. They would come right up to us. This picture isn't taken with any zoom.

This is probably my favorite bird in the park. As it can kill humans, we can't go in the cage with it. I don't remember its name, but I call it the dinosaur bird.

We also got to go into a macaw enclosure. Its actually kind of scary because they are really loud and the fly right over tourists' heads, as in they would hit us in the head with their wings as they flew over.

We had an opportunity to hold a macaw. This one lost its chew toy (his latest had been a button he had pulled off the shirt of a guy that went before me) and decided to lick my hand to see if I would be good to chew on.

And we got to hold a big ole snake.

After the Bird Park, it was time to head to the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls. The Iguazu River is on the border of Argentina and Brazil, so the Falls are between them too. Each country has a National Park on their side. The Brazilian side is better for looking at the falls as a whole and the Argentine side is better for getting up close and personal with nature and the falls and particularly Devil's Throat.

On a normal day the Falls have about 1500 cubic meters of water flow over them a second (That's 1,500,000 liters per second!) On Sunday it was twice as big at about 3000 cubic meters per second.

So here's where things started not going as planned. It turned out that Monday was a national holiday making it a long weekend (it was Children's Day by the way) and I think half of Brazil came to the Falls on Sunday. We had to stand in line for at least an hour to get into the park. (For comparisons sake, I think we pretty much walked straight in when I was here last time.)

Close to the front of the line is way in the background. Its that row of little dots. We did have fun making up standing in line songs. It was taking so long that we decided to start sending groups to buy sandwiches because weren't going to have time to sit and eat as planned after we got into the park.

But finally we made it to the front of the line. This caused our guides some stress though. Remember those people who went to get sandwiches? Well the second group wasn't back. They started arriving as we got to the entrance, or a little after. But David and Andres know everyone, so it was ok. Luckily they bought sandwiches for a third group who wouldn't have gotten to eat.

We also changed our order of events. The original plan had been to hike along the falls and then those of us who wanted to were going to go on a boat ride and get wet. Well because this was going to be another line, they decided to have us do the boat first.

This was cool though, because the students got their first view of the falls from the river.

After we took our fill of pictures, we headed in here. We got a little under one of the falls, but that was certainly enough to soak us. Remember how I said the Falls had twice the volume as normal, well it led to lots of mist so in many of the pictures it looks like we can't see the falls for the water.

After the AWESOME boat ride, its pretty much inexplicably fun, we changed into dry clothes. Some of the students asked me what we were doing next. I told them we were going to hike and look at the Falls. One of them actually said, "Um we've seen the falls." I assured them there was much more to see. They repeated this conversation later and they said I was very right. My favorite thing. As words (and really even pictures) can't really do the falls justice, I'm mainly just going to show pictures.

Most of the group at a lookout over the falls.

Jaimie and the falls. Notice behind Jaimie's head is a bridge. We are about to walk out there.

Jaimie and Kate on the bridge.

Over the edge

Abel, Kate, and Jaimie at the end of the bridge. Remember how some of us had changed into dry clothes? Um... well... last time I was here we got a little splashed on this bridge. This time we were drenched!

This is a Coati. They more or less remind me of racoons. You aren't supposed to feed them, but someone (not us... seriously) did. It did make it easier to take a picture. They aren't particularly afraid of people. My favorite sign about them says "They can and will bite."

The beginning of the falls. They were really sending up a lot of spray. Notice how it has turned cloudy. It was time to go home anyway. David's discussion with St. Peter apparently worked. We stood in line to get on the bus to take us back to the beginning of the park and back to our bus.

Our day finished up with dinner and church at the hotel. We had a really great discussion about how we had seen God at the falls. I was really impressed and moved by the things our students said. As we were finishing up the thunderstorm struck, we lost power for a bit, but that was fine.

Actually I didn't have lights in my room the rest of the night, but fortunately Wendell had given me a flashlight right before I left for Uruguay, so I was prepared. For some reason, several of the students ended up hanging out in my room for awhile. We had a good time playing with my iPhone and trying to read the Bible in Portuguese. Trust me its entertaining when Matt does it.
Well I think that covers our first day at the falls... Whew...