During the ride there were very few times in which I had any idea where we were... I didn't have a good road map to follow... and the little villages that we went through didn't have good signage. This picture was taking at one of our first stops... in a tiny little village... somewhere between Brasilia and Salvador. All the buildings were painted with bright colors. I was actually pretty surprised at the landscape. It was very deserty. Towards the end of the drive there was even a lot of cacti and dry shrubs. At one point during the night I woke up and looked up into the sky. I was completely amazed at the stars. The whole sky was full of them... millions and millions of stars... I thought that I had seen a lot of stars during camping trips and such, but here... in the middle of Bahia, with no moon, no street lights, no city for miles and miles... the stars really came out.... I layed there (in the surprisingly comfortable seats that recline pretty far back) looking into the infinately stared sky, just happy to be there.
(more to come)
It looks like a giant ball, but really it is just a small screen with four mirrors on each side. Even when I knew what it was I couldn’t quite understand it, but it was pretty neat. We caught the air conditioned bus to the first trail station. 
I swear today was even hotter than yesterday, and both days I could have easily melted into a puddle of sweat if I stayed in the direct sunlight for more that 2 minutes. From Brasil the falls were still absolutely magnificent. Most of the falls are actually on the Argentine side of the river, so while we walked among them yesterday, today we had a beautiful sweeping view of all the falls at once, from across the river.
It was truly breathtaking. 
I just couldn’t stop taking pictures. We made our way along the river until we finally came upon Garganta del Diablo, the Devil’s Throat. 
This is the start of the falls, and the water force is unbelievably powerful. We stood for a while on the little platform nearly surrounded by the rushing waters.
I was excited because I had never been to Argentina and this was an opportunity for be to check one more country off my map. Unfortunately I quickly discovered that my Spanish has suffered greatly by being suppressed for 5 months. I was ever difficult to say “gracias” to the people working at the park. Enrique and I made our way through the paths and walkways. We met some friendly animals along the way. 
Finally, we began to hear the sound of rushing waters. Unlike Niagra Fall, Iguazu is a large area with many different falls. Some are much larger than others, and some more spectacular. As we can into the clearing….I was absolutely speechless. I hope this I hope these pictures can do it justice because I don’t think that my words will be able to. There was water flowing everywhere….not to mention the sky was absolutely perfect, bright blue with a few puffy clouds and the mist from the falls created rainbows everywhere we looked. The paths led us right along the top of may of the cataratas so we could actually look down to see where the water was falling to.
It was truly amazing.
After walking across the top we made our way down to the bottom to stand in the spray of the falls. It was so unbelievably hot that we couldn’t wait to feel some mist. (By hot, I mean really hot!! I can hardly remember a time in my life when I felt they kind of heat… I think it was 43˚C… and there was just no escape from the sun, besides of course in the shade of the trees… aka the shadow). Standing below the fall was really impressive as well. The sunlight was coming over the top somewhat like a cloud with a silver lighting. 
The force of the water was pretty powerful, and we walk away with a health dose of it. It truly was an awe inspiring day. 
Afterwards we caught the train back to the central station in the park and then caught the last bus into town, Puerto de Iguazu. 
However we missed the last bus from Puerto de Iguazu back to Foz de Iguaçu… in Brasil. We walked back and forth a few times looking for an alleged phone, that we had heard about, but couldn’t find. Enrique politely waited until the cashier was available before approaching to ask for directions to the phone. Then he pointed up back in the direction from which we just came…toward the other store that he had just asked at. Enrique just rolled his eyes and said, “Welcome to Argentina.” Brasil and Argentina have a bit of a friendly rivalry and Enrique like to find any opportunity possibly to point out how awful the country was. We finally found the phone… it was a regular house phone in the back of tiny convenient stand. We both tried to make sense of the price chart, unsuccessfully. Between us we had about 70 pesos left after exchanging our money in Brasil, and we were hoping that a quick international call wouldn’t be more than that. (70 pesos is about US$25). He called his mom to see if she could pick us up. He didn’t know the street name, but was in such a hurry to get off the phone, not knowing what it was costing, that he nearly knocked over a customer to reach the cashier to ask. It was really quite funny because Enrique is usually very corgial and polite. Of course I am exaggerating, but when we went up to pay the total came to 15…cents… Really?! 15 pesos cents…so that’s… I don’t know, not very much. We joked that we should call all our friends, and later we were both nearly crying because we were laughing so hard about how he had shoved the customer aside to save half a cent. Anyway, all is well and we arrived home safely.
