Bonito and iguassu

day 34 - Bonito
Yesterday we all agreed to go to a local hotel/national park thing for the day which has a river and a football pitch etc and have a bbq. The minibus picked us up at 9 and we went to the supermarket to buy stuff for the bbq. The non-students of the group went all out buying chicken wings, steaks, sausages, salad etc. the poorer of us bought just burgers, suasages, bread and of course some beers.
We then continued on to the park and it was awesome. There was a sand football pitch and volleyball pitch, loads of barbeques and sitting areas, table tennis tables, pool tables, table football tables and then the beautiful river/lake. It had even had a zipline and a diving board for the river.
We went for a quick swim before renting a ball and going to play football. It was really fun and half way through some local brazillians challenged us to a match. Playing brazillians at beach football is usually suicide but after our fantastic win back in peru we were pretty confident. Our earlier fears were soon gone when we proceeded to score 8 in a row with no reply. Obviously the sterotype doesn´t apply to all brazillians and they were soon begging us to intergrate teams. We played for a little longer before stopping to go swimming again. We had a dive contest off the diving board and im pretty sure i won with my running somersualt over-rotation into bellyflop dive. Afterwards we started the BBQ we put all our sausages on but after 30 mins they weren´t done as the rack was far too far away from the heat. Using classic british ingenuity we decided to ram them 5cm away from the flame and they were done in 30 seconds. For desssert we had a pineapple and the left-over marshmellows from pantany and created awesome pineapple and marshmellow skewers.
After dinner we spent the rest of the day relaxing, having the worst all group game of volleyball and then more swimming. It was a reall relaxing day and by the end of it i was totally shattered despite doing very little. We stayed up a little while longer at the hotel playing cards, which then turned into drinking card games and eventually 4 of us seeing off a litre of spirits and far too many beers. It was a fantastic day.

Day 35 - Bonito
Today some of the group went to the snorkelling place i talked about in my last post. With money issues (not being able to take any money out of atm´s in brazil) i decided not to do it. The people who deicded not to do it did very little with the day, we chatted, played cards and wandered round the town buying bacon buritos. It was a basically a day spent killing time until the night bus at 7, nether the less it was a cool day. The night bus was pretty much uneventful and we were pretty used to them by this point.

Day 36 - Iguassu
We got off the night bus, dumped our stuff in the hotel (but weren´t allowed to check in) and went off to iguassu. On the way to the falls we stopped off at a place where you could have a helicopter tour over the falls. It was pretty expensive (70pounds for a 10 min flight) bujt seeing as i´d never been in a helicopter before and a friend in the group said iguassu was the best thing he´s ever seen, i decided to do it, you can always earn more money later...
The helicopter ride was incredible, it reall different from an airplane and the view from the air was incredbile. I rushed to the helicopter and managed to snag the front seat next to the pilot and with a huge glass window and floor so i was pretty chuffed. Seeing the pilot operate the helicopter was really cool and the panaramic views offered by the front window of the helicopter were much better than seeing it through the small plane like windows in the back. It was really cool, if a little short, but i´m really glad i did it. I´m just trying to avoid thinking about how much beer i could have got for that 10min flight...
We then headed on to Iguassu falls themselves from the brazillian side.
They were hidden in amoungst loads of jungle but were absolutely collosal. They looked incredible and were quite different from niagra. They were split up into lots of smaller waterfalls as well as some huge ones. There was a really cool walk way that took you on  a scenic tour of the falls which was pretty cool. Near the end we got to go on a walkway right out into the falls. I got absolutely soaked by all the spray from the falls but it was pretty incredible being that close to them and offered some amazing views.
Afterwards we got a lift up to a viewing point that looked over the falls which again offered some awesome  views before heading back.
The hotel was really nice and had a rooftop pool and bar which we spent the rest of the sunlight hours in.
In the evening we went to a old gap leaders house for a BBQ and unlimited booze. We were joined by another couple of gap groups, one of which contained my room mates old uni room mate who didn´t know the other was travelling and just happened to be in the same place at the same time, small world.
The bbq was really nice with a good selection of salady stuff and lots of meat. Afterwards the party started and the Dj started playing. We were also supprised by two brazillian girls in full salsa outfits with some of the best bums i´ve ever seen. They got everyone up to dance and we had a really good night, if a little boozy.

Day 37 - Iguassu town
Today was a free day with a couple of optional activites to visit paraguay for tax free shopping or visit the huge hydroelectric dam. Still with no money and not wanting to get further into debt when i didn´t have to i decided not to go and spent the day hanging out with the rest of the poor students. We spent most of it up on the roof witht he pool or wandering the town. At 3 we all went to a bar to watch the cup america final between paraguay and uraguay (really wish brazil hadn´t been so poor and got knocked out, would have been amazing). It was quite a relaxed atmosphere but a nice time anyway and we saw one of the gap groups from the party again. I was feeling pretty ill so decided to get an early night so missed the late night festivities which turned out to be a waste of time seeing as everywhere closed at 10:30 as it was a sunday.

Day 38 - Iguassu falls (argentinian side)
Today we went to see the falls from the argentinian side, apparently Brazillian side had only 20% of the falls and that was epic so i couldn´t wait. We had to go through argentinian border control on the way and even got another set of stamps in my passport. I wasn´t disappointed it was even more incredible than before. There was a huge trail round the falls visiting loads of different waterfalls. We did the first section before stoppoing for a quick break when we were attacked by a swam of raccoons. There was 10-15 racoons that decended on us from out of nowhere and started climbing the tables and ripping into any plastic bags that were out. It was quite a weird moment.
After that little interuption we continued along the trail which took us right up to the waterfall for another soaking, through the jungle, and over and past others tributaries and waterfalls.
The last part of the trail was up to the ´devils throat´ so named due to the sound it made. It was huge, akin to niagra. The sound was deffening and there were huge plumes of spray kicked up. There was such a volume of water that half the falls were obscured by the spray so you didn´t get to see how big they really were but it was still epic.
After spending 30mins or so just marvelling at the size of it we headed back to the bus, through border control and back to the hotel. After 10 mins we had to get back on the bus in order to go to the bus station and catch another night bus... For 24 hours.

Day 39 - travelling (paraty)
Spent the whole night and day on the bus so very little to report. We arrived at 6 so it was too late to go to the beach instead we wandered the town until dinner time and then went to a couple of bars in the evening and discovered just how disgusting caprinias (the brazillian national cocktail) really is.