Day 48: Foz do Iguaçu

One of Brasil's most visited places by tourists, Foz do Iguaçu, is a city in the Brasilian state Paraná most famous for the majestic Iguazú Falls. Iguazu comes from the Guarani word "y" meaning water and "ûasu" meaning big, and "foz" is Portuguese for mouth or portal.

We headed to Itaipu Binacional in the morning (since we heard that it would close at 12nn because of the Brasil game in the afternoon). Also called the Itaipu Dam, it's one of the largest hydroelectric dams and is located on the Paraná River between the borders of Paraguay and Brasil. 

The entrance to the complex

We decided to go on the panoramic tour which cost us R$25. There are other tours you can take of the inside of the facilities but since we didn't care much for the engineering, we opted for the panoramic tour. When they were building the dam, they made sure to take care of the surroundings. They built a lake and planted a lot of trees.

They would ask famous people (prime minister of the UK, royal family of Denmark, etc.) to plant trees and the little white cards say who planted that particular tree.

It was a pretty cold day in Foz, especially since it's winter. Here's Daniel all bundled up.

The dam was pretty interesting, though I didn't really understand a lot of the engineering that goes on behind it. But apparently it's one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

It was interesting how huge the dam was and how much electricity it provides (we watched a video at the start of the tour that explained everything), but not really anything great from the outside. We really wanted to see the inside of the dam where the water was (not the engineering rooms or anything - I don't even know what you call them), but it wasn't included in the tour which kinda sucked.

This is our "let's pretend the dam was super amazing" face

These are the huge pipes that feed water to the turbines to make electricity (I totally just googled that). 

After visiting the dam, we headed back to the city center. On our way to the hostel we found a house that was selling home cooked food for R$5 (so cheap!). So we decided to have lunch there, and it was a big serving of traditional home cooked food.

In the afternoon we visited the Tríplice Fronteira where the borders of Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay meet. We took a taxi to get there since it was a bit far off from the main road. Because Foz is at the borders of Argentina and Paraguay, there are actually a lot of people here who speak both Portuguese and Spanish. Our taxi driver was bilingual and he ended up talking to the Triple Frontier to me in Spanish.

It's also the area where the Iguazú (on the bottom left of the picture) and Paraná (in the center) rivers converge. Argentina is on the left and Paraguay on the right.

Each country built an obelisk/marco painted with their country's colors on the land closest to the rivers.

The obelisk at Argentina 

The obelisk at Paraguay 

Daniel, B and me at the Triple Frontier

We caught the Brasil - Germany game at the hostel with a lot of other travelers. The people who worked at the hostel said that if we put on green and yellow face paint for the game, we'd get free caipirinhas if Brasil won.

Ready for the game!

 What a game! Brasil suffered a devastating 1-7 loss to Germany. We still got some free caipirinhas afterwards (to drown our sorrows daw haha). And Ange arrived later on in the evening!

Ange is here :) (+Daniel photobombing)