Non-fall stuff at the non-fall parts of Iguazú and Iguaçu!

So my visit to Puerto Iguazú and Foz do Iguaçu didn't just include visits to the falls, turns out there is other stuff to do there too! After my Argentinian falls visit, I headed back to the hostel and then had dinner again that night with Noam, David and Wun. Noam was heading off early the next day and David and Wun were heading over to the Brazilian side. Friday was the 25th May which is a public holiday in Argentina commemorating the start of the war of independence against the Spanish (makes a nice change for it not to be against the British!). That morning they had a service and then a parade in the main square 

and later in the day there were bands playing although when I headed down there later there were only about 30 people standing watching! I spent most of the day in the garden at my hostel reading my book and generally relaxing.

In Foz do Iguaçu, the evening of the falls visit, David, Wun and I went to see Star Wars! 

Word of advice to those planning a cinema trip in Brazil, they don't have trailers. We were a little late going in and ended up missing the start!! It was easy to pick up the storyline though and personally I thought it was an excellent movie.

The next day I planned to have a lazy morning and then head to Itaipu Dam in the afternoon. However, having decided I couldn't be bothered to go to the dam in the end, I headed to the shopping mall instead where we'd been to the cinema and was near David and Wun's hostel. Noam had said there was a great food stall in the mall food court that served traditional food so I decided to give it a shot, and what a great move that turned out to be as David and Wun's bus to Florianopolis wasn't until later that night so they came and met me at the mall and the three of us got to have a final catch up before they left!

The next day I did make the effort to go to the dam and boy, was I pleased I did. 

Itaipu (which means 'the stone that sings') is a joint project between Paraguay and Brazil. The power it produces is split equally between the two countries but as Paraguay only requires 10% of the output, Brazil buys the surplus from them. This provides 90% of the energy required by Paraguay. Itaipu is one of the seven modern wonders of the world and I can well understand why, it's incredible. The visit starts with a video of the history of the dam and then as I had bought a panoramic visit tour which takes you round on a bus and you get to see the different parts of the dam. You start with a panoramic view 

And then head round to the spillway 

(which kept making me think of X-Men, I rely on some of you getting the reference rather than me explaining!) and then we went on a journey that in theory took us into Paraguay but the whole area is classed as 'binational' and so there were no border issues. The bus then came back over the top of the dam,

back to the Brazilian side.

The business part of the dam is this set of metal cylinders, each of which is 11m in diameter - the water passes through these and circulates in such a way that it moves the turbines to generate the electricity.

This is part of the network of cables that transmit the energy to Paraguay and Brazil

And this is the man made lake which feeds the turbines. 

When full it's something like 12km x 8km!  We got to stop off here and there was a restaurant where I had lunch and watched the world go by for a while. It was lovely! Then I got a later bus back to the main entrance. The dam can produce up to 14 gigawatts of electricity which is equivalent power to burning half a million barrels of oil a day!! And it's clean energy. The park is great as the money from entrance fees all helps to support research into stainable energy and there are nature reserves on the park to support biodiversity and fish runs 

to allow migratory fish to traverse the dam. It really is an example of what can be achieved when there's the will to do so.

I recommend you visit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam as the info in there matches what we learnt on the tour and is fascinating.

That night I met Rob in the hostel, he was in Foz do Iguaçu to do a border crossing for a passport stamp and heading down to Rio the next day, coincidentally on the same plane as me! As such, the following morning we headed to the airport together and chatting to him helped to keep me sane as I'd had some issues with the ticket for my flight home the night before which meant I didn't get much sleep and tiredness leads to anxiety for me. Anyway, that ticket got sorted but I was on a hand luggage only ticket to Rio with paying for checked luggage at the airport and was stressing about it. Thanks to Rob though, I managed to maintain some semblance of normality, and of course, all was OK in the end anyway!

That plane brought me to Rio, where I have only a short time left before I head home on Sunday night. And that will be five months, all but a few days gone. What a great place to be finishing my trip though!