Day 2 - We just broke into Brazil!

First official day of vacation, yet we still have some ground to cover - Today we head off on another flight to the Northern border of Argentina to spend a few days at Iguazu Falls – supposedly three times bigger than Niagara Falls.  Like Niagara, it shares a border with another country (Brazil) giving us the opportunity to visit the falls from multiple sides and multiple countries. 

We had breakfast while Damon marveled at the fact that in Argentina, hotels do not start on floor 1, they start on floor 0, and anything below the lobby is labeled as a negative floor.   We had a quick breakfast, called an Uber (yes, they have Uber in Argentina) and when the guy pulled up in his rather smallish car, he gave our stuff a once over and said “Uh, No” and he then opened his trunk, which was completely full and then he tried to leave.  Given that we had to get to a different airport across the city, we begged him to squish us in.  I sat in the front seat with my knees in my face while Damon sat with all of our luggage in the back seat.  He seemed way to comfortable.

To get through O’Hare TSA, we had to put shoes, jackets, plus every electronic, every battery, every food item, and every liquid onto the belt (no TSA-pre for international) and do everything short of a body cavity search to leave the country.  In Argentina, for a domestic flight, we put a bag on the belt, walked through, and got on the plane.  Never showed ID or a ticket to anyone.  They took our tickets as we boarded – that was it. 

The flight to Iguazu, Argentina was essentially a cattle car people mover, but there aren’t many choices so we get what we get.  There has been very little English spoken so far and it has been generally difficult to understand when people do speak English, but I fly so much that I just go with it as the flight attendants are doing the announcements – how different can a Brazilian speech be?  I can work a seatbelt and can figure out the emergency exists. 

So there I was, buckled in, ready to go with my headphones in, binge watching Supernatural.  The flight attendant taps me and says something in another language (no clue what she said) and the priest (yes an actual priest) next to me mimes that I should unbuckle my seatbelt.  Um, do what?  The number one rule of flying is to always have your seatbelt on, but who am I to argue with a non-English speaking priest?  Hopefully Damon (sitting across from me) was paying attention.  Apparently, we were refueling with everyone aboard and they want you unbuckled and without headphones.  Apparently just in case the fuel catches fire and we needed to make a quick getaway.  Hundreds of flights and there is always something new…  And yes, I was watching Supernatural while sitting next to a priest.  If you’ve ever seen Supernatural, probably shouldn’t be watching next to a priest.

I’m not sure what it is about South America, but the turbulence was kind of rough again.  Just to give you some idea of how bumpy it was, to this point, we had gotten in an Uber, drove to an airport and got on a plane.  Yet when we landed, I had clocked 9,461 steps.  I’m not kidding.  The flight, thankfully, was short and after landing in Iguazu, Argentina, we headed to pick up our rental car to drive to Brazil. 

The road from the airport to Brazil was surrounded on both sides by jungle.  Animals live in the jungle.  What kind of animals?  Apparently damn near every kind of animal.  And apparently they all like to run across the road on the same 5-7 kilometer stretch.  We see the first sign for monkeys – okay, that’s an easy one.  We can probably avoid hitting monkeys. 

Then we pass another sign with Damon yelling “WTF kind of animal is that???”  Then another sign and another “WTF” from Damon.  

Then we are told to watch out for deer (we know what those look like) 

and then Jaguars (easy one because they actually had a photograph of a jaguar).  

I think that if any animal – whether we recognize it or not – is running across the road, we will do our best not to hit them regardless of signage.  Although we did get full insurance, so there’s that.  Then there is the one sign we learned the hard way – I call it "sleeping in bed", but apparently it represents a speed bump. 

And boy do Iguazuians love their speed bumps, which are everywhere.  And they will take out the bottom of your car if approaching at any speed faster than not moving at all.  Far more dangerous than any animal!

So, we get close to the border crossing and like good little soldiers, we follow Google maps’ directions.  Google is trying to get us to Brazil on the fastest route (good), which happens to be on the service roads that go around the border gates (bad).  Oops.  Turned around rather quickly when we figured that one out.  The border crossing is two parts – immigration stop out of Argentina,   

cross a bridge/river, yell “half and half” when appropriately situated on what you believe to be the actual border,

then go through Brazil immigration.  Unless there is no one in Brazil immigration and you roll through without anyone even noticing while Damon yells “we just broke into Brazil!!!”.  Seriously – we rolled into Brazil and there was NO ONE anywhere to be seen.  I’m so glad we paid $100 for visas to enter Brazil when no one was actually guarding the border.  Take that Trump.

We find our hotel in the small town of Foz do Iguacu, Brazil and check in (Damon still oddly excited by starting on floor 0) and then head out for dinner.  We had skipped lunch and apparently there was another time change at some point, and it seemed dinner-time-y so we decided to walk to town to get some authentic Brazilian steak.  The walk from our hotel seemed sketchy – stores were all closed, no one on the street – oddly quiet for 6:30pm on a Sunday.  Given that I had half our money, all credit cards and my passport around my neck, was feeling a little nervous.  Eventually we got to the main restaurant drag and found a steakhouse across the street from a packed, rowdy bar that played everything from the Beatles to Safety Dance (my kind of bar).  Since windows are open everywhere, we had good food and good music.  We ate a delicious dinner and started the walk back.  Still worried about getting mugged, unbeknownst to Damon, I loaded up my unmentionables with all of my cash and credit card stash assuming I could trick someone with a few dollars in cash in my purse. 

What we realized quickly is that our senior citizen dinner at 6:30pm is unusual for Brazil – people come out at night!  Given that we are still in the holiday season, the area was now crazy alive with people and the most amazing holiday display I’ve seen in a while – especially for such a small town.  We enjoyed the music and light shows and huge light Christmas trees everywhere and walked back to the hotel feeling a lot safer, and maybe me a little stupider with all that money tucked in my bra and underwear.  

Unfortunately, we had a tech glitch and seem to have lost all the holiday festival pictures (hopefully temporarily).  Will try to post later if we can recover.

Tomorrow we head to the falls!