The weekend I ate chicken heart and illegaly snuck out of Brazil!

This weekend a bunch of us (Liz, Jess, Lauren, Kevin, Dan, and myself) all took the 10 hour long busride to Foz do Iguazu. And it was definately worth it! We got back on Sunday with some very interesting stories to say the least:

We left Curitiba at 9 pm on Thursday night...got to the hostel in Foz at 6:30 am and slept for a few more hours before heading to the Brazilian side of the falls. They were A-MAZ-ING! Words, pictures, and videos cannot even describe how beautiful and intense they were! There were rainbows everywhere and hundreds of falls. We went whitewater rafting and got to swim around the Iguazu River! After a long day at the falls we went back to the hostel, showered and went out to dinner. We went to an all you can eat churascurria :) And this is where I had my first chicken heart! It sounds gross im sure but I had to try it! They walk around with this huge stake full of these little golf ball sized chicken hearts...so I ate one. To be honest it wasnt that bad..tasted like sausage. Needless to say I probably wont be eating any more of them in the near future!

When we got back to the hostel we had a drink at the bar and talked with some random cool people...A couple from San Francisco and a girl from Ireland. We decided that we were going to the Argentinian side of the falls the next day and went to bed fairly early because we knew we would have a long day of adventure ahead of us...little did we know our next adventure would come sooner than that!

We went back to the room and walked into a GIANT roach scurrying across the floor!! To make a long story short the 6 of us spent 2 hours trying to find him/kill him/get him out of our room so we could sleep. If only we had a video of this as I am sure it was hysterical to watch 6 grad students screaming/throwing shoes/spraying insect repellant for 2 hours! Once we finally found the roach and got rid of it, we went to sleep (with the lights on, haha!)

The next morning we began our long journey to Argentina (which, ironicaly, is only a 15 minute car ride from where we were staying). We were originally going to go to the Argentinian falls with a tour provided by our hostel. However, after talking with some people we were convinced that it was a rip off (50 reias, not including entrance to the park) and decided to travel there by ourselves using the public bus system. So we get on the first bus no problem...until we get to the Brazil border...No one told us we needed our Entry/Exit immigration papers with us!! None of us (except Dan...what a good boy!) had them with us..which means no leaving Brazil for us :( Except we realllly wanted to go see the other side of the falls...so we snuck out of the country! We were told by the Braziliian guards that if we left they didnt want to know about it and if we were lucky enough the Argentinian border wouldmt notice that we didnt have exit stamps in our passports. After about an hour of deliberating what to do and how to get there (it was about 1 km from border to border and when we tried to walk the guards told us it was muy peligroso!) We finally found a bus and hopped on. When we got to the Argentina border we held our breaths as they checked our passports..and....yay! We got through :) Then we probably spent another 30 minutes on 2 different buses before we actually mad it to the falls! And let me tell you they were worth the trouble! The falls were crazy! On the Brazillian side we walked out into the falls and on the Argentinian side we were standing on top of them! We took a train up to the Devils throat and I was in awe! I will post some pictures for you below and a video but I must tell you that you really have no idea how amazing they are until you see them! Sorry!!

I have no idea how we made it back to Curitiba but we did! We left Foz at 8:30 pm and arrived in Curitiba at 6:30 am Sunday morning. I slept in and then walked around the Sunday street market for a bit. This upcoming week is fairly laid back...we have a couple of afternoon activities which include a tour of the city, a favela workshop, and a visit to an archeological dig. The rest of the time we are supposed to be working on our papers because believe it or not we leave Brazil next wednesday/thursday! Hopefully this weekend everyone will be done so we can go to Ilha do Mel...Stay tuned....

You had to be this tall to go white water rafting...I just made it!!

The smallest, most rickety spiral staircase I ever had to climb down...
The gang in their gear...

In front of the Devil's Throat FallsOh, Frederico!Looking at the Argentinian side of the falls...There were random red phones at the hostel we were staying at...but no one was on the other end!?!

We walked out onto this bridge which is the middle of devils throat...Some more pictures of the falls..