Coming To America......Well, South America....

Well we are now back in the Western Hemisphere and couldn´t have experienced a larger culture shift - from conservative traditional clothing, to bikinis and banana hammocks. We spent our first night in Brazil on the floor of the Salvador airport waiting for our connecting flight to Rio de Janeiro leaving the next morning. During this time we saw more skin than in the past 2 months traveling through the Middle East and Northern Africa.

Living up`to it´s reputation, Rio is set in a stunning locatio and is very beautiful offering many world class sights. We stayed in Copacabana (of Barry Manilow fame) and spent a few days just stolling around the area taking in the local relaxed lifestyle.

The site itself is absolutely huge, comprised of over 250 stunningly picturesque Falls running along a forested ledge

When in Rio there are three things you must do, look over the city from Sugar Loaf mountain, keep company with world famous Christ the Redeemer statue, and soak in the atmosphere inside Maracana stadium )once held approx 200,000 spectators for the 1954 World Cup final). As was expected the first two sights lived up to their hype (thanks Mom and Dad Nelson) which we´ve tried to capture in our photos. And the passion of the fans at the soccer game between Vasco and Batofoga was wildy intense.

A comfortable 24 hour bus trip took us south-west to Foz do Iguacu, home of the world renowned Iguazu Falls. It is already quite noticeable that travel in South America will be much more relaxing than African travel and as we settled into our hostel, which had a pool, pool table, games area, soccer field, and a bar, it was no-brainer that we would spend an extra night for some R&R -other than Matt nearly killing himself ungraciously trying multiple times to get onto a floating pool mattress!

We spent two days visiting the Brazilian and Argentinian sides of the Falls (thank you Grandma Nelson). The site itself is absolutely huge, comprised of over 250 stunningly picturesque Falls running along a forested ledge. Once in the park, we saw a great example of why they have "do not feed the animals" signs as a local, who was enjoying his cookies, was attacked by a coati (raccoon like animal), as he walked the trail and quickly surrendered his food to the cuddly looking animal. Needless to say, our snacks stayed firmly zipped in our backpacks. The only other distraction we encountered were the thousands of beautifully colored butterflies that landed all over us and kept stealing our attention away from the Falls. The highlight of the Falls was "the Devils Throat", or "Garganta del Diablo", where fourteen falls drop 350 feet with tremendous force. Unbelievable power!

Our next stop.....big city Buenos Aires and then the most southerly city in the world....