Thanks to jet lag, Jemima and I managed a (very) early morning sea swim - and amazingly, even at 7am, Copacabana Beach was bustling: paddle boarders, serious swimmers with floats, runners, people sleeping on the beach, boot camp exercisers, early sunbathers - I’ve never seen anything like it so early. It feels like the Brazilians take beach time very seriously!
After breakfast with a foreground of sand & sea fun framed with beautiful misty mountains across the bay, and a final pool-with-a-view swim, it was off to the airport for a 2.5 hour domestic flight to Iguaçu Falls.
Inland and slightly down from Rio, the Falls are on the border between Brazil and Argentina. We were staying on the Brazilian side of the Falls - the largest waterfall system in the world, made up of 275 separate waterfalls.
The scenery was strikingly different from early on - mostly green vegetation interrupted with earth so deep red it looked almost purple. We got an Uber to the border of the national park (travelling is very easy these days!), then got a shuttle to our hotel, the only one inside the national park.
A beautiful pink colonial-style building, you can actually see waterfalls from reception - and, it turned out, our bedroom. As we arrived, the baking sunshine from when we landed (34 degrees, felt like an oven), rapidly transformed into a huge tropical storm with fat rain lashing the windows and trees losing branches - it meant sunset views of the Falls were out, but it was pretty spectacular.
Dinner at the hotel restaurant (very tasty) was followed by an early night - I’d been awake since 4am, and we had a busy itinerary of Fall-viewing planned for the next day…
Beach vendors setting up:
You never regret a swim!
Misty mountains:
Trying to take an (unwelcome) photo of our unintentional family airport coordination - white top, dark shorts:
Crab starter with a jaunty tomato flavoured crisp:
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