Cold in Brazil???

Like I mentioned in a previous post, it was cold . . .

This is the morning we left to go back down to the airport. It was about 37 degrees at 10:30.

Can you see Neil's breath? (Not to mention the sweet beard he has going on.)

We had to drop into this store to get warm.

Tour through the Wine Country

One of the days, we took some time to drive up and down the valley of the wineries. It was very pretty, and we got to admire the scenery, have a nice lunch and some good conversations with the winery staffs, and taste some nice wines.

I got a model to stand next to our rental car so that I could take a picture of the car. This building is the cheese and sausage place. We got some nice cheese and sausage, unfortunately the customs guys took our sausage away when we got to Houston.

This is one of the more original and picturesque wineries.

They let you go up on top of the castle to look around the vineyards.

Architecture of Southern Brazil

So like I said in a previous post, the architecture in this part of Brazil is very European. Here are some of the examples of the towns we visited.

I thought the basket was pretty cool, and the church in the background is pretty impressive.

Not all of the buildings are serious. Some of them are really just cartoon style Q-Tips.

Gramado Area

At the end of the trip, we spent several days sightseeing around Gramado. Just like the falls, its an area of great natural beauty. This is an overlook over a horseshoe gorge.

They also have a really cool water falls.

Bento Gonzalves Train

After spending a couple of days at the falls, we took a plane down to Porto Allegre, which is the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, the southern most state in Brazil. After landing in Porto Allegre, we drove north up into the hills to Gramado. This area was settled mainly by Italians in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the towns have lots of pretty European architecture. Its also a wine growing area, and the hills are covered with vineyards. The first day we were there, we drove over to Bento Gonzalves, where they have a train that takes you between a few towns and you can sample some of the wine from the area.

Everyone had told us that it would be cold in the South of Brazil. The falls were nice and warm though, getting into the 70s while we were there, so we thought it would be the same here. We were wrong. It was cold. Here we're waiting for the train and Raquel is trying to keep warm.

Fortunately it didn't take too long for the train to come.

As a part of the train ride, they had musicians come through playing music and dancing with everyone. We did a little dancing.

The Borders

After seeing the Argentinian park, the taxi took us over the to the place where the two rivers meet, forming the border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.

They have these obelisks painted in the country colors on each side of the river. This is the Argentinian one.

The land on the left is Paraguay, the right is Brazil. The river to the right is coming from the falls.

Iguazu Argentina

After seeing the Brazilian side of the falls, we went over to the Argentina side of the falls. The Brazilian side is very developed, the Argentinian side is very natural, and focused on preserving the woods and animals around the falls.

Its hard to convey how large and how beautiful the falls are. We had a wonderful time, seeing and experiencing the beauty God created there. Hopefully these pictures give you some idea of how beautiful it is.

Here we are on the bridge at the international boundary. The river below us fell over the falls a few miles upstream, and about a mile downstream joins another river in a T intersection. At that intersection, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet.

We walked along the upper trail, which leads along the top of the longest part of the falls. This is us at the beginning. The trail leads along the top of all of the falls behind us.

You can see how the trail leads right up to the edge of the top of the falls.

Here we're approaching the end of the upper trail, where there is an overlook of one of the largest of the falls. If you look closely you will see Raquel waving along the rail toward the left of the picture.

The series of pictures below are taken from that overlook. They are lined up as if you are looking from right to left as you stand on the overlook.

Here is the first picture. You can see an old walkway bridge from the original trail that was washed out in a huge flood years ago.

In this and the next picture, the land on the left is the Brazilian side. The building you see is the restaurant and visitor center (where they instruct you to "take the Brazil in the chest".)

Here's Neil in front of the big part of the falls on the overlook.

After walking the upper trail, we took the lower trail, which leads down to the bottom of one of the falls. Here is one of the views from this trail.

Here is Neil at the bottom of the falls.

Fun English

We just had to get a shot of this when we saw it. This is a literal translation of the Portuguese phrase above it on the window.

Cataratas del Iguacu Brazil

The day after Steve and Vicki left to go home, we left Julia with Pedro and Cassia and took off for the south of Brazil to see some parts of the country that we haven't seen before to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary.

The first place we went was Iguazu falls, which is really a series of water falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina and is the largest falls in the world in terms of the volume of water. We spent the first day on the Brazil side.

Here we are at the beginning of the hike, the furthest from the falls.

This is the walkway out into the middle of the river. If you look closely, Neil is about a third of the way out from the left hand side of the picture.

On this one below, Neil is almost all the way over on the right.

Look what I found at the end of the rainbow.

Pretty picture huh? And the background isn't bad either.
Someone was nice enough to take this picture for us. Its almost looks like one of those ones where they take your picture in front of the green screen and then insert the falls behind you, but its a real shot.

Falling Down on the Job

OK, I admit, I've been falling down on the job. Its been a little while since our last post, so I'm going to try to get us caught up. Here goes . . .