The Iguazu Falls and thoughts about the promissed land

We do not want to disagree with God. If he says that Israel is the promised land, then he is probably right. But we do feel that he didn't checked carefully enough all around the world. Had he asked us, we probably would have suggested him to take a closer look at Argentina. If he would have visited the Iguacu falls, maybe Moses would have split the Atlantic ocean apart instead of the red sea on his way to the promised land. We have noticed, though, that a lot of the enormous wonders of nature mention the devil in its names, so maybe God likes churches and synagogues better.
After another night on a bus (about 18 hours) we arrived to Puerto Iguazu, the closest Argentinian town to the falls. We left our stuff at a nice hostel (Marcopolo inn) just across the street from the main bus station, and took a bus to the falls. After about half an hour we arrived to the Iguazu National park. We were said that we need at least 5-6 hours to cover the main routs of the park. They didn't take into account Oren's tendency to stop and photograph every 2 minutes.
We took an internal train to our first waterfall lookout, Garganta del Diablo, Spanish for Devil's Throat. Enormous amount of water just falling down right in front of you. The thunder can be heard from far away, but only when arriving close to the falls the full extent of the wonder is revealed. What a scenery! It was like standing in front of an atomic bomb explosion. An average of 1300 cubic meters per second falls down this waterfall. This is almost the entire daily water consumption of Israel in one hour. What a waste of water! This could have saved the pealing faces of Ninet and Bar Refaeli.
We had a great day, the sun was up so we got the combination of two of our favourite physical phenomena: gravity and diffraction. In the language of the common non-physicists, this means a double rainbow above huge waterfalls. The sight was really amazing, and Oren photographed it from every possible angle. But not just Oren, at every other viewpoint there were lots of tourists taking pictures, mostly of their own faces blocking most of the waterfalls. We looked at them and wondered what was the exact thought going through their minds while looking on this divine picture: "What a nice waterfall, but something is missing... I know what! My face!". It seemed like a sin to us to interfere such a spectacular view.
The waterfalls are not the only attractions in the park. All around the park there were lots of butterflies of all kinds and sizes. A lot of them were quite friendly. It seemed that they liked to eat Autan (the mosquito repellent), and one of them stayed on Lilya's hand for almost an hour, eating it. She called him Pablo. The other attraction are the Coatis , which are a sort of a raccoon. They are used to humans, so they just hang around between them, looking for something to steal. It is very amusing to see them so close. One of them stole a Mate bag from an Argentinian tourist. He should have known not to mess with the locals' Mate. She ran after him and wouldn't give up until she returned her Mate.
In the evening we had dinner with a very nice French guy, that happened to be Jewish. It was refreshing to hear such sympathy to Israel from someone from France.
The next day was dedicated to the Brazilian side of the falls. The trail on the Aregnetinian side takes you very close to the falls, on the Brazilian side you can see a more panoramic view of the falls. Unfortunately, we have found on that day what Pacha Mama likes to eat. She likes steaks, so she stayed in Argentina for few more days. This is why we had a bad weather on this day, and the photos you can see looks grey. But sunny or not, this is Brazil and we celebrated our first day there with a coconut shake that made us think that we would trade some of the promised milk and honey with sweet tropical fruits. Chava Alberstein, by the way, got to the same conclusion.
We spent the second part of this day in the amazing bird park right across from the entrance to the falls. They have a huge collection of birds and some reptiles from all across Brazil. Some of the cages are large with a lot of birds and people can get inside. The birds don't look too disturbed by this arrangement. On the contrary! In the cage that was dedicated to the birds of the Pantanal, one of the more friendly Tucans started eating Lilya's pants. He probably wanted to eat the strings which were exactly what he needed for his diet.
At the evening we took the bus to Campo Grande, one of the main cities of the Pantanal to start or tour there.