brazilian/argentinian immigration is pretty nice at iguacu. for cars, they actually have drive through windows, so you don’t even have to get out of the car….sounds like something they should start in the us. auto immigration was also easy. unfortunately, they valued the car at $1k…meaning that if i want to legally import the car, i’ll have to pay about $4k (yes, that’s in the us dollars). i’ve got 3 months to figure out what to do with the car before the temporary permit runs out.

before entering the brazilian side of iguacu falls, some security stopped us to provide a warning regarding the swine flu. according to him (well, conceivably, the brazilian authorities), because there are so many argentinian tourists around iguacu (and because they have the swine flu there), we shouldn’t touch any railings and should constantly wash our hands. well i made a comment about argentinians being dirty, he replied ‘well, no, it’s because….i mean, well, yeah i guess so’. and we all laughed.

of course, we ignored his recommendations (we’d been in argentina for quite a while already), and entered the park as we would have otherwise. apparently there’s a ton more water at iguacu now than normally (…unsure of the number but somewhere between 2 to 10 times as much). the brazilian side has a nice vista, but is much less impressive than the argentinian side. on the other hand, the brazilian side is cheaper and has pao do queijo. also, they have miraculous birds who literally fly into the falls (presumably, their nests are on the rock face under the waterfalls). when they fly out of the falls, they shake their body for a fraction of a second to remove the water, then soar to safety. very cool!