By Cathryn Ayers, Andrew Beard & Ethan Koehler
January 10, 2013
Thursday began like no other day: we got to sleep in. Nadiel said all we needed to do was wake up prior to 10:30 to check out of the Foz Do Iguacu hotel. As a college student, this was rather refreshing, as we had been used to waking up between 5:45 and 7 AM each day.
The first stop for our group today was at The Parque das Aves at Foz Da Iguacu. This is a bird park near the Iguassu Falls National Park that houses birds that are rescued or unable to survive in the wild for some other reason. The park also houses fish, mammals such as lemurs, and reptiles. Many of the exhibits are aviaries. It was interesting and unique to walk with the birds inside their cage, as opposed to seeing them from the other side of a fence. Species included toucans, flamingos, eagles, macaws, parrots, owls, and many more. Reptiles included, anacondas, boa constrictors, and a caiman (similar to an alligator).
We then headed to a local gift shop between the bird park and lunch. This shop had many tourist gift items such as t-shirts and glasses. It also offered odd structures made of precious gemstones. One large tree made of gemstones was pried at about $300,000 (US).
After the gift shop, we were allowed a little taste of back home. We headed to McDonald’s for lunch. However, the menu was very different than McDonald’s back at home. I personally ordered something called a ‘Cheddar McMelt’. This was a burger with cheese wiz instead of sliced cheese. The classic delicious McDonald’s fries remained the same. All the meat was Angus beef.
We then headed to the airport to board our flight to Rio de Janeiro. We flew GOL airlines, a low cost Brazilian carrier, similar to Southwest Airlines in the United States. The flight was rather bumpy and we arrived during a strong downpour. The often-questionable reputation of Rio de Janeiro is somewhat defensible, as Drew Beard (one of the students) realized that $70 had been stolen from his bag within an hour of arriving in Rio. However, we will give this beautiful city another chance tomorrow as some of us will venture out on a city tour and some will experience the Copacabana! Our drive from the airport to downtown passed several favelas, or slums. These poverty-stricken shantytowns were extremely large and in various parts of the north zone of the city. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians inhabit these areas. We can only hope that the World Cup and Olympics in Rio’s future will help bring some much-needed economic prosperity to these neighborhoods.
We arrived safely at the W hotel at the famous beach neighborhood of Copacabana hoping for the rain to let up on Friday.