Dangerous Elephants

A couple of days ago, on our safari in South Africa, our guide told us a true story involving an elephant, a car and a crash.  A couple was driving through the Kruger National Park on the way to meet the fiancé's family right before their wedding.  The man was South African and the woman was English.  She was driving because it was her first time among these animals and her first time in South Africa.  He wanted to make it special for her.  

As they were driving along they came upon an elephant in the road.  Now these sightings are relatively common so they didn't think much of it.  However, the elephant got pissed off.  He started sort of walk/running toward the car and in the hectic moment the woman accidentally stalled the car.  The elephant rammed into them.  The car flipped over three times and came to a stop off the road.  Now you might be thinking, "What did the people watching do??"  Well, the two cars watching took a picture and a video and drove off because, "The elephant was still there and angry."  In the video they took, you can clearly hear the driver of the car watching say, "Wow we can make a fortune off of Facebook with this!"  What an inconsiderate idiot.  The couple in the car was fine in the long run.  Although the woman had her thigh run through with the elephant's tusk and the man was a bit banged up, they still both had a full recovery and got married!  

Now the point of the story was to explain why when we saw an elephant strolling toward us in the road,  Ruby was screaming, my dad was sweating up a storm, my mom was staring in awe and my guide was taking photos.  Elephants shake their heads when they feel threatened so if you paid attention, you would be able to tell that we weren't in danger.   In the end, the elephant just wanted some leaves and didn't want to mash up our car, thankfully.  

Igazu Falls

Our first look at Iguazu falls, one of the natural seven wonders of the world, was through our hotel lobby in Argentina.  On our first full day near the falls, we took a ten minute train ride up to the top.  We got off and saw these weird furry animals we'd soon learn to call Coaties. Coaties are part of the raccoon family, they measure 33 to 69 centimeters and have very sharp white teeth.

Coaties aren't afraid of people

Coaties kept stealing empanadas from people's lunch and my Mom and Ruby were terrified of them. After staring and taking pictures for about five minutes, we started the kilometer "hike" over the river. The "hike" was just walking on a slippery metal catwalk and occasionally stopping for a nice picture. When we reached the end, we were not disappointed.  The walkway stops right before three different sections of the waterfall drop into a cavern so foggy, we couldn't see the bottom.  To add the effect, there were swarms of birds diving down, fly back up and doing all that again.  We spent quite a while there just admiring the sheets of water flying down into the abyss below.  For the rest of the day, we just walked around the Argentina side of the park.  We did some more "hikes" and witnessed a Coatie attack during lunch.

Heading out to the top of the falls in Argentina

The next day, we took a taxi to Brazil.  We checked into our hotel and went to visit the second biggest dam in the world, Itaipu Dam (after the Three Gorges Dam in China).  It wasn't too interesting since we didn't go on the special tour (Ruby was to young -.-).

The following day, we visited the Brazilian side of the falls.  This side wasn't as big but it had great panoramic shots of the falls.  We were wondering about taking a speed boat up into the falls but then decided against it.  None of us wanted to get wet and cold and the fact that it cost almost $300 for all of us to go didn't really help.  In the end, we were all tired, excited and wistful because while we were in a new country, we wouldn't be going to any more Spanish speaking ones on this trip.

Just part of Iguazu Falls

The Tango

As some of you may know, Buenos Aires is the city of Tango.  And last night, we went to an evening show.  The van picked us up at 8:00 and we arrived at the restaurant where the show was being held around 9:15.  The show would then start 1 hour later.  Needless to say, it was a boring hour since everyone else was eating and we had already eaten dinner.  We played a game of family jeopardy (which has become a game we play before and after meals).  Then the lights started dimming and the show started.

As the curtain rose, we saw some shadows of people.  Then the lights flicked on.  There were 3 pairs of dancers all doing the tango simultaneously.  The band consisted of a piano, bass, guitar, accordion and violin.  The music was very loud.  All the leg twirling, fancy footwork and dim lights made it hard for my eyes to follow the dancers around the stage.  Each dance went on for about 5 minutes and after it was over, either one of the two singers would go on, or another pair of dancers.  The show went on like this for an hour and a half.  I eventually drifted off to be woken by the crowed cheering.  I really liked the show so I wish I saw more of it rather than having slept.  After the show was over, we all piled back into our big van and drove off.  As we drove, I recognized some pedestrians.  They were the dancers.  And on the street, they look just like normal people.  Then for the second to last time that night, I fell asleep.