Foz de Iguacu with Mom 2008!!

Seemingly back to back with my Habitat Trip, Mom and I went to Iguacu Falls (or Foz de Iguacu) and had an awesome time The natural beauty of one of God's wonderful creations was a great way to spend my Mother-Son trip with Mom.

We arrived late Thursday afternoon (January 17th, 2008) and went down the trail to see the Devil's Throat (Garganta de Diabo) that James E. Faust has spoken about in his talks. Along the way we passed this family from India that was a husband and wife with a little girl. Mom thought they were Brazilian and spoke Portuguese because when we passed them they had said beleza, beleza (which means beautiful , obviously referring to the great waterfalls). A couple minutes later this family catches up to us on the trail (because we were stopping to take pictures at least every two minutes) and the dad came up to me and asked me if the path leads up to an exit at some point. I didn't remember very well, so I asked Mom about their question. So Mom goes off and gives them 'directions' in Portuguese and the looks on their faces changed to a polite paying attention, even though they didn't have a clue what Mom was saying. Then Mom finally finishes and the couple just turn to me with a very hopeful expressions that I would provide a translation for them. I hold my laughter for later while I say Mom, English?
So we continue on and get some great pictures at the Devil's Throat, rainbows and all, and came back to our hotel room very wet from all of the mist, sweat, and humidity from our walk. We enjoyed a good dinner at one of the hotel restaurants, and Mom took a picture of my dessert, which did look pretty cool. And afterwards I beat Mom twice in Settlers.

Early Friday morning we headed down the trail again but headed back soon enough because mom's camera's battery died. So we quickly went back to the hotel room to charge it up a little, and then went to this bird place. There were a lot of cool beautiful birds there, and we were able to get some good pictures before my camera's batteries died at the end. But we bought some more batteries at the bird place gift store, and then went on this awesome 10-minute helicopter ride that took us up and over the falls. It was AMAZING And after that we went on the boat ride thing which also was fun. Mom and I were in the front end of the boat, and we got soaked. When we finally got back to the hotel, we cleaned up, played a RISK game (only because Mom loves me so much) and then 7 settlers games... with dinner in between somewhere.

And Saturday we went back down that trail thing again one last time, which was really crowded with other tourists, which made me really glad that Mom and I had gone to see the Devil's Throat by ourselves Thursday. We really made a mad dash (brisk walk) back to the hotel so we'd be able to pack up and check out of the hotel in time around 11 something. We had about two hours to kill, which we used playing even more one on one Settlers. Then we finally went to the airport, and our flight was late, so we spent the time having Mom annihilate me in that Game of the Jaguar game I got for Christmas from Mom and Dad. Mom said several times that it was good for me to be humbled after all the Settlers games we played. The plane was a bit of a fiasco - our flight was late an hour by the time we boarded, only to be told that there was some problem with the plane and that everybody needed to deboard. So about half an hour later (maybe more) we finally get back on the plane, and then wait for what felt like an eternity for our bags. At one point during our wait for the bags this little man squeezed himself between the lady in front of me and myself, trying to grab his bag that was almost his size. He doesn't get good enough footing to lift up the bag I guess, and the bag starts dragging him into me, so I felt the urge to help him get his bag and send the good sir on his way.

Reunited with Dad and Emily, we all decide to grab some McDonald's, drop off the luggage at our apartment and go see the movie I Am Legend in theatres. Mom didn't like it very much, thought it was too scary, but I liked it myself, and I thought it was funny that when things started getting scary, Emily said "okay, give me your arm", and then stopped asking after a while and she'd just grab my arm and start squeezing. A great end to a great trip!