Ilha Grande and Iguazu Falls

Ever one for spotting a blatant backpacker fleecing exercise, then meekly handing over my money because the Lonely Planet Shoestring alternative would require effort... my little sister Claire and I handed over our pound of flesh each for a three hour ordeal in a hot, confined space with a four-song R&B megamix soundtrack; some drunken Irish people and a chick on the floor. Fortunately this wasn't a Bondi backpacker bar simulator, but out combi-van transport to a port near Ilha Grande. Owing to mechanical failure, though more probably mechanical non-existence, of the advertised speedboat; some time after before we knew it, we were near the island courtesy of a man with a shark tattoo-bedecked torso, monobrow-bedecked brow and deck-bedecked boat. If the final leg of the trip had not been mine, knee deep, following an agonisingly slow shore approach in a rubber dinghy that looked more like a carelessly discarded condom... I may not have felt a little cheated by the "Express Transfer" we paid for.

The tourist office on Ilha Grande can tell you all about the lagoons, beaches and hills you can visit on the island; they will also tell you that you need a guide to walk up Parrot Peak, because a Dutch guy got lost for three days up there. I can only surmise that his inability to walk back down the hill is a result of living his entire life in a country full of Kleins but devoid of -clines. What they won't tell you is how to play seventy three different drinking games and that it only takes one cup of Cachaça for an Irishman to re-enact the HAL9000 shutdown sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Given these serious omissions, Claire and I decided to ignore the tourist office's advice to hire a human-guide for the trek up Parrot Peak; opting instead for the competitively priced (1/2 tin of spam each) canine variety. One of the guides that followed us had a curly tail, so we called him "Curly", because his tail was curly (stop me if I'm going too fast). The other we called "Spot" after the festering ulcerous wound she kept chewing on her flank. Our guides performed admirably, pointing out (and weeing on) all the locations where something had previously crapped or died and (somewhat more helpfully) following my trail of alcohol tinged sweat back down the hill.

As Claire was flying out of Buenos Aires in a week, we could only spend one more day on Ilha Grande, which we spent on a surf beach - with just about every other backpacker on the island - before heading to Iguazu Falls.

Of the travel montages I've had so far, this one would definitely vie for inclusion in the yet-to-be-written feature film of my holiday: the winding coast road in Brazil provided spectacular scenery and falls from the on-board toilet; our manic run around Sao Paulo's enormous bus station (2nd biggest in the world), followed by a more manic taxi ride to Sao Paulo's other less enormous, but more appropriate, bus station provided the excitement; and the old man stepping, seemingly in slow motion, on the unopened mustard sachet I dropped in the bus aisle lended a touch of piquancy to the atmosphere - though not necessarily the wit - of the whole affair.

This visit to Iguazu Falls was the fourth and last of my (admittedly short and ignorant) list of must-see places I had devised before coming to South America (also featuring Machu Picchu, the Death Road and Rio de Janeiro). The probable reason for their inclusion is that I think Catriona Rowntree did a Getaway! feature on them some years ago and she still holds some kind of hypnotic hold over me from her Wonder World days. We stayed at the Hostel Inn, on the Argentine side of the border for reasons of economy and pool ownership; not so a Scandinavian couple could make fun of my sister's array of toiletries (the words sound the same, people!), though that was included.

We visited the Argentine side of the falls first, which is where you get to walk in and out of the falls, take a speed boat ride into the base of a waterfall (similar to being blasted in the face by a water cannon) and get reprimanded for swimming from the island. My co-swimmer was a lad from Melbourne (Rhys) who had cunningly deployed a herd behaviour tactic for confusing pickpocketers, having roughly 16 pockets in his jeans (including pockets in the knees!).

The next day, Claire and I headed to the Brazilian side of the falls along with Derek from Belfast and Babs Boumans from Boechout, Belgium (who quite comprehensively won the alliteration award for the day. The Brazilian side certainly has the "wow" factor (I guess the other factor is 1): numbered butterflies, innumerable bees, receiving lollies instead of change. Oh, and to your right is a bloody big waterfall.