The Brazilian tourism authorities recently launched the website Brasil 360° Experience, with versions in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

While most travelers are familiar with panoramic and 360° photos, 360° videos will be a novelty for many. As the image moves, the viewer can change the angle of vision and point the camera in whichever direction he chooses. It is a technology that produces surprising and fascinating results. Brasil 360° Experience aims at surprising the views with moving images of a handful of Brazilian tourist destinations.

The website contains videos of Rio de Janeiro, Cuiabá and the Pantanal, Curitiba and Foz de Iguazú, Manaos and the Amazon and Salvador de Bahía.

The page contains a link “Know more about…” that takes the reader to the Brazilian Tourism Portal, a true liability for the promotion of Brazil as a tourist destination. At the portal, when the tourist tries to find out more information about, say, tourist attractions in Rio de Janeiro, he or she will find the following screen:

Worry not. If you want more info on the destinations covered by the new website, you can check our very own entries for those destinations:

• destination: Rio de Janeiro
• the Pantanal handbook
• destination: Curitiba
• destination: Iguazu Falls
• destination: Manaus
• destination: Salvador
• the Amazon: an index of blog posts

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It is not the first time we bring to the blog spectacular photos found across the internet (a few weeks ago we saw virtual walkthroughs: Jericoacoara, Morro de São Paulo, Paraty, Porto de Galinhas and Rio de Janeiro and 360-degree photos of Manaus and the BR-319 across the jungle).

Today’s selection deserve special attention both for their quality and their spectacular nature. The photos belong to the Russian company AirPano, specializing in aerial captures. Its website contains a beautiful selection of shots from all corners of the world.

Iguassu Falls 360º

Rio de Janeiro 360º

If you click on the photos you will go to the page where they are hosted. The mouse controls movements in all directions. With the wheel mouse you can zoom in or out. There are shots taking airborne and shots taken from ground level.

Two fantastic documents that help portrait in all its glory the grandiosity of two of the best-known Brazilian destinations.

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RELATED POSTS:
destination: Iguazu Falls
destination: Rio de Janeiro

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A note on a local blog (Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: menos onças e mais transgênicos) reports on a recent survey of the puma population inside the Iguazu National Park. Scientists aren’t sure at all but estimate the number of individuals left might range between 6 and 12. On the verge of disappearing. At the same time, the park’s advisory body agreed to bring GM crops much closer to the park. The former barrier of 10 kilometers have been reduced to 1.2 km.

Public and private funds are being spent to get the Iguazu Falls elected as one of the new wonders of the world. Under the light of how the environment is being taken care of, money down the drain, if you ask me.

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destination: Iguazu Falls

Utter madness. The mayor of Foz do Iguaçu has been attempting for a number of years now to get the council to approve a project to set up a night time lights and sound show at the Iguaçu falls. Argentina (and a sizeable part of Brazil too) has always expressed dismay at the proposal (Argentinos rejeitam projeto brasileiro de iluminar as Cataratas do Iguaçu). And in spite of that, the project was resurrected once again recently.

Why in hell would anyone want to spoil the natural beauty of the falls? Is it not beautiful enough? The Niagarization of the Iguaçu falls only obbeys to material interests. We hope the project will never see the light of the day (or the night).

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RELATED POSTS:
Destination: Iguazu Falls
Enough water at the Iguazú falls?
Change of name to the Devil’s Throat
Accommodation in Foz do Iguaçu

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Torrential rain over the state of Paraná has meant a sharp increase in the volume of water carried by the Iguazu river. This has forced the Argentinian authorities to close the walkway leading to the Devil’s Throat.

If you have a look at the link we explained at Enough water at the Iguazu falls? you will see that the volume of water reached unbelievable 11,400 m3 per second when the average is 1,200 m3 per second. More than ten times the average volume of water! A Brazilian website published yesterday a photograph showing the awesome volume of water going down the falls on the Brazilian side.

Forecasters are expecting rain will ease over the coming few days.

Source: Chuva interdita passarela da Garganta do Diabo, em Foz do Iguaçu.

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RELATED POSTS:
Destination: Iguazu Falls
Enough water at the Iguazu falls?
Accommodation in Foz do Iguaçu

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Not the type of landscape that the place name “Iguaçu” conjures up, but this is as real as it gets: the Buddhist temple in Foz de Iguazu. The Buddhist temple is found on the outskirts of Foz do Iguaçu (see its location on Google Maps). You can reach it by taxi or you can ask your van driver to stop there on the way to the Itaiup dam (or on its return). It is located in an area that is not 100% safe so you are not advised to get there on your own. And yes, it is an impressive temple, as impressive as it looks on the pictures.

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RELATED POSTS:
Destination: Iguazu Falls
Accommodation in Foz do Iguaçu
From Curitiba to Foz do Iguaçu

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Our Accommodation in Brazil has a new listing, this time with hotels and pousadas in Foz do Iguaçu. Foz do Iguaçu is your base for exploring the awesome Iguazu Falls.

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The bus link from Curitiba to Foz do Iguaçu is very handy for those trying to approach Iguaçu Falls from the south region of Brazil. The bus company Catarinense runs a service between both cities. On its website you can check schedules and prices.

At the time of publishing this entry, there are between 8 and 9 daily buses (changes according to the day of the week). The trip lasts 11 hours and there are two types of buses, the convencional, costing R$90,63 one way, and the leito (bed), costing R$181,27 one way. On the company’s website you can check how many seats are still available for each service.

At the entry Iguazu Falls you will find the general information on the falls published here at the Brazil Travel Blog.

List-based books are definitely the flavour of the moment. And travel guides have joined in as well: with the royalties earned from the sales of 1,000 places to see before you die Patricia Schultz can retire and spend the rest of her life travelling around the globe. It is now the Rough Guide‘s turn. On their 25th anniversary, they have released a series of books of lists, one of which is called 25: Wonders of the World. On the list we find the usual suspects (the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Taj Mahal, the giants of Easter Island, Angkor Wat, the Perito Moreno glacier and other equally wonderful places). Bottom of the list, a surprising, if not not baffling, presence: Itaipu dam, in Foz de Iguazu.

To include Itaipu dam in a list of 25 wonders of the world can only be explained in two ways: first, less likely, whoever chose to include the dam is an engineer in love with megavats and the power of water in motion; my second theory, much more likely, is that whoever included Itaipu simply never visited the place.

This entry has only one purpose: to alert visitors to the area not to waste a single minute of their time visiting the dam and devote all their time in Iguazu to the truly wonderful falls. Visually, Iguazu dam is horrible. Do not expect to find a Hoover Dam and even less a Three Gorges Dam. Iguazu dam is flat and wide. When the spillway is closed (most of the time) it’s no more than a huge amount of concrete without any redeeming feature. There are no mountains around, there isn’t a spectacular gorge in the middle of which the dam was built. Nothing. It is not worth your time.

A few days ago I informed in this blog that the visit to the dam was no longer free.

Shame on you, Rough Guides! I strongly feel all lists are debatable. But I also feel there is a clear distinction between what can be argued and what is just blatantly ridiculous. To add insult to injury, the authors of the guide didn’t considery the mighty Iguazu falls worthy of inclusion on the very same list.

Another piece of news coming from Iguazu. I’ve just read in La Voz de las Cataratas (in Spanish) that a group of self-appointed religious leaders from Foz de Iguazú want to change the name to the Devil’s Throat, the most impressive of all the falls at Iguazú. Among the arguments for the change (if you can call that an argument) the news item quotes that “if this is the Devil’s Throat then the Devil itself is there, and a marvel created by God can’t have that name.”

The news would give rise to much hilarity if it wasn’t for the fact that it fits in a context of unstoppable advance of religious fundamentalism worldwide, from Washington to Teheran, going through Brazil. In the case of Iguazu, it seems behind the iniative there is a group of evangelical priests – the local Catholic church would have distanced itself from the initiative.

As for the authorship of the falls, it would be a good idea to make it clear that they are the result of erosion. Just in case.

Update: the evangelicals are proposing that the fall be named “The Voice of God”.

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destination: Iguazu Falls

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