When we had originally planned our South America trip in 2020, Jenn made a massive point that she wanted to visit the Iguazu Falls. The falls border Brazil and Argentina and are considered one of the natural wonders of the world. When we decided to do South America in 2023 we weren’t sure where to put it in our itinerary. After a lot of research, we decided to do a day trip to the falls from Buenos Aires. Luxor and Kuala Lumpur were the only two other up-and-back day trips we’ve done in the past. To get it all in we woke up a little after 4 AM and were off to Ezeiza International Airport to catch our two-hour flight to the falls.

Not every day of traveling is perfect and our start to day six of this trip wasn’t what I’d call “smooth.” We woke up fine and finished packing up and went to check out and meet our driver downstairs. After ten minutes of discussing our bill with the front desk (a few things looked off), we finally checked out and joined our driver to take us to the Rio airport.

Even after the minor setback yesterday I was going to do whatever it took to make sure we made today's tour happen. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do anything, I woke up feeling 95% better and by the time the alarm went off at 6:30 AM, we were both amped to get going. We met our tour guide, Alexandre, downstairs at our hotel a few minutes after 7 AM and were off. Our first (and only stop) today was to go to one of the seven wonders of the world, the Christ the Redeemer statue. A good portion of the reason for our visit to Rio was to see this statue and it was worth it all.

When we woke up this morning my stomach was killing me and I wasn’t feeling good at all. My Oura Ring said my body temperature was +4 degrees over normal, so pretty sure I had a low-grade fever as well. We had originally planned an all-day tour in Rio and when I woke up I knew that was in jeopardy. I gave it a few minutes but realized that I wasn’t going to make it.

When we originally started to put the itinerary for this year's trip together we were thinking of just doing Rio and Buenos Aires. But as we looked at flights we realized that we’d need to stop in Sao Paulo and so added it on and boy are we glad we did, it was an excellent first stop to the trip. We woke up early this morning for a 6:30 AM pick-up to take us to the airport.

We were both so tired last night when we got back from the 3+ hour dinner that we decided to extend our alarm ahead of time and skip breakfast this morning. It was a good decision and outside of a room service Cappuccino and Orange Juice we rolled out of bed a little after 8 AM and were downstairs in the lobby for our 4-hour tour of Sao Paulo a few minutes after 9.