My Personal Amazing Race - Brazil Part 2

Continuing my personal journey of visiting Amazing Race locations, today I'll spotlight my travels in Rio de Janeiro & Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil from Season 2, Leg 2.  In this episode, the Fast Forward was a Futevôlei challenge on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Futevôlei is a beach volleyball game where the players don't use their hands to move the ball.  The Futevôlei players use their feet, legs, feet, and head to move the ball.  For this Fast Forward challenge, teams were permitted to use their hands.  Here is my Futevôlei YouTube video.

While I did not personally participate in a Futevôlei game, I did enjoy watching the Brazilians in their Futevôlei games while I sat on the beach enjoying local Brazilian snacks.

The Detour was a choice between hand-gliding or using a metal detector to find the next clue.  I would have definitely chosen hand-gliding since hand-gliding is a one of the activities Rio is well known for.  I did not have a chance to hand-glide while I was in Rio as the "jump-off" location was far from my hotel, and hand-gliding trips are often cancelled due to weather.  Due to my limited time in Brazil, I did not want to spend precious time traveling to the hand-gliding location and have the activity cancelled due to weather.

All teams then traveled to Foz do Iguaçu (one of the Seven Wonders of Nature) on a bus.  This bus ride was 900 miles and took 22-hours! 
We took a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Foz do Iguaçu which was around 2 hours.  The straight line distance from Rio to Foz is about 740 miles or 1190 Km according to this calculator.

When we visited Foz do Iguaçu in March 2013, we took public bus #120 from our hotel to Iguaçu National Park.

The bus dropped us off at the Iguaçu National Park Welcome Center.  From there we boarded a bus into the park.  In the episode which originally aired on March 13, 2002, teams are shown driving directly into Iguaçu National Park which is not allowed for tourists when we visited (over a decade later).
The first 2-3 stops were for excursions (hiking, rafting, etc..), we stayed on the bus until it let us off at the first lookout point for the falls.  The 1.2 meter walking path provides incredible views of the falls.  We visited Iguaçu Falls on a perfectly clear day.
After our 1.2 meter walk, we boarded the bus to take us to the excursion area of the park.  For our "adventure," we rappelled down into the canyon.


Here is my YouTube video from Iguaçu Falls.