The Follow-up (Part 2)
Trip Start
Feb 10, 2006
1
16
32
Trip End
May 31, 2006
Puerto Iguazu, Misiones,
Argentina
Sunday, March 26, 2006
We had a light breakfast, packed the small backpack with a big water bottle, maps, camera, extra socks and shirts, and a towel and were on our way to Iguazu Falls National Park. We had a few tourist brochures so in the car, an so to the beats of Satoshi Tomeii playing, I started up some quick reading.
Turns out Iguazu in the Guaraní tongue means "big water". It became a National Park in 1934 when it was realized that the fall's surroundings and it's wildlife had to be protected, as the river and the subsequent falls were in the middle of an exuberant and vast jungle. The Guaraní people call it "the place even the gods wanted to live in".
Guarani myth says the Iguazu Falls were formed by the wrath of a jelous snake-god who was in love with a beautiful village girl, Niapú, who lived by the shores of the then still and tranquil river. But Naipú preferred the love of her young mortal indian warrior, Taroba, and they together fled in a canoe. The enraged snake-god curved his back, parting the course of the river thus forming the Falls to stop them from escapaing. The lovers hoewever, were killed by the fiercely mad waters.
001 Coburn-We interrupt this program (Satoshi Mix)
They say Naipú's hair flows as the falling water and Taroba's broken bones stand now as tall trees in the jungle.As we reached the National Park, I certainly did not expect to find such an important display of infrastructure and capital put into this Park. We paid the entrance fee as we were entering the Park in the car, and realized, to our disbelief that the prices were different depending on where you were from. For Argetines, the price was much cheaper than for Brazilians or Urugayans and for European or North American tourists the price was not only way more expensive but in Euros or US Dollars. At first I thought this was unfair but then realized it was to promote internal tourism which was, as I've heard around, decreasing.
We parked the car in what shade we could find, and entered the park. I noticed there were many foreign tourists from all over the world, and hardly any Argentines except ourselves and the people who were working there. This was, after all, the low season.
We walked around asking the park tour guides what walks and hikes were better to start off in. We were offered jeep jungle rides and boat rides under the falls which not only sounded exhilarating but expensive. We decided that even though our money was kind of scarce, we were going to do all the rides possible and experience the Falls to the max. This was after all, a one time thing. So the first ride we booked was a jeep-boat ride leaving in about 2 hours. That gave us enough time to start exploring the park on the Lower Circuit hike.
The hike started out by walking into the jungle.
01 Ed in Lower Circuit Trail
There was a stone trail no more than one meter wide with signs of the animals we could encounter, and how not to feed them or get too close, etc. What we did notice right away is that there were butterflies everywhere. All colors, shapes and sizes. Lying on mud holes on the side of the trail, flying around in pairs or groups, and sometimes, gently grasping to your clothes and following you around for a while. I was fascinated by this and picked up many butterflies on my fingertips and shirt. Thus I became the Butterfly Girl. Other tourists looked at me and smiled.....this was my way of starting my communication with the jungle. Ed got into it and started to pick up some butterflies aswell. We also moved butterflies that were resting in the middle of the trail, afraid someone might come and stomp on them. The air inside the jungle feels different. It's a micro-climate with high humidity and heat in the air allowing nature to unfold all of its vitality. The air is thicker, denser, yet smelled unbelievable. We walked the entire trail until an opening came up and you could start to hear the rumbling of the falls. We rushed out of the trail and into the opening, where the air was fresher and cooler, took one big gulp of air and moved on to metal platforms, balconies and trails all along the side of the thick jungle.
We came up to a viewing spot where I was first able to look at the falls. I had seen pictures and videos, but they were nothing compared to what I was experiencing.
02 Little Jungle Friend
The only thing I could do was stare in disbelief at how nature had perfectly combined her elements to form this majestic circumstance of lush jungle, raging water, and sharp rock. The first thing I said to Ed was "Why didn't anyone tell me this was so huge?". I didn't mean huge in size, but definitely huge in force. I was suddenly so proud of having such a natural wonder in my own country, and felt ashamed I had never paid attention to it before, nor ever been attracted to visit it before. It was hard to pull myself away from that first viewing spot, until Ed grabbed me by the waist and whispered "There's a lot more to come". The steel platforms were very well designed and easy to walk on them, considering you could sometimes see yourself walking above a deep precipice of water. We didn't finish the trail as we had to hurry back for our jeep ride through the jungle. We got to the meeting point and found that the jeep was more like a huge top-less truck with seating for about 30 people. Ed and I hurried past everyone and got to the front of the truck so we could take nice pictures without having to deal with other people's heads in the way. At that point, while we were waiting for the ride to start, I noticed a pain in me led, looked down and it appeared as something had bit me. It didn't look like a mosquito bite as it had one dot of dried blood in the center and all around was an aureole of flesh turned red, but it wasn't bumpy not did it itch. I didn't pay any attention to it as the tour guide jumped in and the jeep started moving.
03 Butterfly Girl
The guide explained, in perfect Spanish and English, that the vehicles used inside the park, including this jeep, were specially engineered to make as little noise and contamination as possible. It was pretty noiseless but not enough to not startle any animals in the area. She talked about the wildlife, the species, the trees and also about my beloved butterflies. Every once in a while, a storm of a million yellow butterflies would scare away by the passing jeep and fly all at once from their puddle of mud.
The jeep ride ended after 20 minutes, and we got off and followed a long set of downward steps where we met a small dock. Out speed boat was waiting for us there. On my way down to the docking point, I found some dark purple butterflies and picked them up from the trail to take with me, at least until we got on the boat. I was greeted by a Park guide who teased me in front of everyone about my butterflies, but I couldn't help but laugh.
We were given our life vests and thick plastic bags to put our backpacks and cameras and anything else that we didn't want to get wet. I just didn't know how wet we were to get after half way through the boat ride, where we sped alongside small and big falls. At first we were lightly sprayed with cool water, but all of a sudden the guy who was driving the boat sped along one of the main falls and in less than a minute we were completely drenched from head to toe. It was amazing to feel the energy that came from the falling water.
04 Jungle's draining system
Not only was the noise really very loud but the wind it moved was hard. As soon as we moved towards the falls, you could hardly keep your eyes open by the amount of water and wind blowing into your face. Everyone in the boat and in other boats were cheering and yelling and waving at each other. Totally exhilarating. Ed and I had an adrenaline rush like none other. Sadly, the boat ride ended and we were left on a small island called Isla San Martin, where there was a small beach. We decided to take a short rest by the water in our drenched bathing suits as we watched other boats with cheering tourists pass by. We stayed in our little private beach away from other people for a couple of hours as we took up some sun by the tempestuous fall of the Iguazu river.
Eventually it was time to catch the boat back and continue our trail, the Upper Circuit. We continued to see staggering views and landscapes of the Falls, taking pictures, and taking in deep breaths of jungle fresh air. By this time, I noticed that the bite in my leg was getting bigger, it had almost doubled in size since the last time I had looked at it. I started to get worried but Ed assured me "it was nothing" as he usually does when I complain about something. I let it go since we still had a long way to go.
It was already 5 in the afternoon, and our feet were getting heavy since we had been hiking since 10 am, without even stopping for lunch. But after all the exercise, we weren't even hungry, we just wanted to end the day. We started to climb out of the Upper Circuit trail and find our way out of the Park. As we walked trying to find the exit, we noticed the park was almost empty, everyone had already left, except us, the only freaks who hiked around for 8 hours non stop and were willing to go back for more tomorrow.
Once we got back to the hotel, we sped our way through the lobby and went directly to the pool, where we chatted with a nice English guy who had taken a few sabbatical years from his job as an attorney to travel the world. We also made friends with Sunny, a girl originally from Hong Kong, who was doing social work in San Francisco. We ended up arranging to go out for drinks that night.
We drove around trying to find a decent quiet place to eat and drink something, but everything was pretty much closed. We had to remind ourselves that this was the low season and that even though it was a tourist town, it was a rural town, and that things don't happen here as they happen in a big city where everything is open at 11pm. We finally found a place that had only french fries and beer left to serve us, so after an hour of conversation and greasy french fries we all went back to the hotel to rest.
On our way to our room, Ed asked the front desk if there were any tours scheduled for the next few days to go into the Brazilian side of the Falls. Just our luck, there was a tour leaving at 7am from the hotel so we booked it no questions asked. That meant waking up at 6am. Ugh.
