Las aventuras de Brazil y Argentina

Incredible. Just incredible. My trip to Iguassu Falls was mindblowing. I don’t know if words or pictures will ever do it justice, but I got some videos that might give you an idea. You’ll have to wait 3 months for those though. But I’ll start to give you an idea now, and I hope I can get at least a small portion of the experience across.

My first day in Brazil I just went out with friends in Salvador. Salvador is super sketch. In all my travels I have never encountered a city like that. The stories are starting to roll in about thefts and people getting tackled etc.; most of the cases seemed like they were asking for it, in my opinion. We got very direct advice on what to do and not to do (for instance, if you want to take a picture, do it, but put your camera right back away) and from what I hear most people were ignoring that advice. My friends and I were just fine though. The city was a little difficult to blindly navigate, and a lot of restaurants were closed because we arrived on Brazilian Independence Day, but it was a good start to Brazil.

The next day began at 5 am. We had 5 hours on the plane, 2 hours to Rio de Janeiro, an hour of waiting for new passengers to get on, then 2 more hours to Iguassu. Our entire group was conked out the whole trip. Our incredible guide Carlos met us at the airport and took us straight to the Falls. The first day was a short hike down to Devil’s Throat. As Carlos told us, Argentina has most of the Falls (they have 70% of the land), but Brazil has the best views. The closer I got the more spectacular it got. The end was a walkway out over the water, with the mist rising up around you. Samantha would have had a conniption - all the walkways were made of metal grates. But honestly the view was so incredible I didn’t notice the bridges. The sun hitting the mist created rainbows, it was unbelievably picturesque.

That night we went to a Brazilian barbeque for dinner and ate lots and lots of meat. It’s a good thing the meat on the ship is disgusting, because I ate enough meat for about 2 weeks after all these barbeques, but what do you expect from a country that has more cattle than people? I ordered a bottle of wine that was listed as Brazilian, but it had a very German name; I think I got duped. But it’s okay, because we tried a legit one the next day, as well as an Argentinean wine; we had to do the complete sampling throughout the trip, so I’ve now had Brazilian and Argentinean beer and a caipirinah, a special Brazilian drink made with lime juice, sugar, and cachaca (a Brazilian rum made from sugar cane). Along with the buffet there was a show of Latin American dances and songs. Honestly it was a bit strange, but it was pretty hysterical to watch and good bonding for the group.

The next day was spent in Argentina! Another stamp on the passport, caching! In the morning we took a “jungle safari:” a short trip through the rainforest in 4x4 jeeps that were just like the ones for the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland except for a real driver, not just a fake wheel, to get down to where we would catch our boat. The rainforest wasn’t very impressive; it’s a secondary rainforest (meaning all the big trees were cut down so it’s recovering), and definitely not as spectacular as El Yunque in Puerto Rico. Then on to the boat ride, one of the highlights of the trip. I rocked my poncho, although it wasn’t much help, under my big ol’ lifejacket. To start we sped our way up river and got gorgeous views and pictures (this part was camera safe). Then halfway we stowed the cameras in waterproof bags and got ready to get wet! Now, we didn’t just get wet from the mist, we drove straight under one of the falls and got absolutely drenched. Water just funneled straight down the poncho. It was so much fun. Even in the mist it was hard to keep your eyes open because it was so powerful. Afterwards we started hiking up, catching views of some of the other falls. Iguassu Falls is the widest waterfall in the world, but the falls aren’t all connected unless there’s a flood. After lunch we took a path out over the Argentinean side of Devil’s Throat. This pathway goes right to the edge, such an incredible view. I realize I’m saying incredible a lot but the English language isn’t suited to describe this view. You can’t see the bottom because of the intense mist rising up from it, and you’re just surrounded by mist and the sound of the water rushing over the edge and pounding into the rocks below.

After the Falls we went to the Guarani Indian Reservation. The Guaranis are native people in Brazil and Argentina. They live in extreme poverty; their income comes from tourists and selling handicrafts. It felt so intrusive rolling in to their land in our giant tour bus, but my experiences in Honduras prepared me for it a bit. I knew that it was their choice to allow us to visit, and that they want us to see how the live to help us understand their culture. And they were examining us as much as we were them. As we walked down the road everyone stepped out of their homes and watched us pass. We also started to pick up a few friends: two little boys. They walked alongside us with their arms draped over each other, the best of friends. When we stopped to listen to Carlos, they stopped and wrestled each other and climbed trees. They got over their shyness when most of the group went to buy handicrafts. Some of us started taking their pictures, and I knew to show them their picture on the screen so everyone started to do that. They were in heaven. They would strike a pose, then immediately run over, wrap their hands around yours on the camera and look at the screen, then burst into fits of giggles, and run to go pose again. One of the boys was wearing a Spiderman shirt and I caught him doing the web pose so I had him do it in a picture; after that he did it in every other picture. The innate trust in children is so inspiring; these children couldn’t even communicate with us through words, but they had no problems jumping off tree stumps straight into our arms, only minutes after meeting. We continued on the path and my little Spiderman buddy grabbed my hand and the hand of another girl, so we started swinging him; he was so stoked on that we had to keep swinging him for the next half hour. We stopped to watch a musical presentation by some of the other kids and he still had to keep swinging. He was such a little attention whore; he would lean out around us to see if his friends were watching him and call their names if they weren’t, then leap and swing out and back down, over and over. Too cute. Then we all went to get a group photo and I squatted down in front of some of the little boys. Spidey (I have nothing else to call him; the kids learn Spanish in school when they’re 5, but he was too young, so I couldn’t even learn his name) reached up and grabbed my sunglasses off my head and shoved them on his face with a giant grin. My heart just exploded; he reminded me so much of Amelia, one of the girls in Honduras. Then walking to the bus we went back to swinging, but this time I had a boy on each side - it was quite the workout! When we were saying goodbye I opened my arms to give him a hug and he just leapt into my arms. Children and their ability to form friendships so readily, even when our only common form of communication is a smile, restore my faith in humanity. I can still feel his little hand, covered in the red dirt that was everywhere, intertwined in mine; when I close my eyes I can still see his smile gazing up at me, waiting for one in return. They have so much love to give, so much happiness to spread; I’m going to try my hardest to do my part of that mission in each of the next ports, to make Spidey proud.

This morning we visited Itaipu Dam, which produces the most hydroelectricity in the world. It provides 90% of Paraguay’s energy and 20% of Brazil’s. That’s right, Paraguay! No customs this time, but we did spend about 15 minutes on the Paraguayan side of the dam, so I’m claiming it as another country visited. The spillway wasn’t open, which is where they let extra water through on the side without going through the turbines, which was a bit disappointing. It was not my favorite part of the trip but it was interesting enough; it was hard to be in awe of this manmade creation after witnessing the natural wonder of Iguassu Falls. After that we went to Parque Das Aves, an aviary. That was pretty awesome. There were birds in cages that you could see, but the coolest parts were the areas you could walk through with the birds. There weren’t nets separating you; the birds could go wherever they wanted, and a few tried some paths that would have been straight through my head if I hadn’t ducked. Those tucans had it out to get me! Saw everything from ostriches to flamingos to parrots to peacocks to hummingbirds and anything in between. From there we went to lunch at ANOTHER barbeque. This one was one where the carry skewers of meat to your table and slice it off in front of you, so that was cool. Then on to the airport again. We raced one of the Rio groups back from the airport; we got to the dock first, which meant we didn’t have to wait in line forever while they checked everyone’s bags, hooray! I made a phone call home and now I am uploading 500 pictures and writing this. I can’t wait to sleep after 3 nights of only 6 hours of sleep or less. Tomorrow I’m taking it easy; my only plans are to go to the market for a bit to buy a painting from one of the vendors and spend the rest of my reals. I’m not taking any chances with getting back on the ship late; even if you’re in line to get back on at on ship time, you get dock time at the next port, meaning you can’t get off the ship for a certain amount of time, and nobody wants that. I’ll try and upload a few photos, but I don’t want to waste too much internet time so don’t necessarily count on it. I don’t want to overload you all with thousands of pictures when I get back in December, but that will probably be the case. You probably won’t be interested in 500 pictures of waterfalls and birds either, but there are some I think anyone can appreciate even without experiencing it. And if you think I wrote a lot, you should see my journal! If it’s too long, ask someone else to give you the cliffnotes version, I’m taking a break from brevity for a semester :P And editing. None of these have been copy edited or even re-read, so if you see any errors, ignore them and just know that I do know the difference between right and write, my fingers just don’t always get the memo. Lots of love and smiles from Salvador, Brazil!