Iguaçu: Grand Views, the Futility of Borders and Guarani Children
Back in May, a close friend was the first to recommend a visit to Iguaçu falls. Seemingly an exotic idea, my interest in actually visiting the falls waned the more others I met in Rio de Janeiro mentioned them in conversation. After all, enduring 17+ hours by coach only to be spluttered by cold water among a gaggle of amateur photographers in synthetic overcoats seemed far from appealing.
However, after spending close to two months in Rio de Janeiro, especially after the Olympics, I needed a change from cityscape. And thus, on a spontaneous decision after a brief stint in Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil, I found myself on the way to the falls.
The bus ride was surprisingly pleasant. Equipped with semi-cama (half-way to horizontal) reclining seats, hot meals, wifi and undubbed Hollywood blockbusters with whiskey-on-demand, my traveling companion and I leisurely trundled into Foz do Iguaçu, a city on the Brazilian side of the falls, and caught another bus to Puerto Iguazu, in Argentina. Carried away by musings of where to stay later that night, we carelessly forgot to get our passports stamped at the Brazilian border, leading to a series of hitchhiking attempts to return to Brazil.
On the way back to Argentina, we managed to hitch a ride with Thiago, a slightly pot-bellied 40-something year old Brazilian man with dark under eye circles accompanied by who we initially presumed to be his daughter. Cruising through the rain in his dark chocolate-leather padded 4x4, it was only after a few minutes of fragmented Portanol that we discovered his passenger had been his girlfriend and living with him for over a year in Brazil. The trip he was making was in fact to drop her off in Puerto Iguazu with her parents for the last time.
Following a brief awkward silence, we arrived in downtown Puerto Iguazu where, just before reaching the focal point of an anecdote on Brazilian-Argentine relations, his mirror scraped a shabby vehicle parked on the same road. Among a clamour of breaks and without waiting for the car to halt, he flung his door open and swaggered over to the owner of the stationary car beside us: arms flailing amid an eruption of heavily accented Spanish. His ex-girlfriend sighed, “Como sempre…” before prompting us to leave the vehicle. We managed to thank them both before getting on our way.
Although Puerto Iguazu has a bountiful dog population, it has a severe lack of credit card infrastructure. After finding a hostel to stay the night and discovering we could only pay in cash, it took a couple hours for my friend and I to find a cash point that actually worked- at a Santander Rio. We then returned to our hostel completely water-logged by the city’s wintery downpours. The weather forecast for the following days wasn’t to be too good either: cloudy rain and thunderstorms- not quite ideal for visiting one of the world’s seven natural wonders.
Nevertheless, we took a bus to the falls the next day at a *steep* ticket price of 130 pesos (£6.50) return per person only to discover upon arrival that full entry for gringos to see the falls would cost another 330 pesos (£16.50). After failing to produce a Brazilian identity for a reduced entrance fee despite an appraisable demonstration of our carioca alter-egos, we eventually entered the park. Swathes of coatis roamed the entrance littered with warnings against feeding them for fear of death while Guarani children sang merrily to a wooden guitar on a sheltered bench. A little surreal, I was nevertheless delighted by colourful picture maps presenting trains to the main attractions and signs depicting hot chicken nuggets.
First off, of course, we travelled to the Devil’s Throat. Consisting of 14 waterfalls in total, at a height of 82m and a length of 700m, I vaguely recalled a briefing on the site from a David Attenborough documentary years ago. Iguaçu’s largest attraction at almost twice the height of Niagara, some say that the site alone sees half of the falls’ total water flow of 1,500 cubic meters per second. Increasing to as much as 13,000 cubic meters of water per second during the rainy season between November and March, these cascades power 20% of Brazil’s total electricity consumption and 90% of Paraguay’s consumption via the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant located 38km away.
The Devil’s Throat is definitely worth a visit- at the very least to test your camera’s waterproof capabilities. Although no doubt impressive, the singular ledge overlooking its drop was as inundated by fellow visitors as by water spray, predictably detracting from their overall majesty. Adding to this, the plumes of fallout water from the drop made it difficult to see where the water was actually going. Appreciable on a more mystifying level however, I was nevertheless impressed- if not a little excited to wear an oddly warm coat of transparent film reminiscent of the emperor’s new clothes.
But it was my visit to the inferior and superior falls that were the most impressive. Offering an assortment of interlocking ramps and stairways between more sparsely-packed platforms, I was mesmerised not only by the sheer number of falls — 275 of them in total including the smaller cascades deeper inside the forest, but their energy. An unrelenting torrent of the elements, even with the interrupting chatter of tourists lurking past on the metal enforced wooden gangways, I was taken aback.
Having heard that the falls were better experienced from Argentina, I couldn’t help but contemplate their view from the Brazilian side- from which I could vaguely make out sporadic DSLR flashes in the distance, almost in responsive synchrony to mine. Perhaps these photographers were thinking the same thing.
My thoughts wandered further as I wandered towards the upper falls trails. Offering a cleaner sight of the Brazilian border obscured only by the rising plumes of water-spray, was a stark reminder of my first weeks at university- a series of lectures on statehood.
There, we used academic texts to ponder the efficacy of mapped political boundaries in containing ethnic, cultural and linguistic subgroups. But nature of course doesn’t accommodate manmade economic boundaries. It knows no maps. The homogenous blanket of trees and bush swallowed any attempt of cultural, linguistic and legislative segregation- the river only an ally by convenience for political definitions. Admiring the cascades’ vehement submission to gravity, I could only think of the matter of time before our manmade borders will succumb as well.
We soon left the falls. Although I didn’t sample the chicken nuggets in the end, I was somehow satisfied in a state of peaceful lethargy. This was exactly the natural cleanse that I needed. And my friend agreed. Approaching the exit however, we passed the same Guarani children as five hours earlier singing the same tunes, but with a different lethargy to mine. Usually singing in the park on weekends, they only receive tourist donations for their performances. A park employee later told me that the state grants most Guarani families with financial assistance for food and that they are governed by their own customs, in which ethical concerns for child labour allegedly don’t exist.
On our way out of the park, we noticed a sign offering a half-price park entry fee the next day to those already holding a ticket. Stamping our vouchers to access the offer just before our bus left, we soon noticed that our nationalities had also been printed on. Needless to say, we were unable to find two travellers later that day in Puerto Iguazu from New Zealand nor the Isle of Man from whom to make a quick buck. And so, after a hot debate between pizza and Mexican food for dinner resulting in steaks, we were ready to move onwards to Buenos Aires.
