lessons learned

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today, kyle learned several valuable lessons:

1. iguazu falls is very awesome.
2. just because you're at a waterfall does not mean you will absorb water by osmosis.
3. walking around in the hot sun all day with very little water puts you on the fast track to many nasty things, such as kidney infections.

follow these lessons up with two trips to the local hospital, $20 worth of medical care (i shake my fist at you, expensive united states), and one shot in the butt, and you have us stuck in puerto iguazu for 4 days. why can't we get sick in awesome towns where she who is NOT sick can actually find something to do? other than wander the streets looking vainly for soup and getting whistled at by hoodlums and ne'er do wells?

well, i DID have to wander the streets at 3 am looking for an open pharmacy. that was interesting. fog was curdling around the fluorescent streetlights, the aforementioned ne'er do wells were sprawled out sleeping on the streets, and there was not an open pharmacy to be found. it was kinda like being in the old west, except i wouldn't know anything about that, since i was born in the last quarter of the 20th century.

so instead, let's talk about the falls. now i've seen my share of waterfalls. niagra. victoria. you know the drill. i'm like, meh, you seen one jaw-droppingly awesome mess of falling water, you've seen em all, right? turns out i was wrong!

seriously, that's a lot of water falling all at once...all the time! and iguazu has a whole series of falls that you can see...if you take the paseo superior, you can walk across the top of the little falls...if you take the paseo inferior, you get to see them from the base. then you take a free boat to isla san martin to see them closer up and from a different angle. and finally, the clincher is what the natives call garganta del diablo, or "devil's throat". all i can say is, if that's really what the devil's throat looks like, the man must never be thirsty.

to get to the devil's larynx you have to take a cutesy little train that i can only assume was constructed naturally in the jungle...some miracle crafted from god's own fingers to help us more easily commute to the devil's uvula. THEN you have to walk across a kilometer long raised metal platform (isn't nature amazing?)...the original of which was washed away by some flood in the early '80s before FINALLY reaching the devil's epiglottis.

for whatever reason, americans are as plentiful as water at iguazu. this came as a shock to us at the first nasally english syllable hit our ears because...we have seen a total of 2 americans on our whole trip before now. where do they come from? did they alight from some highly technologically advanced american spaceship? do they come in peace? here's my theory. despite iguazu's awesomeness, it cultivates a certain...let's call it "disneyland" feel. the paths through the jungle are paved. there are snackbars everywhere. it's all very safe (yeah yeah except for heat stroke. nice work kyle.), very hygienic, very orderly. most people come through on a planned, guided excursion. something i've come to realize in my travels is that unlike in other countries, americans do not cultivate a culture of travel. travel is not expected or fit into schedules. thus it seems out of reach, difficult, even dangerous. and so, it seems to me that many americans only like to travel when they can do so in the safety of a land rover or an airplane, and only by surrounding themselves with people who speak english and by treading on concrete.

anyway, it was all very surreal. as soon as we left the park, they VANISHED. it was like the bermuda triangle or something.

nevertheless, it would have been nice to have an english-speaking doctor at the hospital. it wasn't until days later that i learned the spanish word for kidney.

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Photos

water water everywhere...
maybe we could just lower our water bottles into the stream to fill them up? boy, why didn´t i think of that?

A mere fraction of Iguazu Falls
This little chunk of the falls represents maybe the calmest one-sixth of the entire thing. I have way too many additional photos if you need proof.

sicky mcgee
NOTE: do not be terrified by this picture. it is merely a reenactment. and an awesome desktop wallpaper.

Comments

[drae j namaste-rose]

excellent.
alright! you got to see the iguazu falls! i have always wanted to see them. it's too bad about the concrete and steel. it would be nice if it was a little more eco-friendly.. but often in this world, money plays a big part unfortunately. high-profile sites bring lots of high-paying people and high-paying people, although some being very accepting of lower than they are used to standards, are typically wanting of better than they are used to standards, even in remote places where these standards are unheard of, until high-paying people start coming. it would be nice if the money made by all of this really did somehow help the local communities and environment though. certainly, someone is benefiting. ultimately, nature prevails over all for me! i want more pictures of the falls!