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Published: March 14th 2012
that would be us shortly...
the Nautical Adventure boat approaches the Iguazú FallsBy the light of the full moon, the Garganta del Diablo looked eerie, mythical, surreal. Majestic, terrifying, unforgiving, relentless. Words simply can’t capture the noise, the immensity, the power. Water poured over the edge below, around and beyond us, an incredible stretch of foaming fury that, moments before, had flowed along its course serene and impassive.
The travel gods had been good to us that day. Back in January, I’d booked us a couple of days at the Iguazú Falls as a fun place to spend Jo’s 19
th birthday which would fall shortly before we began our overland adventure. That our arrival would coincide with the full moon – come to that, that there might even be “moon walks” to the Falls on the nights around each full moon – had not even flitted through my mind. Only as our adventure grew closer did I stop and read the relevant section of the guidebook and consult my diary on the off chance. What an opportunity! Now, what would be the chances of booking ourselves onto “un paseo de luna llena” (it sounds so much better, so much less Michael Jackson, in Spanish), when we arrived in Puerto Iguazú…
From
the ’plane, we had caught our first glimpse of the Falls, a distant puff of white punctuating the sea of green below. I had felt a familiar thrill of excitement bubble up. We collected our luggage, negotiated a taxi into town and checked into the delightful Hotel Lilian, where the friendliness of the staff was put to the test as we explored the options for joining a “paseo de luna” either that night, the eve of Jo’s birthday, or the next evening. How much was it? What time would we have to leave? How long would it take? Was there sufficient availability? Eventually, Jo decided that she’d rather devote the evening of the Big Day to cocktails and fine dining at Auntie Liz’s expense; besides, we’d be tired after spending the day at the Falls and would probably prefer a night in town. Could we possibly book for tonight? The patient lad behind the desk rang the tour operator for the fourth time, smiling indulgently at Jo when I told him the occasion. Yes! With an 8.25pm kick-off from the Hotel – some four hours’ hence – we would have time to explore the town and find some food, before
mythical
the Garganta del Diablo slathering on the mosquito repellent and joining our fellow moon-walkers.
The town of Puerto Iguazú exists because of its proximity – 20 km or so distant – to the Falls, a World Heritage Site since 1984. It is full of hotels and hostels and taxis and souvenir shops and tour operators and transport connections, but somehow manages, in its laid-back atmosphere (so unlike the bustling chic of Buenos Aires) and glorious Tropical colours, to be quite charming at the same time.
There is, however, one other geographic draw to this little corner of Argentina’s Misiones province: the “tres fronteras”, the intersection of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina across the confluence of the Ríos Paraná and Iguazú. At the western edge of Puerto Iguazú on the Argentinean side, this is marked by a small obelisk in the national colours of pale blue and white, and a predictable collection of over-priced souvenir shops and too-attentive touts. Across the Río Paraná we could make out a similar obelisk in Paraguay’s red, white and blue, though it must be said that the dark grey smoke of a town or forest fire and the distant skyscrapers of Ciudad del Este were more prominent. If
the Garganta del Diablo
... and tourists on the Brazilian side Brazil marked its side of the double border in any way, we couldn’t see it through the trees.
Coming from an island country, I always find it thrilling to stand in one country and look at another. On the shores of Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika, I’d looked across to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from, respectively, Rwanda and Burundi, and imagined, in the case of Lake Tanganyika, the shores of far-off Tanzania and Zambia which are also lapped by its waves. I remember standing on the edge of the Orange River in Namibia and looking across to South Africa, knowing that, as well as it being a different country, it was also, at that point, in a different time zone. (Perversely, the nearby bar on the Namibian side ran on South African time.) From the Archipiélago de Solentiname in Lago de Nicaragua, I gazed at the volcanoes of Costa Rica. From the mountains of Bhutan, I have seen peaks that rise in Tibet.
For Jo, it was yet more countries to add to her tally. She’d begun to explore three new countries in the last month, and she’d landed in – but not left the airport of
– another three. Now she could say she’d looked across at two more. The joys of life on the road!
But we had no time for self-satisfaction or wallowing in memories; we had a waterfall to go and explore.
The evening was a little stop-start at the outset. Clearly the punters are scooped up from far and wide by tour companies and hotels, but all then join one of the thrice-evening walks hosted by the guides at the Parque Nacional de Iguazú. The entire group for the final walk of the night must have numbered a hundred or so, of which we initially thought we were the only English-speakers… but soon discovered we were actually the only English-speakers who spoke up. When a bilingual guide called us to one side, we found we had about thirty new friends, including one very small one, safely asleep in her pram. I doubt she’ll be remembering much about her adventures.
The guide talked mainly about the wildlife in the Park, and how vital it is not to feed the animals and birds, no matter how cute they look and how habituated to humans they appear. For one thing, even the
sweet-faced racoon-like coatis have a nasty sharp bite. But the main reason is, of course, the damage that human food does to species that are not supposed to be consuming it. Horrifically, analysis of a number of coati carcasses a few years ago revealed high levels of cholesterol in the dead animals. Yet still people feed them. Having heard the guide’s talk, we found it positively nauseating the next day to watch other tourists tempt coatis and birds with titbits, usually – it seemed – in the name of getting a good photograph; even the catfish and terrapins were not allowed to escape. Perhaps this is a message that the Park needs to communicate – and police – more forcefully; I saw very few notices and warnings around the Park on this subject.
Successfully indoctrinated, we then boarded the little toy-train that runs from the Park’s visitors’ centre to the head of two of the main walks, the Circuitos Superior and Inferior, and on to the beginning of the kilometre-long metal “boardwalk” that leads across the Río Iguazú to the Garganta del Diablo itself.
I have nothing but praise for the construction of the paths and walkways around
the Park. A massive and thoughtful investment has been made to ensure that visitors to the Argentinean side of the Falls have the chance to appreciate them from every possible angle: up-close-and-personal, as distant vistas, and from above, beside and below. We’d pessimistically donned walking boots, thinking “rain forest + lots of spray = mud”, but we were the best shod of anyone we encountered. Flip-flops (or thongs) seemed to be the norm (even platforms and heels made a number of impractical appearances), with, the next day, a day-at-the-beach attitude to the accompanying couture. So much for our sensible cover-up-against-the-sun conservatism! Raised wooden walkways had been put in for all but the steepest sections, and, where steps were required, several paths had an alternative route for wheelchair (or pushchair) users. Where a path was required to cross the river, the wooden walkway was replaced by a metal grid, with railings for balance. Thoughtfully, the lower sections of the sides of these metal paths were also meshed so as to prevent a dropped water bottle, or suchlike, from rolling into the river.
Setting out along the boardwalk over the Río Iguazú to the Garganta del Diablo by the light of
the full moon was a magical experience. There was no need for torches; the sky was clear and the moon bright, the stars dimmed by its strength. Crickets, cicadas and a wonderful chorus of frogs accompanied us. The river below looked tranquil, with no hint of the rage and fury that were to come. We crossed over islands, long fingers of land pointing towards the Falls. A lone palm waved, slightly off vertical above the largest island; beyond, a more tipsy one leaned out over the water. Gradually the roar of the Falls grew louder. Our anticipation was palpable; I even felt a little nervous as we approached.
Eventually – the walk seemed surprisingly long that first time – we reached the irregular quadrangle of the viewing platform and caught our first sight – and spray – of these extraordinary waterfalls up close. On the other side of the maelstrom twinkled the lights of Brazil. The crowds were two or three deep around the edge of the platform when we arrived, but we knew we had an hour or more there so we bided our time, trying to take in the immeasurable grandeur around us before, more prosaically, playing
three frontiers
Paraguay and Brazil from Argentina with camera settings and angles in a destined-to-fail effort to capture even a little of what we were experiencing.
Time evaporated as fast as the water descended around us. All too soon we realised we were amongst the last to leave, and reluctantly began the walk back across the river to the train. Now the crowds had dissipated: we were no longer part of a slow-moving crocodile, nor were there people coming in the other direction as we had been the third and final “moon-walkers” that night. We paused in our chattering euphoria to listen to the sounds of the Tropical night, the Falls still roaring in our ears.
A few minutes into the return train journey, I glanced at my watch and turned to hug Jo. “Happy birthday, chica!” What a place to turn nineteen.
Friday dawned bright and clear, another beautiful day in the late Argentinean summer. The sky was the kind of fabulous deep blue that I associate with Namibia and outback Australia, and the colours of Puerto Iguazú were brilliant in the glorious sunshine. We treated ourselves to a taxi and headed back out to the national park to begin our daytime exploration.
What can I say? We walked and walked and walked. And ooh-ed and aah-ed and exclaimed and wondered, pinching ourselves from time to time. We walked the upper circuit and the lower circuit. We looked at Falls from above and below and side-on. We saw single waterfalls and pairs of falls and great vistas of the southern cataracts, with the Garganta del Diablo beyond. And when we’d had enough of walking and our cameras had threatened to sue us for overtime, we joined a boat trip to get up close and personal. We chose the “nautical adventure”, the shorter of the Iguazú Jungle Explorers’ two aquatic options, which takes about thirty people each time up to – and into – a couple of the lesser waterfalls. Now we realised why so many people were dressed in bikinis and swimsuits! I haven’t been so unexpectedly and thoroughly soaked through so quickly as when the captain, with – I’m sure – a wicked twinkle in his eye, sped up the boat and turned us suddenly into the spray. Having watched other boats from above, I knew that we would hardly have been denting the fallout zone of each of the two
the Garganta del Diablo
...from the lower circuit waterfalls we approached, but it didn’t feel anything like as mild at the time. In common with our twenty-eight new friends, we shrieked and giggled and shrieked again. Thank goodness for the company’s considerate provision of wet sacks for our kit. Our boots and clothes weren’t so lucky. Unashamedly, I pulled off my shirt when we got back to dry land and wrung it out. My socks needed the same treatment, but with temperatures still in the mid-30s, we soon drying off.
Curiously, as we made our way up to the central station to get the train back out to the Garganta del Diablo, we ran into a Taiwanese/Japanese lady who, like us, was interested in the giant bullet ants (nicknamed “24 hour ants” in Nicaragua for the length of time you continue to feel the pain of their bite) on and near the path at that particular point. We got chatting, and soon found out that she was here with about twenty others and a couple of guides, part of a tour.
“Which company are you with?” we asked.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of them… Dragoman?”
Jo and I looked at each other
and giggled. Yes, in amidst the thousands of visitors to the Iguazú Falls that day, we had managed to run into the overland group we would be joining in Buenos Aires three days’ later! Later, Juri introduced us to more of our future travel companions, showing us off like an interesting scientific discovery. Some of them have been on the road for the last 5-6 weeks, starting in Brazil’s Manaus, and we chattered our way back – they to the truck, and us to our bus back into Puerto Iguazú – everyone delighted at the chance encounter.
All boded very well for the start of the Big Adventure next week…
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