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Our trip to Argentina was planned to perfection... almost. Like every great Turkish carpet it had one flaw, and its flaw was this: that we had chosen to go to Iguazu Falls in the middle of Easter. We went to Argentina's premiere tourist destination when Argentineans themselves would be there on holiday. We worried it would be busy; it was. We worried it would be stressful; it certainly was. But the extent of the chaos that we had willingly chosen to become part of only became clear once we were in the midst of it.
When we stepped out of the plane we were seduced by a benign warmth - we were in the gigantic Amazonian jungle, very near the Tropic of Capricorn and a few miles away from two borders: Brazil and Paraguay. We found a taxi driver called Fernando who was meant simply to drive us to our hotel in the nearby town, Puerto Igauzu. In the end he was our guide and companion for eight extremely eventful hours. Eight hours of adventure, excitement, passion... and betrayal.
The general school of thought on the Igauzu experience is this: both sides of the falls (Argentina and Brazil) are
Iguazu Falls
One of the seven natural wonders of the world.good, and quite different. So to have the full experience you need to visit both sides - a day on each at least. Trouble was we were only there for a day and a half and that half-day (which we were in) was Good Friday. However, we were in a good mood and feeling bold. As we drove through the thick forest towards Puerto Iguazu we asked Fernando what the chances of us getting over to Brazilian side that afternoon to see the falls were. He made a series of calls: he called insiders he knew at the Argentina/Brazil border to find out how busy it was (not bad) and at the Brazilian Park entrance to find out the length of the queue (insane). He gave us an optimistic report of the chances of us being let into the park, possibly based on the fact that he would be our taxi driver there and so would make plenty of money no matter what happened! In fact we had a pretty smooth run at the border, and incredibly luckily we got sold tickets only ten minutes before the authorities closed the park entrance early because of over crowding. Only when it
was over did Fernando admit that the authorities had been closing the park throughout the day to manage numbers so there had been a big chance we would have been turned away: "Welcome to Brazil! Now get out!"
After waiting in a huge snaking queue to get into one of an army of buses, we were driven to the falls proper through the jungle. On the Brazilian side you are further away from most of the falls, but this means you have a particularly impressive view of the entire vista. The scale of the falls is quite astonishing - it stretches for several kilometres and is not one waterfall but many - of different shapes, heights and general character. Because of the sub-tropical climate everything that isn't a waterfall is covered in dense dark green forest. There were many viewpoints, the last of which is along a long bridge over a wide stretch of water that leads to the top of a tall waterfall. A wind was blowing spray over everybody so we were quickly drenched, but happily so.
The sun sets quickly in this part of the world so when we got back to Fernando it was
night-time. We had a long queue to get out of the park and another even longer queue at the border getting back to Argentina, so by the time we finally got back to Puerto Igauzu we were exhausted and thrilled to get to our hotel. This is where the problems began. The lady at the hotel told me that because I, "Javier", had not arrived at the hotel at 3pm (the check-in time) she had sold our room to someone else. Betrayal! "Where should we go instead?" we asked. Tense conversations between Fernando, the lady, and MC (who speaks perfect Spanish) eventually came up with the grim truth: there was nowhere else. Puerto Iguazu has plenty of accommodation normally - but on Good Friday it's full. Really... FULL!!!
Fernando was feeling extremely sorry for us (and probably slightly guilty) and drove us to the tourist office and left us there. We waited there like two stranded refugees and explained our problem to a woman who worked there who looked like she hadn't slept in two days with the stress of it all. When she found us a friend of hers who would take us into
her own house for
My first Havana Alfajor
One the of the finest cookies in the world. the two nights I was grateful and unconcerned that they would charge us slightly more than the going rate for a normal hotel. We were lucky compared to the many other tourists who ended up sleeping outside in the town square amongst the stray dogs. The stray dogs in Argentina are big!
Our hostess, Giselle, was in her late 20s and seemed very nice. Disconcertingly, her home was at the end of a rough dirt road on the edge of town. MC and I were rather perturbed when Giselle's friend who dropped us off tried to charge us double what a taxi would have. More shocks were on the way. Inside we were introduced to her family: mother, brother and another girl who looked about 18 was heavily pregnant. The house smelt... but they had a big TV. This was a strange phenomenon: although these people seemed to be happy to live in filth, they had a big TV in virtually every room. Of course they didn't have a TV in the bathroom, that would be silly, but neither did they have a button to flush the toilet.
One fundamental feature of Italians that I wasn't aware of
until I met Maria Chiara and her family and friends is that they are
fastidiously clean. They are far more particular about matters of hygiene, comfort and health in general than Anglo-Saxons. It was with a sinking feeling of dread that MC was not going to be a happy lady when I saw that toilet flush. I had to reach a finger into a hole in the wall and flick a damp cistern head to make the flush work. The shower was another grim affair - of broken tiles, lime scale and suspicious indeterminate brown smudges. To be fair to Maria Chiara, she bravely coped as best she could.
Our bedroom had a poky little bed with used linen and was insufferably hot - so we had to have the window open and woke up with almost thirty mosquito bites between us.
In the morning at least we had the Argentinean side of the Iguazu falls to look forward to to cheer us up. Or did we? We took a bus and ended up in a traffic jam that was virtually at a standstill in the middle of the jungle. The frightening thing was we were still 10
km from the park entrance. The even scarier thing was the army of cars driving
away from the park. Why were they doing that? Were they giving up on seeing the falls?? I looked at these peoples' faces. They looked VERY sad. So commenced the quiet desperation and panic that we had flown all this way for almost nothing! Then a miracle happened: our bus, of all the queuing vehicles, was allowed by the police to skip ahead. It turned out that the car parks were full at the park - but passenger vehicles like ours were fine. Panic over.
The Argentinean side of the Iguazu falls was the best. It had three quite long walks with varying views: the top of falls, the bottom of falls, big falls and small falls. Iguazu is only the second biggest waterfall in volume (after Niagara) and not as tall as Victoria Falls, but it enjoys a reputation as the
best waterfall of all, because it's easy to view and get close to. As the sun was out, everywhere we looked there were butterflies. My favourite had zebra stripes which made perfect "88"s on each wing - which looked uncannily like a
Iguacu
When you're in Brazil you spell with a "c" rather than a "z". Keith Haring painting. Within the park we still had to suffer crowds and queues but the falls were magnificent enough to transcend such irritations, especially when we were amongst the last twenty tourists of the day allowed a view of the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat). This was the biggest and most powerful fall in Iguazu. As we walked towards it from above it looked like a gigantic sink hole - water falls from three sides inwards. The sound was huge. Staring at the main part of the fall was mesmerising. The water constantly undulates with ferocious speed and monstrous energy.
When we got "home" only Giselle was there - the rest of the family had gone to hospital because her brother's girlfriend (the one who looked 18 and in fact was 20) was giving birth! Before she went to join the rest of her family at the hospital she still managed to find time to show us a YouTube clip of a woman committing suicide by jumping off the Garganta del Diablo. She didn't seem to notice we didn't like watching this, in fact she showed it to us twice! Our second night there was at least no
worse than the first - the mosquitoes must have got sick of us - but MC never did actually manage to take a shower in the whole stay.
So we did it! We saw the falls, and to use that hoary old tourist cliché: "it was worth the effort". The next morning it was another plane ride over to Salta and Jujuy in the extreme north-west of the country for more adventure, excitement and passion. But this time without the betrayal and with toilets with proper flush buttons. Or so we hoped!
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