Iguassu Falls
According to just about every book and tourist, the Iguassu Falls have to be seen from the Argentinian side, and not the Brazilian. Apparently the Brazilian side is more expensive and doesn’t get you as up close and personal with the 250 or so waterfalls. Well the Brazilians must have heard these rumours and made some quick plans to change things around. We had long debated whether we should try skip over to Argentina for a better look or not but on first glance we were fairly sure we’d come to the right place.
The falls are incredible regardless of where they’re seen from. Even if one were to be stupid enough to arrive in mid-summer in a fleece and what Jenny called ‘thermal pants’. It was also the one day I didn’t wear flip flops. We arrived into Foz de Iguassu from Sao Paulo and went straight to the Falls, so my wardrobe didn’t get much thought. But once out there in the 30 something degree I was suffering.
It was so hot I gladly signed up for white water rafting, despite the lack of towel or change of clothes. The friendly guy selling us the trip said ‘Rafting 80, or rafting and repel for 100’. I wasn’t too sure what repelling was, only that it involves a harness and a couple of 100 feet drop, so quickly told him there was no way I could possibly stretch it the 100. I almost fell off my feet when he replied ‘Fine, repel free’. I think his logic was that we had 275 steps to get to the boat and our fellow rafters were waiting, so easiest thing to do was to chuck us off a cliff.
Jenny was well up for this repelling business. She skipped into her harness, pulled on the hairnet and helmet and lowered herself from the metal jettee sticking out about 20 feet from the cliff. Oh, to be 18 again. I was a little slower off the mark. First I made the guide go over the directions and few times and gave him a few ‘what if this happens’ scenarios to see if he had it all planned. He told me all I have to do is lean back and I’ll be ok.
When it was time for take-off the instructor kept yelling for me to move my elbow. I had no idea why he would yell at me when I thought I was fine, my arms were in and ready to go. He had to crawl over and pull at my elbow to show me that I had jammed it into the railing to stop myself moving. I had no idea my elbow was doing that (all on it’s own of course).
After another false start I eventually made my way down the rope, pulling with one hand and stopping myself with the other. It was sort of like abseiling, except that we were dangling in mid-air and not scaling down a cliff face. The instructor had to put up with a few random screams like “I’m twirling, why and I twirling??” but I was moving and that was the most important thing. It even occured to me at one stage to try catch up with Jenny, but she was a good hundred feet or so below me. I had an amazing view of the falls from where I was dangling, but a bit too afraid to really take it in properly. My only aim in life at that stage was to touch the groud again.
I had a mini celebration when I got to the top of the trees, then the branches, the the trunk. I swung into a rock at one stage but didn’t even stop to see where hurt, I was on a mission to get south. The instructor was still yelling to lean back, which I thought was completely unnessesary because I was getting the hang of it at that stage. I discovered leaning back means really leaning back, and not just sticking your neck out a bit. When I was only 10 or 20 feet from the ground I realised I was still moving down, but my t-shirt wasn’t. Because of my lack of leaning back, I had gotten stuck, just like instructor guy warned me would happen. I had to scream to the guy at the bottom to stop (I thought I was doing all the work, but by half way I realised I could have let go completely and the guy at the bottom would have still dragged me down slowly). Operation Rescue Claire had to be initiated to get my t-shirt out of the rope, it was wrapped around the harness so bad that I was totally stuck.
Jenny at the bottom had a good laugh with some of the guys I as I dangled waiting for someone to make a decision. She told me later they thought after I decended all that way I had finally had enough and froze with fear at the last hurdle. I’m glad the photos clearly show I was tied in!
My rescuer came in the form of my instructor who had already put up with so much from me. He had to tie two hand grips and a foot grip to my harness, get me to stand up in mid-air and unravel my t-shirt. In typical Claire fashion this took a good few goes, but eventually I was lowered down to a cheering crowd, all still waiting for me to go rafting.
I was a little dazed and confused after that episode. Luckily the rafting wasn’t too strenuous. Once we got over the 3 rapids the instructor let us get out a drift the rest of the way.
After all that we almost forgot we still had the falls to see properly. We took off up the road in our ever so slightly soaking clothes to find the main falls. Because of all that had happened we finally reached them when the park was about to close, but that just meant we got to see them with very few other people around. There was a bridge so we could stand at the foot of one waterfall and be standing right at the top looking over the edge of some other ones.
When we had finally seen enough water (and Jenny had her ‘taking it in’ time), we skipped off back to our new home, the bus station, to try find our way to Paraguay. Brazil was amazing but with only 3 weeks to get through Paraguay, see Bolivia and get a flight from Chile, we had to get back on the road.
Tags: Brazil, Iguassu Falls
cybersusst