Currents, Rapids, & Falls

Iguazu was the coldest it has ever been - so I was told - and for a few nights it did seem less than the tropical getaway I had imagines. Back in December, Jeff Warren whined incessantly about how hot it was at Iguazu, how he almost had to wear shorts, how his moonlit champagne dinner with Alex Dadok was nearly ruined. So when I arrived in the depths of winter and had to wear my coat at night, I was mildly disappointed. My shorts remained packed away deep in my bag.

The only person at the hostel when I arrived was a Kiwi, mid-forties, who claimed to have been a grade school teacher many years ago. He seemed like a decent enough guy, excepted the entire time I was there he was either high, or drunk and high, or on cocaine or something. I was watching Rambo II on TV, and he walked in and started shouting, 'Is this the Boca game? Boca! Boca! Is this Boca game?' 'Uh, no, it's a movie, it's Rambo...'

With the cold, I packed up for my trip to the falls - long-sleeve shirt, coat, hiking socks; I was prepared. Naturally, as is always the case in these things, as I stood on the bus to the park, the clouds parted and glorious tropical sunshine poured down on the green hillsides. The air heated, the sky was a brilliant blue, and I dutifully tucked my coat under my arm, where it remained the rest of the day.

The park itself is amazingly well organized, well signed, and just generally a joy to visit. There are two main sections to the falls themselves and I went first to the cluster of flat-faced cascades nearer to the entrance, saving the star attraction - The Throat of the Devil - for the afternoon.

The river flows slowly south, widening into something more like a rolling lake than a river, divided by small islands into faster flowing channels, always moving placidly to the sea. At a certain point the land simply falls away, and the water follows it in a series of mammoth falls, marked more by their abruptness than their height or volume. There are indeed higher falls, and larger falls, but Iguazu has something special, something spectacular that makes it a jewel of nature and not just a mildly pleasing natural place.

The upper circuit is a series of catwalks along the rims of the falls, arranged to give as many photogenic views as possibly. The view from the top is amazing; perched hundreds above the brackish Parana, the eye just can´t take in all the little details of beauty - the falls wide and tall, the rainbows and mists, the jungle trees and in the distance, climbing hundreds of feet in the air, the giant plume of watery smoke rising out of the Garganta del Diablo. Truly, Iguazu is one of those places where it really is hard to take a bad picture

Strangely, I often found myself looking at where the water was coming from, the slow streams running cool through the forest and - in some strange way - was more impressed that a small babbling stream could turn itself into something beautiful so quickly.

The lower circuit and the Isla San Martin gave a different perspective, from the base of the falls, and I spent a good amount of time shielding my camera from the sprays. One of the outlooks is perched on a ledge maybe twenty feet from a raging wall of water. As the day got hotter, I let myself enjoy the free shower.

By the late afternoon, I headed on a little tram to the Big Deal, the Garganta del Diablo, the living postcard. It´s a pretty good walk out to it, probably half a mile, crossing over the river heading towards the other falls, over some islands, out to the middle of the river. That´s maybe the strangest part about the Garganta, that it sits by itself in the river, a sudden hole in the shimmering calm of a tropical meander. The Garganta is, as best I can figure, a sort of submerged box canyon only a few hundred feet wide that the river simply collapses into in a titanic rush. It is impressive, for sure.

I found myself oddly depressed at the Garganta for some reason, probably a combination of dehydration and exhaustion. There was some so final, so terrifying about the falls, like looking into some loud oblivion, that I couldn´t stand to look at them for too long.

Upstream, the river widens, presenting new channels and paths for the water to take, and for miles it rolls along south, long and lazy and content. I paid close attention to the water above the rim, to the way it is pulled to the edge, slowly, endlessly; to the small eddys that hold promise but dissolve away as the little streams advance, gaining momentum, mixing with others, rounding rocks, becoming great torrents - green and white foamed rivers-in-rivers - and rushing off the first cataract onto a long low ledge, pausing briefly, and then - All the water in the river will take those falls and pass beyond into a calmer world. I took the bus back to town, bought myself a steak, and ate my supper.