December 7, 2010

We had wonderful weather on arrival yesterday, but during the night it had started to rain. When we got up it was pouring down:

No good. We had only 2 days here to see the waterfalls and heavy rain would, in addition to being uncomfortable, also assure grey skies and maybe fog.

We had no choice but to jump into the adventure and hope the weather would improve.

We had checked tour and transport options with the reception the evening before. They could get us on a tour with max 11 people and a guide included. We had read that there is no point having a guide and an organized tour here, you can easily manage on your own, so we were a bit skeptical. The taxi driver who drove us from the airport yesterday had given us an offer to drive us to the Argentine side of the falls and drive us back when we wanted. He would do it for the equivalent of USD 50, and  when asking for prices we discovered that the tour was about double that. The choice was obvious. He had left us a card with his phone number in Argentina. There was even a separate line with the number to use if you called from Brazil.

I called and a voice told me in Portuguese that the number was not valid. OK, I checked for national prefixes on the net and found out there was a mistake in the prefix. The card said 55, which is Brazil, 54 is Argentina. I called again, using 54, same message. I asked at the reception and they told me that to call abroad you had to call 00, then 21, then the country prefix, then the number. I tried, same message. OK. Time to do some deep research. Wikipedia was my friend and I discovered that 21 was the choice of fixed line provider in Brazil and was not used from mobile phones. I also found that the Argentine phone calling system was completely revamped in 1999 and was turned into a monster.

They split the country into 3 parts, each with its own prefix, and each city within each area with a second prefix in addition. There are rules for how to call within an area and between them and from abroad, all different and seemingly random. You have to know where you are, and the specific rules for calling from that location to the location you want to reach, before you can dial the right numbers to reach someone in Argentina. All fixed line numbers got a new prefix: 4. All mobile numbers got the prefix 15. This was done so people would know if they call a mobile phone, which is more expensive to call. Still following? Why they chose a two-digit prefix in front of mobil phone numbers instead of one is information that has probably has been lost to humanity.

If you call from abroad you have to add a 9 as a prefix before the other prefixes, but you must remove the 15 prefix from mobile phone numbers. Don´t ask me why! The card I had did not include the 9, but included the 15.

So, by simply changing the country code to 54, adding a 9 after the 54 and removing the 15 after the area code (mobile phone numbers have area codes in Argentina) I could speak to the taxi driver. Simple! i wonder if anyone had ever successfully called the guy from Brazil before.

He said he would pick us up at 8. Luckily I asked him in which time zone, since he was referring to Argentina time which is one hour earlier than the time zone on the Brazillian side.

At 9 he picked us up, the rain had almost stopped now. He drove us to the border station

where we went thorugh the standard passport check and stamping of passports. The driver was very serious and quiet during the entire procedure. Border crossings and customs checks are interesting social arenas. They have their own rules and a very special power balance. You know that the person looking at your passport has unlimited power to decide if you get to enter or not. It is not the place for elaborate practical jokes, dancing or even overdone smiling. Our driver had a special ID card with the flags of both Argentina and Brazil, and given his job he must do this many times a day. Still, he was stone faced and avoided all but the most necessary eye contact with the representatives of the authorities. Here we are, closing in and getting ready for passport control:

Once we reached the park on the Argentine side I made sure I had correctly deciphered the right way to call the driver from my mobile phone. It worked on the first try! For some reason there is GSM coverage here, something we did not find in Buenos Aires or Salta.

Just after the entrance we bough our tickets to the famous boat ride where you almost go under the falls and get ridiculously wet. It was very expensive, but is the must-do activity here. We boarded these vehicles

and were driven 12 km through the jungle while a bilingual guide (Spanish and English, no Brazilian Portuguese to be heard) kept on continuously talking about all the plants and trees we were seeing. It was actually very interesting and we learned a lot:

Did you know that when you harvest heart of palm you kill the palm tree? The species mostly used in Brazil for wild heart of palm, Euterpe Edulis, can use 20 years to grow large enough for its heart to be harvested. Each tree produces about 1 kilo (2 pounds). 20 years, one kilo. Not very sustainable if you take out large quantities, which people have done. The result is that this palm tree now is in danger of extinction.

Here we are, happily oblivious to what was going to happen next:

A few moments after this picture was taken it started to rain, at first very lightly. As we live in Norway, we are always prepared for any kind of weather. I asked Héléne to get out the rain ponchos in the backpack she had. She told me to get it out of the backpack I had. Total confusion led to a heated exchange between us in Norwegian, while the drizzle turned into a downpour and I tried as best as I could to protect my camera. To top it all the people next to Iseline were Norwegian and got a good smile out of our pecking at each other.

No one had the backpack! We had left it by the counter where we bough the tickets for the tour. All we could do was smile and enjoy getting completely soaked. Luckily it was not very cold at all. Another one of those cultural climatic things. In Norway, rain without protection is very bad news. If it makes you wet, you will get cold. If you are alone in the woods it dramatically increases your risk of dangerously low body temperature and a premature death. Interestingly enough, since there is so much rain in Norway, people do not let it stop them from going outside, you just dress properly. There is a much used Norwegian saying: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”

After the initial shock it was not too unpleasant to sit there completely soaked. We had a second small backpack with a rain proof bag around it, where we managed to store camera, money and other stuff.

Our backpack was quickly found by the tour company and once we arrived we waited about 15 minutes for the next car and got it back. The rain stopped and the sun quickly dried most of our clothes, except our underpants which would stay wet for most of the day.

Finally we could get into the boat. Here is Helene with the life-saving second backpack:

Ready to go:

The boat had an impressive power as it brought us through some very rough rapids and close to the falls. After I while we could see them in the distance:

WOW! This place was magic. What a fantastic natural phenomenon! If someone had come up with these waterfalls in a painting they would have been criticized for making something completely unrealistic. It was the 4th magical place we had been to so far during the voyage. The others were Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon and Machu Picchu. Sorry Disney, the Magic Kingdom is not magic enough 🙂

At this spot, roughly 100 million years ago, enormous flows of lava ran through the landscape. The earth had ruptured as Africa was moving further away from South America. 100 million years earlier the two continents had been one. Three flows of lava stopped at Iguassu and hardened, each one on top of the other, creating a staircase of Basalt with 3 steps, each step ranging from 116 (381 feet) to 180 meters (591) in height. The river is working on eroding the basalt, but this is taking a lot of time. Today there are roughly 275 waterfalls here, with the highest having a drop of 82 meters (269 feet).

Supposedly, when Eleanor Roosevelt first saw these falls, she exclaimed: “Poor Niagara!”

We came closer:

Then they drove us more or less into one of the falls. The watertight camera casing made it possible to take pictures until a point. After that pictures were all white from the water spray.

We survived:

After several trips to make sure we had no dry parts left whatsoever, we went ashore close to the falls and started walking along the many trails that have been made here. Access to the falls is impressive. There are ramps and pathways everywhere, yet nowhere do they really obscure the view of the falls from the other viewpoints, Very well done.

I have so many pictures, it´s very hard to choose, but here are some of them:

 

There is a constant drizzle in the air. This is not a place for those who do not like to get wet:

These were called the small waterfalls and would have been major tourist attraction of their own anywhere else:

There was a ramp very close to one of the larger falls. The kids enjoyed the shower:

As you can see the water is very brown. Only 20 years ago the water was almost constantly crystal clear. Today, so many parts of the jungle have been removed, that the constant human-made soil erosion keeps the water brown and muddy. Another visible symptom of the damage humans are making to nature.

We took a train a bit further up the river

and walked the long pathway over to the most well known waterfall, the devils throat. This horseshoe shaped waterfall drops 82 meters (269 feet):

This masterpiece of nature is hypnotizing to watch. Your eye´s focus keeps following the water flow down, down, down, all the time. It´s size is so immense it covers your entire field of vision when you are close. This makes it difficult to estimate the distance the water falls and creates an optical illusion which makes it look like the water is running a lot slower than it actually is.

There were an impressive number of butterflies around us. We managed to take pictures of some of them:

Adrian took this one of a fly:

Inn 1992 there was a severe flood here which ruined the pathway system and a new one had to be constructed. A reminder that there are great forces at work when water flows. We could see rests of the old system:

When Helene and I were here in 1996 the new system was not completely in place and we had to take a boat to get out and see the devil´s throat. The boat was a small open boat and had only one engine, a simple outboard mixmaster type engine. I realized, when we were in the water, that proper functioning of that engine was all that separated us from going over the falls and becoming vulture snack.

There is a constant presence of vultures here. Several hundred circle in the air at all times. They look for fish who are turned into very fresh chunks of natural sushi when they hit the surface after having been dragged down the waterfall by the running water. Those who have their head turned the right way get a magnificent view for the last seconds of their lives.

Under one of the pathways a brave bird had made its nest:

There were coatis everywhere:

They look really cute, but are wild animas, and bite if you try to touch them. There were also giant lizards. This guy is about a meter long:

We spent our entire day out at the falls and went back full of impressions and in awe of nature. Once again the weather gods had been benevolent, but we could sense they were playing with us now and that our lucky break might be over soon.

Eirik

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