If there is one thing that backpacking does, it’s the constant testing of your levels of tolerance. It might be through your ability to constantly repeat the same conversation over and over and over again (“Hi I’m Hugh.. Yes I’m from Australia.. Haha no I don’t have any pet kangaroos sorry…” etc.). Or your ability to tolerate ‘different’ travelers, the tolerance of hostel snorers, or the tolerance of the most basic human decency: personal hygiene.
Last Thursday was a national public holiday in Argentina, again. So, naturally, the Argentinians take the Friday off work as well as a ‘bridging’ day to the weekend. This matter-of-fact explanation must have been told to me at least four times at Spanish class, work or in the street when I asked what the public holiday was for. I never got that last piece of information though. For this 4 day weekend I impulsively decided to see one of the 7 Wonders of the Natural World and visit the Iguazú Waterfalls, on the border between Argentina and Brazil with a tour group. I am not normally a fan of these sort of tours, but I hadn’t organised anything, so I thought why not give the tour companies a chance. This company, BAIS, (Buenos Aires International Students) had a good reputation and I was recommended to it. .
We were supposed to depart BA at 6:30pm on Wednesday evening, arriving at Iguazú the following afternoon around 3pm. A long day(s) beckoned. What actually happened was that a portion of the Mexican contingent in our group (which made up close to half of the 38 people on the tour) were a solid two hours late. Anyway, not to worry. Tolerance of others right? One of the selling points of the trip was the gift of free alcohol during the trip. I naively assumed this would be for the 2 nights we stayed at the hostel in Iguazú. In reality, it manifested itself by way of a 7 litre bottle of Orange Juice mixed with Vodka that was shared for the first leg of the 21 hour bus trip. After putting away a few cups of this Jungle Juice and meeting the people I would be spending the next four days with, all of whom were interesting and around the same age, it was about 1am and I was ready to pack it in and get some sleep in the not-so horizontal seats of the bus.
An interesting thing I learnt about Mexican Culture during my trip to Iguazú is that they like to sing. A lot. A shit-tonne-f***-load lot. OK, so it was 2:30am on a Wednesday, 6 hours into a 21 hour bus trip with a busload of strangers and the Mexicans (who, until 8 hours before, had not met each other, but merely bonded over the coincidence of their place of birth) had not, for a single second, stopped singing. Their elected leader, who’s name was “Pancho” (I kid you not) even pulled out the bus’s microphone and belted out a stirring rendition of God knows what. It was unbelievable. I was not so much as pissed off as flabbergasted at their stamina. The only time that a slightly pissed-off Hugh was attained was around 3:30am and I awoke to the lovely sound and smell of retching from a cute Mexican girl who had unfortunately had too much Jungle Juice and had unsuccessfully tried to hit a high C but instead had puked into a plastic bag. The smell hit a much poorer chord with everybody else on the bus. Have tolerance Hugh! What comes around goes around remember?
As we gradually moved into respective cliques (a natural occurrence when the human species is put into groups of around 20 or more), the group that I was part of contained four French people, two Colombians, an English girl, a guy from the US, a German and a couple of extradited Mexicans. Although all 38 of us in the group got along very well. 95% of the weekend was in Spanish, needless to say I got a bit slaughtered, but I was better off than the German orthopedic surgeon, who, despite having three languages, had zero Spanish.
We finally arrived in Puerta de Iguazú (the town about 20km from the waterfalls) around 7pm, on Thursday evening. I was sharing a four bed dormitory with three girls and I could not wait for a shower, some clean clothes and a horizontal place to sleep. As I opened my backpack to get fresh clothes I discovered, to my horror, that the section of my pack normally dedicated to underwear was EMPTY. I had left the separate bag of underwear on my bed in Buenos Aires, 1200km away. Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. My calculations led me to believe that my trusty green Bonds (already 24 hours old) would have to put up with Hugh’s groin for a further 72 hours before seeing the light of a washing machine. Tolerance right? Needless to say I did not inform my new friends and effeminate roommates of this cataclysmic disaster. Social exclusion was not on my to do list. If you are reading this now and I met you last weekend. I am truly sorry.
Added to this, after 24 hours on a bus with minimal levels of sleep, my level of Spanish had disintegrated to that of a 3 month old fetus. My sentences had words without subjects, tenses or grammar. For example: “Cuando salir hostel para ir Iguazu Waterfalls desayunar antes?” Direct Translation: “When to leave hostel for go Iguazu Waterfalls breakfast before?” I was attempting to ask: “When do we leave the hostel for the Iguazu Falls? Is there any chance of eating some breakfast beforehand?”. ‘Waterfalls’ was obviously not a word in Spanish. The confused response from the leader of the group was a confused “Si.” Good tolerance on his behalf.
Friday was the day we had been waiting for, and the Falls did not disappoint. We saw them from the Argentine side and they were truly spectacular, a half moon shape that was around 2km long with millions of litres of water crashing down. Our first view of the falls was via a boat that took us to within 30m of a section of the Falls where nothing could be seen or heard over the water. Following that, we navigated our way by foot around the superb infrastructure of the falls via walkways that connected it all together. It was truly a remarkable display by nature, and a day that I will never forget.
It is interesting: so often when we travel we go city to city to city. This is especially prevalent in Europe: London > Paris > Amsterdam > Berlin > Vienna > Rome > Barcelona > Madrid etc. I certainly have been ‘guilty’ (if you can call it that) of doing this in the past, yet I always find that, more often than not, the places that truly stick in you mind are the places out of the metropolises. Waterfalls, mountains, parks etc. These still might be rammed with people at times; Iguazu certainly was, but you still get that unerring and unbeatable feeling that Nature is pretty bloody awesome, and too often we don’t really notice how sensational she can be. The only frustrating thing was the rudeness of a small percentage of people at the falls. One particularly awesome section was the ‘Throat of the Devil’. Due to people taking selfie after selfie, it took nearly 45 mintues to walk around the 100 metre area. Those who weren’t in the privileged position at the front were hassling people to move along, as if the falls were going to be going somewhere. There was a lack of awareness as well as a lack of tolerance.
Words don’t really do the falls justice, so I have put several photos up to check out. The water was a muddy brown (or ‘golden’ if you are an optimist). I asked a park attendant why the postcards at the kiosks all had the waterfalls as bright blue and whether this was due to Photoshop. She laughed and said it was because they had had so much rain in the past week, that the banks up stream had overflowed, aand that the earth in the area around Iguazú has a very high iron content, which naturally came through as rust-coloured.
The visit to the falls was rejuvenating, that night we all partook in an exceptional asado of chorizo, steak and other animal parts, some known and other not, at the very Argentinean time of 12:30am. Following that a nightclub was attacked by around 30 of us with multiple Cuba-Libres doing the trick until sleep at 5:30am. Although as I walked home I obviously got lost, so it was an extra half hour of roaming until I luckily stumbled into my dormitory.
The catch was that the next morning it was a 7am wake up to visit the Brazilian side of the Falls. Needless to say, I was a bit sketchy. I chucked everything into my bag in zero order, and threw it onto the bus. Luckily it was an hour bus ride to the Falls so I got some beauty sleep in. The Brazilian side of the Falls was just as excellent. It gave a panoramic view of the entirety of the falls, as well as the opportunity to pretty much stand under them and get drenched, which I did, and subsequently purchased a new shirt for remembrance and convenience sake. (First photo)
The return bus trip back was a further 20 hours, with a stop at some mines that housed amethysts. Interesting, but not so much on 2 hours sleep. Fortunately I had discovered that my board shorts could double as underwear, so I put them on as a very reliable cover. For some reason, buses here insist on using air conditioning, regardless of the outside temperature, they also must not have an off switch. Personally, I was glad of the continuous movement and replacement of air as it hid my ever-increasing stench quite well. Did I mention I forget to pack soap as well?
Igúazu Falls was an incredible, whirlwind of a weekend. I am glad that it was only four days, not only because of the state of my personal hygiene, but also because of the rigidity that encompasses any sort of tour. That being said, any one who goes to BA and wants a way to meet new people, do some weekend trips and just hang out, BAIS is definitely for you. They are tolerant people.
Hugh
Spanish word of the day: Olvidar (To forget). For example: ‘Olividé mi ropas interior y olí asqueroso por el fin de semana’ (I forgot my underwear and smelt awful for the weekend).
Hugh's Lost 
great photos Hugh…what an amazing place & an interesting story by-line; I won’t mention underwear!!!
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Oh my. That is priceless Hugh. Very honest. May be you could have stood in the falls for a bit to clean off but I’m glad you didn’t
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Sounds like an interesting and fragrant adventure.
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