The Flood

Yesterday we went to Iguazu Falls again, but this time on the Argentine side, and as much as it pains me to say it (being Brazilian and all), it is actually better on the Argentine side. There’s a little hike through the woods (that we didn’t do because we didn’t have the time) and a little train that takes you from the main entrance to several parts of the park… Then, when you get off the train at the last station, Garganta del Diablo (or Devil’s throat), you have to walk for quite a while on metal “bridges” over the water, until you finally reach the observation deck where you’re really, really close to the falls and have a full view of them.

Amazing. Breathtaking. Not that in the Brazilian side it’s any less breathtaking… but when we were there, it was so misty (because the falls are so full because of the recent rains) that we could barely see anything but a white wall of mist. In the Argentine side, because we were above the falls (instead of in front of them) we could see better, and it looked like a big hole sucking the water in. It was awesome!

The problem is, unfortunately, we didn’t have much time, as we had to come back and catch our bus to Campo Grande at 6pm. We were heading into the Pantanal, and even though I’ve been there before, I was pretty excited about it… but this is what happened: we missed the little train by 5 minutes, and it comes every half hour, so we had to wait for 25 minutes. The train takes 15 minutes to arrive at the main entrance. We missed the bus that goes into town by 10 minutes, and it also comes every half hour, so we had to wait 20 minutes. By this time it was 4:50pm and there was no way we were going to make it back in time to catch our bus. We even tried… from the bus station in Puerto Iguazu we took a taxi to take us all the way home, wait while we threw our stuff together and head back to the bus station. We almost made it… we actually saw the bus pass us by when we were just 2 minutes from the bus station, but of course, he was going in the opposite direction! Luckily they changed the date without charging us for another ticket, and that was really nice of them…

So we decided we’d just skip Bonito (a city with lots of eco-tourism adventures) and go straight to the Pantanal, leaving on Saturday night and arriving in Campo Grande on Sunday morning. And since we had an extra day, we’d go back to the falls on the Argentine side and walk around some more, take another million photos, do the little hike through the woods, etc. We stayed up talking until late, so I was having a hard time waking up this morning… until I regained enough consciousness to realize that the beautiful sound that was lulling me to sleep was rain. And I don’t mean just a little trickle drip-drip-drip rain. I mean a full on storm! This realization came somewhere around 7am. It is now almost 11am and the rain hasn’t stopped or diminished its volume. It’s incredible! Thunder, lightening, rain, rain, rain! Of course, at 7am when I realized it was rain, I also knew there was no way we were going back to the falls today, and therefore there was no real reason to get up, so I stayed in bed, and fell asleep again, to the same tune Noah must’ve heard for 40 days in that arc… FLOOD!