Cataratas Iguazu

I spent the weekend in the town of Iguazu in Misiones Province. Our stay was packed full between the two hour flight there on Thursday night and the twenty hour bus ride on Sunday evening. I felt more than welcome and comfortably at home while hostel-hopping in Iguazu thanks to its humid heat and its small town quaintness. Bordered by the rivers Parana and Iguazu in the northeast corner of Argentina, Iguazu is neighbored by Paraguay on the northwest and Brazil on the northeast, and all countries converge at one picturesque view of the meeting rivers. The three frontiers, exactly the same in jungle beauty, remind one of the superfluity of borders between countries...

The Iguazu waterfalls are the most stunning natural wonders I have ever seen. Waterfalls have always been among my favorite occurrences in nature. I enjoy the peacefulness of their chaos. They also happen to go hand in hand with another one of my favorites: rainbows. At the national park we had the rare luck of close encounters with a toucan, monkeys, and large lizards. Platforms allowed us to approach the base of the falling water from about 10 meters where we were soaked by the ricochet of water hitting water and left breathless as we batted mist out of our eyelashes, witnessing the element at the mercy of gravity. Water falls for as far as the eye can see at the park, from about 80 meters at some heights. White mist of humid droplets is ever present below the circling birds, who I can only conclude enjoy the moisture as they dive in and out of sight in it.

Kilometers of gentle water covered plains drop at the Devil's Throat. I cannot and will not try to explain the raw and instinctual urge to JUMP. No one has ever seen the base of the Throat, for it is a wet white of water spray. But you feel so wondrous and at one.

The Iguazu waterfalls are not something you go to. They are something you witness, because they are happening. It comforts me that they are happening right now.

Water shortage does not exist.

(We also visited an animal rehabilitation center where I photographed this toucan having a late lunch. I bought a beautiful leather hat with a silly but pleasing head dress which only BsAs could make me feel self conscious about. And I got to see an ocelot, though in captivity. Ocelots have long been my favorite animal, only ever seen on a screen on NatGeo. This weekend was special. I am awoken, refreshed.)

My friend and I swapped books for this weekend. I gave him my treasured blue copy of Kerouac's 'On the Road' and he lent me his lovely tattered copy of Thoreau's 'Walden.' We invited each other to annotate freely and remark nonsense in the margins. My read went perfectly with the weekend. Thoreau's praise and love for nature only invigorated my own. And his strong sentiment of solidarity and natural religion inspired me to remember certain rejuvenating habits I have been neglecting. Morning yoga rituals, sweating daily, eating for sustenance.