Get Me My Barrel

I´m writing this blog from Ilha Grande, an island off the Brazilian coast between Sao Paolo and Rio (Brazil = awesome). To give you a sense of the setting, yesterday I was told by a local: ´´If you don´t pass a monkey on your way to the beach, it would be a disappointment. Oh, and beware of the snakes.´´

Now, I will regale you with stories of my experience at Iguazu Falls.

Niagara * 1000 = Iguazu

Iguazu Falls is on the border between Argentina and Brazil. Unlike Niagra Falls, which is just one huge waterfall, Iguazu includes 270 distinct large falls. While Niagara is in the middle of the city, Iguazu Falls is in the middle of the jungle. You don't have loads of hotels, casinos, restaurants, ferries, bridges, etc blocking your view. Mostly, it's just the falls and nature.

Apparently, when Eleanor Rooseelt saw Iguazu Falls, she said ´´Poor Niagara.´´ So, did I. At Niagara, they love telling stories about people going over the falls in a barrel. Maybe it´s because I don´t know the Spanish or Portugese word for barrel, but I never heard one.

This is one of the locations where the accompanying photo explains much more about it that what I can write, but there are a few good stories to mention.

Normally, everybody laughs at people who swim with t-shirts on

One of the options for activities at the falls is to take a boat ride next to them. You get to see the falls in their majesty and get really wet. Everybody said this was very cool, so I signed up. I didn't realize exactly how wet you would get, but when I saw people walking around the park who were completely drenched, I knew that I was in for a shower (which is good because it had been five days). I also only have one pair of pants on this trip, so I couldn't really afford to have them soaked. I decided to go on the boat trip without any pants, and because it would just look awkward to be in a t-shirt without any pants, I put that in my bag as well. Interestingly, there was a sign that said you couldn't go into the boat barefoot. So, there I was standing in my underwear, Tigers hat, and running shoes (went straight to the falls from my overnight bus and didn't change into sandals). I wore the fewest clothes of
anybody on the boat.

Whenver someone goes swimming with a shirt on, they look funny. If someone takes a shower in their clothes, it looks weird. But why do people strangely look at someone who goes on a ride into the waterfalls in standard swimming attire?

This is when it pays to know the lunar calendar

In preparation for my trip to Iguazu Falls, I looked into what activities I could do there. One of them piqued my interest: falls by moonlight. You can go to the largest of the falls in the middle of the night and witness its awesomeness by moonlight. But you can only do these tours in the four days around the full moon. Knowing that the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tamuz was in three days, I knew I came to the falls at the right time. (The Hebrew calendar follows the moon instead of the sun. The month is 30 days long and the 15th day of the month is the full moon.)

The falls were very cool by moonlight (Sorry if the photo is unclear. The light wasn´t great for photos and my camera isn´t a miracle worker). I can now add that to the list of things I´ve done by moonlight in my life: volcano watching, biking in the Chilean desert, watched a movie featuring Doc Graham.

No duty

On the bus from Puerto Iguazu, Argentina, to Iguazu Falls, I noticed the girl sitting behind me was wearing a Duty Free jacket. Either, she bought the jacket from the store and I would ask where I could get one or she works there. She works there. I´d never talked to a Duty Free shop employee before, except to say ´´not interested.´´ Nothing to interesting about this bullet point except I can make the comment. Do you know what they say about girls who work at the Duty Free shop?

No duty.

My Duty Free experience was much more pleasant (and legal) than that of the B´nai Sakhnin soccer team in Israel. As the team was leaving for a match in Spain, some of the players decided to stop at the Duty Free shop at Ben Gurion to pick up some cologne and perfume. They also decided not to pay for said products.

Iguazu is natural awesomeness. Itaipu is manmade

In addition to being the home of Iguazu Falls, Foz du Iguazu, Brazil is also the site of one of the largest dams in the world. Depending on who you listen to or what metric you follow, it is either the largest or second largest in the world. After completing my tour of the falls, I had seven hours before my bus to Sao Paolo. So I hopped on a bus for a tour of the dam. I've never really toured a hydroelectric facility before. Most of my knowledge of how they work came from Sim City 2000. Well, this was quite an impressive site.

I missed the part of the video that talked about how the dam was constructed, but I learned that it took nearly 30 years. I did catch the part about how the company tried to correct the environmental effects of its project (large national park, big lake that is used by fishing industry, channel that connects both parts of the river and allows fish to continue to spawn, corporate social responsibility awards won by the company, etc.).

At the peak of its construction, Itaipu Dam employed nearly 40,000 people. Before the dam, the town Foz du Iguaçu was just a small town. Because of the boom created by dam construction, 250,000ish people live there now. (All of this is according to the University of Illinois-educated engineer I met on my Itaipu tour.

Was I in Paraguay?

Itaipu Dam is built on a river that divides Brazil from Paraguay (actually, the dam was one of the main reasons I wanted to go Paraguay and I didn't know that I could see the dam from the Brazil side.). The dam is constructed on a sort of binational/neutral territory between the two countries. I didn't have to get my passport stamped Paraguay to go to the dam, but the side of the river that I was on was the Paraguay side of the river.

Because I don´t see myself visiting Paraguay ever again (odds are, because I wrote this sentence, the Peace Corps will add a Paraguay program next year), I´m leaning toward claiming I was there.

Stay tuned for my next entry when I bake a challah, try and prove 20 million people wrong, make a great Wayne´s World reference, and find my true love. Depending on whether I can take an entire day of sitting on the beach, I might send this email out in a few hours.