Bad Case of Wanderlust (My Trip Around the World): Iguazu Falls, Day 1 (Jan 10th)

I awoke the following morning to the wrap of knuckles on the door of the guest bedroom in which I had slept. Mosquito's son let me know that my ride to the airport waited downstairs. I had overslept. I leapt up, tended to only those personal hygiene issues of absolute necessity, and was out the door in five minutes. Unfortunately, Mosquito's door remained closed, so I had to assume he was still asleep. Not wanting to wake him, I didn't get to say goodbye.

Once I had found him, Mosquito's friend dropped me off at the airport. I slept through most of the flight, and after touching down, I hopped on a bus for the 10-minute ride to the entrance of the Brazilian national park of Iguassu, threw my bags in a locker, and was off to see the falls. Within the park, I had to take another bus to the first viewpoint; I rode on the open-air second-level and promptly lost the hat I had bought only two days previously. Ironically, I had bought it because it had a fastener in the back, and I thought it more likely to stay on my head, but it had never fit quite snugly enough on my gigantic melon. One size fits all, my ass. Oh, well.

It wasn't until I got my first glimpse of the falls that I noticed the perfect sapphire sky above; my luck seemed to be changing. The falls themselves were picturesque, but not overwhelming. I figured the views would become more impressive as I progressed down the path...

... and indeed they did.

As I crossed the walkways, coming closer and closer to the view at the bottom of the Devil's Throat, where the waters come together in a deafening and fantastic deluge, I fell into step with a tour group led by a cheeky young Argentinian who looked like James Franco. My path intersected with theirs for the rest of the day, and I acted as their informal group photographer, while they helped me get the pics featuring me that my mother so often requests.

As we came around the final bend of the walkway, my breath caught in my throat.

Dozens of the most powerful of the falls cascaded down in two perpendicular rows...

... which then bent and crashed together to form the magnificent Devil's Throat. As I stood in awe, watching the furious progress of the water from the calm waters above to the cataclysm below, a rainbow formed just below my feet.

The scenery was so spectacular that all I had to do was raise my camera and shoot to obtain the most stunning pictures I had ever taken. Had I not gotten myself in a few of the shots, I'm not sure anyone would believe they were real.

Their perfection seems almost artificial, and yet the real thing outshone even these images.

I worked my way from the catwalks to the visitor center perched just over the falls, said goodbye to the tour group, and climbed aboard a bus back to the entrance.

There, I grabbed my backpack and hopped a bus into town. I picked up a few groceries, then boarded one more bus and transferred to another, and finally arrived at the beautiful tree-lined entryway to my hostel an hour before sunset.

Hostel Natura did not resemble any other I had ever seen. The open-air reception area with its bar, kitchen, and lounge area opened out onto a large rolling lawn with a small swimming and fishing pond and a horse paddock behind it. Hammocks and tree swings hung from the trees, and a small camping area with adjacent bathrooms stood just around the corner.

After checking in, I indulged in a dip in the pool while sipping from a delicious mate, which the receptionist, Auscao, shared with me as we chatted.

I fixed dinner while still in my bathing suit and had my meal on the deck, watching the sunset and humming along to the strains of the trance-inducing French jazz music Auscao had put on the sound system.

The day went out with as glorious a finish as I had ever seen.

That night, I hung out around the pool table with a large group of aid workers who had intermittently spent the last two years in Haiti. Gracie, JP, Chris, Sierra, Deb, and Sean each hailed from a different nation, but they had formed quite a bond and had decided to travel together for a few months around South America. They had just come from the Pantanal, where a shaman had allowed them to paint themselves with a natural sort of invisible ink that had since manifested into hysterical and sometimes obscene scrawls across their skins. Chris, in particular, hadn't realized that the paint would be irremovable for two weeks when he had smeared it like war paint across his face.

As they worked further through their smelly bottle of "tuna wine", as they called it, they began to tell me their stories. Some seemed outlandish, but all my doubts were put to rest when, true to their word, they began tattooing each other as we sat on the couches. Seriously. Gracie, Deb, and JP each voiced interest, Chris drew the designs, and Sierra taped a sewing needle to a pen, took out some tattoo ink, and went to work.

Only Gracie went through with it that evening, but each of them showed me the tattoos Sierra or Chris had given them previously. I was thoroughly entertained.