Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Cataratas del Iguazu

(Pictures hopefully coming soon.)

Today I answered yesterday's question about the initial thoughts of the first explorers to stumble upon Iguazu Falls. The falls look amazing from a far; they stretch down the edges of green, jungle inhabited cliffs, but that's not what would have struck a conquistador. The Brazilian side follows man-made paths that wind around above the gorges. The Argentine side twists through similar paths in the wet forest, but stops at the bottoms of a few of the smaller falls, the tops of some, and at picturesque distances from others. (With close to thirty different look out points, I have more photos than I know what to do with. Since my first two memory cards filled to the max, I had to pull out my old card, which opened to the very last picture I took with it in my old camera -- my personal favorite from my Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand trip -- one of E at the airport carrying his bags and wearing his Vietnamese hat).

As my two days pushing through the woods at Iguazu came to a close, one last lookout point was left. A metal walkway shoots out over a fall that I had trouble seeing all week. From distances from all other spots around the National Park, a thick mist wall surrounds this fall. The locals call it Garganta del Diablo, or Devil's Throat, and it truly looks like Devil sucks down everything in sight. Calm water in a seemingly non flowing river is overwhelmed by the gravitational pull of the Garganta. Without warning, the still water feeding the Devil's Throat falls off the face of the Earth. If I was the first explorer discovering Iguazu, still thinking the world was flat, I would have seen this Amazing (in the Biblically sized sense of Amazing) sight and would have honestly believed that my crew has reached the edge of the world. The water drops suddenly off the seamless cliff and flows over the edge with such force that the water erupts as it crashes below. So fierce the splash, the mist climbs like vines through the air all the way back up one of the largest falls in the world (only inferior to Victoria Falls in South Africa).

Right after I stowed my camera away in my bag, the now dark skies opened up and the clouds began to pour down on me. The massive size of the Earth became so clearly apparent. I stood, soaking wet under skies covered by uncontrollable clouds, the only tourist naive enough to still marvel at the overpowering Garganta. Blessed by the rain, I finally shed the tour groups. I watched and felt the Earth all around me, thundering rain falling from the heavens above, roaring water pounding the rocks and spraying heavy mist from far below. At peace by myself, the otherwise empty catwalk hung out over the monstrous waterfall. Experiencing the Garganta like this, in all its glory, was something between religious and humbling. I alone experienced nature and its size as I became a negligible dot lost in this prized masterpiece. After two fulls days of finding Iguazu to be no more than "cool," the Garganta del Diablo stands out as one of nature's Greatest gifts to the Earth.


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