Encountering Eden

by Marianne Jones

“I’ll pray for you,” our guide called to us from the dock as our rubber dinghy started down the Iguacu River dividing Brazil and Argentina. We were twenty five tourists from Japan, Europe, The United States, Canada and South America crammed into the Zodiak setting out for Iguacu Falls.

Some of us had accepted the offer of plastic overcoats to protect our clothes. Others had dispensed with formality, stripping down to their bathing suits. We had all been advised that getting drenched was part of the experience.

My husband Reg and I decided that getting our shorts and t-shirts soaked might not be such a bad thing in the steaming 104 degree jungle heat. We put our camera and sandals into plastic bags for protection, and grinned like kids in anticipation of the ride ahead.

Having left Canada wrapped in the snow and weariness of mid-March, we felt an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of amazement at the cliffs of softly sculpted rock suggestive of the rounded carvings by the area’s indigenous tribes. The boat needed its two 225-hp. engines to propel us against the swift current close to the base of the falls. I took off my hat and clutched it to keep it from being carried away in the strong breeze the boat was creating.

We rounded a corner and got our first sighting of several white streams spilling down a rockface. It was exquisite, but it was only the beginning. Every bend in the river led us to bigger, noisier and more spectacular waterfalls.

The three pretty young girls squeezed beside us chattered excitedly to each other in Portuguese. Our driver waited until a returning boat full of dripping and happily bedraggled tourists passed, waving at us. Then he gunned the motor and took us straight toward a deluge spilling from a 250 foot height. Everyone on board shrieked under the weight of the warm water showering down on us. The driver circled under it several times, before taking us further inward, where we saw more boats and more falls.

We repeated the process a dozen times. Each successive falls seemed more other-worldly beautiful than the last. Each time the driver bore down on the falls with a kamikaze ruthlessness, circling under it until we were saturated. Each time the young women next to us went into squeals of laughter.

When we had gone as far as the current would permit, we turned back, with some relief. Even the young ladies had their excitement quota satisfied. They pointed at one another’s dripping hair, and laughed and teased each other.

Once back on dry land, we boarded the tractor-drawn cart that carried us back uphill through the jungle. By the time we reached the landing where our friend Julia was waiting to take us to lunch, we were almost dry again.

After a quick fast-food lunch we followed the walking trail that led to the Devil’s Throat, deepest part of the falls on the Brazilian side. At our first sighting of the falls from the vantage point of dry land, our jaws dropped. For sheer majesty and spectacular beauty, Iguacu Falls is the aquatic equivalent of The Rockies, with over two hundred individual waterfalls, stretching across for three-quarters of a mile. The rock face, watered and warmed continuously year-round, was densely covered with long grasses, giving it the appearance of luxurious green carpeting. As we got closer, it looked more as though each individual rock and boulder was wearing a thick head of long green hair. At the Devil’s Throat, the white water looked and sounded like an avalanche of snow thundering down a mountainside. I stood, trying to commit the vision to memory, wanting to bottle this feeling of warm spray on my face, the gratuitous beauty and exuberance of tons of water plunging through space, the surrounding jungle and the music of water on stone.

Each vantage point was hard to leave, but each succeeding one made up for it. Reg was having fun with his new camera, but eventually realized the impossibility of capturing every view. They were limitless.

I had thought the sight of the Devil’s Throat from above was the most beautiful, until we followed the trail to a spot at the bottom looking up at the cascade, where the water appeared like sheets of glass spreading out, thinning and shattering as they arced toward the bottom. From there we took a glassed-in elevator that took us up to an aerial view.

Back on terra firma, I stopped to pet a coati, an animal that looks like a cross between an anteater and a raccoon. He put his paws on my shins and reached his long snout up, hoping for a handout. It wasn’t until the next day that I saw the signs warning against petting or feeding the coatis.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from the falls, but we were booked for a dinner show back in town. We couldn’t resist taking a quick tour through the nearby bird sanctuary, where parrots in every imaginable colour called out “Hola!” in greeting, and friendly toucans walked over to peck at my straw purse. I must look like an easy mark to the animal world. We were amazed at the variety and brilliant colouring of the birds, like so many air-born flowers.

The next day we crossed the border from Brazil into Argentina. A train took us back to the falls, but from the Argentinian side this time. After a morning of sightseeing, walking in the punishing heat, we came upon an oasis in the jungle: a large, air-conditioned Brasilian-style buffet restaurant with A Paraguayan harpist playing dinner music. A quick trip to the washroom to clean up our damp-and-sweaty appearance from the morning’s adventures, and we were ready to enjoy a most civilized lunch experience. Mango juice, fresh pineapple slices, a sumptuous salad bar, and the ubiquitous roasted meat, with its offerings of sausage, chicken and prime rib.

The service was excellent, and the music relaxing. Paraguayan harp music has a gentle, slightly mournful sound, unaccompanied by vocals or other instruments. It is a delight when the harpist can be persuaded to play an authentic Paraguayan melody. More often, you recognize the strains of Beatles tunes and popular North American tunes in a metallic vibrato.

We lingered over lunch, enjoying the ambience, and reluctant to leave the air conditioning. Julia had cautioned us that the afternoon’s activities involved a longer, more strenuous walk.

Eventually, stall as we might, we had to face that inevitable sun again. Drowsy and full from a good meal, we found the trek along the walking trails an effort. We picked up bottled water, an essential for warding off heat stroke, and some potato chips for salt, and followed the trail along the riverbank. Walking uphill in that temperature and humidity was slow and labored, but each time I flagged we would encounter a new spectacle that would sting my eyes with tears of awe. This is the same falls that Robert De Niro climbed in the movie “The Mission,” and the movie does not exaggerate the magical beauty of the scenery.

At one point we were thrilled to see monkeys free-falling gracefully through the trees, catching branches easily. Julia was even more excited than we were.

“I’ve brought people here many times, but this is the first time I’ve seen monkeys here,” she said. When Reg stopped to capture a picture, the monkey showed him a mouthful of unfriendly-looking pointed fangs.As I fanned myself with my hat, trying to cool off, the monkey turned his attention my way. He crouched, getting ready to spring at us. We got the hint, and scuttled off hastily.

We continued down the path to a pool at the base of a falls so close we could almost reach out and touch it. It struck me that this must have been what Eden was like: an unspoiled paradise of beauty and sunshine and opulent life and growth. A rainbow formed in the mist over the water: a promise, or at least a hope, that we would return one day.

All pictures by Marianne Jones