This past weekend, our group met at the tiny airport close enough to downtown Buenos Aires to smell a hint of carbon monoxide in the air. We climbed into the air-tight cabin of the plane, and we got out in the small, remote town of Iguazu. It was as though we had been in a time machine.
The town of Iguazu fits many of the most staunchly incorrect South American stereotypes: cobblestone roads crossed haphazardly by loose horses and dogs coated in red clay. The houses of unfinished wood planks were bordered by shabby gardens and roaming hens. Children walked barefoot and waved at our open air tour bus.
Crucial to fulfilling incorrect stereotypes of Argentina was the jungle. When I was little, I thought all of South America was jungle, and it was strange to finally see a place that began to fit that image. We even had a vine climbing contest.
When I saw the dirt and the jungle of Iguazu, I immediately pledged to spend the entire weekend with no shirt. Sadly, I didn’t accomplish this.
The first night, we took a catamaran ride down to the point where the Iguazu and Parana rivers fork, marking the only place where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina share one border.
There was a snazzy dance party on the boat, but I felt like the trip really began the next day at Iguazu Falls. After hiking for a kilometer on a narrow catwalk suspended over briskly flowing water, we came upon it: La Garganta del Diablo (the devil’s throat).
This aptly named system of falls is so awesome (the Discovery Channel definition of awesome, not your stoner friends’) that it is hard to look at. It makes you dizzy because your entire scope of vision can see nothing but falling water.
The water at the base is not visible because of the steady wind of mist churned up by the falls, forcing everyone to yell, “This is awesome!” because the noise of the falls makes it impractical to simply say it.
Later at a second system that was equally impressive, our group – minus a couple of people who were too afraid, wrapped ourselves in cheap panchos and piled into a boat-which took us face to face with one of the seething walls of water.
I can’t verify this claim, but I’m fairly certain I’m the first person in history to play the intro to “Change” by Blind Melon on the harmonica while being rained on by one of the world’s biggest waterfall systems.
Even though I was in one of the settings that is most unlike home, I found something in the hotel game room that night that brought me right back to Baton Rouge: a foosball table. It was great.
We took over the game room for the night. I think the jungle air was particularly potent that night, because after about five hours of drinking delicious $3 bottles of wine and playing foosball, my roommate Curtis decided to run around the game room naked for a little while.
Before I knew it, the rest of us were under the spell of the jungle, and the six of us who were still awake ended up in the pool outside sin ropas (without clothes).
The next morning the hotel complained, and we found out they almost called the police. Picturing ourselves naked in an Iguazu jail was a powerful deterrent, and we behaved much less like wild savages, which is ironically what they called us.
The next day was extreme. First, we went repelling, which was fun. Second, I was able to experience one of the finest ideas to ever penetrate the canopy: jungle zip-line.
We climbed up a flight of homemade stairs that placed us awkwardly into a shaky, little tree house about 100 feet in the air. One by one we were attached with carabineers to a zip line on an inch-thick steel cable and sent flying through the jungle from tree to tree at a surprisingly fast velocity.
Iguazu Falls was one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen, and my first time in the jungle was great. I was even lucky enough to not take any of the jungle back to Buenos Aires with me, unlike the one out of five people in our group who were leaving little pieces of the jungle in the toilet every forty-five minutes for the next few days.
——Contact David McCoy at [email protected]