Travelogues

The blue roadside contained just a white arrow arching to the right and one word: Argentina. We were just a few hundred metres from the border.

On the 24 hour bus ride from Rio De Janeiro, my traveling companion had been Nortberto. A woodworker originally from Buenos Aires, he had been living in Rio for over two decades. Now, he was excited about pursuing a dream of startling generosity. “I have a big house” he explained to me in Spanish, “but around me is much poverty. So I am building a school on the grounds of my home - so local kids can learn a trade and be safe from crime.” Unexpected encounters with wonderful people like Norberto form some of the greatest joys of traveling.

As our bus crossed the mid-point of Tancredo Neves Bridge ("the Brotherhood Bridge"), the road barriers suddenly changed in colour from canary and green to blue and white. The strips of two great soccer nations face off against each other on this bridge, as if permanently ready for kick off.

On arrival on the sleepy Argentinian border town of Puerto Iguazu, I said goodbye to Norberto (who would travel another 16 hours to the Buenos Aires) and took a much needed dip in the pool of Hostel Los Helechos where I was staying.

I was in Argentina for one reason - to sample the roaring majesty of Iguacu falls. The falls - a total of 275 of them, stretching 3km wide and standing 80m high - form a three way frontier between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The spelling of the name of the falls varies between Iguacu and Iguazu depending on which country you are in, but however you choose to spell it, Iguacu is unquestionable one of our planet´s most beautiful glories.

My day spent in Parque Nacional Iguazu on the Argentinian side of the falls made finding sleep more more difficult - that night my inner eyelids became cinema screens on which played insistent images of water, mist and rock. The intensity of this private movie show was a product of my unexpected proximity to the falls that day - within arms length of their spectacular drop-offs, standing before the spray to feel it soak every part of my body and riding a boat into the explosion of water and foam at the base of the falls. The taste, the noise, the spectacle, the feel of the falls combined as a magical elixir that energised and startled - captivating my body and soul.

For this reason, it was welcome, after being so up close and personal with the falls, to spend a couple of days of lazy restfulness in Puerto Iguazu. Experiencing something like Iguacu calls for a bit of quiet reflection time afterwards and the relaxed, time-has-slowed-down energy of Puerto Iguazu was perfect for this purpose. I also found being again in a Spanish speaking environment to be markedly less stressful than my weeks struggling through Portugese. There was less tension in my body once I knew I could conduct everyday transactions equipped with more than one word sentences.

After these days of rest in Argentina, I returned to Brazil - for another experience of the falls, this time in Parque Nacional do Iguacu. The Brazilian park is a slightly different experience to its Argentinian equivalent as there is more distance between park visitors and the falls. Yet that distance is not a weakness - it provides an enriching perspective in which there is a larger canvass on which the falls paint their most beautiful pictures. I can´t imagine experiencing the falls without doing so from both sides of the border.

I spent only one day in Foz De Iguacu, the Brazilian border city next to the falls - a bigger, more developed and less charming equivalent of Puerto Iguazu. I had arranged to meet friends in Sao Paulo for Christmas and I had a plane to catch. Yet what I experienced at Iguacu / Iguazu was my carry on luggage on that flight - a memory that will pulse within me for a long time to come.