Salvador to Foz do Iguacu, Day 13
Alarms rang cruelly early the next morning -- our taxi left the hotel at 5:15 to ensure we made our 7:30 flight. We flew to Sao Paulo, scrambled to make our quick connection and landed at Foz a little after noon. We were met by the van from the Belmond Hotel Das Cataratas -- our extravagant home for the next two days. The Belmond is the only hotel actually within the massive park that surrounds Iguacu Falls -- along with Niagara and Victoria, one of the three most spectacular waterfalls on the planet.
Our van driver was markedly not silent on the 25 minute drive to the hotel -- a function of the very slow speed limit rather than the great distance. He gave us a gobs of information about things we could do during our 48 hours in the area and enthusiastically pointed out the sites -- including a plume of “steam” rising above the forest, marking the location of the falls.
There is a whiplash-inducing culture shock involved in arriving at the Belmond after 4 days in Salvador. Picture the swankest country club you’ve ever seen, painted pink, filled with uniformed staff and guests clad in resort wear, all suffused with a lovely gentle scent that in the US would be a function of some Febreze-like product but here is the result of massive bouquets of gardenias and other tropical flowers every few yards. A massive oil painting of a panther hangs on one side of the lobby. A view straight out to the falls is visible from every front facing window and door. It’s absolutely fantastic, but in a vaguely disturbing way. At dinner the night before we’d had a conversation comparing this trip to our trip to Southeast Asia together. Glenn made a comment that both made me laugh, and made me feel a bit insensitively clueless. He said he was more comfortable in Brazil because there were black people here. Well, not at the Belmond, I can tell you that! But traveling in a pack as we were, we kinda bring our own zeitgeist so no worries.
We were a little early to check in so we repaired to the poolside restaurant and ate a very satisfying buffet lunch (we got a massive deal by ordering “vegetarian only” but that question never came up again). We tried to drink a bunch of beers, but the service was a bit eccentric so we only managed the one. But the poolside patio was ridiculously nice, the food was very good (think the buffet at Senac, only in a radically more delightful setting and three times the price), and we didn’t have to get up at 4:00 the next morning so travel-grumpy moods were rebounding quickly.
We spent the afternoon in slowly evolving groupings (like a human lava lamp), exploring the hotel and grounds, organizing activities and in the case of Dave and me, making a first hike to the falls at about 5:00. The falls fall over 2.7 kilometers, with a handful of spectacular drops, including the most impressive at the head of the falls where the water crashes down more than 250 feet (about a third higher than Niagara, and much wider). Even from our hotel room with the window closed -- almost at the tail end of the falls -- you can hear the steady booming rush of the water.
The path along the river is just one spectacular view after another. The foliage is beautiful. Coatimundies (an animal about the size of a racoon but with a more ferrety face and a great, fuzzy, prehensile-looking striped tail) amble along and congregate at the couple of (closing up) snack bars. We didn’t have the trail to ourselves, but the park was closing soon so we weren’t battling a crowd. (The rationale for our splurge on the Belmond is its location inside the park -- Iguacu is a huge tourist attraction and from 9 to 5 it’s packed with tour bus loads of people justifiably wanting to have a look at it.)
We got to the spot along the path where you can walk onto an amazing boardwalk that winds out into the middle of the river, a few hundred yards from the highest part of the falls. A nice lady was coming off the boardwalk and offered me her (slightly pointless) plastic poncho. And out we walked into what I’m guessing it feels like to stand in a hurricane. This was another one of those situations where I found myself laughing out loud just out of the sheer need to express the excitement and fun of the moment. It was humanly impossible not to shout “this is so COOL!!” (or it was for me -- Dave was more chill about the whole thing).
After our pummeling soak in the spray, we kept going to the end of the path, where you can stand under an overhang just feet from where the wall of water is sheeting down. The sound is unbelievable. On the deck above, you can watch the hypnotically fascinating curve of the water as it tips over the falls -- big tufts of foliage (some like heavy grasses and others looking like the toughest shrubs imaginable) manage to live literally in the flow -- some splitting the water to either side, others just engulfed in the wave.
We walked back up the path -- me straight to the pool where I found Holly and Andy enjoying cocktails and people watching (there were a LOT of artificial breasts at the Belmond, many of them looking like they’d been installed some decades back, if you take my meaning).
We reassembled on the huge front porch for cocktails and snacks (including really good burgers) as well as an energizing fight with our crotchety waiter about what should be billed to which room (no, not ALL the caipirinhas should be billed to Jeremey).
In a bit of exceptionally good travel karma, we’d arrived at the Belmond on the night of a full moon, and it was clear for the first time in 10 days. (One of the reasons the falls were SO spectacular was that it had been raining steadily for more than a week.) A guide from the hotel was going to lead anyone willing to pony up $9.00 up to the observation deck in hopes of seeing a moon rainbow.
“Guide” and “lead” turned out to be very loose terms in this context. A uniformed hotel staffer handed out fancy flashlights and a fellow wearing a safari style shirt marched briskly up the road that runs parallel to the falls path toward the observation deck at the front of a long, straggling parade of guests including too-cool-for-school Europeans, any number of young kids, several tottering senior citizens, lots of Asian tourists and us. It was all a bit goofy (and even slightly annoying) until we got to the platform just under the falls.
Shining above the cauldron of the falls was a perfect, silvery rainbow. Every color was distinct and visible, but translucent and shining like glass. The water was black in the places where it was still -- including the very edge of the falls -- but the froth was pale silvery gold in the moonlight. And of course the pounding sound and driving mist were all just as muscular as they’d been in daylight. The contrast between the ethereal, faerie world we were seeing and the immense power we were hearing and feeling was overwhelming. I know I wasn’t the only one brought nearly to tears.
But humans are humans so after a while the selfie takers and Japanese ladies in impractical shoes and dopey guys being annoying with their flashlights began to intrude on this moment of transcendence and we started back for the hotel. I was a little dismayed to realize the guide was taking us back by the path along the falls. It was genuinely dark and really wet -- and the guide was making no concessions at all to the halt and lame among us (he even waved people out onto the boardwalk into the middle of the falls). I suppose it’s possible someone tipped over a railing and floundered away, pointless cries for help issuing from the hood of their little plastic poncho, but no alarms were raised.
Back at the hotel we learned that whatever shortcomings there might be in the bar service on the porch were compensated for by the absolutely magnificent turndown service. In addition to the usual pillow fluffing and sweet treats left on pillows, all charger cables were neatly coiled, reading glasses tucked into little envelopes made from washcloths, slippers placed on small mats just under the bed, fresh water bottles provided on either bedside table, and everything tidied and perfect. Luxury -- who isn’t seduced by it now and then?
