Argentina A-Z: I for Iguazú, J for jungle

Almost like Dorothy in her red shoes walking down the road of yellow bricks, my adventure in Iguazú started with a spectacular vision. Red were my trainers and not bricks but a swarm of playful butterflies, all yellow, coloured my entrance through the road towards Iguazú natural park.

And indeed, butterflies were my loyal companions during my visit. Embodying lightness, fragility, short term beauty and happiness, butterflies are the joyful inhabitants of the famous waterfalls jungle: they dance around the tourist showing off their colours, letting you play with them and take photos and curiously posing themselves on you. They make sure that you go about with a smile on your face and spark anticipation for your visit where nature is the ultimate protagonist.

I read from my journal “nothing like nature can bring you closer to your own core, your values, your true self. Mundane matters seem so trivial when you are soaked, bare feet on a rock watching an eighty metre waterfall.” In Iguazú I really felt like I was part of it, the words “mother nature” expressed to their utmost when nature alone surrounded me: the power of the water fearlessly shooting on the rocks, ending in a river, a whole breathing entity with the green, the butterflies, the toucans, the coatis, a dynamic flowing everchanging being.

Every fall of the park was spectacular to say the least. I started by taking the small train to La Garganta del Diablo, from which I could see three falls: the Union fall, the Mitre fall and the Belgrano fall. I realised there and then this was going to be an overwhelming experience. The paths are built so that people can get so close to the fall they get completely soaked, but the natural shower also covers you in adrenaline: the more you scream - your body’s natural reaction to the surprise at the water - the more you want to stay and let go, scream more, be rock, be water, become river.  There it is, nature telling you; “you are me, I am you” while you scream childishly and giggle, you instinctively open your arms up towards it: you embrace it.

After that first encounter, every fall is like an old friend you go and visit, once you reach the primordial it is easy to feel like home: the sound, the steam, the humidity becomes a poisonous reality. You look at them with pride, with joy, with friendly admiration. So after the Two Sisters, the Chico fall, Adam and Eve, Bossetti fall, Mbiguá, San Martin, Escondido and all the rest, you get soaked a few times again, surrendering to the power of the experience.

In the afternoon I started the Gran Aventura: a drive in a car through the jungle, where a guide told me and a bunch of other tourists a bit more about the history of the park and how it is still recovering from the deforestation started one century ago and it will hopefully grow taller and stronger in time. Iguazú park has only been a protected area from the 30s and a recognised UNESCO site since the 80s. After the guided tour and a few more botanic lessons, the time for craziness came: we jumped on a boat, safety vests on, ready to sail under the waterfalls. The adrenaline of the water mixed with the speed made us all scream in childish excitement. But the only child that was on the boat with us, a few months old baby in the safe arms of her father just slept in her primordial cocoon of tranquillity: it is nature after all.