Iguazú Falls and Friends

There is a waterfall under the Petit Jean River Bridge just before Corinth Road in Danville. It's probably a good 2 feet of waterfall, and a sunset at the riverside is hard to beat. Plus, it has a good story: it's named after a woman who disguised herself as a man to come along with her French explorer husband in a time when women weren't encouraged to go exploring. That's a cool story.

Another neat story is of me and Jennifer meeting up for this photo! She was walking the same trail that I was on the same island at the same time, and she's a Fulbright Scholar working in Uruguay. We met in Brazil a couple of weeks ago and were not planning to meet in Iguazú, but it worked out. Ha! This will be among my quintessential South America pictures; that's right, Dad, this one is going on the travel picture wall!

Iguazú also has a cool story behind it, a couple, actually. According to LonelyPlanet: Argentina, my guidebook, "According to Guaraní tradition the falls originated when an Indian warrior named Caroba incurred the wrath of a forest god by escaping downriver in a canoe with a young girl, Naipur, with whom the god was infatuated. Enraged, the god caused the riverbed to collapse in front of the lovers, producing a line of precipitous falls over which Naipur fell and, at their base, turned into a rock. Caroba survived as a tree overlooking it.

"Geologists have a more prosaic explanation. The Río Iguazú course takes it over a basaltic plateau that ends abruptly just short of the confluence with the Paraná [River]. Where the lava flow stopped, thousands of cubic meters of water per second now plunge down as much as 80m into sedimentary terrain below. Before reaching the falls, the river divides into many channels with hidden reefs, rocks and islands separating the many visually distinctive cascades that together form the famous cataratas (waterfalls). In total, the falls stretch around for more than 2km."

Steven Skattebo came to visit me! He is my second Fayetteville friend to come see me in Argentina. He was sitting relaxed in the coffee shop downtown when I spotted him. He had been eating meat in the countryside for a few days and was very excited to stay with me because ordinarily he's a vegetarian, or at least a "beady-eyed vegetarian," meaning he only eats birds and fish.

ha!

So he gave a couple of presentations at my university then we headed northeast to the falls! Wow!

The first day was completely nublado, it was so cloudy we could hardly see, and the spray from the falls meant it was best to keep the camera in its case. But day two was fantastic.

In lieu of an aerial shot, here is a photo of an Iguazú model. ¡Qué lindo, che! And the next three photos are of my friend Steven and a friend we made on the way to Iguazú from Spain Juan Cardiel.

In this last one we'd just hiked up the island in the middle of all the falls, Isla San Martín, and were standing just in front of a couple of big ol' falls!

And below are a couple of pictures from Steven's presentation at Instituto Terciario San Fernando Rey, the place where I'm a'workin'.

Here he's judging a game (also known as a "communicative activity," as I learned), wherein two competing students draw something while the rest look on and guess what it is.

A winner is declared.

This is the lovely Chabela and her family. Chabela is the head of the English department at San Fernando Rey, and she is awesome: kind, organized, intelligent, and she made sure that I had some vegetarian food at the table.

Iguazú was certainly one of the coolest things I've seen. It got me thinking about a world of peace and social justice, specifically about sacred, ultra beautiful places like Iguazú. 'Seems like we--humans--should only go a couple of months out of the year and leave it to the animals and people that have lived there for a few thousand years the rest of the time. That goes for a lot of places, me'sa thinks. But let's move along through this, another stream of consciousness blog entry...

Jacob and Angela left for home! That's right, my new friends and neighbors, wrapped up their 11-ish months in Resistencia. They are among my first Lutheran friends.

Raquel and the Britoses had us all over for lunch before Jacob and Angela left.

Here we are celebrating a birthday party at the Britos'. It was my Argentine mother's birthday: Raquel. She's the one in the middle.

Jacob can make some mean pancakes, and they even had maple syrup! What!

Jacob, Angela, and I shared the same landlord, Señora Cuesta. And her daughter took us to her weekend getaway last weekend where we walked, played frisbee, and they ate a lot of asado, barbecue. In the picture above, Jacob, Angela, and their pastor and pastor's wife are all walking away. I like to take pictures of people walking away.


The señora and I rode in the back of the pastor's van on the way.

Homero, the dog, had torn his sweater (in my experience in Argentina, all dogs with families have sweaters) and the señora protested this picture saying that I ought to wait until his new one arrived. I didn't want to tell her that I was taking a picture of his old sweater simply because its tearing was the most exciting thing that had happened all week. ha! I really am happy here.

OK, a little more about Iguazú and we'll be ready to wrap things up.

There is a couple from Fiji in the beginning of the video; I happened to start a conversation with them on my way to Iguazú the first time and as it turned out we shared breakfast together a couple of days later. They were passing through Resistencia (where I live) and so once we got here I helped them book their bus tickets to Salta. The person with whom I'm talking is the Fulbrighter who by chance was walking along the same trail at the same time on San Martín Island. ¡Qué casualidad, che! What a coincidence, che!

On a related note, here are a couple of people walking away, Indian spiritual teachers known as swaminis.

It was because of my time at this ashram, or retreat center, that I have a connection with the Britos family here in Resistencia. All thanks to my teacher, Swami Dayananda. Here is a picture of us!

Pujya Swami Dayanandaji sent me to the Swami Vivekananda Yoga University (http://www.svyasa.org/) where I studied yoga and met a friend whose brother lived with the Britoses three years ago. Swami Dayananda Saraswati, as he is also known, taught me one of the most important things yet. That is, "Life seems burdensome because we only know how to relax in between action and life is mostly action. The trick is to discover relaxation during action. Then one is really free..."

Here is the final picture for this entry. It is of the "Tea with Stephen" group.

We read poetry and hung out. What a great way to share Saturday afternoon! It was some dozen or so English professors and me, and we had a blast.