Two Faces of Iguaçu

After a wretchedly quick but totally tubular excursion to Florianopolis (Obrigado Eduardo e Julia para a hospitalidade!) we took a quick 15 hour bus ride to Iguaçu. We love you Niagara, but, uh..yeah...Iguaçu is just a more graceful and powerful animal. Me wishes to live in it!

Both sides of the falls are monumentally beautiful and when you go, ensure you've been to the toilet because the awe you experience might cause you to evacuate your bowels unwillingly into your shorts. It's with reluctance that we state the Argentine side is better, for we wish not to understate the power of all angles of Iguaçu. The Brazilian side offers an overview of the whole thing, a zoom out if you will, a gander at the big picture.... while the Argentine side allows you into the beast, to zoom in and get up close with the details. It is tourist season, there were a lot of tourists, especially on the Argentine side, but to let that bother you would be a grave mistake.

The video is 86.3% on the Argentine side as a result of us spending more time there, plus the camera finger had been well rested at our lovely hotel in Puerto Iguazu, so it was itching to get clicking.

The creatures at the beginning of the video are Cuatis (kuatis in portuguese) and they swarm you at the entrance of the park or at any time you wish to engage in snacking. They are basically raccoons but aren't nocturnal, can't climb, aren't as fat and are not less likely to have rabies. Signs all over the park tell you not to feed them or touch them, but 86.3% of people ignore that. Petting friendly animals is instinctual, I suppose. The area also had numerous monkeys, a gazillion stunning avians, mammoth lizards/miniature dinosaurs and creepy quantities of butterflies.

The song is a portion of 'Gaio Da Roseira' by Hermeto Pascual. He was unable to work in the fields with his family as a young man because he is albino, and thus developed mad skills on multiple instruments while spending so much time indoors. I feel deep connections to anyone who likes tropical climates but has no tolerance for the sun.

Video 1: Our excursion to Iguazu
Video 2: Other people's excursion to Iguazu in the 20s

Photographic Nibbles of Ordem e Progresso

A man-made vessel of flight just brought us back to Rio from Recife.  Once the sun has risen tomorrow morning, we will be on a similar vessel to Florianopolis, then by ground vehicles to Iguazu Falls & Buenos Aires.  In the last number of weeks we have spent more than 50 hours on buses and 7 or 8 on airplanes....less tiring than anticipated due to quality company, enough good music to last a million bus rides and those inflatable pillows in the shape of a 'C' or 'U' depending which way you turn it.

The visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory & taste systems of the body have all been thoroughly stimulated in this time and our forefingers are in extremely good shape due to the billions of times they triggered the camera.  At some juncture we'll sift through the river of pixels to pan out the gold, but for now we present just singular nuggets from each location we visited.

Click the photos or open them in a new tab to make them big and snazzy.  Zoom in on the map above to get a better idea of the route.

1. Vila Madalena - Sao Paulo - Sao Paulo

Jasmine surrounded by the most grand display of graffiti we've ever seen.  We really thought Rio was the center of urban wall art in Brazil, but nothing compares to what we encountered in Sao Paulo.  Being there reminded me of the feeling I got from certain substances I haven't put in my body since university.

2.  Ouro Preto - Minas Gerais

Pretty far from Sao Paulo, but not THAT far from Rio or Belo Horizonte, Ouro Preto is simply gosh darn spectacular.  The heaps of beautifully atypical churches perched up on hills, the immaculately kept

historic center and the lack of hobos trying to kill you are some of the many reasons to visit here if you get down to Brazil.

3.  Brasilia

Jasmine deemed Brasilia essential as a part of her architectural education.  I thought it would be lame.  The 12 hour bus ride through beautiful nothingness gave us an idea of how out of the way it really is.  Turns out that it's a surreal and impressive city with plenty to keep you overstimulated for at least 2 days.

The presidential home has emus as guards....

4. Alto Paraiso - Goias

Even further out into nowhere, Alto Paraiso is a great way to understand the geography of the interior of Brazil.  It is also a haven for atypical spiritual groups that are fascinating, perplexing and 'unknown adjective x'.  It is also the only place where we felt our security compromised.

5. Salvador - Bahia

Been excited to set foot in Salvador for years, ever since realizing some of the best music on Earth comes from here.  While looking out of our apartment window, we did witness a Canadian lose his backpack to the hands of a local thief, but he was acting like a racist ass....so our pity was minimal.  Need more time here in the future.

6. Cachoeira - Bahia

Instead of going to beaches, we took a bus 2.5 hours inland to the small town of Cachoeira.  Quite pretty by itself, but the highlight was a boat tour we took down the river to a small village, the name of which I forget.  Our guide got us on the drink wagon at 8:45am and we had numerous hours to soak in a bit more of what Bahia contains.

7. Olinda & Recife - Pernambuco

Olinda is a charming nook full of life, pleasantry and debauchery.  Recife is ugly, stinky & poor...but somehow we still found it highly enjoyable.  The culture is strong here and the people are perhaps more open to different styles of music than anywhere in the country.  Again, we only had a tiny taste and don't really know a damn thing.

The High Paradise of Alta Paraiso de Goias

Salutations most beloved humans,

Time is short, our rumps are required on the back of a motorcycle to transport us through these arid, tropical highlands of central Brasil to some kind of lovely waterfall.  We are now at a wee cafe that serves Internet in Alta Paraiso de Goias, 250km outside of Brasilia (a lot weirder and cooler than we thought it would be), a haven for ecotourism and the center of atypical spiritual groups in Brasil.

The last while has consisted of numerous lengthy lengthy bus rides to get us from Rio to Sao Paulo to Ouro Preto to Brasilia and to our current location.  We are having a small crisis in that the hard drive containing all of our photos from the trip has decided to transform from alive to dead....hopefully we can find a techno-schaman upon our return to bring it back (or atleast the files)... so you´ll have to settle for videos of where we are scrounged up from ze Youtube.



The second video has that popular Moby track from a number of years ago....if it doesn´t tickle you correctly or it rubs your fur in the opposite direction of how you like it, just turn down the sound and activate a tune of your choosing from iTunes...that´s what I did.

Trem Do Samba (Samba Train)

"Transportainment" (n.):  The merging of pastimes or leisure activities with a vehicle in motion.

Ex. i) Cocktail party on a yacht bound for Costa Rica (Yachts mustn't be docked or anchored)

      ii) Watching a football game with friends while riding a horse 

      iii) High-stakes poker tournaments on hovercrafts 

      iv) Live samba groups in every car of a train destined for Oswald Cruz station, Rio de Janeiro

Please draw your attention to the 4th example of transportainment, it is the pertinent example for this blog post.

Hopefully when we put the words "Samba" & "Train" together, you can make some kind of mental picture because there's really no time or willingness to explain those terms further. An audio recording mixed with photos & a video have been included to grant you a more vivid overview of the experience.  

There was a mild, throbbing excitement to do a thorough review of "Trem do Samba"  because it was utterly fantastic... but something recently crept into the room, came up behind my motivation and slit open it's throat with a machete.  Now, the only energy left is reserved for watching funny animal videos on Youtube, like the one Jasmine showed me where a mother duck and ALL her ducklings get blown away by the wind.  Heart-breaking and hilarious, just like life.

So, instead of wasting everyone's time, let's just say 90% of this event was completely phenomenal and you should go sometime. I'll wrap up the post by telling you about the 10% that was not so brilliant.

1) At the meat place, you'll see it in the video, you're led to believe that the meat is delicious, plentiful and cheap.  It ended up being mediocre, inadequate and expensive.  We're not sure if it was expensive for everyone or we'd been hit by the "gringo tax" that seems to rear it's head semi-frequently.

2) We met a friendly, older gentleman who conversed with us at length in Portuguese.  We liked him.  The peculiar part was when he introduced us to his daughter like this....... "this is my daughter, she's 13, she has a baby." She then fetched the infant, which had probably been born 15 minutes earlier. Why was it so floppy and pink? The awkwardness left when they did.  I joke because it's the only way not to cry (seriously!)

If you get through the first 1:30 of video and sound, then be prepared for a special treat at the end.  It's included because some things are just too sexy to keep locked away from the world.  Also enjoy the unrelated duck-blowing video that is the main culprit for causing a mediocre blog post.