We were picked up this morning at the tiring hour of 7.45am by a small minibus, and we spun around town picking up more people before hitting the road for the Brazilian side of the falls. We had looked at doing it independently but the hassles of visas and the possible difficulty of the border crossing put us off. Our taxi driver had offered to drive us around for 600 pesos for the day, but the tour we got cost less than half that each, and his offer didn’t include the entrance fees which are another 100. And he seemed something of a slightly dodgy punter as he waved away our questions about visas and the border without really answering them.
The border crossing on the bus was painless – we gave our passports to the guide from the tour company who went inside with them while we waited on the bus, and then we went through without any physical checks from the border police. There must be some arrangement to allow short trips like ours as we didn’t get any official entry or exit stamp in our passports. The drive end to end took a little over an hour and then the guide took us into the site and we had an hour and a half in total to wander around and amuse ourselves. Had we not seen the Argentinian side yesterday this would not have been nearly enough time, but as it was it worked out nicely.
From Brazil you can see the stretch of the site from the Devil’s Throat roughly half way back to San Martin. It’s crazy: waterfall after waterfall of massive size, lined up as if for no other purpose than beauty and intimidation. There are also falls on the half of the river on the Brazilian side of the Throat, but for whatever reason they have not built a walkway out like the Argentinians have at that upper level. They do however have a walkway on the lower level which brings you out to the centre of the river, so you can look straight ahead to the Throat in the near distance and get an appreciation of it different to looking at it from the Argentinians’ platform, and you are very close to the other falls on the Brazilian side of the river. It’s a curiously balanced situation – the Argentinians have by far the greater number of spectacular waterfalls but you get a better view of them from the Brazilian side, and you get a better view of the Devil’s Throat. And you are very close to the waterfalls that the Brazilians do have, meaning they are almost a more intense experience than overpowering run of Argentinian falls. I thought at first that Brazil had got the short end of the stick in the deal that placed the border, but on further reflection it was an equitable solution.
There is a building very near the edge of the river on the Brazilian side where there’s a café and a souvenir shop and all the rest of it, and there’s also a five-storey or so tower with lifts to the top. At the bottom of the tower you are within two metres of the edge of the falling water on the waterfall closest to the edge of the river. Looking down at the smack of the impact where it hits the rocks below I can only imagine your body would be crushed in a very unpleasant way if you were to stand under it, but the urge to do it is there nonetheless. Behind the sheet of water we spotted a cave, almost invisible in shadows in the strong light. There’s no way up to it and it is not part of the tourist attractions, but I would give a hell of a lot to be able to stand in it. It looked to us as if you could probably just about climb up in the space between the water and the cliff face, and what an experience that would be. A 10.0, for sure.
We went up to the top of the tower, which took us back to the level of the road and offered wonderful views from a broad courtyard. The surface of the courtyard is a metal grill raised up from the forest floor a few metres, and it would make anyone who is afraid of heights uneasy. I looked down at just the right moment to spot a speckled iguana, and I called Mike over to see it. That sparked other people to take an interest, and by the time we left there a crowd of twenty or so were gathered around taking pictures. I was pleased to be the first to see it.
We reversed our journey to get out of the park and were picked up by our minibus again and we set out for Paraguay. Both Brazil and Paraguay were new places for us, and if we continue notching up countries at a rate of two per day we will have set foot in every country in the world some time in June. The border crossing was again easy with the help of the tour company, and an hour later we were at Itapai, the site of the second-largest dam in the world.
The Three Gorges in China is the largest, and by God it must be a big one because the scale of what we saw was not a bad man-made counterpoint to the size of the falls. I am writing this on the plane the following day, so I alas don’t have the facts and figures to hand, but I strongly suggest you check them on Wikipedia and try and map them back to something else that will give an idea of the magnitude of them. What I do remember offhand is that there are 19 generators and the total power output is in the region of 750MW, meaning two of the plants would be able to send Marty McFly back to the future whenever he wanted, with enough power left over to cover Ireland’s energy needs.(Marty needed 1.21GW to run the time machine.)
The site is constructed in the shape of a ‘J’, with the short end comprised of three huge channels to allow water to run off and control the level of the artificial lake. Only one was operational when we were there, and it was a white bubbling torrent of water not entirely dissimilar to a very large scale and almost certainly lethal water-slide. At the end there was a short steep ramp, sending the flowing water up in an arc through the air to the river below, and raising a cloud of vapour of blinding, perfect whiteness. It could not have been better designed as a very expensive tribute to the waterfalls not so far away. We read before going there that the total cost of the dam construction was about USD25B, which seems eminently possible looking at the size of it.
Our tour took us to the base of the damn on one of the landward ends, where we looked up at a great expanse of wall stretching into the far distance with the huge pipes carrying water for the generators emerging from it at regular intervals, and then we went inside to the building at the base of the damn that holds all the heavy machinery. It’s all underground so you can’t see it, but what we did see was a single room 110m high, a number I got from a sign, and I estimate it was 50m wide and 150m long. We were on a balcony high up looking down on it, and amused ourselves by wondering if there were 20m of water below would we have the nerve to jump off into it. The entire tour, I should add, was in Spanish, so we had no idea what was being said and only the occasional sign had any English content. As far as I could tell though that massive interior space was just a function of the design of the dam, which must obviously be rather strong, and not required for anything that specifically needed such dimensions.
Finally they took us back on the bus and drove us along the top of the dam. Alas we were not allowed to stop and get out so we had to content ourselves with the slow pace of the bus. On our right was the lake formed by the dam, on our left a huge fall and the countryside below. The top of the damn is approximately 100m wide, and it’s several kilometres in length. The surrounding side has its own private road network, complete with motorway and stop-signs, missing only traffic bar the odd car or truck or bus.
We both enjoyed the visit hugely and were content with a good day well done when we got on the minibus to head back to Argentina and dinner. However to our surprise we stopped at a town we had passed through on the way, the name of which I will have to check and add later. It’s on the border between Paraguay and Argentina and good grief I have never been anywhere like it. Valparaiso struck me as a place you need to keep your wits about you but this place seemed that wits or no wits you were going to experience something unpleasant sooner or later. The bus parked on the main street and the driver told us not to wear watches or jewellery or take out a camera, and then directed us to a particular shopping arcade, which I assume meant there was a kick-back deal in operation. We soon tired of being in there and went for a look around on the main street instead. On one side there is a long continuous stretch of small huts that form a market – the stalls are on your right and the entrances to shops on your left. As you walk down the alley in between people jump out from both sides, offering you the usual weird South American stuff (a vanity set, for example) and stuff they think will appeal to tourists – one chap shouted several times ‘Canon Nikon Sony camera’ like a sort of mantra. Mike spotted a woman selling switchblades, then we passed an off-licence where just inside the door was a man with a pump-action shotgun. He was rocking his weight around and stepping forward and back in the short view I got of him. Next we came on a large shopping centre with a huge entrance, like you would see at home, except that the entire entrance was barred off as if it was a giant prison cell, and to get in a guard needed to open a small door within the bars to let you through.
That was enough for us. We got out of the market and walked back up the centre of the main street, where there was a grassy central divide with palm trees on it. We found a place on some steps to sit down. To our left was a large scattered amount of rubbish. Several people stopped to have a glance at it as they passed, but everything of possible value must have been long taken.
Mike and I stood out quite a bit, to say the least; the others on the tour were at least from South America and had some chance of blending in. Some people glanced at us, some people stared at us with open curiosity. Twenty metres or so up the main street a large group of men were drinking. Skinny dogs nosed among the rubbish that was everywhere. Now and then someone would come over and try and sell us a camera case or whatever they happened to have. Kids sold bottles of water. No-one seemed particularly aggressive and I wondered if I was imagining things, but in the glances and the dirt and the rubbish and the heat there was a perceptible sense of threat and danger, of being the only people around who evidently had at least some money on them, of being far away from the standard protection that perpetuates the unfairness of wealthy tourists and poor locals.
We got back on the bus as soon as we could, and as the others trickled back on several noted that they were glad to be back too. I thought it was slightly insane that a bunch of tourists would be ejected into such a place, and there was a slight sense of tension as people came back in ones and twos, but everyone had returned by the planned 5pm leaving time. I wonder what the place is like at night, and what constitutes a normal life for someone who lives there, and what they think of these people who come on buses and stay as short a time as possible, and how much of South America is like this.
It was a bit of a thought-provoking end to the day. Once we were across the border into Brazil the character of the town changed immediately – almost no rubbish on the streets versus piles of it, buildings that looked new instead of about to be demolished for safety reasons, better dressed people, better tended grass and flowerbeds, a sense of prosperity rather than poverty. As we were leaving the Paraguayan side we saw three young lads with large rucksacks picking their way across the road towards the border, and I wonder how many other people watched them too.
I was very glad to have seen it all, though it raised feelings of guilt and increased the acuity of my understanding of how insanely the world is set up, where some people have so much and most so little. In the evening we went out for dinner as usual and I thought several times of the town and the people there, but how easy it is to let these things slide away and become distant and shrug at the way things are. We were exhausted going to bed, and it was a pleasant to know we have nothing much to do tomorrow and no reason to get up early.
