As it write this, the weather is dreary and it´s drizzling outside (i can feel your smug smiles from here.) My tan has turned from a nice mahogany colour to a patchy grey. This is probably due to our proximity to Iguazu falls, a huge waterfall on the edge of Argentina and Brazil. We´re staying in a small nowhere town called Puerto Iguazu, where everybody drives incredibly slow, and all the restaurants serve is pizza, pasta and burgers. The quality of the burger determines the quality of the restaurant. Everything here is built around people coming, spending a day at the falls, eating, sleeping and moving on. That´s pretty much what we´re doing too. We got off our 26 hour bus journey from Brazil, (it´s ok, the last Harry Potter was on, so that kept us busy), headed to our hostel, enjoyed sleeping horizontally again, got up bright and early and headed to the waterfall. Luckily, it was raining when we set off, meaning we´d well and truly perfected the ´drowned rat´look before getting anywhere near the huge mass of water. I´d also like to say, at this point, that there is absoloutely no way, NO WAY, a rain poncho can look good. There was me and some 80 something American tourists wearing the glorified plastic bag, and they probably did it more justice than me.
The falls are incredible, and while i would like to get truly deep and meaningful and describe how awe inspired and reflective i felt, i just kept thinking, ´This looks so much like Jurassic Park.´I was convinced Jeff Goldnblum would appear riding a giant dinasour. I suppose what i´m trying to say is it looked prehistoric: check out the pictures, i hope you agree. We took the boat into the waterfall which was a hoot, though the power of the spray meant you couldnt actually see anything, so it was more like having a really strong power shower in your clothes than anything else.
That is my most up to date activity and i´ve currently crossed one border, only to cross into Uruguay tomorrow to then go BACK and experience the joys of Argentina good and proper in a few days. But enough of the future, i have the wonders of carnival to tell!
Since my last blog, it all got a little manic. We travelled back to Rio from Paraty and went on a hunt for our hostel. I have to say, we were pretttyyyy worried about this place, as a) it was relatively cheap over carnival and b) it didnt have a minimum stay of 5 nights, which every other hostel did. We feared for the worst. On the website it said the dorm roomed 50+ people. We got there, and found that 50+ actually meant 64, sharing two toilets and three showers. OH. But fear not worried adults, it was actually great! Our ´girls dorm´was separated by a large sheet, so we had all the privacy we needed, and it was probably the quietest hostel we´ve been in, as everybody just went out, came home and slept. Once our fears had been quelled about the mega sleepover situation, we dumped our bags and got picked up by Mr.Hang glider.How great would it be if that was his actual name and his profession was hang gliding?! Alas, i just cant remember what he was called. Off i went to throw myself off a cliff with only a large kite and a nonchalant Brazilian to keep me afloat. After a whole 30 seconds instruction, which consisted of, ´Just keep running off the edge, don´t jump, just run.´I figured, right, i better start running then! Off we flew, soaring over the top of Rio: the view was unrivalled, especially as it was a perfectly clear day. It was nice to be able to spot some places we´d been too. All the sightseeing paid off! Once my stomach left my throat and returned to its normal resting place, i couldn´t help but do the really British thing of forcing idle chit chat. After the inital ooohs and aaahs, you´re pretty attached to this person(the instructor)for the duration and i didnt want to seem rude. I went for the, ´So, how often do you fly?´´What are you up to this weekend?´ ´Weathers nice isint it?´route.I think he probably thought (knew) i was a complete dweeb, but overall the experience was an amazing one, and i´m glad we managed to squeeze it in.
Once back on land, we headed back home hoping to find hoards of people ready for some carnival partying. There was three people, Warren the 60 year old Australian nomad who was all partied out and two English people. Well, best make the most of a quiet situation! I pulled out my much revered cat mask and feathers, and we headed into the night to find some carnival spirit. What we didnt quite realise, in our naivety, was that a lot of the revellry takes place in the day and at night, it´s the slightly seedier version. Luckily, our group had grown to incorporate two Colombians, so i was sure that if anything kicked off, these guys could handle it. We had a great, if somewhat interrupted, night. All the ladies definitely learned that NO needs to be said multiple times in a firm, preferably Brazilian accent to get shot of the wandering eyes of the males!
The next day was far more successful. I´d heard about the Sargenta Pimento Bloc party, where they have a Beatles Latin American cover band, and everyone dresses up. We didnt have much time to stay, but did manage to fit in a quick boogie. Particular favourites being the jazzed up versions of ´Twist and Shout´and ´Drive My Car.´I bet old John and Paul didnt expect people would be samba dancing when they wrote Abbey Road!
We only had two nights of carnival, and the second night was the most anticipated. The SAMBADROME (duh duh duumm). This is the big culmination of carnival, which takes place in a huge outdoor stadium, where the best samba schools parade in a bid to win the ´best school´title. The event begins at 9pm and finishes at 5am. We got picked up at 7pm so it was a good 10 hour slog. The scale of the thing was barely comprehendable. 6 schools of around 2000 people parade for an hour and half with their own music section and 40 or 50 costume varieties, most of which were incredibly detailed. The floats were out of this world, enormous moving objects of weird and wonderful creation. I tried to capture some of the costumes in the pictures, but none of them really do it justice. All they served for food was Bob´s burgers, so i managed to stay awake mostly down to cheeseburgers and lots of coca cola ( i didnt want to give anyone the wrong idea by just saying coke.) It was a pretty tiring event but worth well well worth it. Ive not really seen anything done on such a big scale before ( think Tramlines needs to up its game to be honest.) It was a very memorable and apt way to finish our time in Brazil. I can only apologise if i come home and decide to wear only feathers and glitter from now on, but if they can pull it off, i can too right?
Next stop Uruguay, then Buenos Aires. Sorry the pictures are all so ´landscapey.´While my camera is very good (thanks James) it´s quite big, so not great on taking on nights out etc. Heena is good at that, so i´ll get some of her ´people pictures´to add a bit of human persepctive soon.
Adios for now,
Amy x
