So, I'll let you guess. Which flyover is Buenos Aires...
...and which is Iguazú, home of the big water?
I'm gonna back up a minute.
Editor's note, to those pressed for time: don't miss the video toward the bottom. Apologies if I fall rather short of Eastwood...So: I'm now five plane flights into an eight-flight trip. You've heard the part where I get a ticket north to the big water getaway. (Turns out, planning or no, I'd likely have to fly back through Buenos no matter what: flights out of Iguazú's "international" airport have just one destination.)
So, thanks to my friendly, slow-witted travel agent guy, I've got an extra day to kill up north, with only morning flights in (the whole transaction was befuddling) but arriving too late Friday for the Argentine-side tour, and me lacking the yellow fever vaccination for the Brazilian
frontera. So, I did what I frequently do on my last day in town (astute readers will have seen this coming): I dutifully packed my bag, laid out my passport with the next morning's clothes, went out and got stinking drunk.
It's not that I was being irresponsible. (Stumbling in at 4-something a.m. en route to a 5:30 taxi? No...) It's just that, confronted with a suddenly last day in B.A., and having planned to have Friday and Saturday night under the big top, I felt obligated to have one great cow-based meal -- this I did at a fancy harbor restaurant, over a bottle of Malbec (I guessed 300 bottles of wine on the menu, with not one by the glass) -- and drift down to a Tango dive in San Telmo, where the ridiculously pricey cover "covers" for there being only two other paying guests present, but also as many whiskeys as you can whisper for with only the requisite
porteño slurring...
The Tango was classic -- a super-suave looking fellow, gesticulating grandiosely, crooning
tremolo profundo to unnamed, unfaithful females, backed by a photo of Bogie himself, complete with shit-eating grin and fedora.
Here's a video -- not of that singer, but of another. This one, an older fella, started my night curled into a corner with a lady his age, and a sharply dressed younger couple who finally emerged for one or two highly disciplined, impassioned tango steps. My favorite number was, according to the older singer, an old Mexican yarn:
Por Una Cabeza. It was way too Godfather in there to be toting out a camera much, but I managed a sampling of one number:
Says I, you've got to love the gentle disdain with which they treat the microphone as the piece wears on.
As the whiskey kept flowing, the singers gesturing suggestively, I couldn't help but think of my man Rich, as I lifted my glass and...
Long story short: Flight was at eight. I woke up at noon.
Panic!!! Self-immolation! Have I suddenly dropped hundreds of dollars to
not go to Iguazú and the legendary falls?!
Do I go back to the travel agent, tail between legs, for another marathon dehydration session? Do I mutter
fuck it, and jump a cab to the airport just to see? (I'll never know why my Blackberry alarm didn't go off -- I checked it again later, everything was set right; and I don't think I slept through it. But I also don't know why I didn't think they'd have wake up calls...)
In the end, I chose
fuck it, and the cab to the airport. And was rewarded:
Sure there's an afternoon flight. You're welcome to it --
tchau.
I bought a phone card, scared up the number in Iguazú (hey, with no internet, no cell line, in Spanish, gimme some credit) so the guide service still met me at the airport -- and in the end, with a day and two nights still to go, I got to quit Buenos precisely the way I would have chosen in the first place.
Give or take some decidedly head-against-wall moments, and a rather stringy hangover...
So: Iguazú. I'll try to keep it short!
The
cataratas (waterfalls) were awesome. What's remarkable is how many of them there are. It's not what you'd call overwhelming all at once; more like the place keeps showing off.
I did go for the boat ride, where they zip you once around the island (Argentina on one side, Brazil the other), dunk you in a few of the falls for effect (and because it's upwards of 100 degrees out, though with the modest humidity it never felt it) and before you know it, you're drying off in an open-air truck through a jungle path to the souvenir shop.
Okay! Waterfalls... Check.
Sadly, no monkeys. (Sorry, Ashley. Didn't I mention the horsey I fed later?
PONIES!!)
Oh: And those weird, raccoony things that hang around the snack bar? You're
not supposed to feed them. And don't eat around them (?). And they bite(?!!). Niema Quiet, your thoughts?
(I can hear your
I would flip, the fuck, out from here.)
What I want to get to, actually, is the restaurant last night. (Really? From Sao Paolo, it seems weeks ago.) I had decided to walk the 2 or 3 km (i.e., a mile or two) down the road into town, where I'd jogged the evening before. What I loved about Iguazú -- population about 50k, a native told me -- is that it feels like itself. Not overly touristy, except with other Argentines and Brazilians, who blend. Not much money going around amongst the locals; yet despite the sparse lifestyle, they look well-enough fed and, generally, contented. I never felt threatened in the least, and thought an outdoor grill might be worth the stroll.
I wasn't disappointed. I ordered my customary bottle of Malbec (hey, I'm on vacation) and agua
con gas (finally acquiring the taste); enjoyed some delicious pieces of cow, always cow, with wonderful spices and juices, but very much like a backyard barbeque, with some hundred-plus people sitting out, enjoying the night. The band leader, a kindly type with specs and a gaucho hat, who loved nothing more than to gyrate one leg in front of the other while scraping one of those rhythm-scraper things, would turn around from time to time to include a passerby on the street behind him.
Finding no extra tables, two youngish guys were seated at mine. After an hour of keeping to ourselves, we got to talking in Spanish. These were the natives; the more talkative one was relieved that an American found his home such a paradise.
Here is perhaps the band's best number: the lead is the fiddler's son, all of
four years old. Tell me he doesn't kill. (Yes, the house drummer's like, ten.)
I'd love to stay and complain about Sao Paolo. But I think I'll leave it at that.
As they say here:
Tchau...
