So here are some pictures from the fabulous weekend I jsut spent in Iguazú. To sum up, I felt like I was on a moving sidewalk through paradise for two days. This place was very moving and spiritual.
On a more wordly note, you will also notice some decidedly less heavenly photos of the highway which connects the airport to the national park and then to the city of Puerto Iguazú. What happened was that the parents of the public school kids in Puerto Iguazú had been protesting the horrible conditions of the schools there for several months and had decided out of desperation to take their protest into the streets. This took the form of a ¨corte de la ruta¨ or roadblock of the only highway into town. Argentines takes their protesting very seriously and this was a serious picket line. I was unable to reach the city for the first day and spent several hours in the bus from the airport stopping on the highway before we turned around and headed to the waterfalls for the rest of the afternoon. That night some friends I had made on the bus and I managed to get through the corte when they decided to lift it to pedestrians later on that night after we had waited there with all our lugage thinking of where to sleep outside (since ALL the hostels and hotels in the area were on the other sid of the corte) for quite a while taking in the action. The next morning, we tried to cross back through the corte to spend the whole day at Iguazú (since we only had a couple of hours the first day) but they were having non of it. They had decided overnight not to let a single person or car through until the Province´s Minister of Education came out there to negociate. So we waited. Eventually the minister did show up and we managed to sneak in in the mass confusion surrounding his entourage but they wouldn´t let us out the other side so we wound up stuck inside the 40 or so yards where the protesters were camped out on the highway between two long Argentine banners that bloqued al lanes of traffic. As the negotiations were taking place (which consisted of angry protesters taking turns on the microphone bitching at the minister and him smiling and nodding very uncomfortably in the middle of a huge crowd and military guards) a ridiculously strong jungle downpour began to come down. We took shelter under a huge piece of black plastic that the protesters had ready and preceeded to be stuck there for about an hour and a half waiting for the torential rain to let up. It may sound miserable, but it has to be one of the best experiences of my life. There I was, taken in sponteneously to the struggle with the protesters (it was NOT EASY keeping that ¨tarp¨ over our heads in the strong wind) in the middle of the highway in the middle of the jungle in the middle ofa very dysfunctional political system. People were laughing, there were children playing in the mud. The Argentine national anthem and snare drums broke out on more than one occassion, all while the minister and the protest leaders huddled underneath and Ice Cream umbrella in the middle trying to sign an agreement.
Definitely an experience. Anyway, they finally signed off on an agreement and they lifted the corte and all marched back into town. I spent the whole of the next day in the Iguazú National Park which was nothing but paradise, even with the confused British tourists and hectic Chinese tour groups. The next day I spent in the town where I went to the meeting of the Paraná and Iguazú rivers which forms the boundary of Paraguay, Brasil, and Argentina. It was a very moving view and a great end to an amazing trip.
