The Boat Tour from Hell, and the Falls from Heaven

We picked the perfect ending to the perfect trip – Iguazu Falls, one of the new Natural Wonders of the World (joining another new inductee: the scene in the bathroom in Olinda).  Upon arrival in the airport, Megan took an aggressive lead and, prompted by excitement and general tourist naivety, we were suddenly convinced we needed to buy tickets on our phones. Immediately. We had heard that the “boat part” of the full tour of the falls was the best part, so, connecting the dots between A and B, Megan bought the Boat Tour for 9 a.m. the next morning. I followed suit and bought 3 more for Becca, Goose and I. Two important details to remember: 9 a.m., and “Boat Tour.”

Backing up now – on Saturday morning, Goose was slotted to go home from Rio to L.A. on Monday morning. On Saturday night, Goose executed one of the best smashmouth tourism moves I’ve ever been a part of. Three weeks previously, he’d accidentally booked his flight for Thursday from L.A. instead of Friday, although he was in Omaha on Thursday and flying back to L.A. that night. He awoke in a cold sweat (likely smelling of pure bloomin’ onion after 3 days at the C.W.S.), and called United to get his flight changed. For some reason, despite preaching the customer service principles of a Phillips 66, United Airlines obliged, and changed his flight to Friday. So, last Saturday morning, in perfectly innocent yet entirely malicious fashion, Goose used this to his advantage, acting like the changes were made as a fault of United’s, and begging for a free extra day on the end of his trip as a result. Because of United’s extreme lack of communication and operation on a system that relies solely on binary code, it worked – he was granted a free flight change to one day later. With the extra day, he bought a $700 flight for Iguazu Falls 2 days in advance. Trip changed. He was now slated to be in Iguazu for a full 18 hours. Amazing. 

After we settled in, we watched Germany nearly get blanked by Algeria at a nearby restaurant, and met some of the fellow world travelers at our hostel. The stories that come from these places are incredible. One Irish kid, John, was traveling South America alone for 4 months. Another couple booked a trip for 33 days, with no places to stay and no transportation in between. These are trips that would make mothers like Becca Swanson lose their minds in second. No plans, they were just going. Well, the next morning, we did the same. We just went for it. This is where things hit the fan for a few hours.

We awoke at 745 and considered what we should wear that day. We had heard we were going to get wet, but it was going to be in the mid-60s, so flip-flops and swim suits seemed appropriate. It was cold in the morning, so one layer with flip-flops along with some changes of shirts in a bag for later were the final consensus. We headed out. After only one small mixup that ended up with me on the opposite side of a 4-lane street as the bus that I was supposed to be getting on with the rest of the group and then getting two guillotine-esque bus doors slammed on my ribs as I barely made it in, we headed toward the falls. When we arrived, we immediately noticed it was still 45 degrees, and that when Brazil has a winter they REALLY have a winter. Becca and Megan immediately bought some super cheesy tourist sweatshirts for an extra layer. At the ticket counter in the park, I presented my e-mail confirmation of the 3 tickets I purchased for the boat tour, and Megan provided her name because she never actually received one (a sign of things to come). The ticket agent was confused, and slightly scared – these weren’t the right tickets. IN FACT, she explained, this tour didn’t even enter the falls. This was the boat tour of the islands, which is basically for bird hunters and whoever else in the world decides to come to Iguazu FALLS and tour the islands about a mile away from the falls. Additionally, because of extreme flooding in previous weeks, this boat was inaccessible by foot. BUT, they were going to work it out anyways – they found a tour guide, and they were going to make damn sure we saw these islands. We were given directions to a new kiosk in the middle of a forest where we were met by blank stares from the tour guides there. Each of them looked at each other like we were the dumbest people alive and each asked, “You know what this IS, right? And you’re aware the area is completely flooded?” Whatever. After another 20 minutes of them figuring out what exactly they were supposed to do with us four young idiots, we finally started walking toward the Iguazu River with our tour guide and were told we were going to have to start kayaking down the path because it’s impossible to walk. At this point, we were all shivering and accepting of whatever dumb boat transportation they could provide us. I would have accepted a blowup Shamoo whale from target and a paddle. “Toss me in the river, Jack, I’ve got nowhere to be.” Becca, contrarily, was turning cyanotic and her eyes had all but frozen over in the 45-degree and breezy weather.

Does Becca look like she has enough layers?

As many friends and family are aware, Becca is actually the only cold-blooded human on the face of the earth, and her body is physically incapable of homeostasis. It’s an ongoing situation, serious stuff. Don’t laugh. Anywhere outside of 75-78 degrees and we’ve got major problems – anything between shivering and sweating profusely is a possibility. So when she was stuck wearing only two sweatshirts, jeans, and flip-flops with socks, the Becca Body Temperature Situation was immediately upgraded from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 1. We proceeded on until reaching the walking path-turned-river. The tour guide had us get into a jeep and explained the following, with this exact wording: “We’re going to attempt to cross this in the jeep. If that doesn’t work, we’ll kayak.” This meant that a) this had never been tried before and b) there was so much flooding they were unsure that an oversized expedition SUV could even trek through. It did, thank the good Lord. We made it to the boats on the enormous Iguazu River, where we were greeted by ONE (1!) other passenger for the tour: an English bird-watching enthusiast. Told ya so. We prepared Becca as was necessary, hopped in the boats, and took off on the grandest of tour fails.

If you want to know what it was like, imagine you’re really, really, cold…then add 40 mph winds. We boated for about an hour, stopped once and saw a bird, which almost sent the English man overboard with excitement, and started boating back down the river, which was brown with mud from the flooding. I thought I saw an orange bird once but just realized I was looking at the inside of my lifejacket, as my head was buried inside it to avoid the arctic winds whipping across our faces. Next? Kayaking! YESSSS. The one way we decided we could possibly make ourselves more miserable was to make ourselves sit in inflatable kayaks full of water that spun in circles if you paddled them. So that’s what we did for a solid 20 frigid minutes. Becca was so cold at this point her mental functioning was completely lost, and she agreed to do this as well for reasons unbeknownst to any of us, including herself. We reached the dock again and immediately proceeded into doing calisthenics and dynamic warm ups to return any sort of blood flow to our extremities.

Jumping jacks, get the knees up!

 

We did this while waiting 25 minutes for the jeep which never arrived, likely lost in a pile of mud and filth somewhere. We proceeded walking and came upon a new river. We circumvented this obstacle by getting some random teenage interns to pull us across in different inflatable kayaks while they were barefoot. Goose didn’t even care anymore, and went all in, sacrificing himself and his jeans for the good of the trip.

Taking proper preventative measures

#Allin

Ready my ferry boat, Winston, chop chop

The “Safari” ended in grand fashion: with a handshake and directions to a bus stop to get us to the actual falls. We needed this to be the best sight a human could possibly lay eyes on to make up for the disastrous, but memorable morning. 

And it was. The clouds burned off and saved us all. Neither words nor pictures have any hope of describing what a place like this is like. Imagine you’re in your backyard. Now blow your entire backyard up, turn it into a giant canyon, add some trees, and, throughout the entire canyon, through the trees and lush green bushes and plants, add the most enormous, cascading waterfalls in the world. That’s Iguazu Falls. Almost. As we walked the trail, the views grew increasingly intimate and increasingly beautiful. At one particular part, Goose actually became an entirely new human, ready to make love to mother nature at any moment. Here’s proof:

Yes

YES

YES!

YESSSS!!!

There are some moments in life where you are so awestruck by nature’s beauty that you feel compelled to just stand and stare. You’re drawn into it, and careless that the wind from the falls is whipping water bullets across your body, soaking you to the core. At least, that happened to us. Goose, Becca and I just stood, stared, smiled and even yelled about the beauty while we were out on the “Devil’s Throat,” platform, which puts you as close to the falls as possible. Megan was somewhere watching from a distance because she didn’t want to get wet but whatever, she got the idea. Goose explained that in a moment like that, if he died, he just hoped everybody knew how happy he was as he died. THAT is how beautiful Iguazu was.

 

Funny enough, rainbows actually taste like Skittles

And now, the trip has come to a close, Goose has gone home and we’re on our way back too…PSYCH!!!! WE’RE STUCK IN SAO PAOLO!!!! This blog will be continued when we actually have some semblance of an idea what’s going on, but United has left everyone in the dark. Here’s what we know: yesterday’s plane arrived at 10 in the morning, broke, and United did everything they could to fix the problem before our flight at 9:10 p.m. from Sao Paolo was cancelled at 8:45 p.m. And by “did everything they could,” I mean they did absolutely nothing and sent a 24-year-old employee into the fire to control the crowds and make something up about how we were all being re-routed. We were all placed on buses (not kidding) and sent out to a Holliday Inn with the promise of a flight the next day at 1 p.m. despite 150 customers having a grand total of 0 boarding passes and even less clues as to what they were supposed to do to get home. The bus was to leave the next morning “around 9 or 10,” back to the airport. It didn’t. Why? Because the flight at 1 p.m. the day after the cancellation never existed. We were lucky enough to be on hold with United for a short 25 minutes, and are now re-routed through Delta (thank God) at 1130 tonight, a full 26 hour and 20 minute delay. Considering there’s a hurricane ripping the East Coast to shreds at the moment, we’re just hoping to make it back at some point on the 4^th of July. Of 2015.