"Meet back at the top in four hours" directed our Brazil Group Study Exchange leader as five young professionals from Northeast Missouri plotted an afternoon at the Argentinian side of Iquazu Falls National Park.
"It's about six miles, we might make it" I whispered to Scott, convincing him we should hike down to a site called Escaleras a Cataratas Pequeno on the trail sign.
_______________
We had just completed the first two weeks of a Rotary tour of the southern Brazilian state of Parana. Challenged to hoops by each local chapter, we soon became known as the Bad Dream Team in disdain for the first U.S.Olympic basketball team of professional players who had just swept the 1993 winter games. Tired of losing to business owners and their hoops-obsessed teens in the capital city of Curitiba, we'd bribed a Rotarian pilot with much coveted American dollars to fly us out to the world's largest waterfall by volume of water.
"Two downhill hours, but there it is" I observed to Scott from the top of a thousand step stairway along a clear stream spilling down a cliffside and into the wide Iquazu River still hazy a mile downstream from the tremendous cataract. "If we go down, we'll never make it back in time."
"Fuck it" yelled the realtor and former Northeast Missouri State University defensive end lumbering down the stairs through the dense understory with me in hot pursuit.
Fuck it we did, rollicking in the icy jets until the late summer sun dropping below the canyonside reminded us of the time.
"Either we run back or rock hop to the base of the big falls" I proposed. "There might be a way to the top."
He leapt for the first rounded boulder and then we climbed and jumped for a sweaty quarter mile before the futility sank in.
"Let's float back to the little falls" he urged stepping to the edge of a tan megalith.
"A boat!" I shouted, and we proceeded to wave wildly as first one and then another small motorboat sped downstream.
"Wave these at the next one" I offered, handing over two twenties and keeping two for myself.
Our eighty turned the trick that two crazy gringos couldn't, and we soon disembarked at a ranger's hut four miles downstream. He emerged from under the hood of an old Jeep.
"No maquina" he said with a toothy grin, holding up two oil smeared hands.
"Telephone?"
"No telefono."
"Muchas gracias" I called over my shoulder as we took off up the dirt road.
"For nothing" grumbled Scott trudging along as if in full pads at the end of an August double-session.
After an hour of coaxing the big guy to run, we were only halfway to the top.
"We're late anyway, might as well enjoy it" he reasoned while slowing to a stroll through the lush forest.
That's when we glimpsed a police jeep bouncing down the trail toward us.
"What happened" cried our fearless leader, sweaty and pale in his fear that we had fallen off the cliff.
"We liked that little waterfall" Scott rationalized as I blushed to match the trumpet flowers dangling from every tree.
_________________
"Two downhill hours, but there it is" I observed to Scott from the top of a thousand step stairway along a clear stream spilling down a cliffside and into the wide Iquazu River still hazy a mile downstream from the tremendous cataract. "If we go down, we'll never make it back in time."
"Fuck it" yelled the realtor and former Northeast Missouri State University defensive end lumbering down the stairs through the dense understory with me in hot pursuit.
Fuck it we did, rollicking in the icy jets until the late summer sun dropping below the canyonside reminded us of the time.
"Either we run back or rock hop to the base of the big falls" I proposed. "There might be a way to the top."
He leapt for the first rounded boulder and then we climbed and jumped for a sweaty quarter mile before the futility sank in.
"Let's float back to the little falls" he urged stepping to the edge of a tan megalith.
"A boat!" I shouted, and we proceeded to wave wildly as first one and then another small motorboat sped downstream.
"Wave these at the next one" I offered, handing over two twenties and keeping two for myself.
Our eighty turned the trick that two crazy gringos couldn't, and we soon disembarked at a ranger's hut four miles downstream. He emerged from under the hood of an old Jeep.
"No maquina" he said with a toothy grin, holding up two oil smeared hands.
"Telephone?"
"No telefono."
"Muchas gracias" I called over my shoulder as we took off up the dirt road.
"For nothing" grumbled Scott trudging along as if in full pads at the end of an August double-session.
After an hour of coaxing the big guy to run, we were only halfway to the top.
"We're late anyway, might as well enjoy it" he reasoned while slowing to a stroll through the lush forest.
That's when we glimpsed a police jeep bouncing down the trail toward us.
"What happened" cried our fearless leader, sweaty and pale in his fear that we had fallen off the cliff.
"We liked that little waterfall" Scott rationalized as I blushed to match the trumpet flowers dangling from every tree.
_______________
Cataratas de Curitiba
The spring at your source
gushes into old homes
rushing out with coliforms,
flows into factories
running out with chloroform,
and trickles into favelas
overflowing with the children
who will clean the homes
and work assembly lines.
- March 1993
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