rain rain rainforests

iguazu falls

Basically my hair was wet all weekend. It rained, it poured, it drizzled, and then it poured some more. This weekend, I had my first experience in a rainforest, and now have officially experienced why they were coined with that name. Normally I don’t trust weather forecasts that much because often times the weather never turns out to be quite like they say. Well that philosophy bit me in the ass this time. I am still trying to dry out my things from this weekend.

Our school went on a weekend adventure to Iguazu Falls, the biggest waterfalls in the world. It was absolutely amazing, in all ways. First of all, it was such a riot to travel with 56 kids. A group so big, that it felt that all we were every doing was waiting, but it was well worth the wait. It all started Wednesday evening at 6:00 when we all met to get on a bus. We had to be early, otherwise we would have been left. Well, getting there 10 minutes early ended up to be a waste. The bus didn’t show up until 7:30. I couldn’t feel my toes (even though by the end, I was wearing two pairs of socks). As soon as our butts were in the seats, bottles of wine started popping up everywhere. Apparently, all college kids think alike. Fourteen hours later, we arrive at a bus station, only to wait for another bus. A few activities later full of waiting for 10 minutes to walk 20 yards in order to wait another 10 minutes, we arrived at our hotel exhausted. I quickly passed out that night after the most refreshing shower that I have had since living in South America to the sound of a movie in English and my head on the comfiest pillow I have felt in a while. Any bed seems like paradise after sleeping on a bus.

The next day we headed to the national park. As soon as we got there, half the kids ran to buy ponchos. It was pouring. I thought my raincoat would suffice. Oops. Once again, it was wait, move, wait, move. But damn, every 10 minutes of waiting was well worth the next 10 of moving. After a short train ride through the forest, we arrived to the falls. Every step you took further, you could see yet another fall. The water was a dark reddish brown from all the excess runoff. It blended in with the dark skies. As nice as it would have been to see clear water contrasting with a blue sky, it didn’t matter. The falls were breathtaking. The railways that we were walking on were ridiculously crazy. We literally were walking over the tops of waterfalls watching the water belt down hundreds of feet below us. It was scary, but so cool. Next, we went on a boat ride to see the falls from the bottom. We were on a dingy zooming through the thrashing rapids to the bottoms of the line of falls. Not a single thing on me was dry by the end. It felt like I went swimming in my clothes, I practically did.

The next day we woke up to go see an Aborigine village. A guide took us through the jungle to show us how they survive. We were shown the various traps that are used for hunting and different styles of huts. Shortly into the tour, clearly it had to start raining to follow the trend of the weekend. But I found it hilarious and so perfect. Some kids starting taking their shirts off, as it was their last set of dry clothes, and most people took their shoes off. We were walking barefoot in red mud, through a jungle, in the pouring rain in Argentina. It was so surreal. I couldn’t help but think about what my friends were doing back home in NYC compared to what I was doing. Clearly, I won!

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