Iguazu Falls!!

I had approximately 2 weeks with my parents in Brazil, and realistically, that is not nearly enough to see all of it. I had been doing some research, and I decided to take them to Iguazu falls and Rio de Janeiro. Iguazu falls was first. *****Warning Gratuitous pictures of waterfalls ahead********

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 We got into Foz do Iguazu and we found it to be a very quaint little town by a river and we spent the first bit of time just walking around exploring the city. It was an instant and very dramatic change from Salvador. In Salvador, walking the streets at night is virtually unthinkable in certain areas, whereas here, we did it without too much question and less incident beyond finding a very cheap all you can eat place. We stayed at Iguazu Guest house, an awesome, cheap, and rather friendly hostel right by the river. There was a bit of a social scene at the hostel, everyone would gather at the central table, hang out, share traveler stories. I danced some foxo, listened to some music, and relaxed in anticipation of the day to come.

The all you can eat churascarria=stomach overload

We actually managed to wake up decently early (which is an accomplishment for my family), and we were off on a series of buses to the Iguazu falls. We are just a magnet for tourism agencies and everyone and their grandmother was advertising how we should get there and what we should do when we are there. We decided to take the Macuco boat ride to see the falls a slightly different way from normal.

We went on the bus to the macuco station, and it was bitterly bitterly cold. The frigid wind made my dad reconsider his choice of only a shirt.

And you can see him styling his new and fashionably overpriced jacket on our jungle safari truck.

We got out of the trucks and got to hike a little. My dad absolutely abhors guided tours, so we lagged behind the group a bit, and waited until the chatter of the argentinian tourists had faded and all that remained was the chirp of insects and the call of the birds. As we walked further, a slow sound developed into a patter and then a roar as we passed a waterfall. (I love that sound)

There was a lot of different types of plants on our trek

There were also a lot of butterflies, on the order of 100's in a relatively small area. They would veritably flock.

The fams before the boat trip. My dad was mentioning how he didn't really want to get wet. I felt bad, because I knew he would.

The boat trip was definitely worth it to me (a little bit less so for my dad).

The falls gradually came into view

The camera situation was pretty interesting, because I had to balance keeping it dry, and trying to take pictures of an a really beautiful landmark from a bouncy speedboat. This was one of my last photos from the boat, because after this, I wrapped my camera up in plastic, and then tucked it under my poncho, issuing a silent prayer that it remained dry. The french man sitting next to me found that his camera card was full at a very inopportune time, and had to stow his away, but not without a curse. And while it is hard to convey here, going right up to the falls is pretty awesome (in the actual sense of the word). The boat took us so close that just the spray from the falls forced our eyes shut. I tried fervently to keep my eyes open and capture the moment, but the sheer force of these waterfalls is incredible. The boat driver called it showering, and I found that rather accurate, as I am sure did my parents. We took several "showers" that day.

Me cheesin, very wet, and post lots of wind

It was funny after the boat ride to hear my dad describe the boat driver as "sadistic" for continually dipping us under the waterfall, but I think secretly he enjoyed it.

They had this animal called a coati and they were very attracted to my bag for some reason.

Most of the rest of the pictures of the falls can stand for themselves but I will intersperse the occasional comment here and there.

vultures circling is never a good sign

We had the most ridiculous looking ponchos on. This observatory lookout thing was really the bee's knees, because you could have waterfalls on all sides. When you are staring at something from a distance, for some reason it doesn't allways feel real. With the water within touching distance, with driplets spraying from the waterfall basically sideways raining, with rainbows forming before your eyes, it was a bit more real. 

This rainbow had been developing all through our path and it just got better as we went further. You can see the faint outline of the double rainbow, and as we walked along the observation path, it turned into a 360 degree rainbow. 

Not sure if that worked (but if it did, that is the falls in motion. The crazy thing, and to give this some perspective, this is only a small fraction of the waterfalls that constitute Iguazu falls. It is literally a 2 km hike on just the brazil side full of waterfalls, and apparently the argentinian side has even more.

So I haven't fully described the beauty that is a churrascarria. It is all you can eat, but they bring over delicious meats and ask you if you want any --- the answer is yes. Yes, yes, and yes, until your stomach is close to bursting.

That's a yes

That's a yes too

It was super delicious, and after not eating all day, even more so.

The next day we went to the.....zoo. It was actually pretty fun, and we decided it wasn't worth it to go all the way to argentina, because as US citizens, we would have had to pay 160$ each in addition to transport and entrance. We instead took a very chill day.

Monkey!

We had turtle races, and we did some turtle commentary too, imbuing the turtles with human personalities.

We had one final day at Iguazu falls, and there was a bit of a dilemma on what we should do. We ultimately decided to try to hike in the park, but we didn't realize that the trails came with hefty price tags, that they had to be in groups (my dad didn't like that part) and that the next one left several hours later. My parents were like to heck with this, and we set out walking along the road. I mentioned how I should run at some point that day, and they were like, no time like the present. Off you go. If you insist I replied, and off I went on about an hour run. The coolest aspect of the run by far was the hordes of butterflies. I would run through an area and dozens of butterflies would fly up in my wake.

I came back with some bites on my ankles, but overall, a very successful trip to Iguazu falls.

Seeing the parents at last, and saying goodbye

And suddenly, not exactly sure how it happened, but there was one more week of the program left. I had written and turned in my ISP, the massive research project of the semester, and all I had left to do was to present my findings. Of course, this meant that ALL the other people in the group had to present When you multiply a 40 minute presentation by 24 people, that is a lot of time sitting through presentations. Some of the presentations were definitely interesting, but the sheer amount was daunting, especially considering it was all crammed into the span of two and a half days. We were again in the convent, again with a curfew and again, our collective group ended up displeasing the nuns, being too loud and racous.

The final day we were officially together, the program staff had asked if there were any suggestions for improvement. I settled in my seat, knowing that this would be a loooong conversation. Midway through, my parents showed up, and I essentially just left. I only know select parts of Salvador, so we went out to explore these areas. I realized quickly that I had never actually seen Salvador from the purely tourist perspective. It was a novel experience for me, having been a place for so long yet suddenly acting the consummate tourist. We went along the typical jaunts in campo grande, but then they pointed up to a fort that I had never really noticed. 

here is the fort

My darling parents. I find myself fairly overprotective of them while traveling, telling them to be cautious and only showing select areas to them.

We continued our walking tour of the city...going pretty sketchy places, up and down hills and finally getting to avenida sete.

More graffiti. My mom was a fan of it too. It actually kind of reminds me of Bane from Batman.

The historic district of Salvador, the Pelorinho, seemed like a good choice to visit next. I had been here multiple times before, but this was the first time that people continually come at me with English, trying to sell us wares, trying to get us to exchange money---my parents do not exactly hide their identity as tourists.

On our first food outing, we went to a real restaurant, which was certainly a change of pace from the standard budget salgado fare. I ordered a Ceasar salad out of the vain hope that it would be a real Ceasar. Instead, it was a thing vaguely resembling a salad with a lime dressing. We had acaraje, a dish composed of fried bread and shrimp and shrimp paste (which I swear tastes better than it sounds) and a few other starches

Knowing my parents, it was no surprise to me that our next stop was the myriad churches inhabiting the Pelorinho.

The churches were pretty cool, and VERY ornate

They had this really cool facade present in the antechamber of the church. It was painted onto tile, and together with many of the other pieces constructed scenes from the past.

This guy was really awesome. I forget his name already, but the singular feature of his face that stood out was a gigantic mole on his forehead, and it reminded me of the scene from Austin Powers, where he is like moley moley moley (I know, I am a terrible person). I tried to get past this and when I did, this man schooled me on religion in Brazil. He went over the different artistic styles pertaining to the different time periods like the development of the baroque style. He taught me about sincretism, which is a mix of catholicism and the local religion of candomble. The orixas of candomble are equivalent to beneficient spirits, and he taught me about one of the most important orixas called exu, which is the messenger orixa, in charge of technology and communication, and he told me about how exu was the one orixa that had the potential for evil. He spent about an hour teaching me as we toured through the church...in Portuguese, which I was pretty excited about, that I could understand that kind of thing in Portuguese. I am just afraid of losing it all when I get back to the States.

The guide had a little story about this front of the church. Apparently, this is the baroque style, and the church switched to a more reserved style later on called the classical style. As there were too many naked cherubs and the like (risque right?), the church leaders covered up the front to the church with a white material, and only upon an accidenta; chip did a man realize that there was something under it. 8 years later with the aid of some of the local artists from the academy of art, they had restored it to its former glory.

A cool little crest of sorts

Saying goodbye to everyone was really hard. I had made some solid friendships during my time here, and generally liked everyone on the program. We had spent virtually every waking moment with each other, so it was really the end of the abroad program when we had to say goodbye. I already made plans to meet up with a couple of the people

I was hosting Ray, a friend of mine from the program, in the hotel room for the night, and as I was leaving, we agreed to meet back at the hotel at 6/630. This turned out to be faulty planning on my part. The parental units wanted to eat dinner in the city, rather in the remote area where our hotel was, and as I didn't want to make them go all the way back I journeyed by myself. I knew I first had to get to Barra to take the bus, and literally as I was explaining the plan to meet up with my parents, I spied the bus that I needed. Because it was extremely tight timing, with about two hours to go and at least a 45 minute bus ride each way without any traffic, I jumped on, pointing at a building and saying meet in front of that building at 730. I had a good conversation about my research on the bus over, and unfortunately I slightly overshot my stop so I had to run  to the hotel. I knocked, Ray got ready, and we were off. We were relatively lucky and our bus came pretty quickly, but that luck seemed to evaporate when the bus started turning inland (when that kind of thing happens, you just want to get off, and try again) We took a new bus, and found our way to the meeting site in time.

Here is the Barra sunset

We then worked to find a decent restaraunt, as it was my mom's birthday and we wanted to celebrate it in style. My dad is picky when it comes to this kind of thing, but eventually we found a place that looked satisfactory. Looks did not deceive. As a few other friends from the program joined us, we decided to divide the food family style and ordered everything from an entire fried fish topped with onion rings to a very cheesy  lasagna to the classic moqueca dish (a kind of bubbly and delicious fish stew). We ate to the point of stuffedness and then ate some more.

Very cheesy lasagna

Our group sans me, as I was taking the picture.

And then an early wakeup and a goodbye to Ray was all that separated me from going to Iguazu falls.

Work and play

We came back from the village of Remanso, and had one day to spend in Chapada, the place where I went ziplining/snorkeling/caving. There were a couple options presented as to what to do, and I decided to go on the hike to one of the tallest waterfalls in Brazil, the Cachoeira da Fumaca, a waterfall that registers in at 353 meters high. Of course, the thing about a 353 meter high waterfall is that you must first climb to the top to see the waterfall from the top. 

Our guide led us to a firefighter station first. I grabbed a handy cane and was ready to set out. I was definitely that annoying person on the first 2 km straight up hill, charging ahead, issuing encouraging statements to people who were working pretty hard to get up the hill. I enjoyed the climb, but I could definitely acknowledge that it wasn't easy, and I took a few water breaks on the way. There were some beautiful views though, kind of like the grand canyon but a bit more verdant.

This was from the top of the hike, before we went inland.

The terrain was mostly chapparal. 

We had about 5 km of flat ground next. It was beautiful, rugged, and we followed a windy path with some puddles and we had some fun jumping from rock to rock, trying to arrive on the other side dry and unscathed. Our group inevitably separated on the way, as we all had different paces. They eventually found their way back, and rejoined us with a tale of how they got lost, not sure which path to take. 

We finally arrived to the waterfall, and it was basically a huge canyon culminating in a waterfall

We had one of those lunches that theoretically should not have been nearly as delicious as it was. But after hiking, food just tastes so much better. We washed some veggies in the creek, had sandwiches with questionable meat and some heavily processed cookies, but again we relished every bite.

The waterfall was unlike any I have ever seen. It didn't reach all the way to the bottom, instead, the water stream dissipated on the way down, going whichever way the wind blew. 

The mist even blew over to form a rainbow

Another view of the falls You can see that my camera got a bit wet in the interim

Here the mist is super dispersed

And here it is going straight up, crazy right?

We got to climb out to the edge and look off, and while you really didn't want to fall off, strangely enough I didn't feel too much fear. It was kind of exhilarating actually.

Did I mention you didn't want to fall off?

There was only some mist, so sometimes you would just see a patch of rainbow.

Walking back I think all of us were tired, but I amused myself doing some sword practice on the bushes-- Have I ever mentioned that I am a kid at heart?

The graffiti in this town is awesome.

I made french toast for my birthday, treating my host parents to food american style.

yum

Research Period

So the research period passed without too much event, so I will skip a lot of unnecessary details.

We had an apartment between 6 people and me, and it was actually surprisingly spacious with surprisingly good wifi and a kitchen and everything. The biggest perk was probably that we were about 100 steps from a major supermarket, and each of us went there either every day or every other day. 

I also started up some jiujitsu here in Barra too, and went about 5 or 6 times a week, so we had established a very regular rhythm. Before I had fully moved, I got promoted to a blue belt, with a rather unconventional promotion in multiple respects. A week before, my sensei had said that he was promoting me when I left. I had not really expected this, as I had only done jiujitsu in total for about 4 months, and the average time for promoting to blue belt is between 1 and 4 years, and one is generally considered fast. So it really surprised and gratified me to hear this. I spent hours on youtube trying to learn all the moves that I thought would be on this "test" when really the "test" consisted of just facing a lot of people in a row, which is can I say exhausting. I probably went 30 or 40 minutes straight and by the end (actually by the middle, but they didn't seem to care) I was gasping for water.

To fully transition, I also had to submit to the "Corridor" again, which is a gauntlet of sorts where you run along a line of people and back, hunched with your kimono slightly protecting you and them hitting you with their belts. It was an incentive to run fast to say the least. The worst part about it psychologically was that you never knew when you were done. At first they said 3 times back and forth, but then when I had finished, the Sensei set me on a fourth time, with me slightly accusatory, saying he had said only 3 times, but run it I did.

I really felt happy to earn a blue belt. These are my teachers. The one on the right is a MMA fighter and had recently won a professional bout. The one on the left was the leader of the gym, Grimauldo Oliveira, and had said that he had recently gotten like 3rd in the world championship. 3rd! That is crazy good.

My back immediately after. If it is not readily apparent, I have large purple welts on my back, welts that only expanded and deepened in colour for the next two days.

Here is the living room to the apartment, with a hammock out back.

We even had an extra mattress for visitors, as well as a long and creepy hallway

I will do a highlight reel of my research now.

• I did my project on  the social exclusion and stigma of physically handicapped people in Salvador and did ethnographies to determine if these problems occurred and if so how. Then I went and interviewed 5 people in long in depth interviews to find out their attitudes on the problems.
• I found there was some interpersonal discrimination, teasing etc
• the bus system was a major site of said discrimination
• Salvador is not an accessible city
• Physically handicapped often fear leaving the house
• not very many opportunities for those with physical handicaps, both socially and in the workmarket
• the situation is getting better and efforts are made to start to include those with physical handicaps but the city of salvador was still a long way off
• And something that I found rather crazy, two of the five people I did my research on had been shot and one of them had been shot 6 times.
• I learned a lot in the course of my research about both those with physical handicaps as well as myself and I learned how to conduct social research on my own, which was pretty exciting for me

I actually finished my research project a full week early, so got some time to go to the beach and hang out. I traded editing skills for acai, a Brazillian dessert.

And one last experience for the end of this entry. It was torrentially pouring outside, and I was warm, watching a tv show. A friend of mine named Dylan suggested running outside in the rain, and I responded you know, yeah I'll do it. We ran in the rain, our ankle deep in water and made it to the beach where the waves were crashing. It was fun to just look up at the sky, and see the water coming down (the droplets were that big, really easy to see). We clambered over some rocks to watch the bay, and eventually we were just running along the beach before we decided to head back, soaked but exhilarated.