IGUAZU, THE OTHER GOLDEN TRIANGLE

I catch a cab in Paraguay to go through Brazil and on to Argentina.  In how many places can you do that?  For those of you counting countries and too cheap to spring for a Brazil visa, this is a cheap way to cut corners, literally, without the formalities.  In retrospect $50 for a Paraguay visa and tip seems like a waste, but at least the hotel was cheap, so balanced out.  Of course the hotel lady in Asuncion short-changed me while warning me about street thieves, oldest trick in the book.  Last time that happened, a Peruvian street artist replaced my good note with his counterfeit one while showing me how it’s done.  Ouch! 

      Paraguay’s cheap like Peru and Bolivia, which means poor, and really Argentina’s not so dear outside Buenos Aires.  Is there anything here worth hanging for?  There is.  Puerto Iguazu’ is a surrealistic little dream town where the three countries meet, maybe the other Golden Triangle in the Bizarro world of opposites.  Something like a cross between Chiang Saen, Thailand, and Panajachel, Guatemala, it’s calm and beautiful and cheap by Buenos Aires standards, but hardly overrun by backpackers or anything like that, though there are a few scraggly stragglers. 

     The falls of course are to die for, certainly one of the ten great falls in the world, if not all natural wonders included.  The view of the cataracts themselves from Garganta del Diablo (“the devil’s throat”) is unbelievable, frothy and turbulent, aptly named for those suicidal among us, the walking wounded, future zombies, for whom the mid-air roulette wheels where water sublimes to vapor must represent some kind of witches’ brew of Kabbalistic digital speed dialing 1010100101010100101010 your bar code all or nothing millions of times per second to see whether you live or die, whether today or tomorrow.  The Golden Gate is for wimps and wannabes.

     For the rest of us it’s a view of God at work as light passes through a prism and light breaks up into an infinite number of possibilities, including life liberty and the pursuit of happy meals.  This is the kind of place where you could meet your little brown-skinned third-world soul mate doppelganger, settle down, and pump out some little pot-bellied poopers till your pumper poops out…zzzzz…  Huh?  Did I say something?  How long have I been dreaming?  I gotta’ get outta’ here.  I’ve got work to do.  Next stop is Uruguay.  Now where’s my suitcase full of spare logic?

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