Current Release: September 11th, 2007 | Vol. XXIV Iss. 10

Staff Abroad

Lauren Perry

laperry@vwc.ewdu

There are experiences in life that will change us in ways we can never foresee. They will bring to light some truth previously unknown. Being drenched in a waterfall amidst paradise is one of those experiences. Running barefoot with pueblo children in the Amazon rainforest is another.

It was the naturalness of the beauty that astounded me, from the clarity of the dark eyes of the indigenous children to the profoundness of standing over a 200-foot drop of cascading water. These are two things that offer an appreciation impossible to recreate within the steel and concrete of civilization.

It is rare that we remove ourselves from structured and inanimate surroundings. Being in a huge international city like Buenos Aires, I am surrounded by square billboards of chiseled beauty, loud buses, and recently the thick haze of smog. It took my volunteer group, LIFE, and other travelers three days to escape the smoke that descended on Buenos Aires from out-of-control fires in farms north of the city.

This made us all the more grateful when we finally arrived in the northernmost part of Argentina, where the Amazon rainforest descends and gives shelter to many small tribes and pueblos. It was one of these pueblos, Perutí, which our volunteer group of 10 girls from all over the world came to help.

Every month, LIFE sends volunteers to help distribute clothes and shoes, cook meals, and pick lice from the scruffy heads of these wild jungle children.

This may sound strange, but it was a cleansing and refreshing thing to run barefoot over red earth in the Amazon rainforest with a little girl on my back, getting lice in my hair and mud on my face.

After three days in the pueblo, we went another two hours north to where Brazil and Argentina meet.

The Iguazu River separates the two countries, and in the middle of its curving path the land collapses over 200 feet, and the water descends with it.

The first thing we did was cross illegally into Brazil on a bus. There is a system that takes people across the river without stopping at the strict Brazilian border station. This benefits the drug trade that filters down into the ports of Buenos Aires. And it benefited our wish to see the Brazilian side of Iguazu.

The landscape revealed to us the stark hole where the earth is cut as if by an angry god (which, in the local legend, is what happened). We enjoyed the Portuguese, and the thrill of being in Brazil without the exclusive visa. But the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls captured and held our breath.

Argentina got the better end of the deal with access to “Garganta del Diablo,” or the Devil’s Throat, where most of the river is pulled forcefully to the earth. And standing above the gaping throat, we felt the exhilaration of vertigo.

The best part was booking a seat on a boat that took us beneath two waterfalls, and skipped like a playful dog against the edges of an immense force that refused to welcome the boat too far into the mist. When we emerged, and the mist cleared to reveal this paradise of arching rainbows, clouds of jeweled butterflies, soaring birds and verdant trees, we saw it all with drenched clothes and a quenched spirit.

There was something similar in the profoundness of the waters and the depth in the eyes of the children of the Amazon that had pulled us into something previously unknown. We carried away with us that strange and powerful something when we finally returned to the city.