my trip 2

As I was thinking about my trip, I realized that it is pretty unexciting to talk about. It would be full of "On my mission..." and "This one person..." and "...bus ride..." only to end with "I was in airports/airplanes from 8 pm on on Saturday, till almost midnight on Monday, eastern standard time--that's over 2 full days!!!" So, I really won't bore you with all the mission-related visits we did. It is enough to say that while it was wonderful to see everyone, they were bitter-sweet days, depending on the decisions people have made in their lives over the last few years.

The beginning was fairly inexpensive (aside from the plane tickets) because we stayed with friends, and they took good care of us. It always amazes me how generous people are down there. Even though they don't have much to offer, they gave us the best they had. They even abandoned their rooms to allow us to use their beds, such that the entire family was left with only one room.

The end of the trip is what proved to be most expensive. It was the part of the trip when we were tourists that we emptied our bank accounts. 4 days were spent in Foz de Iguaçu/Iguassu/Iguazu--depending on what country you are in. It is near the point where 3 countries meet: Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. since I don't have my pictures yet, I just grabbed this one from the a site. From this view, I believe the green on the bottom, with the brown/red hut is Brazil, then the green in the upper left is Paraguay, and upper right is Argentina. Here is another picture, from a different site that shows the 3 countries a little better, but I'm not sure about the angle of the picture...it looks like hut shown in the first picture is in the land in the top left of this picture, making that Brazil, the tip right Paraguay, and the bottom left Argentina....but again, I'm not positive.

The most amazing part of that area are the waterfalls. That is why we wanted to go to that city. the largest waterfalls in the world. Think Niagara falls + AMAZING. Part of what's cool here is that there are two sides. There is the Argentina side:

Which includes the "Devil's Throat." It is horseshoe shaped with falls all the way around. There is a walk way that takes you out over the river (it's probably like a mile long) to look into the Devil's Throat. It is amazing to see the power of the water rushing over the cliffs in such great quantity! According to one Indian legend, this water fall was created by M'Boy, the serpent god. The tribe's leader had a beautiful daughter named Naipi, who was to be sacrificed to M'Boy, but one of the tribe's men, Taroba, fell in love with her, so during the ceremony, while everyone else was drunk, they ran away. As they were canoeing down the river, M'Boy got angry, penetrated the earth, and created the throat falls which swallowed the canoe. That's just one tale. I'd like to know more about how that story evolved into what it is today. Was there really a great earthquake in the midst of young love's rebellion?Or was it just a chief trying to scare his people into obedience? Either way, thanks for the amazing waterfall!!! Oh ya, and also--it's like 80 meters high!!! Know how that converts, but I figure it's pretty dang tall.

I'll post tomorrow about the Brazilian side, which was my favorite!