Dec 21 2006
Brazil Trip Diary: Day 8
We slept for barely five hours before we had to get up for our trip. Because we were both so tired, we canceled part of the trip. Instead of going to the Argentinean side of the Iguacu Fall, we decided to stay within Brazil. It was a good decision. The fall has some South American-ness in it: expansive, casual but passionate. During peak season after the rain, the fall would have been 7 kilometers wide. Now it is like two clusters of large falls with many smaller strands in between.
Our guide is a funny local man. When he’s excited, he’d always say, “Woolala”. He certainly took the right path upward: started as a server in a restaurant, he learned English and French and worked his way up as an independent tour guide for 2 days out of a week. He didn’t feel we were any strangers to him, so much so that he told us more than we wanted to hear, e.g. he has several “girlfriends” his wife doesn’t know about. One is a Dutch lawyer who is coming to town for his birthday next January.
He also told us that there are more than 30,000 Arabs living in Iguacu. But unlike what Americans would have thought of the news (I remember CNN had a piece on local demographics and the possible links to T-ism), Valdir’s epiphany was, “Muslim can have up to seven wives; Brazilians two, three girlfriends; Chinese only one wife.” To that I replied, “Definitely not woolala.”
The tour to the fall was uneventful. During lunch, we met a group of French tourists. One of them has a son working in Brazil right now. Valdir complained earlier how arrogant the French could be: they loathed communicate in English even when that is the best choice for the guides. But the one I met was open enough. After all, his son got an MBA from Texas A&M.
Later, Valdir brought us to a “stone shop” near the fall. He said there are many tourists from China now. They often come in large group (20 plus), spend a day or two for the fall then another day to shop for famed Brazilian jam stones. This story is well collaborated by our experience for the rest of our day: the shop assistants, waiters in restaurants in Iquacu can speak some mandarin words without hesitation and they like to show us that too. In fact, we learned some of the stones’ Chinese names from a shop assistant in the stone store. Apparently, there have been many rich Chinese visitors to the store because they all showed us stones or jewelries worth thousands U.S. dollars. I grew up in a rationed economy so it is really a surreal feeling to vision free-spending Chinese. Not only that but did so in such a “veni, vidi, vici” bravado.
The last event of the day was a dinner and show event. A local troupe entertained hundreds of dinners from all over the world with different types of South American dances from Mexican to Peruvian. It was very festival atmosphere.
I could never imagine myself getting tired of eating meat. But my visit to Brazil certainly changed that. We had bone-dry beef everyday for lunch and or dinner. My braced teeth felt really sour and tired after each meal. Song was delighted to see I went for salad voluntarily.