Vida Continua..

It's been a retrospecting day and a day of looking ahead. The past five months have been wondrous, have been exciting and refreshing. They have been seemingly endless and here I am at my starting point again.

Returning in Buenos Aires after so long was always going to be tricky and it was just that. Everything looks and feels so familiar, so close and common, it's almost as if I've been here for years, almost as if I never left. It's a hard place. A tough, grand city full of concrete and avenues, people and cars and at the same time a city of mystery and secrets. Yet, I always have the impression that I know every corner of it. This time round though the spell was broken instantly. I do know this place, I've known it ever since I was 18, ever since I moved to Athens for the first time. It's the megalopolis of my past and will be the Capital of my psyche for ever. It's all linked with a thin spider web of memories and moments, every corner like the inevitably familiar turn in a maze, desperate and still comforting.

It's a new start, another start in that endless sequence of starts that interweave and form the net of our lives. Not just another point in a line, more like another random intersection of an endless network of memories and instincts. And once again the past and the future and the never-quite-existing now are merged. The genie has returned to its oil lamp to rest but its gentle wheezing snore will e a good company in the nights to come.

This Marvel Called Iguazu!

There are instances when you know you're small and insignificant, you know there is time and scale and life way beyond you, there has been past and will be future and it will go on for ever. And that's when you're happy to be alive and be there, because you're a witness, you're present, you play a tiny part in that grand scheme. That is Nature.

The Iguazu Falls have been one of the main targets of this trip and they more than lived up to the hype. This certainly must be one of the great wonders of the world. The scale and the beauty of the environment, the enormity of the waterfalls themselves, the unimaginable force and incalculable amount of water descending from hundreds of places, the richness of the rain-forest in terms of life and diversity, the ever-present mist and the loudness! The deafening sound of millions of cubic meters dropping off 275 different cliffs is awe inspiring. If there is one thing I can't take off my mind, it is that constant, brutal force translated through the most violent roar in nature.

I caught myself looking at the same cataract for minutes, trying subconsciously to explain the phenomenon, to comprehend it, to grasp it's scale. Futile. And when I came across another one later on, I swear I though it was a set, a film set of something, a screen projection, anything that my little brain can contain. And no matter how long I spent there there was always a Toucan's cry, a teardrop of mist from a green leaf, a deafening boom from the water round the corner that woke me up: hey! you're in Wonderland! But the best description-to-break-the-spell for Iguazu's impossible grandeur came from my friend Nick: surely, there must be some guys somewhere in that rain-forest that wait patiently for closing time, and when everybody's gone they turn some old, rusty, creaking valves and switch this thing off. Eeek, eeek, eeek.... It just cannot be going on like this for ever... It cannot.

What's also funny about this place, is how all the visitors seem to have pretty much the same reaction to it. A gaping mouth, a giggle and snap! the camera. It's almost like a theme park for kids, only here you do not need to be 10 years old, you become it. It's impossible to resist it and futile to pretend to. Everybody's trying to take pictures, all the time, from every possible angle and I'm pretty sure all of them look the same. And they all look poor too. I know because mine do.There is no way in the world something like this can be photographed. Images do not have sound you see, and video does not spray water on you, and even if it did it'd be silly. And truth be told, words are too small too!

(this is obviously Nick having a blast!)

Two relevant links, one informative with further reading suggestions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_falls
and one with a different take on our two days here: Cataratas del Iguazú

Florianopolis, Curitiba and Beyond

After the deluge in Trindade and Paraty our little company demanded some sun. Back in Rio the sun was shinning but our compass was pointing south, to the Iguazu Falls. And it was Floripa and Curitiba that were called to the rescue.

The first is famous for it's summer, beaches and surf. I'm afraid they have to be followed in that order. Without the summer, the other two are of limited use. Sure, we got our sun but the city and most of the island was in poor shape. The party was over, the beaches were wonderful and wonderfully empty and the water cold. And somehow the city itself was not exactly what you would call a night-spot. Anyway, next time we must get the timing right.

Curitiba on the other hand is at an altitude of almost 1000m and has no beaches close by, so we knew what (not) to expect. A nice city though. Mostly a student one and surprisingly organized, prosperous and neat, it is regarded as a model-city for Brazil and more. I liked it. A tight historical center, nicely laid out, a Sunday market, loads of young people and unmistakably reminiscent of Europe. I have to admit that it wouldn't be my favorite place in South America but it's certainly worth a visit. And the little corner place with the local guys playing samba for the whole sunny afternoon made my day!

All in all the further north I am in this country the more at home I seem to be. And it's not as obvious as it sounds, but it is as certain as the sunrise we'll have in a few hours. Now, we can't wait for Iguazu. Everybody's been there and nobody's been let down. It is one of the wonders of this little blue planet and we'll pay our respects. Until then:

Underworld Heaven

There are some nights that exist only as a dimensionless pulp of moments, a conglomeration of seconds and minutes and hours and seemingly weeks. Surely a misguided illusion but an inescapable one nevertheless.
And there are places where any sense of space is lost between infinity and non-existence. It is impossible to feel the limits of your own body as it merges with thousands more and at the same time floats in a cosmic soup.

When the gravitational field of this universe consists of hard beats, sweat, flesh, sex, alcohol and smoke, when the frenetic dancing and the deafening, saturated sound waves pierce you in an evil, unforgiving fashion and all this time you're in heaven, it can only be an Underworld Heaven.

It's not a secret, it's not sect; it's only a Baile Funk. The music (pronounced funky) is a raw, filthy and bloody species of a beat, the dance is a barely masked sex ceremony, the floor is as dirty as possible, the dj is incapable of playing more than a minute of each track and the sense is better than you'd ever expect. What more can one ask for? No reason to be intimidated, it's in a favela for sure, somewhere in this human jungle we call world but everybody's here for the same reason: F U N! Just get down and dirty.

(photos 1,2 and 4 are courtesy of Chris Vucic. Thanks Chris.)