The Authorities

Well... so long, No-Rules Bolivia... hello, Oh-Yes-There-Are-Rules Argentina.

It all started with pasta. It´s the pasta´s fault, really. There I was, in my hostel, minding my own business, when three friendly young travelers from Paris invited myself and an Argentinian guy to help them finish off the pasta they´d made for dinner. Cool. Free food. We joined them, chatted the night away, and the next day we all ended up going to Iguazu Falls National Park together. (Insert ominous music here.)

The Perpetrators.

Iguazu Falls is a series of massive waterfalls... it´s one of those important, top-ten sights no traveler to South America should miss. It was totally impressive, even though there´s been very little rain this season, and the falls are actually much smaller than they´ve been in years. (Remember that... it´ll be important later.)

Falling into the Throat of the Devil -- the biggest, baddest waterfall in the park

We spend the day wandering around the paved, guard-railed network of footpaths, taking pretty pictures of pretty waterfalls and pretty scenery. Very nice, but not especially adventurous.

A pretty waterfall, with a pretty rainbow.

Our trouble (or our real fun, depending on how you look at it) all started when we took a little boat over to an island in the middle of the waterfall chain. We wandered around trails there for a bit, until we came to a particular ´scenic overlook´ spot in the trail. There was a guardrail. On the other side was a dry, rocky streambed that was obviously a good-sized stream most of the year. And across the streambed was a sweet rock-arch thing that we couldn´t quite get a good look at from our vantage point on the trail. So we did what any inquisitive, nimble young tourists would do... we went in for a closer look. I mean, obviously, that guardrail was just meant to keep people from falling in the water, when there is water. Now there´s just rocks and boulders. No big deal.

When we got closer to the rock arch, though, we could see that it was much more than an arch. It was a gateway to our own private paradise:

So of course we went in. Into the gateway, into paradise...

...and into the water. That´s me, if you were wondering.

Look closely... that´s us on the left.

And, of course, we had to have some photography fun. Wow. I´m white, aren´t I? Gotta work on that.

After we´d had our fill of swimming around and standing under the waterfalls, we wandered over to peer over the edge of the next set of waterfalls. While we were occupied thusly, a helicopter flew by, rather low, and seemed to pause for a bit, more or less directly overhead. We figured it was a bunch of sightseers, and waved for the camaras. Ha ha, funny. Little did we know...

Anyway... remember, this is all taking place on an island in the middle of the park. We knew that the last boat would leave the island at 5:15, and we made it back to the launch point just around then.... to find that there was no one around. We were sort of stuck. No problem - there´s not much water, remember? The river was just low enough to be able to wade across in one spot. Barely.

So everybody gets across and dries off again, laughing all the while at how our adventures have been prolonged. We walk up the trail towards the park exit... and there, waiting for us at the top, was The Man. You know... the fuzz, the five-o, the po, the law, the cops... The Authorities. The Man kindly informed us that we had been trespassing, that they had aerial photographs of the infraction, and that we would need to accompany him to his office. Oops.

Here´s the park map, an arial photo of the whole area. I´ve circled in green some points of interest from our travels... (1) is the big daddy waterfall, (2) is our private lagoon, (3) is other waterfall we walked to the edge of, (4) is where we forded the river, and all the red lines are places we went where we weren´t supposed to. Heh heh.

They ended up letting us off with just a warning, instead of the $20 fine (gasp) they could have slapped us with. I felt much better after I learned the worst that could happen was I´d lose twenty bucks... I was having visions of $500 fines and nights in jail dancing through my head. This is still South America, after all.

Sign? What sign?