The Iguassu Falls Area Guru

I found this photo on the web . I am using it as a way to ask for your vote for Rio de Janeiro. There is an election going on. What is being chosen are the world's Seven New Wonders - N7W. Rio is on the list. The idea came from "New7Wonders Foundation" created in 2001 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, with a mission to protect humankind's heritage across the globe. The initial stages of the New 7 Wonders campaign were financed by Weber himself, aided by a small number of committed N7W Members. You, too, can join these members, who remain firmly committed to the project and its aims to this day. All N7W members have the right to a listing on the N7W Memorial Wall. Fifty percent of all net revenue raised by the New 7 Wonders Project is to be used to fund restoration efforts worldwide. One such project is the mission to recreate the giant Bamiyan Buddha statue in Afghanistan, which was featured in the Swiss Pavilion along with the New 7 Wonders project at the 2005 Worl...

Berlin has had a wall. President Bush wants to build his own and Israel already has one to separate them from the Palestines. We in Foz do Iguaçu also have one. It is my local Berlin Wall. It is my local Wall of Shame. It is seen somewhere in between the caterpillar digging the foundation for the new Immigration-Customs- Border Control Center and the building skyline in the background. The wall was built in order to prevent people from running with their "sacolas" (bags), boxes of fake cigarrettes and so on. I hope that with the new world-classe structure, the wall may go down and the river may appear, may zoom back into view again.

Photo by Nei de Souza People don't accept the war against smuggling very easily. They do fight back. Above I posted one of my friend Nei's photos showing a bus burnt by a group of very upset people. Many buses and cars have been burnt. Like this one.

Photo by Nei de Souza The "sacoleiros" soon became a crowd of millions. Sacoleiros began to hire local residents to bring goods across the bridge for them. These people were called "laranjas" - which means orange in the sense of "mules". It is said that over 20.000 people in Foz do Iguaçu alone are "laranjas". These "laranjas" soon began to deliver these goods in other states. They brought the goods, little by little, a box a time, like the ands do. Soon they were called "formigas" - (carrying) ants. There are all kinds of "ants" on the border: Paraguayan "ants" taking toilet paper, food, drink, clothes; Brazilian "ants" bringing computer goods, abortion pills, fake watches, gadgets and junks, to viagra sex power pills and now and then grass, dope, bullets, guns and what not. The not so funny chapter we lived through recently was the "tour bus chapter". Thousands of buses mainly of one ...

Photo by Nei de Souza Paraguay's GNP is around 8 billion USD a year. Ciudad del Este alone has boasted to have grossed over 12 billion USD yearly in the early 90s. People say that 2 + 2 is four but not in the Paraguayan case where 8 billion + 12 billion has never equaled 20billion USD so necessary to provide needed resources for Paraguayan's education, health and housing plus other needs. In this weird mathematics 12+ 8 has keept being 8. Back in the early 90s a Los Angeles Times writer whose name I forgot but I do remember that there was something Spanish to it, wrote that Ciudad del Este was the world's Third Largest Retail Cash Shopping area in the world. It is possible that he did not say Retail Cash Shopping. He might have said something else. The phrase was misunderstood in the area and soon the writer's statement was translated as "Ciudad del Este is the World's Third Largest Comercial Center. I never swallowed that up and always asked myself, what Lond...

The Brazil-Paraguay Border at Foz do Iguaçu is ready to put into operation a new border control facility. Costing anywhere between 9 and 12 million BrR$ (Brazilian Reais), at least half of that in USD, the new facility is not complete as yet. This is just the structure to receive people and goods coming on the Paraguay-Brazil leg of the trip. The Brazil-Paraguay leg is yet to come.

From the Greenpeace Site: Iceland has decided to defy world opinion, granting a license to kill 30 minke and 9 endangered fin whales: the first commercial whale hunt the country has undertaken since the 1980s. Three years ago, we successfully battled back an attempt by Iceland's Fisheries Ministry to set a quota of 500 whales. We did it by showing Iceland that whales are worth more alive than dead: tens of thousands of us took the Iceland Whale Pledge -- a promise to visit Iceland if, and only if, the whaling ends. To date, nearly 90,000 people have taken the pledge. That represents a potential income to Iceland of more than 100 million US Dollars (80 million Euros), against a whaling industry that is today effectively worthless, and which even at its peak made only 4 million dollars per year. We've seen 20,000 new pledges in the last few days as news of the hunt has spread: we need to show the Icelandic government just how much we value keeping whales alive. Your travel plans...

I do not think that there is a word with more spelling confusion than Iguaçu. The possibilities are: Iguaçu (Brazil,France), Iguazú (Argentina) Iguassu (English, international, airlines’ lingo), Yguazu, (Paraguay). You will probably see in touristy material something like “The Iguassu Area” – in an attempt to include the three sides of the Triple Border. Iguassu is supposed not to be Brazil, Argentina or Paraguay. But this attempt does not go very far either. That is the Brazilian proposal or putting better, the proposal of the “IguaSSu Right”. This subject was never offered to the consideration of Paraguayans and Argentineans. What we do have and was achieved by Mercosul*/ Mercosur's Resolution 41/97 is the Polo Turístico Internacional Iguaçu / Iguazu (PTII) which would roughly translate as The Iguassu International Tourism Pole – one of the first Community- Integrated Tourism Product, community here in the Mercosul, EU sense. What it really means, is that there would some kind ...

The “Ç” versus “SS” debate was the only thing that literally made city people take to the streets. And this city has had reasons enough to take to the streets before. One thing made very clear was the divide, the rift the discussion provoked. People for the SS writing were normally hotel owners, travel agents. Shop owners and businessmen called the “right”. People on the Ç side were students, from kindergarten who already knew how pretty Ç was to students – from high school to graduate – also the poor, the destitute and everybody else. I suggested we created a flag. A white flag with a a huge red “Ç”. Something like the Canadian flag without the maple leaf. Well the SS, caviar-eating group lost.

The artwork shown above depicts firstly the official cote of arms of the City of Foz do Iguaçu. You will notice that there is a lot of red standing for NO to something. Can you guess what has been so hotly and passionately debated? I will tell you: it was about the proposal by a local city councilor to change the spelling of the city name in order to make it easier for the tourists. Among the reasons offered was that the internet was unable to read the “cedille” which is not in the English alphabet. Also, it was remembered, that until the late 40s Iguaçu was spelled Iguassu. So the real proposal was that the name of the city instead of being written Foz do Iguaçu as it is today, it would be written Foz do Iguassu.

A Qantas Airlines Boeing 747-800 visited the Foz do Iguaçu-Cataratas International Airport earlier this month. I konw nothing about this flight or the people who came to town. All I saw was a note in the newspaper and the photograph above proudly clicked away by Brazilian Infraero Airport Authorities . Now and then huge planes like this fly into the Foz do Iguaçu-Cataratas Int'l Airport. I once saw two Iberia 747-800 Boeings behemoths at the airport. The beautiful thing about them was the take-off operation. Since the airstrip is far narrower than the plane's wingspan, two turbines, one on each side hung suspended over the grassy lawn on both runway sides. A cloud of red dust rose up from the ground in a way that seemed to chase after the plane, threatening to engulf it. Then the plane lifts off, the sky seemed dusty and the runway had to be swept out. The crowds of Iguassuans who have come for the occasion just clapped hands, happily. That is tourism! Everybody is happy,...

The building of the Dam. Photo from Itaipu

Hello you all folks from the whole world coming down here. The Triple Border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is a special place. You may call it weird. I say crazy, sometimes. First things first. All the cities here are relatively young. Foz do Iguaçu, the oldest, was born in 1888. Until then the lands west of Curitiba were dangerous, here-be-dragons-and-wild-indians type of places. Official Brazilian presence was none. It was then that the Brazilian Empire - yes Brazil wa an empire once - created a special commission with the mandate of organizing a civilizatory expedition to the no-man's land where the Iguaçu River met the Paraná. Purpose: build a city. The commission left the city of Guarapuava about 300 kilometers east of Iguaçu. Soldiers, horses, tools inching their way up slowly, building bridges, machette-cutting their way for a whole year. When they finally got to the land they had two funny surprises. The here-be-dragon land was inhabited: Argentineans, Paraguay...

What we do in fact see here is just two sides of the three-country area known as Triple Border. In the Google Earth photo here that I have copied and also offered the link so that you can go to the original site ( just click on the photo to enlarge and see source) , you can see the Paraná River as it winds down South past Itaipu Dam with the Acaray Island seen in midstream. To your left is Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. To your right is Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. Linking both cities is the International Friendship Bridge dedicated in 1965. Still on your right you can see the Acaray River flowing into the Paraná river. A few kilometers downstream from the Bridge is the "Foz" or junction of the Iguaçu (Iguassu) River - or the point where the two rivers meet.

No exageration! Sunsets are gorgeous here. Funny things is that Ciudad del East means City of the East. For Paraguayans here is where the sun rises. It is West for Brazilians. Besides being a national border is it also a sun border where a limited and smaller kind of East and West meet? Spanning the gap: the Friendship Bridge. Photo source Ministry of Transports, Brazil.

This picture shows the rush hour crowd over the International Friendship Bridge between Brazil and Paraguay. Rush hour is anytime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. everyday with the exception of Sundays, Strike and protest days. Situation tends to be worse on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

This photograph was taken by friends Fernando Martin and Ruth Sanchez last year during a fantastically beautiful and awe-inspiring flood.And the one standing over there, is me.