Iguaçu Falls

We made it! Our first flight, Boston to DC, was very unpleasant for me, but I rallied and the long one (9 hours, DC to São Paulo) was very good. We were even both able to sleep a little. (First class helps with that!) I told Duck that we might have a problem on our hands, since I’m not sure I can do that trip in coach now that I’ve done it in first class. We both enjoyed the hell out of our journey to our honeymoon. (Except for the part where I checked the wrong bag and they confiscated our sunscreen, that part wasn’t so great.) As we deplaned in São Paulo, Duck and I turned to each other and commented on the wall of heat and humidity that greeted us! Feels good after it was snowing on us in Boston on Tuesday!

We are all settled in at our hotel, which is lovely. We got in around 2:30pm yesterday and had lunch and then went for a swim in the pool, and had also arranged for a fruit bowl to be delivered to the room, so we have already snacked on a pear-like fellow and some big, seedy red grapes (there are also bananas, apples, a mango, kiwi, and what is maybe a papaya?). We were standing there at the pool, just minding our own business, when I looked over and saw a long, ringed tail twitching not ten feet away – a coati! Our friend Denise had warned us about these bold critters who will hop up onto your table and steal your meal. Luckily, we didn’t have anything for this guy to steal, but they’re about the size of a possum and I wouldn’t want to make one mad.

We had a beverage on the porch of the hotel and enjoyed the late afternoon rain, then walked down to the end of the hotel driveway to take in the smaller falls. The big one, Devil’s Throat (Garganta do Diablo), is a bit more of a walk. We’d like to do that on a day when it’s not supposed to rain, but it might rain almost the whole time we’re here. Duck also wants to take a boat tour of the falls, where you go right under them and get totally soaked, so he could do that even if it’s raining. Boats do not agree with me, so I will have a piña colada on the front porch and read a book (now that I’ve gotten my kindle to talk to the library) while I wait for him to return.

We had a nice buffet dinner at the hotel and then I tried my hardest to stay awake until 9pm, which was only 7pm EST! I don’t think I’ve ever traveled this far to feel so much jet lag without there actually being much of a time change! I’m still trying to figure out the time zones here. According to the little map on the airplane, the time zones are all over the place and don’t make any sense. (By the way, to anyone I told that we’re only an hour ahead of EST, it turns out we’re two hours ahead, at least until Daylight Savings starts again. Sorryyyy – especially to my mom, who is especially challenged in this area.)

We fell asleep around 9pm and woke up at 8:30am feeling much more rested, even with a brief interlude of really loud thunder at 5am. After a lovely buffet breakfast (which I’m treating as a way to figure out which Brazilian pastries I like and that we’re likely to encounter at cafes), we headed to the front desk to sort out our charger/adapter situation. Turns out that I brought the wrong adapter from my set and in Duck’s international all-in-one adapter, the part that works in Brazil is broken. Our hotel here has one we can borrow, and our São Paulo hotel should also have one, but then we will need to buy something. Luckily we should be fine with just one because I brought a power strip, so we can plug in 5 devices at once.

The last thing that’s worrisome is that our future home city, Belo Horizonte, is in the midst of some serious flooding from constant rain for the past month or so. 54 people have died and the footage they showed on TV, of cars washing away and restaurants flooding, was pretty alarming. My fellow Fulbrighter is already in BH, I think, and I’m waiting to hear back from her about what things are like in the neighborhood where we’ll both be living. I also reached out to our landlady and my host at the university to see what things are like for them. Worst-case scenario is that we’ll stay in São Paulo for a little while, which means I should be able to explore the library there and learn something. Stay tuned…!