Declaration of War

 We're at war and we don't know it. 

 For a long while now we've been at war. And it's a world war. And we're losing it. It's a war with casualties from mostly one side only, but it's a very civic war. In this war, most of the time, it's not like someone will come to us and shoot us, oh no. That's not polite. In this war we lose little by little, our lives and our time. Although in some areas you do get shot, where the fight is in its worse shape. It's an asymetrical war, both sides are rather different in numbers and power. But it's a war nonetheless. 

This war has been raging for all our history. Sometimes there's calm periods and truces. Sometimes there's small victories. But lately it's going worse for us, after a period where it seemed we could achieve some level of victory, or at least a reasonable truce. 

 We've had recent battles in plenty of places. In Brazil, we lost to ignorance and stupidity, and because of its current culture it may take some time before any victories can be achieved. In Chile there was a recent stand off that gives us hope after a long period of darkness, but it needs to be developed and to grow into a victory, and it may not be one just yet. In Bolivia we won after almost losing an important battle. Hong Kong seems lost, the battle continues but the enemy is too brutal in there. In USA we were defeated so long ago nobody remembers our side, but lately there's been some movements towards a change, although it's still in its infancy, and the latest results are not really a victory. Poland was never in our side but maybe after the latest abuse some reaction will be triggered. I'm not informed enough to talk about countries in Africa but it seems there's been an ongoing change in there too, little by little, in some of them small victories for us. Turkey has been conquered after a period of hope, and we need to recover it but won't be easy. Russia had some chances but the opportunity was not taken. Most religious-based countries mark a huge defeat for us.

Spain was lost since 1939, and is still lost to this day. Catalunya has a chance to be a small win, but Spain will fight us to the death. 

One side is always the same: Fascism, dictatorships, unchecked corruption, economic power, religious power. The other is just the average person. 

The war is simple: Average people want to have nice lives. Lives where you do work, but you also have free time, health, friends, and where you can work with what you like. Lives where you can allow yourself presents, for you and your friends and family. Where you can have vacations and visit places. Where you can have moments of rest and calmness. Where you can believe whatever you want and no one imposes their views on you. Where you can retire and you don't need to die right away. Where people help each other. and where we can collectively decide things for ourselves. Then we have internal struggles about how to achieve these objectives, but that's the idea.

The other side wants to have these things only for a few of themselves, the chosen ones, and everyone else should suffer and die slowly to provide these things to them, It's a simple as that.

 Maybe this seems simplistic or evident. But what I want to remark, is that this is WAR. When people get kicked out of their houses, people DIE. When factories are closed down, people DIE. When hospitals are privatized and medicine is not affordable, people DIE. Those are casualties. When some rich or powerful bastard takes a decision to withheld resources for the common people, this person is PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the impoverishment, misery and death of these people. Same way I would be accused of not helping someone that was bleeding to death in my house if I ignored them and didn't call an ambulance nor did anything at all.

All this was to explain a few things regarding the current struggles:

 1-This war is all the same war. Catalan people wanting to vote and getting beaten by police is the same war as Hong Kong people wanting to decide for themselves and getting beaten by police. It's the same war as BLM in USA. Its the same war as medical professionals asking for more resources. It's the same war as workers asking for better conditions. It's the same war. So, support all of them and don't be blinded.

2-A lot of idiots are supporting the wrong side because in their little evil minds, they think they're part of the powerful side and that they will get better lives through it. The reality is that they will be squashed and discarded with all the rest, but since they will not be the first ones and the first ones are a group they don't like, they think this is good and later they'll be spared. 

3-Being neutral or equidistant, or "centrist" here means support to the powerful. As they say in Germany, a table with 1 Nazi and 9 people that let them be there is a table with 10 Nazis. And thinking the one doing the beating is the same as the one being beaten is morally abhorrent. 

4-Civility is not an option when it results in one side always winning because they're the only ones that can be nasty and violent and brutal while the other side is expected to put the other cheek and accept their fate and "be nice". Doing a "smart" economic operation that can force a building full of people to be kicked out to the streets should be responded with the same rage and pain that it has caused and the person responsible should suffer horrible consequences for it.

5-The current health crisis is making everything on hold, but we should not forget that we're at war, and you can see whose lives have been the most affected and who's reaping benefits from all this, and understand then who needs to be defeated. 

Any approach that doesn't take this into consideration, that doesn't understand this is a war, that doesn't understand that we're all going to suffer and die unless we turn the tide strongly to the other side will not succeed. To go back to USA, the current election results will not achieve anything at all, things will just get worse a bit more slowly in there, the important defeat there was in the democratic primaries and after that one the end result would be bad or horrible, but never good.

The "agree to disagree" and moderation is for cake, not for the worth of human lives. And Nazi Germany was not defeated with hugs and good intentions.

It's the end of the world (as we know it)

So, we're again in Interesting Times. And maybe we have had enough for a while.

Nevertheless, this has created an opportunity at least. Yeah, it's a horrible thing what's happening and it would be better if it didn't, but it's giving us lessons, really important ones. And I'd like to mention some of them, as I think about them.

1-In lots of workplaces, it is possible to work from home. This one is written from a privileged standpoint, of course, shops and industries and the primary sector is not included in this. But there's currently a lot of new jobs, based on services, where we have been forced to go there every day and stay there for a lot of hours, to be present just out of a certain old fashioned panic that if we don't have someone breathing on our neck, we won't work. Well, not the case, clearly. At the same time, there's meetings and such things that in the end were not as necessary as we thought and can be shortened or eliminated without that much problem. For sure in-person contact has its advantages too, but this should really made us rethink how we work, and try a more balanced system where maybe we can easily be home at least half of our time.

2-Really essential services are the primary sector, the food shops and the cleaners. Jobs like working in a supermarket or cleaning offices and houses should be better valued and paid nicely. Also better considered.

3-Healtchare must be public. Private healthcare that depends on profit has no advantage in dealing with this, because it requires a lot of resources and hours and it's overall too expensive. Also, public healthcare must be well-funded and have enough resources. And given this learning, I would go further: Just straight up ban and nationalize private healthcare companies. Also, if you're all for private healthcare and vote for parties that are against public one, it's only fair you refute any treatment nor help in public hospitals and facilities. Or reconsider your vote next time.

4-Capitalsim doesn't work. The system is totally broken and this crisis is showing its worst sides. Under pure capitalism, we would need to continue working right now, as we die left and right. Under pure capitalism, now people should just go hungry and starve and die out as they cannot work. Under pure capitalism, any business that was unable to function for this period should just close and disappear, or leave its employees to die out at least. This is neither a sustainable model nor a model we should want to keep. This needs to go. I'm not advocating for communism, but we must get rid of the idea that the market is great, when the truth is the market would see humankind destroyed in order to keep benefits. We have seen this before, in the people that lose track of the real world and require workers to do extra hours to finish a project that will ultimately have no meaning 2 weeks after completion. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit on this example, but this same attitude is the one where some manager considers that maybe people should just work, because the company needs it, without realizing this means people will die.

5-Related to this, we need to make people in power responsible for their actions. Managers who have disregarded warnings and asked people to work have killed people. Governments who haven't taken action once it was clear how serious the situation was and have not followed medical expert's recommendations are guilty of personally killing people. One thing is not knowing what to do, another very different is thinking that since your friend the banker prefers people to die than to close some of his business, you can allow it. Or allowing it out of some political agenda. This means you are killing people. And this is not the only situation when this happens: when a government allows banks to kick people out of their homes from unpaid mortgages, both the bank and the government are directly killing people. When a manager over stresses their workforce to the point of people having nervous breakdowns, they are directly killing people. When a rich bastard not only doesn't pay their taxes but also pressures the government to close public hospitals, they're directly killing people. No more fucking euphemism, if you do these things you're a killer, and you should not be allowed to get away with it.

6-Centralism doesn't work. Look, I think Spain is a failed project and I'd rather be left out of it. Maybe you don't think the same, that's fine. But what is undeniable, as we've seen in companies, countries and other organizations, is that when you centralize everything, when you try to manage personally more and more and more things, when you're further away from the real action separated by layers of responsible people, well, you have a less clear image of what is happening. In this crisis, hospitals and small towns or neighborhoods can know better what's the best actions to take. They can know better what resources they have, what do they lack, what to do. So you leave them be, unless they prove to be doing a bad job out of it. Then, if they lack things, if you have organizations over them you can manage that from such a higher level, and so on. But when you try to, basically, micromanage everywhere, that doesn't work. So let's not do that. From a government point of view, I believe regions should be more independent and able to take their own decisions, since they tend to know better their own needs. For example, now Spain has declared we can go back to work. This is idiotic and will cause deaths as the experts are saying (see point 5), but I'd say that for some regions it may be OK. However, should be managed region by region as I said, to see which ones can do it and which ones cannot.

7-Spain's traditional parties plus the right wing parties are useless. Right wing, we know, they're here to steal and lick their rich friend's anuses, and people can die as far as they care, we all know that. However, I hope it also helps to show that PSOE is almost as bad: they militarized the crisis instead of giving funds to healthcare, and since their members are professional politicians that don't know how to do things but know how to get paid from public funds, we've had the situation were resources are not reaching the people, or they buy the wrong things and millions are wasted, plus time is lost.

8-Left-wing parties do not deserve special protection just because they're considered left-wing. We made this mistake before with PSOE, letting it do things that were not left-wing just because we labelled it as the left-wing party. So, the same applies now to Podemos. They're part of the government even if they're not big enough to make some changes. I understand they're not able to criticize some of the government actions without creating a conflict, but that doesn't make them untouchable. We should criticize the fact that they let military to lead this crisis. We should criticize that they're not protecting workers by allowing people to work. And we should criticize their silence or their praise to the current government, when it's not right.

9-USA, UK and Brazil, as very capitalist and right-wing countries, are far from the worst of it, and it will be a massacre in there. Spain is already one because of several of the mentioned points, and forcing people back to work now will kill and numbers will grow again.

10-Catalunya's proposals have been a bit more smart than Spain's (because duh, it's not very hard to be), but far from effective, and one of the involved parties has also been de-funding public healthcare, and that's something we should not forget either.

There's plenty more things I could say, but politically speaking I find these are quite relevant...

Intolerance is the way

Lately I keep seeing posts and comments,  especially on facebook, about respecting all ideas and positions.

Fuck that.

Let me elaborate: Karl Poppe indicated that there is a paradox on tolerance. The idea is that a society that is tolerant of intolerance has the risk of becoming intolerant, since the intolerants can become majority and destroy this tolerance.

I'm not an expert on all the nuances here, but I agree with the general principle. The idea is that there are positions that are not defensible, and that if there's people that won't consider rationality at all, their positions should not be allowed as viable.

The thing here is about extremes of course, and I would say that a good indication  is any position that ask for repression, internment or death of any group of innocent people.

So,for example, in lots of areas of the world there's this growth of extreme right wing supporters. Bolsonario in Brazil, Trump and the Alt right in USA, lots of different parties in Europe, etc. (Spain doesn't count, the 2 main right wing parties are directly fascists, so extremism didn't grow, it just never left after the dictatorship. Fascists won and conquered Spain and until it is taken from their hands and they're properly defeated, we'll have this issue).

These parties and people are the type that, for example, defend that LGTBs cannot marry, makes laws that are bad for them and allows discrimination as a "right" they have of not liking them. They are also very anti-immigrant and racist, anti-women and anti-cultures that are not the state-approved ones. They´re very conservative and plenty of times religious, but only of their religion of course.

So in these cases, the "I don't agree with you but will defend your right to say it" does not apply. There's no "need to accept all different opinions". It´s not a matter of "subjectivity". It´s not about "agree to disagree" and leave it at that.

Nazism and fascism needs just one answer, which is brutal repression, intolerance to such ideas and no apology for hating extreme right bastards. In Germany, for example,  doing the nazi salute gets you arrested. I fully agree with this.

What some people that try to be moderate and reasonable fail to see is two main points in here. The first one is that this is a tactic from the extreme right. When establishing your position, if you know most people that consider themselves moderate will try a compromise, if you´re inflexible and extreme, the middle ground will become a lot more to the right than what should be allowed. If your standard position is "kill all gays", for example, a moderate might feel that a balanced outcome is to allow not hiring gay people at work or not providing services to gay people. The extreme right, and the right in general actually, have been moving the extreme more and more to the right for years. The result is that "moderate" ideas now are actually clearly from the right. So the right answer when someone says "kill or imprison all gays" (or something to that effect), after maybe spending a few seconds trying to reason and double-checking the mental sanity, is to ban the bastard from participating in politics and conversations, and arresting them for good measure.

The second point that "moderates" fail to see is that the two positions are not equal. When a politician says that "women should stay at home and in the kitchen", to put another example, being against this is not "subjective". You see, in this point you can agree, or don´t. The thing is agreeing to this limits the freedom of women and represses them, so if women call the person on their misogynistic bullshit, you cannot say it´s just another point of view: This will directly harm women. Therefore, it is perfectly valid to not allow this type of ideas in political discourse, any party that defends this should be just banned and be done with it. Again, it's not a matter of opinion, one side gets harmed with this position while the other does not: when this happens, the side not harmed has no right to defend this opinion. And this is in no way the same as some religious bastard saying that it "harms" their idea of religion. It´s the basic difference between victim and oppressor, between attacking a person or defending yourself. A person defending themselves does not share the same level of guilt as the person attacking, doesn't matter the outcome. And it's impossible to be moderate and reach a middle ground when one side wants to exist and the other side wants to basically kill you or deny the fact that you exist.

Related to that, being indifferent to such behaviour and ideas is also not acceptable. If someone is an abuser, an homophobe, a violent person, supporting them means that even if you're not these things actively, you think it's fine or not a big deal. So accepting an homophobe as a candidate or voting for them makes you one too,even if you would not directly do something else homophobic. Again, fascism was, and is,a problem not becasue of the minority that is directly violent, but because there was a silent majority that accepted those things and considered it the new normal. 

So, summarizing, fuck that. Fuck fascists, and fuck dictators. It is perfectly reasonable to try and not allow such options to even exists in politics,and to confront anyone defending such ideas and trying to be moderate or defending it as "just another opinion". To put it bluntly so it gets into the skull of some people , would you consider it just "another opinion" if i'd vote for the party that wants to straight-up murder your family? 

So no, not all opinions should be tolerated.

Looking at you, Brazil.

Gangneung: First Contact

So, I’m in Gangneung now:


This is situated in South Korea. I’ll be here until this Friday, and then I’ll come back at the end of November.

South Korea is a very interesting place. After Brazil and Russia, I really wanted to try and live in a country more technologically and socially advanced, just to check the differences and enjoy the better level of live.  We lived very well in Russia, but Adler had plenty of issues. In Brazil, we lived adequately but the problems of the city and the country really affected us, and we managed fine but we would not want to live there for long periods again, we would go back just for tourism and in a while….so, South Korea sounded attractive. The only thing is that my son has started school and after considering this and other variables, we decided that this time I would go alone. This is not the best thing in the world, but just for a year and 3 months and with a total of 5 trips back while being there we thought it would be ok after all…

The trip itself was nothing special after having done plenty of other transoceanic flights, but it’s true that Turkish airlines is really good, nice food and nice movies to watch while flying^^.

The first contact I had with the country was of course in Incheon Airport (Seoul). On the passport control, after scanning mine with a machine, an automatic voice told me in Spanish to put my index fingers in two fingerprint readers. IN SPANISH. After that the check lasted 2 minutes, if that much. This is the first thing I loved.

The second thing I loved was free wifi without registering anywhere. Just connect to the open network and use it….after other airports, this was amazing. The third thing I loved was going to the airport shops and seeing signs about leaving the suitcases outside to not bother people…and people doing so, with suitcases in the corridors, unsupervised, while the owners could not see them. Do you know how that feels, especially after Brazil??

At this point I knew. Whatever happened later, and whatever problem I found in the country, culture or in the project, I was going to love this country….

Since Gangneung is actually pretty far from this airport, I went to the information post. I had been told there was a bus that went directly, so I asked about it. They told me its timetable, which exit to use to get there and what to do and wrote everything in Korean, so no problems there^^.

The bus was pretty awesome, its seats were huge, only 3 per row, soft and comfy. The only problem is that the trip was more than 4 hours…the last 2 felt very long, especially because we got a couple of traffic jams.

During the trip I looked around, but I got a bad day for sightseeing since everything was covered by a low cloud and it was raining. I could see it’s a very green country, but not like Brazil (which is green but clearly tropical, with really huge plants and trees), more like France or Germany, but with different vegetation. There was a surprising amount of agriculture going on, I could see plenty of people working in small fields under the rain, even if it was Sunday. And lots of lights and leds in the road indicating different things, I noticed that too, they seem to love leds and lights….

Gangneung is a coastal city after the mountains where the Winter Games will take place. The mountains themselves are rather low, 700-1000m, but I’m told it snows enough in winter to do snow activities in there. The feeling I got was like a big town or small city, with some main roads but afterwards plenty others with no sidewalk, areas with small houses and not much people or traffic. Unlike the airport, nothing was in English and people don’t really speak it apart from at the office and at the stations (and even then, at the office I’m really surprised by the fact that plenty of people working for Olympics do not speak English well enough to communicate without help, which is not ideal….), so I realized it would not be easy to live there without getting the basics of the language…but I had been warned about it, so it was ok.

The first days were very nice and interesting. The area is very calm,  as I said like a small town, with some particular details that you associate with east-asian culture like plenty of neon lights, (k-)pop, cuteness everywhere, typical school uniforms, some big shopping malls (but it's a town so it's shopping streets full of little shops), very well packaged food even if it’s fruits, extreme politeness, face masks, etc…. It has stuff to do around, with bars and clubs, restaurants, bike paths and parks, and a curiously varied expat community, bigger than usual because in this country English teachers need to be native and there’s plenty of people from abroad teaching.
I found a very small apartment for me on the second day, small but ideal for this period, and it even included a bike (well, “included”, it was the bike of someone that lived there before and left it, and the man renting the place said he was going to throw it away, so instead I’m able to keep it^^) I will be using to move around. I also already ordered some furniture online, which is currently travelling towards it, and in general this first contact went very well.

The only thing it may still cause issues is the food. Food is amazing, similar to Chinese and Japanese, really tasty and healthy…but there’s plenty of things that are spicy, very spicy. And I cannot handle that…so unless I’m with a local or an expat with experience, I go to a place I already know and order the same thing, which may make me bored of the thing fast if I don’t manage to get a wider selection of places…

I’ve also heard that some processes of the burocracy are very very slow, and for example getting a simple SIM card will not be easy…but there’s open wifis with really good speeds everywhere, so it’s not a big concern at the moment….

Anyway, all in all I’m very happy with this new place I’m getting the chance to discover^^

Escape to Iguazú (II)

After the day in the Brazilian side, we reached the border to Argentina.  The border was weird, with two big areas, one for each country, where they could check passports and a shop in the middle. There was a bridge that had the point where the two countries met, and I saw pictures before if that bridge as if there were no barriers between them, when the fact is that the barriers are before that point.

We didn't get stopped in the Brazilian side, which was a bit strange, but well, we thought that was normal for people going away. In Argentina we had no problem and they just stamped out passports, and then we got to the hotel using a bus to wars the city.

The Argentinian city was similar to Brazil,  but with some differences. It looked as poor in a way, but a little more touristic as well, with plenty of advertisements about hotels, and with streets slightly more pedestrian - friendly than in Brazil. It also looked. .well, red. The terrain had red soil, and there was plenty of red bricks as well.

This hotel was much much worse than the Brazilian one. It was more like a hostel, a small room with lots of dust, almost no electric plugs, no air conditioning, very poor wifi coverage...

I did not do the reservation, so I don't know how many stars the hotel advertised. As long as they indicated 2 or less I guess it's fine, because it definitely was not 3 by far. Still,there were little details that even if you have 1 or 2 stars are shameful, like having to ask them to give toilett paper and towels...

Anyway, we managed to check-in and then go eat to some restaurant nearby. For some reason it was hard to find one open, and we ended up into a kilo place,like in Brazil, where you weight your food and pay for kg, but with some different dishes, more pasta and, of course, bread. In Brazil they don't usually include bread, and it was nice to have some^^.

The place was nothing special though, and we went back to the hotel and finally got a shower, slept and rested.

The next morning turned out to be half-sunny, so it was less likely it would rain, which was good. The breakfast here was not full of options, but it came with dulce de Leche (boiled condensed milk), tipically Argentinian and really tasty^^. It took a while to get ready and then we went to the park area.

We had been told the Argentinian side was bigger, and that's true. It was also much better done and indicated. The area looked more like a theme park, but it was very clear where you were, the paths you needed to take and even the stairs you would find on the way. With sunny weather with some clouds,  everything looked very nice but soon it was really hot too.

Since we had two days to spend here, we decided to take the lower route today and then do the higher one during the next. There was also the devil's gorge, which we would visit if we could at some point. First we had to walk a bit around the forest, and we started seeing plenty of bugs and butterflies, some Quatis (there were also on this side, and they also stole food but seemed more taken care of) and some scarily big ants and insects.

The lower road went between the forest and the river,  but at a very nice level, between the high side of the river and the low side. And while the Brazilian side gave you a view from afar, this side was right next to the waterfalls. The path was an elevated metal platform, which means that in some sections you crossed small streams that formed between two consecutive small waterfalls. It was quite impressive to see them that close, and the whole area was really green and beautiful. There were also some panoramic viewpoints, and in general it was a great path.

After walking for a bit, the path allowed you to go almost under a medium -sized waterfall. It created a big cloud of constant small drops,  and the closer you walked the more soaked you got. It was nice and refreshing, and also quite curious to see everything so close. There is something in watching do much water moving and falling that is hypnotic,  together with the white noise it makes...

We got a bit wet, not as much as other people, and we continued. In the way we also managed to see a lizard that was quite big, at least compared with most lizards we have seen...it was black, and had quite a big head and mouth,  at least as long as my forearm. It seemed to be wild but apparently used to have people around, although it maintained a distance with all the tourists...

In the end we finished this path quite earlier than we thought, after just a couple of hours. Since we still had plenty of time, we decided to also visit the devil's gorge.

To reach the devil's gorge, you had to take a small touristic train that was marginally faster than walking, but they didn't allow you to walk there so we had to use it. When we reached the gorge's station there were a huge number of butterflies flying around, drinking water from the wet floor next to a fountain for the visitors. Elay was very happy about this and "danced" with the butterflies (probably killing some, even if we tried to tell him to be careful ). It was really beautiful, but also very hot. We drank and watered our heads, and we started to walk towards the gorge.

This path was also a metallic platform on top of the higher part of the river. You could not see the waterfalls from there, and we knew it would take a while to reach the gorge. There were some islands from time to time, that offered cover from the sun, which was very bright and hot at that moment. I believe it took us around 20 minutes to reach the end of the path,  and it was very full of people and very hot with no shadows, but was the most impressive place probably.

The gorge was the area of the biggest section of waterfalls, moving the biggest ammount of water. A massive volume of water kept falling down quite a big distance, making a lot of noise and movement, and making big raindrop clouds. There was also plenty of rainbows, and in general it was really beautiful and brutal too.

With that we finished our first day, we went back to the city and had dinner in a nice place next to the hotel. We were tired after the heat (the walking was ok, we didn't do that much distance actually), so we went to sleep early.

The next day was our last, so we had to check out of the hotel. While crappy, it is true that the people managing it were nice enough. After having the same breakfast as the previous day we left one suitcase in the bus station lockers and went back to the park.

If it was your second day visiting, there was a discount, but they asked that you marked the ticket when leaving,  which was stupid since there was no one at the exit to mark it or explain this to you. At least they also accepted photos from the previous day as proof, so we got the discount.

Today we wanted to do the high path of the waterfalls, that went at the level of the river before falling, and that was short enough to let us plenty of time to go back to the Brazilian side and get to the airport. This path was, in our opinion, not as spectacular.  Sure, you could see most waterfalls from above, but it felt nicer to be next to them in the lower path. However, the nature around us was impressive, of course. We even saw a small cocrodile, and probably the biggest wild spider I have ever seen waiting in its web in the middle of the river, between two trees...

Anyway, we finished the day and went back to the bus station to start our trip to the Brazilian airport. After checking times and prices, we decided to get a taxi directly there, since buses just left you at the border and brought you to the Brazilian city center, which means it took twice as much time with any luck, and we didn't have that many hours until out flight.

With the taxi we arrived to the border, and the taxi driver gave us some papers to fill for the Brazilian border. However, we had not been stop at the Brazilian border when going to Argentina. The driver told us we should have been stopped, and that it was best then to just say we didn't have papers and we lived in Brazil.

We passed the Argentinian control without problems, and we were getting ready to lose a lot of time in the Brazilian control so we could explain out situation. However, once again the Brazilian border didn't even stop us. Apparently they do have controls, but because they have agreements with Argentina they just check people from time to time, and private cars and taxis pass without stops plenty or times. So, we visited Argentina with it leaving Brazil, according to our passports.

After this we had no other trouble, we boarded the plane and came back home. It was quite a nice and impressive visit, definitely recommended for anyone that gets the chance to go^^.

Escape to Iguazú(I)

I haven't explained anything about trips for a while..because we haven't visited anything new, that's true..but well, let's explain the latest one...

After working weekends,  we get days off to select afterwards. I usually take them as soon as possible,  but sometimes 2 or 3 accumulate.

Recently I've done this on purpose, so last week I took Tuesday to Thursday as days off, so we could travel to Iguazú on monday night.

Everybody who works here in Rio has traveled or plans to travel to Iguazú. It is a popular destination, and agencies offer packages to get there and sleep, but I didn't really do any research about what is in there, apart from knowing it had big waterfalls. It was also a natural border (the river) between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

We spent one night in the Brazilian side, and two nights in the Argentinian side. Each side has a natural park that you need to pay to enter, and some other stuff to do around.

So, on Monday night we took a 2-hour flight to Foz de Iguazu. The Brazilian hotel was pretty good, with nice enough rooms and nice breakfast, apart from an awesome pool that we didn't have time to use but looked nice. We slept there and on tuesday we grabbed the bus that goes there(if you are not careful you will get scammed with price of transportation ).

This day was all gray and cloudy, and forecast warned about rain and storms. Far away we could see some big black stormy clouds coming our way, but well, nothing we could do about it.

The Brazilian park had another bus to bring you close to the waterfall areas. We stopped in the middle of the way and walked around the forest. First thing we saw was a warning about Quatis. We didn't know what animal was that, but got the point of not trying to feed them. We reached the first observation post, and yes, I can see why it is a popular destination.

The waterfalls are massive, and really really big. There's lots of green around it (not equatorial jungle, but more like tropical,  still pretty dense and green and humid), and there is lots and lots and lots of waterfalls. From that side, you can see them from far away and it is impressive the ammount of water that they're moving,  and the spray they create. You could literally see the water making "clouds" right there, many tiny little drops floating up towards you or towards the sky. This together with the green of the forest gives an amazing view.

On the next open area, we found Quatis.

Quatis are a type of mammal that is probably related to Raccoons. They move similarly, and act similarly. The ones in this area have adapted quite well to humans,  and are totally shameless, trying to check your bags and making puppy eyes for food. We were shooing them away from our son (who of course was very happy to see them and wanted to touch them, but was so excited it would have resulted in him hitting them), that was in the stroller, but they kept checking it and trying to grab our bags. In the end, while opening one pocket of the stroller they saw a bag of dried apples, and one of them jumped on it and stole the whole bag.

It was actually very funny, because it was not something that would be bad for them (just dried apples) nor anything we needed, but we could see that, while cute, they were shameless and problematic...

We continued our walk and found some stairs. This was very annoying, because we had the stroller with us,and previously there was no indication about them. We even passed areas that had ramps next to some steps, as if this was the norm in all the park. So we had to move through stairs several times during the day...

We passed several nice observation points, and in one of them we saw that the storm clouds we noticed during the morning were moving quite fast. They looked really awesome, as if they were unfolding, and they seemed to have a very liquid texture. There was especially dark sections moving at different speed than the rest...and for a bit we enjoyed the show without realizing their movement.

Then we saw that they were moving towards us at high speed and we had an "oh crap" moment.

We covered ourselves and the stroller with raincoats, and just managed to get ready before it started to pour water in top of us, right after the beautiful clouds passed us overhead...

This put an end to the visit, and we just run through paths and stairs to the restaurant area, which had pretty good views from far away of the top of the waterfalls and one of the main sections called the devil's gorge...

We could also see the Argentinian side from there, and there were platforms on top of the river and next to the waterfalls. It looked curious, we needed to check that next day...

We managed to eat, the rain calmed down, and we went out of the natural park to visit a bird park next to it.

This park was like a zoo, but bird-based and taking advantage of the nature around it. It claimed to be a place to rescue birds, and it is true more cages were rather big, but it is still a zoo, and a touristic one...

Anyway, I don't know if they trained the birds in there, but most of then were very sociable,  with some of them jumping towards us when they saw us. Our son was extremely happy about it and keep making happy noises.

And then we went to one of the cages, since the path entered some of them and let you be around the birds. These were big caged areas, and it was nice to see them close. However, our son was eating a chicken stick at that moment...I thought they would tell us we could not do that,  but nobody said anything...

Anyway, we were in this really big cage, and we saw some pretty big birds walking around, and some tucans. I really like tucans, and we had seen some free ones in Rio, but it was still nice to see different types around.

Then, several things happened. First, we were being followed by a number of walking birds, and we noticed that they were looking at our son's food. We shooed them away, but then a small tucan, for whatever reason, started to harass my wife trying to touch her toes, until it actually bit her a bit.

While trying to send the little tucan away, I turned around to see a big black walking bird stealing the chicken finger from our son (he maybe got scared for a sec but he was also happy that the birds were that close), and ran away followed by other big birds, who started stealing the food from one another....

It was very chaotic for a moment...and apart from the little tucan's attack, what the other birds did was funny but worrying...

After that we passed other cages, but we made sure to not have food around us...

In one of them we also found another tucan(a big one this time), this one apparently sociable and very cute, just sitting in a railing of a bridge that crossed the stream. We took pictures of it, and some people even caressed it...it seemed not to mind, although if some person was too annoying it just took some steps away, indicating that it was enough..I could not resist a gentle tap with one finger, and it just looked at me^^.

After the last tucan, and considering this one had a beak twice as big, my wife just looked at it from a distance, while taking pictures...

During the visit it started to rain again, which was annoying. Most birds at least had a place to cover themselves, but the rest of the visit happened much quicker after this. I will only mention that there was a big cage you could enter that had butterflies and hummingbirds, and it was quite impressive, especially the butterflies, big as my hand....but then they showed you the caterpillars, and they were also that big^^'.

We finished the visit quite wet, and returned to the city to grab a taxi to the Argentinian border, really hoping the hotel in there would also be nice and wanting to eat and take a warm shower after the wet rainy day...

I'll explain the other two days in another post.