Igazu Falls adventure for our Brazil volunteers

It’s been hard to find the time to sit down and write this blog because life has been non-stop in Brazil. We are no longer at ‘Criadoura Oncapindata’, since we caught the very comfortable bus back to our host families in Florianopolis. The past few days have been spent getting to know the city a bit more, and getting more settled in with our families. Our Portuguese is coming along slowly, but surely, as we become more immersed in the culture and spend more and more time in situations where we need to whip something out purely for survival’s sake. For instance, my host family’s dog left a poo on the lounge room floor one day. If it weren’t for my Portuguese the poor maid would have had to deal with an awful surprise the next day.

Oh, and something I haven’t mentioned yet… we all have maids! It is very typical of upper-class brazilian families to have a maid that cooks and cleans all day, Monday to Friday. Many families even have two!  

The last weekend before leaving Curitiba was spent at the beautiful Igazu Falls. Everyone decided to go, except Hugo who wanted to spend some more time in Curitiba city, playing his guitar and meeting people. It took us 10 hours by bus to get to the border of Brazil and Argentina, where the falls are situated. Lucas booked a hostel for us, which was absolutely perfect for our needs. The staff there helped us organise the whole weekend. We spent the Saturday on the Brazilian side, which takes about 3 hours to explore. We were blown away by the beauty, but after about 30 minutes we were also blown away by torrential rain. Despite my attempts to keep dry, what was once a perfectly new passport of mine now shows an identification picture of ‘Two Face’ from Batman ‘the dark night.’ I foresee having a bit trouble getting back into Australia with that.  

The worries the rain caused were all whisked away with the perfect weather that the next day brought. This day was spent on the Argentinean side, which was what we called ‘the real deal.’ We even took a boat ride that went directly under the falls, which we have some great photos and videos of. This was most likely the biggest thrill of the trip so far, for all of us, especially considering we found it rather hard to breath under the gushing streams. It’s this sort of thing that would be considered breaching some sort of ‘health and safety’ contract in Australia. This is the beauty of visiting a country that likes to live on the edge.

Arriving back at the wildlife sanctuary after another 10 hour bus trip was really relieving. We had an amazing weekend, but coming home felt surprisingly like coming ‘home.’ The animals even kindly put together some welcome home gifts- many fallen faeces and half-eaten rotten fruit to clean up. By the last week we were very used to getting ‘down and dirty.’ I miss the smell of anteaters on my clothes.  

Last week I realised that ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,’ or rather ‘’till it’s going.’ When saying goodbye to all the staff at Criadoura it became clear how close they were to our hearts. Some people, whose names I will not mention, even cried. Driving down the torturous long dirt road had me in deep thought. It isn’t every day that you have to say goodbye to people that have changed your life forever. People that care more about Brazil’s environment than themselves, people that have a bustling world of pointless technology around them but decide to focus on what’s important. I’m not sure whether Florianopolis has people like that. I think we may have met some more today.  

Today was our very first day working with the kids at ‘Cidade da crianca,’ which means ‘Children’s city.’ This program was created to keep kids that go to school for only half of the day off the streets. It comprises many different activities such as arts, dancing, sports (they’re obsessed with soccer) and general games. At the moment they don’t have English classes, but everyone there is so excited for that to change with our contribution. We have also learnt that the kids are fearless. Within twenty minutes of meeting them all they were jumping all over our backs and tugging at our jumpers. Apparently they didn’t have many kids today because it was raining so much. I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of ruckus the sunshine brings. The coordinator there has organised all sorts of jobs for us already. We are going to start taking English conversation classes next week, Lucas is going to help with sport, Hugo with the arts, and I with the dance classes. I’m sure the others will be very well occupied as well.

The dog just did another poo on the floor, so here goes another awkward explanation of events. I can’t believe that even the Brazilian pets like to live life on the edge. Have a great couple of weeks until the next blog post.

Bejos (Kisses). xo Interested in volunteering in Brazil? What about teaching English overseas, or working on building projects? Antipodeans Abroad specialises in gap year ideas and volunteer travel - find out more here.