Curitiba Pilgrimage 10 (11/25 – Foz do Iguaçu)

Santo Agostinho parish hall - Revda. Elisete

It was an extraordinary struggle to get up and out of the house by 7 a.m. (Did I mention that our cheerful hosts went to bed when we did and were always up before us to prepare coffee and set out breakfast?)  We did make it out on time, but two other members were late, having waited for about 20 minutes for their ride to the pick-up point to materialize.  After we were underway, we were told we would have no problem making it on time.  Shortly before reaching our destination, we stopped to pick up two more passengers.  One was Revda. Elisete, the pastor of Paróquia Santo Agostinho de Cantuária in Foz do Iguaçu (the city is commonly referred to as just “Foz”), and Alexander, a young man who spoke English, but whose situation was never quite clear since we all heard different things in conversation with him that didn’t seem to match up.

We were driven to the Itaipu Dam and Hydroelectric Plant, where we were greeted and given a personal guided tour.  Elisete handed me a hat to cover the little piece of exposed skin on the top of my head (what spot on the top of my head?!).  Like our first day in Curitiba, today we would mostly be tourists, and since the Itaipu Dam and the Iguacu Falls are world-renowned — much grander than the largest of their counterparts in the U.S. — I won’t cover details here.  At one point, our morning tour of the dam took us across the border into Paraguay, though there was no border checkpoint or “Welcome to Paraguay” sign to demarcate the change, since this was all within an enclosed facility.  That spoiled our threat to leave our Spanish-speaker Kate there, but we thought we all should at least spend a few moments butchering the Spanish language on this side of the border before returning to Brasil.  We took a few group pictures on the Paraguay side looking toward the spillway and then drove back.

We then went back to town to have lunch at a small café.  This again was a hosted meal, and we were getting better about selections and proportions from the buffet.  The food was excellent, as it has been everywhere we’ve been.

We then drove through Foz to the national park where the “Cataratas do Iguaçu” (Iguacu Falls) are located.  Melissa, who had covered this territory with a friend as tourists a couple of weeks earlier, repeatedly warned us that we were going to get wet.  I thought I was appropriately dressed.  However, my one concern was for my passport, since we were told we needed some documentation of residency when buying a ticket. (There were three different entrance fees depending on whether one was a local resident, a citizen of Brasil, or from somewhere else.)  After we had almost reached the line to buy tickets, we were told we didn’t need the documentation (since we were paying the highest price), but no one wanted to go back to the van to leave our passports at that point. (Hint: big mistake!)

We bought tickets and boarded a bus that took us into the park to drop off points for hiking down to the falls.  It was overcast, but the weather was warm enough to make us look forward to getting wet.  Nancy, Amber, Alexander, and I went down more or less together, to an observation point where there was a steady spray from the falls.  We then went all the way to the end of the walkway that extended out over the river in front of the falls.  It was windy, and there was no way to avoid getting soaked.  After trying to take a few pictures, we walked back to the observation point and a place to get out of the spray.  Only it didn’t stop at the place where we had been out of the spray before, and it slowly dawned on me that it was raining, rather heavily.

Rather than being uncomfortably hot, we ended up being uncomfortably cold as we rode the air-conditioned park bus back to the park entrance.  We checked into a motel where Paróquia Santo Agostinho had reserved rooms for all of us.  We hung up our wet clothes, hoping they would dry out. Our passports?  Well, they’re sturdy enough to survive, but we were just hoping we could train them to lie flat again.

Nancy and some of the others went out to shop, and I stayed in to write.  Due to confusion over when we were leaving for dinner at Santo Agostinho, I was not ready when Melissa knocked on the door, and by the time we got in the van, collected more passengers, and got to the church, it was probably close to 9.  We’ve been assured more than once, and seen for ourselves, that Brazilians customarily eat late and have no problem with their children staying up late (at least at this time of year).  While we really enjoyed each other’s company the day before, today we were getting on each other’s nerves.  Deborah helped break the tension when, upon seeing what looked like a list of activities at a church we passed, she remarked, “Hey, Neurotics Anonymous meets here.” (Melissa in fact had met a woman in Curitiba who said she attended Neurotics Anonymous, proving there’s a 12-step program for everyone.)

We started in the temple with a prayer service, which included four children singing a song for us.  We then moved into the parish hall in a separate building behind the temple.  As Michael has remarked, most of these parishes appear to be “land rich,” that is, they have good facilities, even though they may not have a lot of resources otherwise.  I don’t think it’s for the same reason as in the U.S. — that is, having been a prominent denomination with many more members and resources in the past when church-going was more customary — but I don’t really know.  Here in the parish hall at Santo Agostinho, we met more members, including our guide from Itaipu dam.  We went through a buffet, sat down with the members, and were served more barbecue at our tables churrascaria style.  Nancy talked with one of the children, getting him to say some things in English and asking him who was number 9 on the Brasilian national team.  Melissa was with some of the smaller children, and with a sheet of butcher paper and a crayon, they did a perfect tracing of our wooden labyrinth and taped it up on the wall.  It was one of those things we wished we’d thought of before.

During this road trip, I have noticed that the locals were always calling Roberto by his last name Negreli, and in the last couple of days I have started doing so also.  Roberto is a former Roman priest who converted to Anglicanism about ten years ago, and in ways is very Italian, including using his hands to speak.  When it came time to do presentations with Roberto translating, I just said my name and then turned to him and said, “Negreli, o que eu fazou?” (What is it that I do?)  And then laughing, he proceeded to tell them that I’m an attorney who works for the state of California, adding, I think, that Governor Schwarzenegger is my boss.  I said a few more things, but our presentations this evening were not our finest moment.  The late hour may have been okay for the Brasileiros, but we were all suffering from serious sleep deprivation and had another early morning ahead.  Amber knew she had hit the wall when she described the labyrinth as something that engaged both hemispheres of the brain.

Still, we loved the warmth and friendliness of these parishioners as much as the others on our journey.  Elisete told us that three of the children, the youngest of whom was a six-year old girl, had just lost their mother and were from a very poor family.  Unfortunately, the parish did not have resources to help them other than to provide them with loving attention.

We got back to the hotel late. (It’s not a motel, Michael said that motels are strictly for assignations, and some of the names match that description.)  We had another early start scheduled, this time to drive all the way back across the state from Foz to Curitiba.  The breakfast buffet at the hotel opened at 7, and we all agreed to be there right at 7, in Amber’s words, like “panting dogs.” (Amber’s Texas roots come out from time to time to keep us in good humor — once in a while I refer to her as Reverend Tex, the preacher with the small voice and the big laugh.)