28 November 2024

Iguazu Falls

The water was flowing gently along the wide river. It had no idea what would happen to it. Its sole role was to go where gravity was leading it. For now, it was but a smooth ride in the middle of the endangered jungle.

The fish somehow instinctively knew they shouldn't cross the Rubicon. They never knew exactly why but the school never took the risk of getting past a particular point. It was perhaps the noise or a perceptible acceleration of the current that alerted them of danger.

The edge was near. When the water crossed it, the drop was like something it had never seen. Not only has the water no memory, but it cascaded from one massive waterfall into another just as big. Thousands of cubic metres all dropping at once in deafening noise.

The birds didn't seem to mind. On the contrary, they appeared to enjoy the challenge of traversing the wall of water. Any other living organism would have been crushed by the weight of water hurling down. But not them. They always found an opening in the curtain of water – and glided through to reach their well-protected nests. In and out they flew, a spectacle for those taking the time to soak in the view.

For the view was grandiose, with huge waterfalls all around, across kilometres of jungle. A single of those waterfalls anywhere else in the world would have warranted a highlight in any travel guide. Here, there were dozens of them, each bigger than the next one.

How not to be humbled by their size, their power, their lifetime even? We are nothing in comparison. The water has been rushing down for hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of years. What are we? Just a tiny fraction of that flow, like a few droplets one can try to track with the eye as they fall over the edge and mix with other droplets before disappearing in crashing waves and mist.

He was contemplating those thoughts as he was leaning over the railing, a few centimetres away from the gushing water. And then, without a word, he pressed his hands on the metal bar, lifted himself up, and elegantly went over, disappearing in the devil's throat.