Yguazu // "Big Water" - a Major Understatement

My entry stamp for Paraguay lasts 90 days, so I took advantage of having to leave the country to visit the stunning Iguazu waterfalls (which used to be part of Paraguay, and now straddle the Brazilian/Argentinian border), accompanied by the lovely Esther Brassett. Esther is also from Cambridge, where we went to the same secondary school and sang together in choirs (notably Cantiamo! - we love you Mr Bond!) for several years. She is on a Spanish-speaking gap year in Asuncion before beginning her degree in French and Arabic at Cambridge (and she speaks Chinese as well. Why do I bother?).

[See those clouds at the top of the left-hand picture? Not ordinary clouds. They are in fact the spray thrown up from a colossal waterfall known as the "Devil's Throat"...]

On seeing these waterfalls, Eleanor Roosevelt allegedly said "Poor Niagara!". I have never been to the Niagara Falls, but it's hard to imagine anything more incredible than Iguazu. It means "Big Water" in Guarani, but we were searching for fresh adjectives at every new viewpoint - "indescribable" is perhaps the most accurate! The weather cooperated to festoon the scenery with rainbows wherever you looked.

Just one more spectacular rainbow-wreathed view

If you ever get the chance, go and see it for yourself - the photos can't do it justice. Speaking of photos, there are a lot of old ones here as part of a Brazilian project. Don't be put off by the Portuguese - the pictures speak for themselves. If you click on the 'Documentary' tab, the third video is a rather amusing British effort from the 1920s.

Pre-Health and Safety.

Colossal, immense, monumental, spectacular, amazing, wonderful, magical, bewitching, enchanting, hypnotising, mesmerising, awe-inspiring, impressive, fearsome, implacable, relentless, foreboding, heavenly, incredible, unbelievable, indescribable, stunning, striking, breathtaking, astonishing, astounding, majestic, magnificent.....et cetera, usw.

The Paraguayan "doorbell"

No-one here has doorbells, and doors are often open or token. If you're standing outside someone's house and want to get their attention, rather than knocking, you clap your hands. If they're in, they emerge to receive the applause!

The fact that clapping is audible and effective as a doorbell is indicative both of the tranquility of the town and of the lack of insulation / doors that close properly.

Maize and Mimi

Holy Week / Semana Santa #6 - Easter Saturday

The culmination of the church events was the long Easter Vigil on Saturday evening, beginning with a bonfire in the square outside. After the end of the service followed Tupãsy Ñuvaiti, a tradition dating back to the Jesuit era which imagines the encounter of the Risen Christ with his mother. Previously the Jesuit-Guarani statues of St John, Mary and the resurrected Christ were taken from the museum to play the three roles, but since one suffered some damage last year, people dressed up instead. 

The Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, hiding in Margaret's house.

All the women hide in a house opposite the church with the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. The men then accompany St John, leaping and bounding, to knock on the door. The second time they knock, Mary Magdalene goes out, and the third time the Virgin and all the other women go out, and everyone processes around the square with lanterns to meet Christ at the church door. Lots of singing and general jubilation ensues.

In earlier eras this custom was rather lengthier, as no-one knew which house in the village Mary was hidden in. Her location was passed around the women in the village by word of mouth, and the men just had to go knocking from house to house all over town to find her.

On Easter Sunday there was a normal service in the evening but it was rather like the Sunday after Christmas in terms of attendance...Eggs are a less prevalent symbol, perhaps as Easter falls in autumn rather than spring, and chocolate is pretty dubious - even the bars that you can find in San Ignacio admit to being "chocolate flavoured paste".

Holy Week / Semana Santa #5 - Good Friday (Part 2)

Margaret and I went to San Ignacio for the Good Friday mass at 3pm (the one in Santa Maria is at 5pm) so as to go on to the candlelit procession at Tañarandy. This is the most well-known and widely attended Holy Week event in Misiones. 

A colossal altar constructed entirely from maize, recalling the Jesuit-Guarani reredos in its design, was illuminated by hundreds of candiles (candles made from hollowed out bitter oranges filled with fat), displaying the historic statue of the Virgin Mary in the central upper alcove. Once night fell, it was reflected in the lake before it, which in turn was strewn with floating candles.

A procession of men and women with lanterns, accompanied by estacioneros singing Guarani dirges, marched to the foot of the cross, constructed on the top of a scaffold, and ritually took down the body of Christ and placed it in the 'tomb'. 

All in all, it was breathtakingly beautiful. The assembled crowds were silenced.

Holy Week / Semana Santa #4 - Good Friday (Part 1)

Every year on Good Friday, thousands of Paraguayans from all over the province of Misiones make the journey, often on foot, to the Cerro, an objectively-not-very-large-but-relatively-so hill with a small oratory at the summit. It takes about two hours to walk to the hill and another half-hour or so to climb it. Although the relentless heat has eased now that we are into autumn, Paraguayans still consider it unthinkable to trudge that distance in the sun, so we set off at 4am, with chipa.

The sun rose on the way.

At the top, eating CHIPA! With Leti, Paty and the parish priest Oscar.

Wooden cross next to the oratory.

Lots of people go to the foot of the hill by car or motorbike, so halfway back to Santa Maria we hitched a lift home from a passing vehicle. By that point the sun was beating down again, so it was quite welcome!

Holy Week / Semana Santa #3 - Maundy Thursday

Thursday lunchtime (not Easter Sunday) is when the big family meal happens. Asado, of course!

In the evening I went to San Ignacio to see the beautiful Cuadros Vivientes (Living Pictures), an artistic Holy Week event where young people represent famous religious works of art 'live'. Some were static and some were accompanied by music and readings and incorporated movement.

Holy Week / Semana Santa #2 - Chipa!

Thursday and Friday are the bank holidays, but most Paraguayans take Wednesday off too, for the serious business of making chipa - a kind of baked cheesy maize roll/scone/biscuit hybrid.

Demetria has a grinding machine, so on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday half the population of the town dropped by our house to have their maize ground into flour.

The other ingredients for the dough are cassava flour, eggs, Paraguayan cheese, butter or pig fat and aniseed.

7 kg of cassava flour going in

That orange bit in the middle consists of over 30 eggs and a couple of litres of pig fat.

 Then you knead the dough and make it into the classic chipa shape, or in my case assorted animals...

 Meanwhile, you make a fire inside your outdoor brick oven - the "tatakua" (Guarani 'fire hole')

 When it's glowing, you sweep out the wood and embers (in your flip-flops, with a broom made of very flammable twigs, naturally). Then you put in the chipa trays and cover up the hole.

 Remove and eat with cocido (caramelised yerba mate with hot water and milk).

These are the classic shapes.

Chipa is a 'fasting' food, which you eat on Good Friday when you can't have meat. Of course, everyone has far too much so a lot of exchanging goes on.

Holy Week / Semana Santa #1 - Via Crucis and Palm Sunday

Misiones, the province in which Santa Maria lies, is famous for its Holy Week traditions. As in much of Latin America, Semana Santa is marked and celebrated far more than Easter Day.

The Friday before Palm Sunday is "Viernes de Dolores" (Friday of Sorrows). This was marked by a Via Crucis, a candlelit procession with readings, singing and prayers, visiting 15 stations of the cross spread throughout the town. It lasted about two hours, by which time my candle had burnt down to a stub and my hand was covered in wax. The whole thing was very atmospheric and reflective, and I was struck (as I regularly am) by the eloquence and social relevance of the prayers. In a tradition started by the Jesuit Reductions and later renewed by the Ligas Agrarias Cristianas, Christianity in Misiones has always been linked with radical social models.

For Palm Sunday itself ("Domingo de Ramos"), the Jesuit-Guarani wooden statue of Christ on the donkey is brought from the museum into the church. If the weather is good, there is a procession from a little hill near the edge of the town, but it was raining so it was just in church. Everyone brings woven palms to wave, and there was a semi-dramatised Passion reading.

Church on Palm Sunday with statue

One of the variety of woven palm branches