IGUAZU FALLS

The Iguazu National Park Imposing and majestic, it holds in its midst the Iguazu Falls which has been declared a World Natural Heritage Site surrounded by a wild landscape of untamed subtropical vegetation. The traveller can discover in it an incomparably marvellous natural spectacle.

Located 17 kms to the south-east of Puerto Iguazu, and 22 kms from the point where the River Iguazu flows into the River Parana, the Falls were discovered by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca in the year 1541, and he gave them the name Santa Maria Falls, as a homage to the Virgin Mary, protecting his expedition. They are in the area that is now bounded by the cities of Puerto Iguazu (Argentina), Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil) and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), which has been named The Iguazu International Tourism Zone by a Special Tourist Meeting of the MERCOSUR.

The Iguazu River has its source in the State of Parana in Brazil and, as it approaches its confluence with the River Parana, there is a diversity of rocks, islets and elongated islands that split it up into numerous branches. When these reach the gorge, each of them turns into a waterfall, and all together they make up the huge "fan of the Waterfalls", on the border between Brazil and Argentina.

However, the river encounters its greatest obstacle shortly before meeting the Parana, right on the Argentine-Brazilian borderline. As it falls over the final edge of the plateau, the thundering roar of the powerful river has been compared by one observer to "the sound of an ocean emptying into an abyss". The noise is so great that it can be heard many kilometres away.

In a chain along the cliff-edge, forming a crescent almost three kms long, a series of 270 cascades and individual waterfalls separated by rocky islets let the river level to drop to that of the plateau. This is a 50 to 80 m free-fall, intermittently broken by outcrops or rocks.

The waterfalls, which are memorable in themselves, become even more outstanding in their beautiful forest surroundings.

The exuberance of the woods with their bamboo plants, palm-trees and ground-covering ferns, with such an intensely green that it is difficult to believe one's eyes, gives that touch of extra beauty to every waterfall while the brilliant feathering of parrots and toucans flutters through the foliage, amid exotic orchids, begonias and many other wild flowers.