THE IGUAZU RIVER

With its vast torrent, arrogant and striking, yet spontaneously refreshing, the Iguazu River offers its thousands of visitors the fascinating picture of a conglomeration of obstacles, islets and elongated islands, breaking it up into innumerable branches.

The Guarani people called it Iguazu, literally "great water", as they gazed in wonder and ecstasy at the immense sheet of water diving in a majestic torrent from the heights at various points along its course.

Nowadays those feelings of wonderment are repeated constantly in the hearts of each and every one of those who live here, and in every fiber of the visitors.

The source of the river is in the Sierras Do Mar, just a few kms from the Atlantic Ocean, at a height of 900 m above sea level. Its earliest springs are formed near the city of Curitiba, capital of Parana, a Brazilian State, where it is known as the Rio Grande de Curitiba.

The river forms in Misiones a natural border between the Argentine and Brazil. Its approximate length is 1,300 kms, of which 1,205 are in Brazil, and 115 make up part of the joint border; the Argentine part begins exactly where it is joined by its tributary, the San Antonio River, and ends when it flows out into the Parana River, 23 kms below the Falls.

The waters of the Iguazu and the Parana do not mix immediately, and for a long space those of the Iguazu can be easily differentiated by their transparent and greenish hue as they whirl around the darker, reddish waters of the Parana, until they are finally absorbed by the latter.

At the confluence of the two rivers, the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay can be very easily and clearly distinguished.

As it runs through Brazilian territory it forms numerous falls that are very picturesque but never near as large as the Iguazu Falls: the Cayacanga, 10 m in height; the Do Funil Falls, some 12 m high; the Passo Falls; the very tall and beautiful Santiago Falls; the Osorio; the Caxias and the Faraday falls.

Running between low-lying banks, the river width over the grater part of its course varies between 500 and 1,000 m.

However, within Iguazu National Park, the river broadens to 1,500 meters, turns southwards, then swings back towards the north to form a wide U, featuring a sharp drop at its mouth that originates the imposing Iguazu Waterfalls.