Iguazu Travel Guide

The story goes that many years ago a young Guaraniran away with a beautiful maiden who was about to be sacrificed in honor of a serpent who lived in the depths of the River Iguazu. When she discovered this insult, the serpent let her rage flow over her back, and, twisting it, split the course of the river, trapping the young lovers and thus creating the waterfalls of Iguazu.

Many years later, the traveler posing in front of the falls not only gives in to their fascination, but also feels the presence of the young lover in the dense forest around, and of the beautiful maiden who falls, unharmed and majestic, from high above.

The visitor is facing one of the wonders of the world: the most spectacular waterfalls that exist on the face of the earth.

 Only after gazing a while in wonder does he or she realize the immensity of the falling volume of water, and the fact that it has been falling for centuries, giving the impression of an ongoing harmonious "catastrophe". From a distance, the falls can be seen as a long, blue-shaded, snowy hill collapsing ceaselessly and harmoniously onto another liquid mass that flows in silent majesty until it is lost in the abyss. Over all this is the clear blue sky, and all around the intensely green forest.

 
A tourist venue par excellence, it was first glimpsed in the year 1542, when Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to Asunción in Paraguay. The conquistador, amazed at the sight of the falls, christened them as "Saint Mary's Falls", a name which over time was replaced by its primitive Guaraniname: "Iguazu" (I: water; Guazú: great), i.e. "great waters".
 At that time the region was inhabited by natives of the Mbyá-Guaranitribe, who, around 1609, began to live within the evangelizing influence of the Jesuit fathers, who set up an experiment unique to Latin America: the establishment of a system of "reductions", that at its height included 30 towns scattered throughout the regions of the Tapé and the Guayrá (currently the south of Brazil and Paraguay), all the Argentine province of Misiones, and part of the north of Corrientes.

 Political and economic differences with the throne of Spain led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from the region in 1768. The zone of the waterfalls passed into oblivion from then on until August 1901, when the explorer Jordan Hummell organized the first tourist excursion to the area. One of those travelers was Victoria Aguirre, who, when this excursion had to turn back for lack of proper roads, donated a large sum of money to open a land-route between Puerto Iguazu and the waterfalls. This date marks the beginning of tourist trips to Iguazu, and has been claimed by the community as its foundation day, in homage to Victoria Aguirre, who then became a kind of protector, a driving force for the growth of tourism and of the population.

This is its official history so far. Behind and around it lies a permanent effort, starting with the pioneers and continuing with the present inhabitants, to develop and give an international projection to one of the main tourist attractions on the planet.