Reel 30 - Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls and its history

Water rushing to the rocks below.

Reliable 3D standard plant-in-foreground shot.

Reliable 3D standard tree-in-foreground shot.

Going round the bend.

Water thunders into the river.

Rainbow!

More rainbow!

Getting nearer to the tremendously powerful waterfall.

This set of views features what will become a much bigger staple on the Brazilian side – rainbows. Like a constantly running scientific demonstration of the refraction of light, they're present almost everywhere you look. They add another layer of colourful beauty to what is already one of nature's greatest spectacles. I mean, at this point it's going beyond showing off and bordering on indecorous behaviour.

We were driven to the entrance of the falls just after they opened. This, like so many other tourist attractions, is a huge car park designed to hold coachloads of visitors. We were there early to get ahead of not just the crowds, but also to keep ahead of the sun. It was relatively cool in the morning, and by relatively cool I mean the air was a deeply unpleasant soup through which we toiled. My hat became quickly drenched and sweat broke the levee of my eyebrows.

Our guide led us through a series of trails and walkways. Glimpses of waterfalls came into view along the way. They were still distant, but their roar was steadily building. I took photo after photo, each one essentially the same but a little closer. As exciting as these views were, they were mere footnotes compared with the colossal drama of the falls in full effect.

Some waterfall facts:

• An average of 1,753 cubic metres of water flows over Iguazu Falls every second.
• This is approximately 0.7 Olympic swimming pools per second.
• Not being too familiar with Olympic swimming pools, this comparison didn't sound all that impressive, so I made a different calculation.
• The volume of water flowing at Iguazu Falls is equivalent to approximately 160,000 Gentoo penguins per second.
• For the avoidance of doubt, there were zero actual penguins at Iguazu Falls.

I looked into the history of Iguazu Falls and was immediately struck again by how different a place Antarctica is from the rest of the world. The first thing I saw was that Iguazu Falls were discovered in 1541 by Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. This must have been extraordinary news to the Guaraní people who had been living there for thousands of years. You would have thought they would have noticed a massive system of waterfalls or at least have wondered what all that noise was. Places in Antarctica really were discovered. Practically everywhere else on the planet was already populated before anyone thought to make notes on the matter.

The name Iguazu comes from the Guaraní words y (water) and ûasú (big) and is pronounced ee-waa-soo locally. De Vaca named them Saltos del Santa Maria and that was how they were known for a while. They were largely forgotten about until they were rediscovered for their sightseeing potential in the late nineteenth century. At some point their name reverted to the original Guaraní, but it's difficult to find any reliable history online. In fact, the once-venerable Britannica claims they were formerly known as Victoria Falls, which I find hard to believe. Britannica, which definitely was formerly known as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has apparently embraced technology, particularly AI, to stay relevant in the modern age. The article making the Victoria Falls claim is marked as having been checked by editors, but I still don't believe it.* Only a handful of other sites make the same claim, and they are word-for-word identical, suggesting the error is spreading like rot.

That's enough grumbling about the careless application of AI. The Falls became the tourist attraction they are during the thirties, when both Argentina and Brazil made their respective sections national parks.

The falls are arguably amongst the most impressive in the world. They're bigger than Niagara Falls in every measure, and are the world's largest system of waterfalls. Victoria Falls has them beat in terms of length of continuous curtain, whereas Iguazu is made of 275 individual falls. The largest of these is the Devil's Throat, which straddles the border between Argentina and Brazil. This is the focus for visitors to the falls on both sides.

A question that is often asked is which side is the best to visit, Argentinian or Brazilian? I'll answer that when we get to the Brazilian side, but for now I'll just say that recommendations to see both sides are not unreasonable.

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Bonus selection of digital 3D and 2D shots on Flickr

* I contacted them about this and they denied it could possibly happen, at which point the article was quitely corrected. I sent them the screenshot I had taken pre-edit and heard nothing further from them.