36 Fun Facts About Iguazu Falls

A 2011 worldwide vote named Iguazu Falls a New Seven Wonder of Nature alongside which other South American wonder?

The Amazon, river and rainforest together. Angel Falls and the Galápagos reached the final 28 but missed the cut, leaving Iguazu the only waterfall among the seven winners.

What does the name Iguazu mean in the Guarani language?

Big water, from the Guarani y, water, and guasu, big. The first Spaniard to report the falls named them after Saint Mary, but his name never caught on and the Guarani one soon won out.

What is the name of the narrow chasm at Iguazu into which about half the river plunges?

The Devil's Throat is the tallest drop at Iguazu, about 80 m. The border between the two countries runs straight through the middle of it, so each owns one side of the same fall.

The jungle around Iguazu is one of the last large remnants of which threatened South American forest?

The Atlantic Forest once ran down Brazil's coast and inland as far as Paraguay. Logging and farming have left only scraps of it, and the two parks at the falls guard one of the biggest.

The curving line of the Iguazu Falls is most often likened to which shape?

A horseshoe, almost 3 km from end to end. Because the cliff bends back on itself, a visitor on one bank can look straight across at the falls pouring off the other.

In the legend of the Iguazu Falls' creation, how was a fleeing couple travelling when the river was split?

By canoe. In the tellings the couple are paddling away from a jealous god, or a giant river serpent, who breaks the riverbed in fury, creating the falls and parting or dooming the pair.

Which Spanish conquistador, on his way to govern a colony, became the first European to describe the Iguazu Falls?

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had already survived a wrecked expedition to Florida and eight years of wandering across North America. He came upon the falls in the early 1540s while marching overland to his new post.

The Spaniard who first described the falls was marching overland to govern from which inland colonial capital?

Asunción. He left his ships on the Brazilian coast and walked there along native trails instead of sailing up the rivers, a route that led him to the falls.

The Iguazu Falls drop over stepped layers of which rock, left by enormous floods of lava?

Basalt. The layers wear away at different rates, and that uneven erosion has cut the cliff into a giant two-step staircase.

What splits the Iguazu Falls into some 275 separate cascades?

Wooded islands along the lip of the cliff part the river into separate streams. Soaked by permanent spray, they carry dense forest right up to the brink.

What did US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly exclaim on seeing Iguazu?

"Poor Niagara!" is the remark credited to her, though it comes down only as hearsay. The comparison holds: Iguazu's drops are taller than Niagara's, and its rim is nearly three times as wide.

Iguazu is wider than Victoria Falls, but Victoria holds which record?

The largest single curtain of water: Victoria falls as one sheet more than 1.6 km wide and over 100 m high, while Iguazu, though wider, reaches its cliff as hundreds of separate falls.

In which season of the southern year do the Iguazu Falls usually carry the most water?

Summer. The heaviest rains fall between about November and March, when the river can swell to several times its usual flow; it runs lowest in late winter and spring.

Which cataract, once among the highest-flow on Earth, was drowned in 1982 by the Itaipu reservoir, moving Iguazu up the rankings?

Guaíra: Brazil and Paraguay had both claimed the falls, and their treaty to build the dam together ended the quarrel by drowning them. Thousands of people came for a last look as the water rose.

Below the falls, the Iguazu River drains into which major river, South America's second-longest?

Paraná. The two rivers meet about 20 km below the falls, at the exact point where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay touch, so the confluence is a three-country frontier.

The Iguazu River rises in the Serra do Mar near which Brazilian city?

Curitiba. The river is born in coastal mountains only a short way from the ocean, yet it turns its back on the sea and winds west across the whole width of southern Brazil before it reaches the falls.

Why are the big migratory fish of neighbouring rivers naturally missing from the upper Iguazu River?

The falls block their way. Cut off above the drop, the river's fish went their own way, and well over half of its species are found nowhere else on Earth.

Which international status did the national parks on both banks of the Iguazu Falls gain in the 1980s?

UNESCO World Heritage Site: the Argentine park in 1984, the Brazilian one in 1986. UNESCO noted the spray as well as the falls: its clouds keep the riverside forest permanently soaked, so the growth there is lush and dense.

A Brazilian engineer urged a national park at Iguazu in 1876, four years after the world's first was created where?

Yellowstone. André Rebouças, an engineer and anti-slavery campaigner, wanted the falls kept for 'future generations', but Brazil took until 1939 to create the park he had asked for.

Which activity, offered on the Brazilian side of Iguazu, was stopped on the Argentine side because of the disturbance it caused?

Helicopter tours. Argentina keeps its visitors closer to the water instead: walkways run out over the river, and inflatable boats nose right up under the falls.

Visitors on the Argentine side of Iguazu ride to the falls on which means of transport?

A rainforest ecological train. Its quiet locomotives, electric or gas-powered to spare the forest, pull open carriages through the jungle, so the ride doubles as a look at the wildlife.

Which bird is famous for flying straight through the Iguazu Falls to roost on the wet cliffs behind them?

The great dusky swift. Its colonies nest and roost on the rock face behind the falling water, so the birds dive through the cascade every time they come home.

Which large cat, along with tapirs, ocelots and harpy eagles, lives in the Iguazú National Park?

Jaguar. The big cat is endangered in this part of South America, and the two parks around the falls are among its last refuges, along with the tapir and the giant anteater.

Which riverside tree at Iguazu bears the red blossom that is the national flower of both Argentina and Uruguay?

Ceibo, the cockspur coral tree. It thrives where the ground floods and tolerates waterlogged soil, which is why it crowds the low banks of the river here.

The Brazilian gateway to the falls is Foz do Iguaçu; what does the Portuguese word 'foz' mean?

River mouth. The town is named for the spot where the Iguazu ends by flowing into a bigger river, about 20 km downstream of the falls that made it famous.

As of 2020, the Itaipu Dam near the falls ranked second in the world for hydroelectric output, behind which dam?

Three Gorges, in China. Itaipu has far less generating capacity, yet it held the world record for a year's output until the Chinese dam beat it in 2020.

At the Triple Frontier where the rivers meet, each country has erected what in its national colours?

An obelisk. Each one stands on its own bank where the two rivers meet, painted like its country's flag, and from any of the three a visitor can see the other two countries at once.

Which dictator was the Paraguayan city facing Foz do Iguaçu formerly named after?

Alfredo Stroessner ruled Paraguay from 1954, and the border town founded in 1957 as Puerto Flor de Lis was renamed Puerto Presidente Stroessner in his honour. After the 1989 coup that overthrew him, it became Ciudad del Este, East City.

Which Roger Moore James Bond film was shot partly at the Iguazu Falls, which the story moves to a distant jungle?

Moonraker. The crew tried to send a real boat over the falls for Bond's river chase, but it stuck fast on rocks at the edge, and a model at Pinewood Studios took the plunge instead.

In the 1986 film The Mission, Father Gabriel climbs the Iguazu Falls and reaches out to the Guarani by playing which instrument?

An oboe: one of the Guarani snaps it in two, but the others, captivated by the music, lead the priest to their village. The film was shot at the falls themselves.

Which film hero's 2008 adventure used second-unit footage of the Iguazu Falls for its jungle waterfall scenes?

Indiana Jones. A hurricane stopped Steven Spielberg filming a waterfall fight on location for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so a second unit shot Iguazu and the footage was blended into a studio scene.

In July 2000 a state-run refinery spilled more than 4 million litres of what into the Iguazu River?

Crude oil. A pipe at a Petrobras refinery ruptured and leaked for up to two hours, some 630 km upstream of the falls, in what an official called the worst environmental disaster in the state's history.

Which Catholic order founded settlements among the Guarani around the Iguazu Falls from 1609?

The Jesuits. They learned Guarani and gathered the people into towns of their own that sheltered them from Portuguese slave raiders, until the Spanish crown expelled the order in the 1760s.

A statue in Brazil's park at Iguazu honours which aviation pioneer, who lobbied to have the falls protected?

Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brazil's Father of Aviation, passed through on his way home from an air congress in Chile and lent his fame to the call for a park. An airline later paid for the statue.

Which Brazilian agency manages Iguaçu National Park?

The Chico Mendes Institute, Brazil's federal parks agency, is named after a rubber tapper and union leader who was shot dead in 1988 by a rancher's son for defending the forest he worked in.

The Iguazu Falls sit on the border between Brazil and which Argentine province?

Misiones is a narrow finger of Argentina hemmed in by Brazil and Paraguay. That sliver of land is how one small province comes to hold most of the falls on a river that is otherwise Brazilian.