Day 3 - Iguaçu Falls and Itaipu Dam

That was quite the day! After so much travel, many of the group had no trouble sleeping last night and the wake up call at 6:30am (remember we’re now 3 hours ahead of home time) seemed very early.

The breakfast buffet was excellent and Jzinge especially enjoyed the mangos. The bus arrived with Arlette, our guide, and we were off to our first adventure.

It was interesting to learn that at the resort we were only a few minutes drive form Paraguay and Argentina. Too bad our schedule didn’t allow us the time to go explore some more countries.

We arrived at Iguaçu National Park, which we learned is designated as a World Heritage Site and we soon found out why.

After we were through the gates, we headed down the trail on the Brazil side of the canyon and took lots of pictures of the Argentina side of falls. We saw a Toucan bird, the circling vultures over the falls and canyon and the Coati Mundi,


which similar to racoons but we were not allowed to feed them. This one was eating something that fell from the fruit tree above us.




The view was spectacular at the base of the falls (click the word for way better pictures) and the mist coming the water was cool as the sun was getting hot and we had been walking for half and hour. When the falls are more intense (they are currently about a 10th of the volume due to the fall season) the mist is almost a torrent and visitors get drenched from head to toe.

The elevator was good for an even better view of the area. It also revealed spiders under the walkway at the top that were almost as big as my hand but I couldn’t get a decent picture.
Although Rick pointed out the army of ants that had overtaken a green Praying Mantes for supper that night!




As we waited for lunch we also saw two lizards, lots of butterflies and a large school of fish that went crazy when food was thrown in the water from the balcony.

Lunch was great with a buffet and local fish dishes and most of us tried some Brazilian soft drink called Guarana. It would be like Schweppes Ginger-ale with a light cherry flavour.

The bus ride to Itaipu hydro-electric dam was filled with sleeping, worn out students and sorry I didn’t get a shot of it as I was one of the ones that had crashed in the very comfy seats!

The security was tight as it is the largest hydro-electric dam in the world and supplies 100% of the electricity for Paraguay and 75% for the electricity for Brazil.





The tour started with a video of the history and facts about the dam which I’m sure was great but the whole thing was in Portuguese so we looked at the pictures and moved on.
We learned that the dam is jointly owned by both Brazil and Paraguay as the border of the countries passes directly through the middle of the dam. It is shared by costs, employees, both generation and maintenance. Hopefully the two counties stay positive with each other or that arrangement may turn sour. The size of the two countries is vastly different as Brazil has 190 million people and Paraguay has 6 million, so Paraguay sells 90% of its power back to Brazil to help subsidize its costs.

The rocks used for the wall on the Brazil side to support the dam were all quarried from the river to make it big enough. The lake created by the dam is 175 feet deep and holds enough water to provide each person on earth with a 6000 litre drink!



The building at the base of the dam looks kinda small but is five stories tall! The spill gates are usually opened a few times a year when the lake level gets too high but limited rain has prevented them form it being used hardly at all recently. The water travels down the spillway at over 100 km/hour but they would not allow us to go down with inter tubes! I guess the reason was we didn’t bring our swimming trunks.




The building level of the dam showed the white outer casing of the turbines, which can funnel more water per second then the Iguaçu Falls total! The view up to the top of the dam is 75 meters and 150 meters down to the base of the original river bottom which did not show up well on the camera. The last time I felt so small and insignificant was when I lived in Northern California and stood in the Red Wood forest!

The next step was going deep into dam’s interior to see the main control rooms and the generators. The yellow line that Austin is straddling is the actual border between Brazil and Paraguay, although at this border they did not require our passports!

The elevators did not have floors for the buttons but feet from sea level instead. I think the engineers in the group appreciated that more then the rest of us.





Nothing is small in this place and the massive hallways are over 1 km long and hundreds of feet high.

They said that in 1997, after 30 years of paying, they finished paying off the interest of the loan and now are paying off the principle. That is projected to be paid off in year 2023. Wow, when you build the largest hydro power dam I guess a 50 year payment plan is normal!

We thanks our guides that did an excellent job of answering all of Ran’s questions (Ran is an engineer at SaskPower) and bid them farewell. The airport called and said the flight was overbooked so instead of eating out we went straight to the terminal for early check-in and ate at the airport. The food was good, many enjoyed some drinks and I was quite entertained watching the ant trail at my table.