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WONDERS OF NATURE
Iguazu. Nature miracle
Iguazu - this is how this place is called in the language of the Guarani Indians - in translation it means "big water". This word they called in ancient times one of the widest and mightiest waterfalls in South America.
Hidden in the depths of the mainland, this waterfall remained unknown to Europeans for a good half century after the discovery of America by Columbus. The acquaintance of white people with Iguazu happened, in general, by chance. And the first to see it was a man who was not looking for a waterfall at all. This was the case. In the hot summer of 1541, a small detachment of Spanish conquistadors made their way through the tropical rainforests that cover the left bank of the Parana River in Brazil. The leader of the detachment, the famous adventurer Alvaro Nunez, was no longer young. By the age of 50, he managed to fight in North America and, by the way, was the first European to cross it from ocean to ocean in the widest place: from the Florida peninsula to California. True, he did it not of his own free will. The detachment with which Nunez landed in Florida was partially defeated by the Seminole Indians, and the rest of the unfortunate conquerors died on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from hunger and thirst. Only four Spaniards out of 800 managed to survive. They were captured by the Indians and turned into slaves. Passing from one Indian tribe to another, Nunez and his companions ended up on the Pacific coast, where they were rescued by a Spanish detachment that accidentally stumbled upon them. Alvaro Nunez, who received the derisive nickname of Cabeza de Vaca ("Cow's Head") from his fellow countrymen, wrote a book about his adventures that brought him fame, and was soon appointed governor of the South American colony of Spain - Rio de La Plata. Then he led an exploratory campaign through the Brazilian Plateau to the Parana River. The purpose of the campaign was to search for the legendary "country of gold" - El Dorado, according to rumors, located somewhere on the border of Paraguay and Peru. Prior to this, Eldorado was also searched for in other places: in Venezuela and Colombia, in the malarial swampy thickets of the Amazon. But nowhere did the white aliens manage to find this fabulous country, stories about which the conquistadors heard more than once from the Indians. According to them, the inhabitants of Eldorado worshiped the goddess in the form of a snake woman who lived at the bottom of the sacred lake. And when the ruler of the country died and the time came to elect a new ruler, a raft decorated with gold was lowered into the water of the sacred lake. A solemn procession came out of the palace to him: priests on a golden stretcher carried a young man - the future king - to the lake. His naked body, rubbed with fragrant resins, was sprinkled with gold powder, precious sacrificial gifts were loaded onto the raft and pushed him away from the shore. In the middle of the lake, the contender for the crown threw gold jewelry into the water - a gift from the almighty goddess, after which he jumped into the water and swam to the priests who were waiting for him. If he safely sailed to the pier and there was not a single golden speck left on his body, then the new ruler was pleasing to the goddess, and then grateful subjects irrigated the lake surface with a new rain of golden gifts. It is clear that this lake has become the cherished dream of many greedy adventurers. The search for El Dorado has been conducted in different parts of South America for more than two hundred years, but not one of the seekers of the golden lake was lucky. Nunez Cabeza de Vaca also did not find gold, but he discovered a treasure that has amazed people since then for more than five centuries - the famous Iguazu Falls. It is located on the left tributary of the Parana - the Iguazu River, which begins almost at the Atlantic coast, not far from the largest Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, and is one of the most "waterfall" rivers in the world. Over 1300 kilometers, she overcomes more than 70 waterfalls, the highest of which makes her jump from a forty-meter ledge. But 28 kilometers from its confluence with the Parana, the Iguazu River encounters the most unusual obstacle on its way: here an 80-meter abyss cuts into the river bed, reaching a kilometer wide, and the waters of the mighty river break off from both sides of this wedge, forming a luxurious lace curtain of 275 two-stage waterfalls with a total width of 3600 meters! All this roaring symphony of sparkling jets can be fully captured by the eye only from a helicopter or plane. Clouds of water spray pierce dozens of rainbows, complementing the lush and colorful palette of flowering plants at the foot of the waterfalls and on the rocks separating them with their multicolor. Bright spots of begonias, orchids and bromeliads accompany the jubilant glare on the wings of thousands of tropical butterflies that hover over the flowers. Blue, green, yellow and red plumage of numerous parrots and hummingbirds completes the picture. Picturesque thickets of palm trees, bamboo and tree ferns intertwined with flowering vines rise along the banks. And above all this splendor is the roar of water. Iguazu Falls is located on the border of two countries. Of its total width of 3600 meters, about 600 belong to Brazil, and the rest of the giant pointed horseshoe is on the Argentine side. Nevertheless, it is through the Brazilian part of Iguazu that the bulk of the water falls, and it is here that the most spectacular waterfalls are located. There are 28 main cascades, and each of them has its own, very sonorous name. On the Argentinean side, these are Arayagaray, Belgrano, Rivadavia, Three Musketeers, Adam and Eve, Two Sisters, Ramirez, Mitre, Salto Escondido and others; on the Brazilian side, Salto Floriano, Union, Benjamin Constant and Bosenti stand out for their beauty and power. But all their charm fades before the formidable grandeur of Gargantodo Diablo ("Devil's Throat") - the main Iguazu drain, located at the top of the wedge-shaped ledge of the waterfall. The border between Argentina and Brazil runs along it, it is here that the main part of the water drains down. But other cascades also have a lot left: after all, the total flow of Iguazu during the rainy season (from November to March) is 12 cubic meters per second! This means that over a billion tons of water falls down from the crest of the waterfall in a day! Iguazu would fill the interior of the Grand Sports Arena at Luzhniki with water in less than a minute. True, in the dry season, the volume of rushing water decreases by almost 10 times, but even then Iguazu is a wonderful sight. However, very rarely, about once every 100 years, in a particularly dry summer, the river can dry up completely, and then the waterfall dries up for 2-3 weeks. The last time this happened was in 1978. Below the waterfall, the jets of many cascades again merge into a single stream, which, with a furious roar, rushes into a gloomy canyon only 400 meters wide (b'9 times narrower than the front of the waterfall!) And swiftly rushes towards Parana. The canyon is formed by the relentless work of water, gnawing through the basalts of the waterfall ridge. Every year the waterfall recedes upstream by 1-2 meters. This means that about 20 years ago it poured directly into the Parana River, the valley of which is now almost 000 kilometers away from it. Parana itself, by the way, also has a violent temper, it also has a lot of waterfalls and rapids. The largest of them, the SetiKedas (or Guaira) waterfall, blocks the Parana 160 kilometers above the confluence of the Iguazu River. Its height is lower than that of Iguazu - only 40 meters, but the width reaches 4800 meters! The flow of water in it is even greater than in Iguazu (from 9000 to 13 cubic meters per second), and both of them are among the three widest and most watery waterfalls in the world. Ahead of them is only the Kohn Falls on the Mekong River in Indochina, which, with a width of 000 km, brings down almost 12 cubic meters of water per second from a twenty-meter ledge. But in terms of the combination of power, height and variety of cascades, Iguazu Falls certainly has no equal. It is no coincidence that both countries that own the waterfall have declared the areas adjacent to it National Parks. Both in Brazil and in Argentina they have the same name - Iguazu. Numerous tourists come here to admire the virgin beauty of the rainforest, to see a herd of wild peccary pigs or an anteater sweeping their trail with a huge fluffy tail in the thicket, to watch capuchin monkeys and toucans - outlandish awkward birds with huge multi-colored beaks and disproportionately tiny bodies. But the main thing that attracts people here, of course, is the unique panorama of 275 silver cascades of foamy water, forming a fabulously beautiful rumbling arc with a sonorous Indian name - Iguazu. Author: B.Wagner
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