🇦🇷 Argentina · The Northeast
Puerto Iguazú is the Argentine gateway to one of the planet's natural wonders: Iguazú Falls. This quiet town in the far northeast of Misiones, set deep in the Paraná rainforest on the banks of the Iguazú river, lives off the awe generated by the waterfalls a few kilometres away, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site and chosen as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
But Iguazú is more than its star attraction. It is also the vertex of the Triple Frontier, where the Iguazú river flows into the Paraná and three countries meet — Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay — each with its landmark painted in the colours of its flag. It is lush subtropical rainforest, with its toucans, monkeys, coatis and butterflies; it is Guaraní culture and the history of the Jesuit missions; and it is the starting point for the San Ignacio ruins, the precious stone mines of Wanda and the immense Itaipú dam.
This guide runs through the essentials of Puerto Iguazú with a practical, warm eye, and with real, verified prices: how to organise the visit to the falls (Argentine side and Brazilian side), what to do in town and around it, how to get around the border area, where to stay and eat, and what precautions to take. Iguazú is, without exaggeration, one of the unmissable destinations in Argentina and in all of South America.
The Iguazú region was the territory of the Guaraní peoples, who knew the great falls and, by tradition, gave them the name 'Iguazú' (from Guaraní 'y', water, and 'guasú', big: 'big water'). The falls were sighted by the Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1542, during his journey towards Asunción. The area was later tied to the Jesuit-Guaraní missions (17th and 18th centuries) and, later still, to the yerba mate and timber trades. Puerto Iguazú was born as a port on the river in the early 20th century and grew with the tourist development of the falls, above all after the creation of Parque Nacional Iguazú in 1934 and the declaration of the falls as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of the Paraná rainforest and the red earth: home to the famous Jesuit-Guaraní missions, today a World Heritage Site, to the yerba mate that peopled its forests, and to the Iguazú Falls, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
Read the history of Misiones →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Almost every day, when the sun hits the Garganta del Diablo full on, a rainbow lights up over the cloud of spray. To science it is elementary optics; to the Guaraní, who lived beside these falls for centuries before any European saw them, it was something else: proof that two lovers punished by a god still find each other. Because Iguazú Falls, before being a World Heritage site and a Natural Wonder of the World, were the stage for a story of love and divine fury.
According to the legend, the river was home to M'Boi, a serpent-shaped deity that demanded sacrifices. A beautiful young woman, Naipí, was destined to be offered to it, but she fled in a canoe with her beloved, the warrior Tarobá. Enraged, the deity split the course of the river, opening an enormous crack and precipice — the falls — separating the lovers forever: he turned into a tree at the edge of the drop, she into a rock lashed by the water. The rainbow linking the tree with the rock is said to be proof that their love survives the punishment.
The original owners of this landscape were the Guaraní peoples, who lived in the Paraná rainforest and knew the great falls of the river well. From their language comes the name of the place: 'Iguazú', usually read as 'big water' (from 'y', water, and 'guasú', big). For the Guaraní, the forest was not an obstacle but their world: from it they took food, medicine, materials and a symbolic universe that ran through their whole cosmology.
That Guaraní heritage is still present in the region: in the place names, in the indigenous communities that still live in Misiones, in the language, in the culture and in the deep bond with the forest. Understanding Iguazú starts with recognising that these falls had names, stories and owners long before they appeared on European maps.
The first European to leave a record of the falls was the Spanish conquistador and explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who in 1542, on his journey from the Atlantic coast towards Asunción in Paraguay, came upon the imposing waterfalls. He named them 'Saltos de Santa María', though the name did not survive against the Guaraní one. His account was the first written mention of one of the continent's natural wonders, which would remain remote and little visited for centuries.
Through the 17th and 18th centuries, the region became bound up with the extraordinary experiment of the Jesuit-Guaraní missions. In the Alto Paraná and Uruguay river area the Society of Jesus established a set of 'reducciones', or mission towns, where thousands of Guaraní lived under the organisation of the missionaries, working in agriculture, the arts and the trades, with notable cultural and architectural achievements. The ruins of San Ignacio Miní and other missions, today a World Heritage site, are the most visible legacy of that era, which ended with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and the decline of the towns.
After independence, Misiones was for a long time a territory of disputed borders and deep forest, tied to the exploitation of yerba mate (the Guaraní 'caá') and of timber, which drew logging bosses and workers in often brutal conditions. The region, bordering Brazil and Paraguay, was settled slowly, and the falls remained a distant, hard-to-reach destination known to few travellers and explorers.
Iguazú Falls are the result of a geological process that began more than 130 million years ago. During the Cretaceous, enormous flows of basaltic lava covered much of south-central South America, forming a thick plateau of volcanic rock known as the Serra Geral basalt. That hard rock, fractured into blocks, would be responsible for the present shape of the falls.
The Iguazú river rises in the Serra do Mar, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, and runs some 1,300 kilometres west before flowing into the Paraná river. On its final stretch, the river crosses the old basalt plateau. Where the current met a large fault or step in the rock, the water began to plunge, and over millennia erosion carved out the spectacular horseshoe we now know as the Garganta del Diablo. The set holds between 150 and 300 falls — depending on the flow — spread along a front almost three kilometres wide, with drops of up to some 80 metres.
The falls are still 'alive' geologically: erosion continues, and the lip of the falls retreats slowly upstream, year after year. The flow varies enormously with the rains in the basin: in flood the spectacle is thunderous and sometimes forces walkway closures, while in extreme drought the flow can drop drastically. That natural dynamic, together with the biodiversity of the Paraná rainforest around them, is what led UNESCO to recognise their outstanding universal value.
The founding of Puerto Iguazú has a date, a name and an unexpected protagonist: on 10 September 1901 the first Argentine tourist excursion to the falls arrived, and one of its members, the Buenos Aires philanthropist Victoria Aguirre, donated 3,000 pesos that same day to open a road between the port on the Iguazú river and the falls. With her contribution — added to that of other donors and the work of the 12th Battalion — the road of some 20 kilometres opened in 1902, and the fledgling settlement was named Puerto Aguirre in her honour (only decades later would it take its present name). That date in 1901 is the one the town celebrates today as its anniversary: few towns in the world can say they were founded, literally, by tourism. The settlement then grew around river traffic, timber and yerba mate, in a forested border area that was only beginning to be integrated.
A decisive milestone was the creation of Parque Nacional Iguazú in 1934, which brought the falls and the surrounding rainforest under protection, in line with the wave of national park creation Argentina was living through. Official protection laid the foundations for the development of tourism and for the conservation of one of the country's most extraordinary landscapes. Over time, access roads, walkways and services were built that let more and more visitors see the falls up close.
International recognition came in 1984, when UNESCO declared Iguazú Falls (Argentine side) a World Heritage site — the Brazilian side received the same distinction shortly afterwards — and it was cemented in 2011, when they were chosen as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World in a global vote. Those milestones set tourism off for good, and Puerto Iguazú became a tourist town, with hotels, restaurants and services for the millions of visitors who arrive from around the planet. Today the town lives off the awe the falls generate, guards the forest around them and keeps alive the Guaraní and mission heritage that gave this corner of the Argentine Litoral its name and its soul.