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A helicopter tour of theworld’s largest falls.

A helicopter tour of theworld’s largest falls.

Iguazu Falls

Sao Paulo

Rio deJaneiro

Buenos Aires

Atlantic Ocean

Argentina

Brazil

Paraguay

Paraguay

Brazil

Paraguay

Brazil

Iguazu Falls

Iguassu Falls, or Iguaçu Falls are waterfalls of the Iguazu River located on the border of the Brazilian state of Paraná and the Argentine province of Misiones. The falls divide the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. Their name comes from the Guarani or Tupi words y(water) and ûasu(big). Legend has it that a god planned to marry a beautiful aborigine named Naipí, who fled with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. In rage, the god sliced the river creating the waterfalls, condemning the lovers to an eternal fall.The first European to find the falls was the Spanish Conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541, after whom one of the falls in the Argentine side is named.The falls were rediscovered by Boselli at the end of the nineteenth century, and one of the Argentine falls is named after him. Iguazu Falls was short-listed as a candidate to be one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature by the New Seven Wonders of the World Foundation. As of February 2009 it was ranking fifth in Group F, the category for lake, rivers, and waterfalls.

The waterfall system consists of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometers (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. Some of the individual falls are up to 82 meters (269 ft) in height, though the majority are about 64 metres (210 ft). The Devil's Throat (Garganta del Diablo in Spanish or Garganta do Diabo in Portuguese), a U-shaped, 82-meter-high, 150-meter-wide and 700-meter-long (490 by 2300 feet) cataract, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil. Two thirds of the falls are within Argentine territory. About 900 meters of the 2.7-kilometer length does not have water flowing over it. The edge of the basalt cap recedes only 3 mm per year. The water of the lower Iguazu collects in a canyon that drains into the Paraná River at Argentina, shortly downstream from the Itaipu dam.

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