The Parana, is the second longest river in Latin America and easily one of the most beautiful river systems of the world.
On its pristine blue-green to sometimes muddy waters, boat-riders, even on short trips, get rare visual treats and unusual experiences.
Almost immediately one encounters a rich, diverse marine life and on its banks, lands dominated by savanna or incredible tropical rain forests. The trees in the distance are an awesome sight.
Densely packed, they preside over lush greenery - exotic vegetation, quaint fruit trees, and rare aromatic plants many still waiting to be discovered.
Some giant trees exuberantly push their way above the ground for sunlight.
On the trees can be spotted toucans, macaws, humming birds, eagles and other multi-coloured feathered creatures making it a birdwatchers haven.
In the leafy cover, and in the dappled light, roam rare wild life - puma, bog deer, jaguars, iguanas.
Just as the camera lens’ close in on smiling, joyfully naked children and whole families thrashing about the waters catching fish, a playful spider baby monkey and its mother stare back at you, wondering what manner of strange creature in straw hat, goggles and dangling photo-gizmos has sidled to their world.
In this timeless celebration of life, there is a symphony quietly unfolding in the background - bird song and chatter, flutter of butterflies, insects and frog calls.
Every now and then, some great maestro calls in the grunts, growls and crying of the bigger denizens to enhance the fleeting wild notes.
Besides the richness and flamboyancy of nature, the Parana passes several old and modern dwellings, lagoons and small islands and towns.
More commonly you’ll see tiny farming and fishing villages with shy lightly tanned inhabitants with minimal clothing. Many of these communities have strayed from the forest interiors. The southern end of the Parana river system bustles with human activity.
Water plays a significant role in everyday life. A range of ancient and modern water transport works the river - merchant and naval vessels, ferries, kayaks, and motorboats ferrying people, farm produce, construction material and other manufactured items, crude oil, timber and other commodities.
In between ocean-going ships and cruises steam up and down the river. The waters have not always been serene.
In its long history, the Parana has seen skirmishes aplenty - clashing swords of steel, canon and gun fire, screaming, warring men, mostly white from far off lands. The violent battles were invariably for territorial and forest bonanzas.
Today another assault is regularly witnessed: Man’s plunder of nature. Illegal logging, poaching, large scale clearing of woods for soybean, dumping of untreated industrial and domestic sewage into the river, and other abuses that endanger the delicate eco-system.
As an upshot, the river and its tributaries see hectic activity even as communication linkages have improved.
At one point of the Parana’s course, at the borders of Brazil and Paraguay, the ‘large waters’ is tamed by the colossal Itaipu dam.
The economic benefits are huge say the beneficiaries. The ecology has been comprised groan critics. The debate continues decades after the damming.
The project has come up at a spot where stony protuberances of a long submerged island impede Parana’s flow. The rocks above and below the water, lashed and withered as they have been by natural forces have becoming craggy.
When water gushes through them, a series of eerie howling sounds result. Depending on the intensity of the impacting forces, sounds vary - sometimes intimidating growl, sometimes soft, ethereal - providing another musical score to the wild setting.
The ancient people of the area, the Tupi, Ava-Guarani and Mestisos tribes, had a name for the phenomenon, ‘Itaipu’, ‘Singing Stones Island’. The name stuck. Today the area is the site of ‘the largest power plant on the planet’.
Communities in the area that once faced either drought or floods that impacted crops, livestock, industries and livelihood, now have something to smile about, say supporters of Itaipu.
Great volumes of water are stored in gigantic reservoirs for use in irrigation and to generate electricity. But the taming of the Parana didn’t happen easily.
The work began when Brazil and Paraguay got together and partnered the mega electricity project. Right from the start, the enormity and scale of the dam construction stunned the world.
First, a lake reservoir and dry riverbed were created. The mighty river’s thundering course was altered, by a diversion canal.
During construction, civil work moved at the mindboggling rate of ‘a 20-storey building every 55 minutes’. The quantity of iron and steel used was enough to ‘build 380 Eiffel Towers’, and cement enough to ‘build 210 football stadiums’.
Today the completed eight-kilometre long dam has a height equivalent to ‘a 65-storey building, 200 metres’! It has cost some $18 billion. The project generates an impressive 91.1 billion kWh of hydro-electricity - ‘an unequaled performance in the global electricity sector’, equivalent of ‘burning 433,000 barrels of oil per day’, making it the world’s largest producer of electricity, ahead of China’s Three Gorges dam.
“The company managing the dam, Itaipu Binacional, has the unenviable task of continuously rehabilitating the forest people, reforestation, relocating displaced animals in biological shelters”, explained Tachi, our guide.
“The project implements its vision for biodiversity by maintaining a ‘green corridor’ that has been widely acclaimed," he said.
As such, and for the richness of its surrounding forested areas, Itaipu is a major tourist attraction. Visitors are invariably bowled over by the waterworks’ ‘monumentality’. On the dam’s huge walls, workers ride bicycles or drive small electric cars and ply about. By the side of the dam is the Museum of the Guarani land, the Forestal Greenhouse, the Biological Refuge Tati Yupi, and the river Monday Falls.
After a ‘dynamic’ sound and light show at the Itaipu dam, we piled into our bus for our resort in Foz de Iguazu.
As the vehicle pulled away, soon in the distance the cacophonic chorus of settling in birds was being replaced by the cries of nocturnal creatures.