Blog being Worked on

Hi, to all my English readers. I am working very hard on this blog about the Iguassu River and its basin. Check the photographs and texts that I already pposted here. More will be uploaded soon! Thank You.

The Iraizinho River

This was my first contact with the Iraizinho River. The "zinho" ending of the word means "little". There is a larger river called Iraí. The Iraí-little will go to the Iraí proper. As far as I am concerned the Iraizinho is the "true" source of the Iguassu. I mean, the Iraizinho basin. But just like what is happening with rivers everywhere, the Iraizinho here is already polluted by subsistence agriculture, agricultural poisons, garbage and human and animal wastes.

Way back in historical time there was an Indian road. The road was travelled by Guarani Indians going fronm the sea to the mountains and vice-versa. Then the Portuguese built another road they called Caminho da Graciosa (Gracious' Way - something like this. When you hear the name of the road, we tend to ask Whose Way?). Later on, a new road called the Estrada da Graciosa (The Gracious' Road) was built. The road was made for heavier traffic, trucks and buses. What you see in the photo is part of the Estrada da Graciosa right after it passes downtown Quatro Barras, a city I felt like "liking". Today, traffic on the Graciosa can't be heavy. Heavy traffic travels on the BR 277 Highway. Sometimes the traffic is so heavy that a line longer than 60 kilometers will snake through the road for days. I walked the road you see. I went very close to the mountains. That is where all the water that goes to the Iguaçu / Iguassu comes from. It is watery!

The Roça Nova station has seen better days. The train does not stop here. No one alights. No one gets on board. It is ghost station.

The first tunnel

The tunnel I mentioned in the preceding posting as better seen here in ths Piraquara's official photo. With the exception of one tourism train, most of the traffic here serves cargo trains now run by the ALL company.

Maintainance man

Maintainance man by the entrance to the first of 13 tunnels between this spot called Roça Nova and the sea level city of Paranaguá. I will have opportunity to show more of the railroad later - in upcoming photos.

Pristine example

This photo is a courtesy of the Tourism Department of the Piraquara City Government. This pristine spring creek is sometimes reffered to as "the source" of the Iguassu River. It is a beautiful spring of course but is it is one out of many. This waterspring is located in the higher ground area of Piraquara as one goes up the slope of the Mata Atlântica - or this portion of the Brazilian Southern Atlantic Range. As you will see in this blog not all sources of the Iguassu River are as crystal clear and pure as this one.

Where does the Iguassu River come from?

Piraquara City Gov't Photo - The Iguaçu River's many sources come from the montains seen in this picture. The bus travels from the foothills to downtown Curitiba in less than half an hour along the length of Avenida Getúlio Vargas.

There were three questions that I hated the most when I worked as a guide in the Iguassu Falls area back in the late 70s when I was younger and foolish. The first had to do with the geological formation of the Falls. We then learned, as we still do today, that the Falls orginated from a volcano. Which volcano? Where? The second question was which side of Iguassu Falls is more beautiful the Brazilian or the Argentine? Depending on who asked you might be in big trouble. The third was: where does the Iguassu River come from? The answer then was normally what it still is today: the Iguaçu River comes from Curitiba – like the Government. Curitiba is the seat of the Paraná State Government – a Government headquartered at the Palacio Iguaçu (Iguaçu Palace) in the Curitiba’s Civic Center.

I have started this blog to answer the third question. The Iguaçu / Iguazu or Iguassu River orginates from thousands of water springs found on the high flatland (Plateau) on the Western foothill of the Southern Atlantic Mountain Range around the Curitiba Metropolitan Region (RMC). The RMC is made up of 26 cities most of them having something to do with the Iguaçu River but as far as this posting is concerned I will concentrate my efforts on the municipalities located to the East of Curitiba proper and between Curitiba and the Mountain Range.

Piraquara is my focus. The city claims to have catalogued 1.162 springs that form the heart of the Uppermost Iguaçu River Basin – the headwaters of the Iguaçu River which in this area happens to be the basin of the Iraizinho River. Because of such a privilege Piraquara, Piraquara also “houses” the headwaters of several other small river basins like the Piraquara River, the Iraí and the Itaqui rivers which will end up in the Iguaçu River somwhere and somehow downstream. Why do I say somewhere and somehow?

The City Hall (Prefeitura) of Piraquara affirms that 93% of its territory lies within the Headwater Protection Area and that another 7% is Mountain Slope Protection Area. Which means that 100% of the city is compromised with environmental protection. It also means that there are serious restrictions to growth, progress, economic development – as we know them today.

If you look for a good reason for so much protection – all you have to do is to stand on Piraquara's Avenida Getulio Vargas and look westward. You will see Curitiba with its population of 1.7 million sprawling down there. Piraquara is responsible for 50% of the water Curitiba uses to drink, bathe with, flush toilets, wash cars, laundry and so on. Climbing the nearby mountains will reveal the existence of dams or reservoirs of all sizes. Among them the Piraquara I and the Iraí Dam, soon to be joined by Iraquara II, all owned by the partly (half) State-owned water and sewer company called Sanepar. Unlike other dams down river – in the middle and lower Iguaçu, these are not intended to produce the much needed electricity. They are part of the Curitiba Water Supply infrasctructure.

It is only past Piraquara and other municipalites that the Iguaçu River already polluted will be called by this name. I am an Alagoas State-born Brazilian that has been residing in or near the Iguassu Falls since 1977. Sometimes I leave the area in order to let things cool down. I have been involved in several campaign and efforts to save the Iguassu River, to save the Falls, to stop night-lighting at the Falls, to stop helipads being constructed by the Falls and as of lately, the struggle against the privatization of Iguaçu / Iguazú National Parks tourism-linked structures. In the blog I will post photos and texts that are product of my trips along the Iguaçu River from the Sierra and Piraquara down to Iguassu Falls, across lands belonging to the Brazilian states of Paraná and Santa Catarina as well as the Argentine Province of Misiones. Hope you enjoy.