Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
Itaipu Dam
Av Tancredo Neves 6702 •
Itaipu Dam
Panoramic Tours: daily 8am-4pm (hourly; 1.5hr); Special Tours: daily 8am, 8.30am, 10am,
10.30am, 1.30pm, 2pm, 3.30pm & 4pm (2hr) • Panoramic Tour: R$24.20; Special Tour: R$60.20 •
T
45 3520 6676,
W
itaipu.gov.br •
Ecomuseu
Tues-Sun 8am-4.30pm • R$10 •
W
turismoitaipu.com.br
•
Bus #101 and #102 from Foz do Iguaçu, taxi R$120 return
Some 12km north of central Foz do Iguaçu, the
Itaipu
Dam
harnesses the power of the
Rio Paraná in what is supposedly the world's largest operating hydroelectric facility
(jointly with China's Three Gorges Dam). It's a stark contrast to the natural wonders
of the falls, but mind-bending nevertheless: almost 8km long and 196m high, the dam
supplies around ninety percent of the total electricity consumed by Paraguay (and 19
percent consumed by Brazil). In 2009 a temporary disruption at the dam blacked out
the whole of Paraguay for fifteen minutes.
Work on the dam began in the early 1970s at a cost of US$25 billion, and its
eighteen 700,000-kilowatt generators became fully operational in 1991. The project
has been controversial from the start, with some ten thousand families forced off their
land, the destruction of the Guaíra Falls and as yet unknown ecological consequences,
despite the much-publicized animal rescue operations and financial assistance for
displaced farmers.
Buses drop you at the
visitors' centre
where a film about the project, in English and
other languages, is shown, and from where illuminating
guided tours
of the complex
depart - Special Tours take you inside the dam itself, while Panaromic Tours end at the
viewpoint on top. You can also take a look at the
Ecomuseu
on the edge of the
complex, which chronicles the history of the site.
Santa Catarina
Another relatively rich state,
SANTA CATARINA
is best known for its beaches,
especially around the holiday resort of
Ilha Santa Catarina
, the small, beautiful,
laidback island that, confusingly, shares the name of the state. The island is
sometimes refered to in general as
Florianópolis
, but note that this more specifically
refers to the main city and state capital on its west coast (the city now also extends
to the mainland) - don't book a hotel in the city and expect to wake up next to a
palm-fringed beach. Elsewhere, cities such as
Blumenau
and
Joinville
, established by
German immigrants in the nineteenth century, have become wholly Brazilian (with
the exception of Blumenau's hearty
Oktoberfest
), but in the surrounding villages
such as
Pomerode
, and on isolated farms, many people still speak the language of
their forebears in preference to Portuguese; Germans, Austrians and Italians all
settled here in numbers between the 1850s and 1910s.
Florianópolis
Founded on the
Ilha Santa Catarina
in 1675 by Portuguese adventurer Francisco Dias
Velho,
FLORIANÓPOLIS
- aka “Floripa” - really got going 75 years later thanks to an
influx of immigrants from the Azores. Since then, it's gradually developed from sleepy
provincial backwater to a middle-sized, fairly a
uent
state capital
of just over 400,000.
Until 1893, the city was known as Desterro, but it was renamed for Marshal Floriano
Peixoto, the second president of Brazil. Florianópolis as a port has all but died, and
today the city thrives as an administrative, information technology and tourist centre.
Land reclamation for a multi-laned highway and bus terminals has tarnished the
character of the old seafront, but despite the changes, the remaining late nineteenth-
century pastel-coloured, stuccoed buildings still have a whiff of old-world appeal, and
it's worth taking half a day to look around.