Iguazu Falls

Around 275 separate waterfalls strung along a two-step lip of basalt on the Argentina and Brazil border, most of them 60 to 82 metres. Half the river goes down one feature, the Devil’s Throat, a chasm 80 to 90 metres wide and 70 to 80 deep that you can stand over on a walkway. Average discharge is 1,756 cubic metres a second, and on 9 June 2014 it hit 45,700. The rock is three layers of the Serra Geral basalt and the lip is retreating upstream 1.4 to 2.1 centimetres a year, so the falls are slowly walking inland. The Guarani name means big water, and their story has a god cutting the gorge in a rage when two lovers escaped him by canoe. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote the first European account in 1541. Both national parks are World Heritage sites, Argentina’s from 1984 and Brazil’s from 1986, and each side is a different visit.