Mighty Itaipu (by Joe)

The Iguazu Falls may well be one of the natural wonders of the world (see blog below), but on a different river, less than 50 kilometres away lies one of the undoubted man-made wonders of the world: the Itaipu Dam.

A joint initiative between Brazil and Paraguay and becoming active in 1984, this is currently the world´s biggest hydro-electric power station (to be superceded by China´s Three Gorges dam), providing a whopping 95% of the electricity for Paraguay and over 20% of the electricity for Brazil.

We went along to see it on a cloudy, wet afternoon and before getting absolutely drenched by a tropical storm, sat through a very interesting (if suspiciously slick and defensive) corporate video which provided some great stats to illustrate its scale.

- The iron and steel used to build it would be enough to build 380 Eiffel Towers
- The height of the dam (196 metres) is the same as a 63 storey building
- Brazil would burn 434,000 barrels of oil a day were it not for the dam
- 12.6 million cubic metres of concrete were used in construction
- The rock and earth excavations at Itaipu were 8.5 times more than those of the Eurotunnel

It was a tremendously impressive thing to visit - certainly the biggest man-made structure I have ever seen. Iguazu tends to be the bigger attraction in the area, but in its own ´feat-of-engineering´ way, we found Itaipu just as awe-inspiring.

Joe