Puerto Iguazú

For centuries before Europeans arrived, the forests around the falls were home to Guaraní communities, and the name Iguazú comes from Guaraní or Tupí words meaning big water. The first European to record the falls was the Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541, but the area remained Guaraní land, outside colonial settlement, until the late 19th century.

Settlers began arriving after 1880. One of the early backers, Victoria Aguirre, paid for the first road into the settlement in 1901, and on 10 September 1902 it was formally established as Puerto Aguirre in her honour. A police post, a civil registry and a post office followed over the next decades. The national government created Iguazú National Park in 1934 to protect the Argentine side of the falls, and in 1943 the town took its present name.

Tourism shaped everything after that. The Iguazú National Reserve was created inside the municipality in 1970, the falls were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, and in 1985 the Tancredo Neves Bridge opened across the Iguazú River to Foz do Iguaçu, tying the town into the wider Triple Frontier with Brazil and Paraguay. Gem mining at Wanda to the south added a second, smaller draw.

Puerto Iguazú is a frontier town in its daily habits. Portuguese is widely heard in the shops and at the Feirinha, Brazilian grills and beers share the tables with empanadas, and Brazilians have been part of the town since its beginnings. Paraguayans are the largest immigrant group, and the region's Guaraní-influenced Spanish, chipá and tereré are shared across all three borders.

The Mbyá Guaraní are the oldest community here. Five Mbyá villages lie within the municipality, one of them, Fortín Mbororé, practically inside the town, with about 2,000 people between them. Stories are part of the place too: a legend tells that a deity, enraged when Naipí fled with her mortal lover Tarobá, sliced the river to form the falls, condemning the lovers to an eternal fall.

The town's rhythm is set by visitors and by the heat. Mornings start early for the park buses and tours; in the late afternoon people walk down to the Tres Fronteras viewpoint to watch the sun set over the rivers, and the evening moves to restaurants and the market tables.

Puerto Iguazú had 82,227 people at the 2010 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Misiones after Posadas, Oberá and Eldorado. Tourism is the main economic activity: hotels and commerce are the main sources of jobs, and incomes rise and fall with visitor numbers and with exchange rates between the peso and the Brazilian real.

Cross-border trade is the other constant. People shop on whichever side of the river is cheaper at the time, and the bridge to Foz do Iguaçu carries a steady stream of buses, taxis and private cars through border controls on both sides. The Triple Frontier's smuggling routes mean police and border checkpoints on the main roads.

Outside the tourist centre, many residents live in plain neighbourhoods of single-storey houses, while many international hotels have been built along the banks of the Iguazú River. Dengue outbreaks in recent years have made mosquito control a public concern, and the long, humid summers keep the middle of the day quiet.

The food of Puerto Iguazú is the food of the upper Paraná, close to Paraguay's and Brazil's. Chipá, small cheese breads made with cassava starch, are sold warm by street vendors in the morning. Sopa paraguaya, a dense cornbread with cheese and onion despite its name, and mbeyú, a cassava-starch pancake with cheese, come from the same tradition, and mandioca (cassava) is boiled or fried as a side to almost anything.

River fish are the speciality of the town's restaurants. Surubí, a large catfish, is grilled, stewed or breaded as a milanesa, and pacú and dorado are cooked over coals or wrapped in foil. Beef from the grasslands of Corrientes keeps the Argentine parrilla going, and the Brazilian influence shows in the grills and picadas, shared plates of cheese, salami and olives, served at the Feirinha.

Yerba mate is grown and processed in Misiones, and it is drunk hot as mate in the cool hours and cold as tereré, often with herbs, through the heat of the day. Sweets include dulce de mamón, papaya cooked in syrup.