Dam! I just HAD to Visit Itaipu...
Written: Sep 17 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Huge project, free tour
Cons: Dull tour, propaganda galore
The Bottom Line: Itaipu is one of the biggest, most impressive public works projects in the world. The tour is somewhat less impressive...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Itaipu Dam |
If you're into "biggest" this or "greatest" that, and you find yourself in the Iguazu area around the southern end of Brazil or northern end of Argentina, you might want to carve a little time out of your busy itinerary to visit Itaipu --- the world's biggest hydroelectric dam.
The Dam...
Locals boast that Itaipu is the biggest dam in the world. And it is, for now anyway...
The Chinese have an even bigger hydroelectric project underway --- called Three Gorges --- but, until they get their dam online (expected to happen in 2008), Itaipu can still claim to be the "world's biggest hydroelectric dam". And I'm sure the locals won't forget to let you know that even when Three Gorges does come online, it will not be able to match the electric production of Itaipu (the Parana River has a greater flow than the Yangtze).
Before visiting Brazil, I had no idea that this dam even existed. I guess I've led a sheltered life, thinking that the biggest dam had to be something like the Hoover Dam or Grand Coulee. I didn't realize that those dams are only famous by U.S. standards; that they've long since been eclipsed by other, larger, more productive facilities --- notably, Itaipu.
The dam itself is impressive. It cuts a five-mile arc across the Parana River --- the natural geographic border between Brazil and Paraguay. By the numbers, there's no mistaking the significance of this place, nor the incredible engineering accomplishment that it represents.
* Electric production: 12,600 megawatts
* Height: 642 feet
* 16 million cubic yards of concrete (enough to build 15 chunnels between England and France)
* 18 years to complete construction (completed in 1991)
* Supplies 25% of the total electricity used in Brazil, plus 95% of Paraguay's power
The dam itself was jointly developed by the governments of Paraguay and Brazil who operate it on a 50-50 basis under a joint binational treaty. The dam is considered the national territory of both countries who equally share in responsibilities and production. Although the power is ostensibly split, Paraguay is a small country that will probably never be able to use more than a fraction of the power produced by a plant like Itaipu. Consequently, most of the power is actually sold back to Brazil, which pays Paraguay for the right to use the excess capacity. The facility itself straddles the border, with parts of the plant lying in both countries --- the observed international border (for ceremonial purposes) is between turbines 9 and 10.
If you want more information about the dam, their web site is: www.itaipu.gov.br
Visiting Itaipu...
Tours of Itaipu are free, but are offered at scheduled times on the hour (usually 9 & 10 am and 1, 2, 3 pm), but check ahead if you're planning. Get there a little before the scheduled time because you need to stand in line and get a ticket --- the tickets are free, but they are capacity controlled and you may have to wait an hour or two to get in on a tour (each tour will be up to about 1,000 people). When you get the ticket, you will be assigned to a specific bus for the actual dam visit. Before you get close to the dam though, you'll have to sit through "the propaganda"...
The Propaganda....
What a wonderfully idyllic project Itaipu is! That's the message you'll hear over and over as you sit through the 30 minute film about Itaipu and its story.
Itaipu is an engine for economic growth. The people of the region are happy, healthy, productive people now that the miracle of Itaipu is here to protect their environment, power their homes, and create wealth that falls into local pockets like mana from heaven. Itaipu is a model for international cooperation. It will cure cancer in our lifetimes and achieve religious harmony among all peoples of the world. It may even help you get laid.
Excuse me while I barf. The video is so obviously one-sided propaganda that its just a little unsettling to my stomach.
The folks at Itaipu are so busy churning out the mindless drivel that they don't bother actually providing much useful information for a curious visitor. I'd have liked to know a lot more about the challenges that cropped up over the 18-year development cycle and how engineers rose up to meet those challenges with creativity and innovation. I know that the engineering profession regards Itaipu as one of the 7 great engineering accomplishments of the 20th century, so I have to assume that there's a reason why it's significant.
I understand that the folks running Itaipu don't exactly want to talk about the DOWN sides of the project --- like it's huge environmental impact: the dam did, after all, destroy thousands of square kilometers of natural habitat, it destroyed a series of waterfalls that were larger than Iguazu, it destroyed whole towns that once lay along the old river valley, it created huge problems with unnatural erosion, and it created huge impacts on the breeding and migration patterns of aquatic species and animals that once thrived in the river wetlands. You don't just dump a 600-foot high, 5-mile long dam into a river, flooding an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island, and not have any environmental impact. But you'd never know there was a downside to Itaipu, or so much as the whisper of a technological challenge, if you watched The Propaganda.
In propaganda world, all is wonderful at Itaipu. Life is clean. Everybody is happy.
Mercifully, The Propaganda does have ending credits, and folks can step outside and board their tour buses for the main event.
The Tour...
If you came with a bus tour, you'll re-board your bus to go see the dam itself. Everyone else (like all the folks who took a city bus, private car, taxi etc. to get to the visitor center) will board one of Itaipu's buses as assigned when you got your ticket. The buses are numbered. When I was there, they had 15 buses (luxury tour bus type vehicles) that was each totally filled with folks like me, eager to boast about doing a "free" tour of a place like this.
Unfortunately, the quality of the buses was the high point of the tour.
The tour is a huge disappointment. It goes to one single "scenic overlook" from which all 1,000 visitors simultaneously emerge from their 15 buses (plus maybe another 5 tour operator buses), and all simultaneously crowd into the pre-arranged stadium style photo vantage point to take their identical photos of the same distant and unexciting view of the dam. Then it's back on the buses.
The bus then proceeds to drive down a road across the base of the dam. It goes into another parking lot near the spillway, but doesn't stop there. A pre-recorded, propaganda spiel spouts lots of facts and figures and details about what "you are now seeing", even though the bus isn't always exactly at that point. The result is a jarring narrated soundtrack that reminds me of watching badly dubbed bad Japanese sci-fi shows from the 1960s (do y'all remember Ultra Man?)
The bus does get up close to the exterior of the dam, and it is impressive to see just how mammoth those chutes are, but it's nothing like the good, up-close-and-personal tour that you get a place like the Hoover Dam. You never get to go inside the dam, and you never get to see workings of anything at all. Just concrete from the outside...yawn.
After the bus takes you across the base of the dam, it skirts around the spillway and up onto the top of the dam to drive across the mouth of the huge lake that lies pent up behind those 16 million cubic feet of concrete. The lake is big. It's deep. The view from the top is amazing, as you look down from the top into the river gorge lying hundreds of feet below you. Unfortunately again, the bus never stops to let anyone get out and take pictures or see any details up close. And again, there's no effort to really show you anything of substance or importance. (I'd kinda like to see the control room).
The basic free tour is a disappointment. It's free. I saw the dam. I'm not as impressed as I would be if the tour were actually good (and by the way, I would pay for a good tour of this place --- but the free tour is worth no more than the price charge).
The Lonely Planet Brazil guidebook says that there is a much more thorough technical tour available by appointment. When I asked about that, I was told that the technical tour is offered only to professional engineers and bona fide engineering students on a pre-arranged appointment basis, and that you need to call at least 3 days ahead of time to arrange it.
I like the idea of free tours, I like the egalitarian spirit of having the tours open to everyone. BUT I think a huge opportunity is being squandered here. In my opinion Itaipu cries out for a GREAT hard-hat tour that would take 2 or 3 hours and that would be available to the general public --- charge for it, by all means, but make it available. (The guys at Itaipu should visit Hoover Dam as a tourist to see how it can work).
As things exist today, a visit to Itaipu is interesting. The significance of the place is undisputed. But the tour is a huge disappointment, far too short and far too stupid to warrant anyone going far out of the way to see. If you're in the Iguazu area, I would recommend this tour only after you've gotten tired of the parks and the falls and the adventure treks. Itaipu is okay, but it's not worth going out of the way for.
The Logistics...
Itaipu is located at roughly the point where the borders of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina come together. The dam is about 20 kilometers northwest of Iguazu Falls (which is the real reason most tourists would be in this part of the world). The dam lies about 2 miles from the bridge between Foz do Iguacu Brazil and Ciudad del Este Paraguay (both cities of about 200,000 souls each).
Nearest airports: Iguacu Brazil (IGU) or Iguazu Argentina (IGR)
Distance to nearby major cities: Asuncion Paraguay (4 hours), Buenos Aires Argentina (4 hours), Sao Paulo Brazil (13 hours)
Time needed to visit: 2 hours
Cash needed to visit: none (unless you want souvenirs or need bus fare back to town)
Bonus: souvenirs are cheap (R7 for a good-quality hat --- about US$2)
Until next time, see you on the road. As always, I'll be sniffing out the best travel values out there (even if "best" might not be "free").
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Students
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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