Both the inside and outside view – of the impossibly immense Itaipu!

As promised, I turn now to the Itaipu Dam – the third-largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. It sits on the border between Brazil and Paraguay next to the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu, which is also famous for the nearby Iguaçu Falls.

So let’s go for a walk inside the power plant – where they actually run excursions!…

A monumentally massive structure! The main part of the dam, where the machine hall, the turbines, and all the other key stuff is, runs to nearly 900 meters long!

The views inside are stunning:

Somewhere waaaay down there you might just make out dry rocky outcrops – that’s the old riverbed above which the concrete dam now rises:

Corridors run through the whole dam on several levels ->

And since the distances here are big, the staff get around the dam on bicycles! ->

Grandiose ->

This is probably the only place in the world I know where the entire control systems for such an installation aren’t just allowed to be photographed, but are actually part of the standard tourist route! Normally taking photos of this kind of thing is strictly forbidden:

Here – no problem!

If you look closely, the main screen is symmetrical and split into two halves – left and right. Remember the border between Paraguay and Brazil that runs right across the middle of the dam? Same thing here! The left side is controlled by Brazil, the right – by Paraguay. Take a look at the numbers – fresh electricity goes off to the left at a frequency of 60 hertz, to the right – 50 hertz. The border between the two countries is shown here too:

The machine hall:

How big?! ->

The red circles are the turbines. You can go down and see what’s underneath too ->

This thing here is what spins – it’s the upper part of the turbine. And the total height of each turbine is 27 meters: about a seven‑story building!

Meanwhile just next to that colossus:

I don’t know if you can make out the details in the following pic, so here’s some of the main figures: the total length of the dam isn’t five kilometers like I mentioned earlier – but over seven! Its height is 196 meters (almost 200 – not bad!), and the width of the base is 400 meters. Yep, what we usually see above the water is just the top of the dam. At the bottom it has a pyramidal shape – as shown here:

The sophisticated design of the turbine:

And various other data in both Spanish and Portuguese:

“Cota” means “elevation”. There are no “floors” here; all technical rooms are numbered by their elevation above the base. The control room, for example, is at a height of 139 meters:

Same goes for the elevators. 127 – that’s not the floor number, but the height at which the elevator has stopped:

A great tour. Highly recommended!

Unfortunately, it was (late) fall – the dry season – so the water level in the reservoir was low, the spillway – dry…

In other seasons (spring–summer) the pictures here are completely different:

Impressive, right?

Yeah, that’s what I think too…

And a few photos from my traveling companions:

And here’s a short video of our trip to this impressive hydraulic structure:

That’s it for Itaipu, but more Brazil tales coming right up!…