Exploring Argentina’s Misiones province

A million tourists a year now visit the Iguazú Falls, where 275 distinct cascades, nearly 2 miles wide, separate Argentina’s Misiones province from Brazil. The sound and fury created as the Río Iguazú pours over 265-foot-high basalt ledges are overpowering, the visceral impact one of South America’s most compelling experiences.<br>
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By Colin Barraclough, Globe Correspondent
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Misiones, named for the mission settlements established by the Catholic Church’s Jesuit order during Spanish colonial times, juts like a finger far into Brazil and Paraguay.

Human population is scant: A few lonely pioneers eke out a living in clearings hacked from the jungle.

In the forest’s inner reaches, seven feline species — from the tabby-sized Geoffroy’s cat to the mighty jaguar — prowl silently by night.

A black-throated trogon (Trogon rufus). In the jungle’s dense foliage are 550 species of birds, more than in all of Europe.

Fidel Ramírez, Tacuapí Lodge’s naturalist guide, showed Misiones’s colorful birdlife.

A male band-tailed manakin (Pipra fasciicauda). The best wildlife viewing is on private land adjoining Misiones’s nature reserves.

A white woodpecker (Melanerpes candidus), resident of Misiones. Trees are in fruit during the September-November spring and April-May autumn, drawing migratory birds and large concentrations of butterflies.

On Misiones’s central sierras, traditional wooden houses, each painted a vibrant shade of sky blue, sunflower, or lime, are raised on stilts, a technique that affords protection against snakes, spiders, and damp.

A century ago, the province was carpeted entirely with subtropical Paranaense forest, which extended as far north as Brazil’s state of Bahia.

In the 20th century, Polish, German, and Ukrainian immigrants cleared large tracts of land for forestry and farming.<br>
<br>“Misiones must be one of the only places in the world where children with blond hair and blue eyes scrabble barefoot in the dirt,’’ a taxi driver said.

Don Enrique Lodge has three tastefully decorated cabins on a remote riverbank, 15 miles from the Moconá Falls. Doubles $360, full board.<br>

www.donenriquelodge.com.ar

Tacuapí Lodge’s battered Isuzu pickup goes off-road. Tacuapí Lodge ‘s seven rustic cabins overlook the forest-clad Cuñá Pirú valley in Misiones’s central sierras. Doubles $290, full board.<br>

www.tacuapi.com.ar

Estancia Santa Cecilia, a cattle ranch near the Jesuits’ San Ignacio Miní mission. Doubles $410, full board.<br>

www.santa-cecilia.com.ar

Estancia Santa Cecilia offers horseback forays with gauchos and visits to San Ignacio’s Jesuit ruins.

San Ignacio Miní mission. After nightfall, projectors hidden among the mission’s moss-covered stones cast ghostly images onto curtains of sprayed water, the filmed narrative portraying the Guaraní tribes’ sorry history.