Saltos del Monday

WaterfallsAlto Paraná,Paraguay

Paraguay's best-known waterfall, a triple cataract in one of the last standing patches of Atlantic Forest, dropped to by glass lift and crossed by cable.

September·Quiet month

Jun–Sep

Winter's low: rainfall bottoms out in July and August and the three curtains separate cleanly — less spray means the clearest views from the lower decks. Days stay mild near 23°C, mornings chilly. Nothing closes; the park runs daily all year.

Year-round The three curtains fall every day of the year — this corner of Paraguay has no dry season and the Monday River never stops; volume, spray and rust-red colour swell and thin.

Saltos del Monday is a 120-metre-wide wall of rust-red water dropping about 40 metres over black basalt, ten kilometres from Iguazú and almost empty by comparison. Here you are allowed to get close. Walkways run out to the rim, a lift drops you to the riverbank, and from below the noise reaches your chest before the spray reaches your face. The name is Guaraní, taken from the Monday River that feeds the falls. The river comes over in three main curtains, split by islands of rock, and it arrives carrying the iron-rich earth of Alto Paraná, which is what makes the water red. That red is also a warning. The forest that once held the soil in place has largely gone. The Alto Paraná Atlantic Forest still covered roughly three-quarters of this region in 1973, and by 2017 about nine percent was left, cleared for soy and cattle. The nine-hectare park around the falls is one of the last fragments standing. Watch the soaked rock beside the water and you may pick out great dusky swifts, which cling to the wet cliff and pour into the gorge in flocks at dusk. A steel cable 275 metres long is strung across the gorge for visitors to ride from one side to the other, and others go down the rock face on ropes. The river never stops, because this is the wettest corner of Paraguay and there is no true dry season. It swells with the summer storms from October to January and thins in the July cold.

Worth knowing

Good to know

High water is a trade-off — from October to January the river runs at full force but the spray swallows the lower decks; in the July low the three curtains separate cleanly.
Rainbows need the sun at an angle — come mid-morning or late afternoon rather than at noon, when the light drops too steeply into the gorge to colour the mist.
Assume you will get wet — the lower platforms sit inside the spray, so bring a waterproof cover for the camera and expect the wooden decks to be slick.
The zipline and rappel stop in the late afternoon — do them early rather than saving them for the way out.
Iguazú day-trippers mostly skip it — the falls are barely ten kilometres from the border crowds, yet on a weekday morning you can have the rim rail almost to yourself.

Things to do

1
See all three curtains line up from the rim
From the upper rail the falls resolve into what they are: three main curtains and a scatter of smaller ones across some 120 metres of black rock. The lip is not a clean edge. Basalt outcrops cut it into separate falls, each island carrying its own crown of trees, which shows you the ledge hidden underneath.
2
Ride the glass lift down to the riverbank
A glass elevator drops forty metres from the rim to the bank below, and the falls grow as you sink past them. At the bottom the walkways carry you out toward the water until the roar is something you feel in your ribs rather than hear, and the spray settles on your skin.
3
Cross the gorge on the 275-metre cable
A steel cable carries you 275 metres over the river at around thirty kilometres an hour, ending a few dozen metres short of the falling water. For those few seconds the full width of the falls is beneath your boots, and the noise comes up at you from below.
4
Walk what is left of the Atlantic Forest
The shaded trails behind the falls run through one of the last standing fragments of the Alto Paraná Atlantic Forest, a forest that has almost disappeared from Paraguay. Orchids grow on the trunks, butterflies work the gaps in the light, and the sound of the water never quite leaves you.

Watch

Nearby

25 km

Iguazú Falls

Misiones,Argentina