Beauty… there are many kinds.

The sight of another person — desire and passion. Our children — love. Or architecture. How did those people manage to create this?

Then there is beauty in art — the ability to express something.

And life. A beauty we are often unable to see.

But there is one kind of beauty that perhaps no other can equal. A beauty that created itself, born of innocence. It is as old as the world itself.

Nature.

What beauty must the first person who discovered Iguazu Falls have seen? What did he feel?

Something is roaring there, powerfully, like an earthquake. Water — immense water. It falls. It plunges from every side, as if the sky itself had torn open above it.

Surely that man could not look away. So much beauty poured into him that he was drowning in it.

His name was Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer. In 1549, he traveled down the Iguazu River. They say he was astonished. It almost sounds banal.

In Guaraní, Iguazu is a combination of the words for “water” and “big.” But that comes afterward. While a person stands there, there are no words, no names. Surely, some are even brought to tears.

The most beautiful thing about nature is that it can do something for the sake of doing it. Perhaps that is why we admire it so much. It has no ambitions. And that is very beautiful. It can simply be. And be forever. What is beautiful is eternal.

Is it really?

Just 180 kilometers to the north, between the Brazilian city of Guaíra and the Paraguayan city of Salto del Guairá, there once stood the Guairá Falls. They were far more powerful than Iguazu.

Today, they no longer exist. They lie beneath the waters of the Itaipu Reservoir. The world has almost forgotten them. Even in Brazil, they are rarely spoken of. Perhaps only in Paraguay do some still remember them.

Were those falls so ugly that man had to drown them?

Just as we admire the beauty of nature, perhaps we could also admire the audacity of some people.

What is truly eternal?

The falls are still there. They are only sleeping. Perhaps waiting. And perhaps one day they will appear again.

Until then, let us admire what remains.

Iguazu Falls.