The Colorada Earth of Misiones has the pavement of Route 12 with a phosphorescent patina that lengthens east of Posadas. Above the vegetable mantle, 20 kilometers from Santa Ana The silver brightness of a 52 meters high cross -Assented on a 30-meter building-, installed since 2011 on the largest elevation of the province.
To raise the slope of 1,300 meters you can opt for the comfort of a Minibus, a car lying by a tractor or climbing on footwith the possibility of stopping before several panoramic landscapes upholstered.
It seems that only there, from the perspective of that place perched on the reddish ground, for a magical moment, the jungle gives a portion of its authority and leaves the folds, the minimum slits and the changing nuances of its chromatic deployment in sight.
The natural show shakes the senses and invites you to face the two main paths of the Park of La Cruzwhich lead first to the colored festival of the Butterflyhe Orchid and the three greenhouse greenhousesthe protective mantle of organic native plants.
Later, each of those pedestrian paths takes its course towards the area of interpretation and identification of species and the seven stations of the Via Crucis.
Already at the foot of the metallic tower and its arms 29 meters long, where the vegetation offers its first shady tunnels, the walk is filled with the fragrances of the lapachos, bromelia, carnations, faces, federal stars fluttered by picaflores and butterflies, specimens of guembé cool Carpenters, the yellow fruits of the Yachaatiá and the sweet fruits – the perdition of the squirrels and the monkeys – that hang from palm trees pondó.
Very close to the ruins of San Ignacio, too Santa Ana retains the remains of a Jesuit reductionfounded in 1633 and abandoned in 1767, when the religious order was expelled from all the domains of the Spanish crown.
That first settlement had turned first in Brazilian territory, but had to be transferred to this area -then somewhat less hostile -stalked by the Portuguese attacks headed by the Paulista Bandeir.
Santa Ana’s final foundation took place a century later. Arose as a promising Agricultural colony in 1883pushed by the activity of the sugar mill San Juan, whose splendor definitely went out in 1904.
In those times of prosperity, Santa Ana was an important port for large -draft ships carrying wood and yerba mate bound for Posadas, Corrientes, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires.
Also at that luminous era the fame of the rural town had shot up for the quality of its chipá (prepared with cassava starch) and rapping, an exquisite sugar cane nougat.
The industrial tradition of Santa Ana revives in the foundations of a old tannean ambitious family venture.
While the leather processing plant was dedicated to the vegetable tanner with tannins, the current complex heats the water and climb its pools with solar energy and ignites its boilers to biomass with wooden waste. An ambitious ecosustentable bet to attract their guests.
Closer to the domains of the Paraná River, the last standing facilities and the Urunday and Pasture Covered Park of the ingenuity that came to integrate the fortune of Otto Bemberg are now part of the FEDERAL PARK SILVESTRE NATURAL RESERVE FIELD SAN Juan.
The protected area is the best shelter found by species threatened by predatory projects, such as the accelerated burrito -a variety of bird of the family of the gallats and galllines -, corzuelas, melleros bears, carpinchos, gray foxes, lapachos, palm trees pondó, Ibirá Pitá, Anchico Colorado and missionary cedar.
Nine trails lead to planted viewpoints for points of interest -The river and the Coast of Paraguay, the historic center and a waterfall, among others- of this protected area, a limited synthesis of all natural and past attractions that explain the growing interest that Santa Ana arouses.