Esteros de Iberá

So, this is going to be pretty much my final blog on Argentina. We are now sitting around Buenos Aires, packing a getting ready for our flight tomorrow. It’s a good time to ask ourselves questions like what our favorite part of the trip was. The interesting answer to that question has almost always been where we saw animals.

I bring that up because one of the best “wild” places we saw with animals were the Esteros de Iberá. It is a huge wetland area between the largest two rivers in Argentina (Rio Parana, and Rio Uruguay). In many ways its hydrology is very similar to the Everglades, with the underwater flow being the most important. The main component are the many floating “islands” of vegetative material that has become the substrate for an entire habitat, including trees!

We came here to see Capybara… those who know me will not be surprised that I felt compelled to see the worlds largest living rodent. They are well represented here, being one of the few places in the country where they are protected. Apparently good eating (though we sadly couldn’t find any to try) and also producing very high quality leather (which we did buy), they are hunted elsewhere, as well as raised in farms.

Of course, being a wetland, it was also full of birdlife. The largest is this “Southern Screamer” a group I was unfamiliar with before coming here. These guys hang out in family groups and make a lot of noise if anything approaches too close, so they are the watchdogs of the marsh.

The top predator here (other than man, as usual) is the Yacaré, or Caiman. They were hunted near to extinction at the turn of the century for leather exportation, but now are thriving here in the reserve. They were everywhere, mostly sunning to be ready to hunt at night. Apparently, their favorite food is a pirana-like fish that lives here, but the only one we saw eating was swimming around with a dead Capybara (found dead, not killed by the Caiman).

Another large bird is the Jabiru, a huge stork. Not much to say except it is considered to be the main predator of young Yacarés, and it’s the tallest bird that can fly.

Overall our time in the Esteros was very good, we saw Howler Monkey (terrible photos…I hate trying to take monkey photos, they are always backlit looking up into the trees!), iguana, and more Cui! Of course, it was indisputable that the best things were the capybara… we are pretty sure you can never have too many photos of unusually large rodents!