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Published: February 14th 2010
Hello all, It's
Lilach again after a fairly long pause.
Carnival is over! We are back to nature exploration and
Esteros del Ibera is our next destination;
So at the end of a fine day in the local hot springs of Gualeguaychu (where we have been for the Argentinian carnival), we take a night bus to the town of
Mercedes, where we arrive at 6:30 am. I could not wake up Shachar from his deep-sleep in the bus, so I placed him on the first bench I found in the terminal, and he just kept on sleeping for almost 2 hours...
We found out that the only bus to
Colonia Carlos Pellegrini, the little town at the entrance to the natural reserve of Esteros del Ibera (“I” in Guarani language of the natives, meaning “water”, and “bera” meaning “shining”, hence “shining water”), leaves at 12:30 - which means we had 6 hours to “kill” waiting for it. The other option, as we soon learned, is to hire a private pick-up that will take us whenever we want, but would cost more than double than the bus. Meanwhile, Tal went out of the terminal and brought some food for
breakfast. The plan was to have breakfast, then store the bags with the information so we can go “light” into town, and spend the waiting time in an internet cafe. While having our breakfast (fresh milk and pastries), someone approached us and offered his private transportation services, we kindly rejected this offer and told the driver
“Thank you, but no thank you” as it was way too expensive for us. Not much later, and the same guy comes over again, and esplaines that since he lives in Carlos Pellegrini and has to drive back there anyway, he is willing to charge us like the bus - this was an offer we could not resist. And so, happily we loaded our bags to his pickup, and hopped in - Shachar in my hands - still asleep, and totally not aware he is being moved from the bus to the bench and into this car.
Within 2 ½ hours drive, we arrived to
Carlos Pellegrini, having seen on the way a nice share of wildlife, among which were: 1 Nandu, 3 huge Tegu lizards, 1 dead caiman and many black vultures. We are out of the pick-up, and devastated to learn
Howler Monkey
Monkey Trail, Carlos Pellegrinithat the temperatures outside are hot as much as 35 degrees if not more, plus humidity as high as 80%! Nevertheless, we have to find an accommodation. Beto, our driver recommended a nice and fairly priced accommodation called 'Rancho Ibera' - and since they really had all we needed (breakfast, air-conditioning and a nice pool, and even Wi-Fi connection!) we took it right away. At that stage, we were fairly tired from the previous day in the hot springs and the night bus, which is never a very good night sleep, and already sweating all over (even our elbows...), so we decided not to rush anywhere, and stayed to relax in the cool room. With our final breath we told the kids they can go to the pool, and they - obviously, were so happy - they are never too tired for that.
Late noon time and our bellies tell us they are hungry. We have decided to explore the town looking for something light and fast to eat (well now it is only 41 degrees outside)... We were told that “only 2 cuadras” (This in English means - 2 blocks away) from our ranch, we could find what
Huge Toad by the Ditch
Carlos Pellegrini Main Road we look for. Before I proceed, I must tell you more about Carlos Pellegrini: It is a very calm and sleepy town. The streets are all sandy and unpaved. No Road signs. No shops of any kind but 3 or 4 kiosks with the very basics goods which people may need. The houses are built in a very spacious manner and so distances between one to another are big. This meant that the walking the “only” 2 blocks distance in this heat was a mini-trek by itself. We finally arrived to the restaurant, but if we had any thoughts of having lunch in that restaurant, they were quickly gone - once we opened the door - the heat inside was unbearable, we could hardly stay there while waiting for our empanadas (meat pastries) to be prepared for us to take and eat back inside our well air-conditioned room.
At last, we had our freshly prepared empanadas. After that, and resting for some more, we were ready to actually start doing something... It got a little cooler only at around 1730, so then we decided to take a walk toward the village entrance, where the visitor center is located. That
point is also the starting point for 2 posted trails. We quickly realized that what seemed to be an easy walk, just to get to the entrance of the village, is actually a ~3km walk (and we would also have to walk this back). Shachar was too tired (if he had to keep on jumping into or running around the pool, he could have kept going for hours, but walking - this is a differnt story!), so I had to carry him on my back major parts of the way, until I found a ride for the two of us for the last 500m stretch with a car exiting town.
As we arrived to the visitors center, we were
amazed to see a family of Capibaras (parents and 4 cubs), grazing in the grass outside the visitors center, as if they are the local pets. It was not our first time to see Capybaras, as we have already seen them in Bolivia, nevertheless, it was amazing to get so close to them, without them showing any stress or walking away.
The trail we picked was very short, and very nice - lots of trees, bromelias, ferns, as well
as other types of sub-tropical vegetation. We felt very well that we are in wetland area - the mosquitoes were all over us the minute we made our first step into the trail; It was also very hot and humid, even hotter and more humid than in the town's streets. Since the trail is called the
Monkeys Trail, we were expecting to see monkeys - and as we were just about to end the trail, disappointed not seeing any monkeys - we suddenly found them. A small family of Howler monkeys right above our head - the male with dark - almost black fur, while the female and the youngsters were light brown. We watched them for a while, hanging from the tree, then moving to another tree, than, vanishing in the trees.
Upon finishing this short trail, we entered the visitors center and watched a movie explaining about the gentle environment we are at - Esteros del Ibera, a huge area of wetlands, second in the world only to the wetlands of Pantanal, in Brazil. It explained about the flow of the waters in the area, about the animals living in the area and the dependency of each
on the other, the delicate relations between them, and even about the impact of the people (in a bad way) on the gentle area, until it was announced as a National Park - this was when hunting of the caymans and capybaras has completely stopped, just before their extinction.
While walking back to our room, the sun has already started to descend, but since it was cloudy that day we could not enjoy much from a sunset beauty. while we were walking back, Omer found some huge frogs standing on the side of the road, and the kids were thrilled with looking at these frogs. It was very hard to convince them, even though 15 minutes passed, that we are all hungry and thus better continue walking to our room. Eventually, we got to our room, showered again (I think it was at least the 3rd time that day...) and went for dinner in a restaurant slightly closer to our room and better ventilated than the one we visited for lunch.
The next morning, we woke up really early for a boat tour in water ways of the wetland. It was a lovely and peaceful tour, though pretty
Lilac Nymph
Carlos Pellegrini short - 2 hours only; We all felt we could stay much longer, though the sun started to hit us at around 0930. Anyway, at 0700 we departed from the wharf towards the “floating islands”, that are actually made of water vegetation, that grows creating a shelter, a feeding and breeding habitat for a variety of birds, caymans (crocodiles), capybaras, marsh deers, fishes, and more. Along these floating islands and in order to get close to them, the boat driver maneuvered the boat with a long bamboo stick, similar to the one they use in Venice with the Gondolas...
As we already saw capybaras and caymans (in Bolivia and Peru), we mostly wanted to see the marsh deer, about which we learned from the film we saw a day earlier in the visitor center. We were lucky and our wish got fulfilled: An hour after departure, we had encountered a magnificent male deer, entering the waters on our left hand side, then swimming through the water in front of us, exiting on our right hand side, where he started grazing and eating the vegetation growing in the water.
We obviously saw many species of birds, as well as
many caymans (most of them were fairly small vs. the ones we already saw in Bolivia) and some big capybaras (swimming and diving in the water).
The rest of the day was dedicated to actually - doing nothing... We spent a few hours bathing in our pool, surfed in the internet, rested, etc. A lot of time was dedicated to trying to figure out what would be the best way to continue from here to the Iguazu Falls (8 hrs. north from where we are), but as I told you before, the only bus from this little town goes to Mercedes (from where we came) - back
south (and leaves at 4am!). Then from Mercedes, the only way to get to the Iguazu Falls is to travel on 3 additional buses, none of them connects well with the next one - this meant, that best case scenario we would leave at 4am and get to Puerto Iguazu late night - something we were clearly not so happy about. Well, the other option, was to take private transportation from Carlos Pellegrini north to the nearest town and from there to go with (“only”) 2 buses to Puerto Iguazu. No one
was really sure about the time tables of the buses in any of these options, and our deep search in the internet gave us only a rough idea, but it became clear that though private transportation is more expensive, it may well worth it this time. With all this thinking, you can understand why we were exhausted and rested most of the day...
Late afternoon, Tal & Nitzan gained force, and decided the heat is bearable enough to walk toward the bridge at the entrance to the village, and watch the sunset. They came back reporting that the sunset was beautiful, though not more amazing than previous sunsets we have already seen before. What they were very happy about, though, was that they found another private transportation option that is way cheaper than the one we were about to use (almost 50% less), and would thus be even cheaper than the long route with the buses. The 'catch' was that this pickup does not have a double cabin, which means “someone” would have to seat in the open back with the bags... Since Tal did not want to decide on his own (how thoughtful), he asked the driver to
pass by our lodge some time later, so I can approve this transportation, which obviously I did.
Next morning sharp at 7:30 as we have set, our transportation came to pick us up from our lodge. We just finished our early breakfast, so we placed all 3 kids next to the driver in the cabin, and we hopped with our bags into the open back of the pickup. The driver, really stood to his word, and improvised for us a bench in the back - which was placed on top of 2 beer cases - so we even had a seat for our ride. We made sure we took a lot of water with us, creamed ourselves with enough sun block and only then, started our 2.5 hours journey on a dirt road to the north, leaving Carlos Pellegrini and the magical marshlands behind us....(except for the tons of dast from the road that has sticked to our cloths, hair and whatever between them)
At the end of that long and tiring day, changing one pick-up truck, 2 buses, and 11 hours, we arrived to Puerto Iguazu, gateway to the famous Iguazu Falls.
hasta pronto (or until I will be permited to write again),
Lilach
To view our full set of photos, click on the following link: Ibera Wetlands Gallery
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