Advertisement
Published: December 12th 2006
Edit Blog Post
My first time off after 3 weeks working at the ranch - my god it was a hard slog - Anne and I spent the weekend at Ibera Provincial Reserve. Well technically we were staying at the tiny town of Carlos Pellegrini (population 500 or so) but the town is right next to the reserve.
The reserve is very new - only 25 years old i think - so the alligators are all young and not too big (because there were a huge amount of poachers hunting them before) and the place is quite quiet. The other reason for the lack of visitors is that apparently not many Argetineans can afford to come. It came as quite a sad shock when I realised that most Argentineans can't afford to see all the amazing beautiful parts of their own country, let alone travel abroad. For example one of the gauchos that worked on the ranch, quite an old man, has never seen the sea.
We arrived at the reserve after a bone-jarring 4 hour drive in a little combi, surprisingly there were quite a few other tourists going to the reserve with us, including 3 lovely girls from the
Uk who we hung out with for the weekend (hello Kate, Faye and Rachel if you're reading this. I promise I will email those photos once i get a chance!) We stayed at a guest ranch (home away from home!) and it was lovely just to sit out in the sun and do nothing for a change. Of course in between all the sunbathing we found time to go and see the reserve...
We started out with a ride on horseback around the outskirts of the town and reserve, it was good fun chatting to the gauchos (and amazingly for the first time ever i was the one in the group with the most Spanish, so i was trying to translate for the other girls, instead of just sitting quietly and not being able to follow the conversation, as normally happens.) We went out late afternoon so we saw the sun go down from horseback, which was lovely, (tho not exactly galloping off into the sunset). Then as soon as we got back from that we were whisked off for our night time safari. That was the highlight of the weekend for me. 6 of us crammed into the
back of a 4x4, with Rodrigo our young guide perched on the side and shining a spotlight into the night as we drove along. Despite wearing every item of clothes i'd brought with me, i was freezing (it reminded me of my days in Buenos Aires when i first arrived, and had to wear about 4 layers of clothing). It was worse for Anne, who had been fooled by the earlier sun and was still in her cropped trousers. Luckily Rodrigo was a gentleman, and gave us the jumper off his back to huddle under! We stuck to the main road out of town (only a dirt track tho) but we managed to see loads of wildlife. There were Carpinchos everywhere, even wandering in people's gardens. Not so easy to spot were a grey fox, marsh deer (very smaller), pampas deer (the one with antlers), and a few night-time birds (whose names i don't remember). At one point they stopped the car and we all clambered out and crawled under a fence to go looking for bizcacha - we spent more time stumbling round in the dark than looking at the little rodents, but we did find a big grey
heron sleeping in a tree. Our last stop on the way back was at a small pond next to the road. Rodrigo promised us there were caiman (alligators) there, I couldn't see them at all until he handed me the spotlight, and then when you shine it at them it makes their eyes glow red. Very creepy.
The next day kicked off with a boat tour in the morning. It was just the 5 of us in a little speed boat (we had been joined by a slightly strange Texan for our night safari), which was lucky because when we got close to any animals or land Rodrigo killed the engine and had to propel us along with a long pole. There were caiman everywhere (at the ranch they call them yacare, but i think they both mean alligator), mainly sunbathing on the edges of the numerous floating islands. And lots more Carpinchos (they can swim) and birds. We asked Rodrigo if it was safe to walk on the islands, so he pulled the boat up to the firmest one. The ground was pretty springy underfoot, but no-one sank, and we got a cool photo-op with the Carpinchos.
If you've been paying attention to my previous journal entry, you'll have realised already that actually most of the wildlife we saw at Ibera is also running around back at the ranch. Thats not to say that it was a waste of time going to Ibera, cos i had a lovely weekend, but it just made me appreciate what we had at the ranch more.
We ended our stay with a guided walk around the reserve, and I managed to add vultures and monkeys to my list of animals seen. The combi arrived at 4am to take us back to Mercedes, so we rocked up at the ranch more or less on time for the start of the days work, and already looking forward to our next weekend off.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0412s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb