Fishing the Amazon? There's an App for That

Since I began writing for guidebooks in the late 1980s, I have focused on the area known as the Southern Cone for its shape on the map of South America. It includes Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, parts of Brazil and the Falkland Islands, but I’ve always retained an interest in the rest of the continent and other parts of the Americas. Though my experience in the Caribbean is limited to Trinidad, I have traveled in every South American country except Venezuela, and in every Central American except Belize (which unfortunately refused my Argentine wife entry for lack of a visa) and Panama (though I have changed planes there en route to South America).

In the course of my professional life, I’ve worked mostly with print media, and I still feel most comfortable with traditional guidebooks. That said, I’ve produced my own apps to Argentina and Chile (please refer to the ads in the sidebar) and, in the course of maintaining my interests in the rest of the region, I’ve tried to keep up with other developments in the field. Today I’ll bring one of those to your attention.

Fish Amazon

Nearly four decades ago, I first visited the Amazon Basin on a backpack trip through Ecuador, when I rode a dugout canoe down the Río Napo. Since then I’ve been briefly to the Brazilian Amazon, but do not fancy myself an expert on the area, nor am I a fisherman (though fly-fishing is important in the lakes district of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia, and a few other areas in those countries), but I do eat fish.

Once, in response to charges that he was not a musician, a rock critic asked rhetorically whether “You gotta play guitar to know how to buy records?” While I may not be a fisherman, I like to eat fish and, for that reason, I enjoyed looking through Larry Larsen’s Fish Amazon (link goes to iTunes; also available in Android version), since his knowledge of natural history seems to match his love of fishing. From my point of view, I also found it useful because many of the same fish species inhabit the River Plate drainage, where they can be found on the grills of restaurants along the Paraná and Uruguay rivers in Argentina and Uruguay.

According to Larsen, in an email he sent me recently, “The peacock bass (tucunare) are very small in the Paraná but the suribim (“shovelnose catfish,” pictured above, photo under Creative Commons license) and piranha are very large (30 pounds and much more, and four to five pounds, respectively). Payara, jacunda, trieda, red-tail catfish, pacú (“pigfish”) and the others are in there in relatively large sizes as well.” I don’t know all of these species by their Portuguese common names, but I am familiar with the surubí (as it’s called in Spanish) and pacú.

Not so long ago, the Buenos Aires restaurant Jangada specialized in grilled river fish but, unfortunately, it has closed. Close to my apartment in Palermo, though, diners can still sample pacú and occasional other options at Nemo, which serves mostly seafood. Visitors to the city of Santa Fe, however, will find a much wider selection at El Quincho de Chiquito, which specializes in products of the Paraná.

While I don’t fish myself, two locations along the Paraná come highly recommended for those who wish to test its sediment-laden waters. One of those is Paso de la Patria, about 35 km east of the provincial capital of Corrientes, and the other is Goya, about 220 km south of Corrientes.

Tuesday Topics

Today entry includes items from Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

A White Xmas? In Summer?
In the course of my research, I rarely spend the year’s end holidays at home with family - unless somehow we get together with my wife’s relatives in Olavarría, in Buenos Aires province. In southern South America, of course, it’s summer, and you’re likelier to need air-conditioning than a shovel to clear the snow off the sidewalk (leaving aside, for the moment, that we live in coastal California where snow is always rare).

To be sure, if you seek out the heights of the Andes, you may have a white Xmas (when I lived at 4,400 meters above sea level in Parinacota (pictured above), Chile, summer was the rainy season and, at that altitude it could easily snow). Likewise, if you seek out high latitudes on the Southern Continental Icefield, you can virtually guarantee it. But I was nevertheless surprised last Saturday by a snowstorm in Parque Nacional Conguillío, in the relatively low-altitude, mid-latitude Andes east of Temuco. At 5 p.m., conditions threatened to become a whiteout, and I quickly headed down and south to the town of Melipeuco, where it was cold and damp but snow-free.

En route, though, I saw snow-covered monkey puzzle trees of the sort that drew pioneer conservationist John Muir here from California in the early 20th century. Even more strikingly, the volcanic slag heaps (pictured below) on the lower slopes of Volcán Llaima (whose steaming summit was obscured by cloud) turned from black to white in minutes. Except for rangers and park administrator Norberto Arias, with whom I briefly spoke in his office at Laguna Conguillío, I was the only person in the park. It warmed on Sunday, though, and the prospect of a white Xmas is receding by the minute - though, as I’m continuing farther south, it could still happen.

Gaucho Gil Crosses the Border
My brief Conguillío excursion came at the end of long day’s drive that began near Curacautín, at the outstanding Bavarian-run guesthouse Andenrose, and proceeded to circle the park via Malalcahuello, Lonquimay, Liucura and Icalma. En route, I stopped to photograph this shrine to the Gaucho Antonio Gil, a Robin Hood figure and folk saint from Argentina’s Corrientes province whose cult has grown in the aftermath of that country’s economic meltdown of a decade ago.

This was the first time, though, I have ever seen a Gaucho Gil shrine in Chile - a country that’s been almost untouched by regional and global financial crises. To be sure, the highway itself links Chile to the Argentine province of Neuquén but, even then, it’s jarring to see the Chilean flag flying above Gil’s shrine.

The Falklands Tussac Grass
Jim McAdam, the editor of the Falkland Islands Journal with whom I have corresponded for many years but never met (we just missed each other a couple weeks ago, as I was in the departure lounge at Mount Pleasant as he arrived from Punta Arenas), recently explored Argentine Tierra del Fuego in search of Falklands tussac grass, Poa flabellata. Once abundant throughout the Islands, the grass is exceptional wildlife habitat, especially for small birds - watch for the lurking sea lions, though - but much reduced by unrestricted grazing since the introduction of sheep in the 19th century.

According to Jim, tussac ranges from South Georgia through the Falklands to eastern Tierra del Fuego (including Staten Island and the Wollastons), but “it is only thought to be present at one site on actual mainland Tierra del Fuego - the tip of the Mitre Peninsula near Cabo San Diego. We didn't make it, though, despite a three-day expedition on a quad bike.” He is interested in tussac’s DNA, to see if all came from the same original population.

Socorro Means "Help" - for Argentina's Iberá Marshes

After posting recently about Chile’s proposed Parque Nacional Patagonia and the new lodge there, I realized that, on this blog at least, I had never written about environmental philanthropist Douglas Tompkins’s projects in Argentina but, in 2004, Tompkins and his wife, Kris McDivitt, donated parts of the former Estancia Monte León, in Santa Cruz Province, to Argentina’s national park service through the Patagonia Land Trust. That’s noteworthy in its own right, and I’ll write about it sometime soon, but this post will be dedicated to the Esteros del Iberá, the northeastern wetlands where he has purchased several estancias open to the public and begun to reintroduce the giant anteater. He now spends the southern winter at Estancia Rincón del Socorro, a prime property on the south side of the marshes that’s become a destination for environmentally oriented tourists.


Rincón del Socorro and the surrounding marshes have just about everything, including innumerable birds, caimans (pictured below), capybaras, howler monkeys, marsh deer and rarely seen maned wolves (which are few and nocturnal). In late 2006, though, Tompkins’s efforts earned unwanted publicity when piquetero demagogue Luis D’Elía - then a federal government official - falsely claimed that Tompkins had blocked a public road through Estancia El Tránsito, in another part of the marshes. In a blatant publicity stunt, D’Elía staged an invasion of Tompkins’s property with ostensible campesinos in support.


D’Elía and a handful of congressional xenophobes called for expropriation, but he badly misjudged his own position. Tompkins’s donation of Monte León had benefited then President Néstor Kirchner’s home province of Santa Cruz and, combined with the fact that other Corrientes landowners united behind Tompkins, D’Elía soon found himself jobless.

That’s not been Tompkins’s only challenge, though. The latest villain is Forestal Andina, a timber company that’s built unauthorized earthworks to drain parts of the marshes for cattle grazing. Such a project would disrupt water flow elsewhere, with unpredictable but almost certainly negative consequences.

Meanwhile, the capybaras - Rottweiler-sized rodents (pictured above) - and rheas still stroll the lawns at Tompkins’s Hostería Rincón del Socorro. Managed by Anglo-Argentine Leslie Cook and his wife, Valeria Verdaguer, it has six impeccably decorated guest rooms with high ceilings and fans, plus three separate bungalows, along with a restaurant open to nonguests by reservation only. Much of the food, including spectacular tomatoes, comes from their own organic gardens. Additional amenities include a quincho for barbecues, a game room with a DVD player (though the guest rooms are TV-free), a library, and even satellite WiFi.

Besides accommodations, Rincón del Socorro organizes boat excursions into the marshes from Colonia Pellegrini, 35 kilometers east, plus horseback rides and catch-and-release fly-fishing (at certain seasons). Guests also have access to mountain bikes.


In addition to Rincón del Socorro, there are also accommodations at Estancia San Alonso, reached only by private plane. Because of Socorro’s isolation, some guests arrive by plane; there is a one-kilometer airstrip 800 meters from the hostería. For those who can’t afford to stay at either, there is a greater diversity of accommodations, along with moderately priced tours, at Colonia Pellegrini.

Buenos Aires: Carnaval Meets Chinese New Year's

New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro get all the press, but Argentina too enjoys Carnaval in the weeks before Lent. The biggest celebrations take place in the Mesopotamian cities of Gualeguaychú and Corrientes, but over the past decade or so it’s taken off in Buenos Aires. In fact, as I walked downtown on Monday, the pounding drums that I originally assumed to be part of a political demonstration - I was only a few blocks from the Congreso Nacional and the booming “bombos” are part of every protest - turned out to be murgas (community dance troupes) from the city’s southern and western barrios.

Unlike the spectacle of Rio or the chaos of New Orleans, Carnaval celebrations in Buenos Aires tend to be relatively small, neighborhood-oriented events, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t lively. With leaping dancers directed by whistle-blowing leaders, the advancing parades resemble African-American “stepping” in some ways. In fact, some of the participants are clearly Afro-Argentine, even though that population is less conspicuous than it was in the 19th century - “forgotten, but not gone” in the words of historian George Reid Andrews.

The murgas often bear colorful names - my favorite is Los Mocosos de Liniers (“The Snots of Liniers”) and their costumes are equally colorful even if Carnaval is not so flamboyant as in Brazil, Argentina’s Mesopotamian provinces, or Uruguay for that matter. Uruguay still maintains a fairly large Afro-Uruguayan population, generally estimated at about five percent, and their influence is far more conspicuous in Montevideo and other coastal cities and towns.

Carnaval is not the only celebration in Buenos Aires at this season. Last weekend, tens of thousands of Porteños crowded the barrio of Belgrano, where Chinese New Year’s parades now take place. Last year, in fact, the ambassador of the People’s Republic sponsored construction of a portal to the barrio’s Chinatown, which is most obvious on both sides of Arribeños street.

Argentina's Worst Road? Into the Iberá Marshes

One of Argentina’s greatest underrated and underappreciated sights is the Esteros del Iberá, a slow-flowing river of wildlife-rich floating islands in the northeastern province of Corrientes. It’s the place to see capybaras - rodents the size of a Rottweiler - and caimans, marsh deer and hundreds of bird species, up close and personal.

The problem is getting there. To the village of Colonia Carlos Pellegrini, where services into the these marshes are best, the easiest access point is the west-side town of Mercedes, 120 km from Pellegrini, but Mercedes itself is 230 km from the nearest airport, or an overnight bus ride from Buenos Aires. The Misiones province capital of Posadas, to the northeast, is closer, but the eastern segment of provincial Ruta 40 from the town of Gobernador Virasoro is virtually impassable during or after a rain.

Yesterday I was driving from the Argentine border town of Puerto Iguazú, near the famous Iguazú falls. I would pass near Posadas and, because circling the Esteros to Mercedes would have added an extra 320 km to a 550-km drive, I decided to brave Ruta 40. Taken in Colonia Pellegrini, the photograph here marks the end of the story, but my mud-splattered truck - note the chunks of mud on the roof - doesn’t tell everything.

At the junction with national Ruta 14, the well-traveled paved highway to Buenos Aires, a sign warns prospective drivers that Ruta 40 is closed in wet weather. Ever since I left Puerto Iguazú there had been high clouds, but darker, lower ones were forming to the west toward the Esteros. A hotel owner in Puerto Iguazú told me the route had been good, except for one sandy 23-km stretch, when he had driven it a few months earlier.

At the beginning, the route was smooth, supporting speeds up to 80 km per hour, and I was somewhat confident that, even if it began to rain, it would take some time to make the route impassable. After about 20 km, though, lightning flashes appeared to the west and, before too long it was a hard rain, if not quite a downpour. The surprise was that even this brief rain turned the road to a brown slush and, in no time, chunks of mud were flying onto the hood and even the roof of the truck. I engaged my 4WD immediately.

Mud was also accumulating on the underside of the chassis as I slipped and slid on tracks left by previous vehicles - the least uncertain means of continuing. By the time those tracks disappeared, there was no turning back, and I took to driving with one set of wheels on the mostly grassy shoulder - but perilously close to water-filled drainage ditches. My speed dropped to about 20 km and, on more than one occasion, I was advancing diagonally along the edge of the road.

Two or three times, I was so stuck in the mud that I had to rock back and forth between first gear and reverse to get out of a wallow that, it seemed, would have held a hippopotamus. Fortunately, the rain stopped and the conditions never got any worse, though I did pass through areas approaching Colonia Pellegrini where it might have rained harder, and one long but slight uphill stretch was particularly difficult.

After about four hours, mentally exhausted, I had covered the 120 km to Colonia Pellegrini and taken a room at Rancho Ypa Sapukai, a comfortable, moderately priced guesthouse that also offers excursions into the marshes.. In reality, I was never in any particular danger - sooner or later a tractor from a neighboring farm would have pulled me out of the muck - but I had no desire to spend a hungry night sleeping inside the truck.

And at least I learned that the eastern segment of Ruta 40 is impossible for an ordinary passenger car, and difficult enough even with 4WD. Nevertheless, owner Pedro Noailles of Ypa Sapukai is taking two passengers to Posadas today over the road - a transfer that now costs from 700 pesos (nearly US$200) for up to four passengers. Considering the route’s difficulty, rising fuel prices, and the distance to Posadas, this is not an unreasonable cost, especially considering that the driver and vehicle have to return.

For my part, after a wildlife-watching excursion today, I’ll be heading west tomorrow toward Mercedes on the all-weather access segment of Ruta 40. I’m not sorry I drove the eastern segment yesterday, but I’ll likely never do it again - unless the weather is perfect or the province paves the road.

Hi, Neighbor!

Along with Buenos Aires and Patagonia's Moreno Glacier, Iguazú Falls is one of Argentina's top three attractions, and one of the places people most ask me about. To be sure, it's a spectacular sight, far wider and higher than Niagara, with volumes more water, but I've grown to dislike its Disneyfied commodification--the approach to the falls feels like "Iguazú Theme Park." Away from the falls, in the rest of the surrounding national park, there's plenty of wild subtropical forest.

Still, anyone seeking a really unique experience, without the crowds, should travel to the downstream Iberá marshes of nearby Corrientes province. That's where you'll easily see fauna like the yacaré negro (black caiman) up close and personal.

Even if you don't seek them out, maybe they'll come to you. Today's Clarín carries an account of a five-foot caiman that parked itself on a family's doorstep near the port of Reconquista, across the Río Paraná in Santa Fe province. Responding to the attempted home invasion, local coast guard officials cautiously detained the reptilian perpetrator, then deported it to its natural habitat.

The Robin Hood of Corrientes

Yesterday, January 8, more than 100,000 pilgrims swarmed to a sprawling shrine just outside the Corrientes provincial city of Mercedes (population about 30,000) to remember the gaucho Antonio Gil. Gil, according to legend, was a Robin Hood figure who was unjustly executed in the 19th century but has survived in Argentine folk consciousness, especially among the poor and dispossessed. All year, there's a steady flow of kneeling, miracle-seeking visitors in economic distress, and others who come to offer thanks--and bring gifts--for favors already granted. They lug home souvenirs that are numerous and often huge--including life-size or larger plaster statues of the "Gauchito" (known affectionately by his diminutive).

Since the Argentine economic disaster of 2001-2, impromptu red-flagged Gaucho Gil shrines have proliferated alongside highways from the Bolivian border to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. In fact, the Gauchito has moved into the top echelon of Argentine folk saints with San Juan province's Difunta Correa, whose own roadside shrines are distinguished by plastic bottles filled with water. Legend says the "Difuntita" died in the desert following her draftee husband during the 19th-century civil wars, but her baby survived at her breast. There is no evidence whatsoever for this, but believers have made the Difunta's home shrine near Vallecito even larger than Gil's at Mercedes.

Devotees of both the Gauchito and the Difuntita consider themselves genuine Catholics and see nothing contradictory in their beliefs. The official Church thinks differently, though some of its more open-minded priests have tried to come to terms with ineradicable popular beliefs whose strength and durability are a mirror of the Church's shortcomings.

Argentine directors Ricardo Becher and Tomás Larriñaga, meanwhile, drew parallels between the 19th century and the present in their 2006 film El Gauchito Gil: La Sangre Inocente (Gauchito Gil: Innocent Blood), whose trailer can be seen on YouTube. For what it's worth, a Chilean rock band goes by the name of Difuntos Correa.