swamp thing

One of our longest drives with my mom was out to Esteros del Ibera, the second largest wetlands in the world.

After quite a while in the bus, we turned off to do the final 100 km on soft sand and dirt. We had heard that this section can be impassible if it rains, so we were anxiously watching the sky turn gray all the way to the end.

After over 2 hours without seeing a single other vehicle, we were so relieved to find our lodge quite charming and professional. Staying at a lodge with guides seems to be the way to go out here. There really aren’t many other options (it’s a small town) and we weren’t going to do any swamp camping with mom. Still, it’s possible – there is a campsite and tour info at the north end of the bridge and a visitor center at the south end of the bridge.

On our first day we set out on 2 boat excursions of the marshlands and spotted all sorts of wildlife. It was definitely as close as I ever want to get to caimans. Our captain seemed to have no fear of pulling up right next to them and making them hiss at us. It was nearly non-stop animal viewing, but Bode was still very excited about his new books, so on the second trip he requested that we let him know if there was something really cool and he buried his nose in his book.

Jason and I have a history of ill-fated boat journeys (though this is the only other one on this trip) so even thought we had a nice guide and boat, the throttle cable broke. We were pushed with a bamboo pole back along the shore and the captain made some cell phone calls. In the end, another tour group came by and we borrowed someone’s Swiss army knife. We weren’t really too worried until the sun started to set, the bugs started swarming and the other tour groups were long gone. But, we finally rigged something and made it home without getting eaten.