I could have spent a week at Rincón without
exhausting its possibilities. I went trail biking
and horseback riding. I ventured out on night
safaris where I glimpsed a rare ocelot, a meter-
long wild cat with dappled fur. For sundowners,
I hiked to the edge of the wetlands, where
stands of palm trees petered out beneath vast
reaches of sky. One foggy morning I took a boat
ride, pushing out into the white oblivion of
Laguna Iberá—at almost 260 square
kilometers, one of the largest lagoons in the
wetlands. As the curtains of fog lifted, a water
world emerged. Caimans lay in the shallows,
their armored hides like burnished metal.
Rheas, large birds related to the ostrich,
flounced away through the reeds like petulant
ballerinas. Cormorants skimmed across the
water. Disheveled cuckoos perched in the
branches of trees. Scarlet-headed blackbirds
straddled reeds like gymnasts to pick insects
off the lagoon’s surface.
Like reserves the world over, Iberá has been
a battleground between exploitation and
conservation. Ranchers, keen to protect their
herds, hunted the indigenous jaguar to
extinction, while mariscadores, the wetlands’
traditional hunters and trappers, severely
depleted native species like the marsh deer and
the giant anteater. By the late 20th century,
almost all the mammals of Iberá were under
severe threat.
The turning point was the Argentinean
government’s decision to establish the Iberá
Nature Reserve in 1983—and to hire the
mariscadores as park rangers, giving them a
vested interest in species protection. Within
the reserve, park authorities persuaded the
gauchos that ecotourism could add to the
region’s economic possibilities and that, if
managed sensitively, it could coexist with the
limited ranching of the highlands. In 1998, in
another seminal moment for Iberá, American
CLOCKWISE FROM
TOP: Gauchos ride
across the
highlands in Iberá;
capybaras near the
Hostería Rincón
del Socorro; a
caiman on the
Estancia San Juan
de Poriahú.