nostrils above the water, breathing with a deep
snorting rasp—suddenly a strange aquatic
creature. Hanging on to her tail, I sailed
through the water in her wake. Perhaps this is
what it feels like to fly, I thought, this effortless,
dreamlike gliding. I looked across at Omar,
only his head above the water, still wearing his
sombrero, as he was pulled along behind his
horse. We laughed, like children. “Homeward
bound,” Omar called.
“Home” was the posada, or small guesthouse,
that Omar had built for visitors on his family’s
remote plot of land. It was simple and rustic and
delightful. We sat outside on the porch beneath
skies with tumultuous clouds, weary after a long
day’s ride, while the horses grazed contentedly a
few yards away. “This is the future for us,” Omar
said. “As guides and hosts in Iberá, we can hope
to keep it uncha nged.”
In the lingering sunset, the river was
flushed with color. As night fell, fireflies came,
li ke tr ua nt sta rs. At fi rst a few, a nd t hen
hundreds of them, dancing all about the house
and far across the dark pastures.
MY FINAL STOP was Estancia San Juan de
Por ia hú, a n estate a couple of hours’ dr ive
north of Concepción. Originally a Jesuit
estancia, it is owned by Marcos García Rams, a
ruggedly handsome man in his early sixties.
Marcos comes from one of the oldest Corrientes
families; they have lived there since the 1600s.
His house feels like the home of a threadbare
aristocrat, a place of rocking chairs and carved
bedsteads, of faded family portraits and
sideboards filled with 19th-century china, of
ancient shade trees and a sense of history so
palpable it seems to ooze from the walls.
Marcos came here on vacation from his
school in Buenos Aires, back when his
grandfather ran the estancia. He had been in
awe of the gauchos, and we bonded over our
shared boyhood dreams. But it was a love of
Iberá’s wildlife, nurtured at his grandfather’s
side, that was to become his lifetime passion.
Long before the Tompkinses arrived, Marcos
was a leading proponent of conservation in the
region. For him, the wildlife and the gauchos
are not incompatible; in Corrientes’s wide
acres, he argues, there is room for both.
As we hiked, rode and bounced along old
tracks in a beaten-up Land Rover, the
irrepressible Marcos introduced me to his
neighbors, the animals of the wetlands. Here
were the two tribes of howler monkeys that did
not get along, there were the spoonbills
arriving at the beginning of the season, and
over there were the marsh deer that his
grandfather used to watch from his window.
He pointed out a five-meter-long anaconda, as
thick as a man’s thigh, sliding through a water
channel; white-faced eagles soaring above the
ibirapita trees; and a trio of squabbling vultures
that lived in a strangler fig beside the barns. In
his presence, the wetlands became a menagerie
of wonders.
At day’s end we made our way back to the old
house along rose-colored water channels,
through constellations of fireflies. A full moon
rose, its reflection trailing after us. Standing in
the stern of the boat, Marcos spread his arms
and said, “It is always different. The wildlife,
the landscape.” A wind had rearranged all the
embalsados, the floating islands. New lagoons
had emerged while others had vanished. It was
a tenuous, fluid world, teetering between land
and water—a place of ever-shifting alignments
and endless possibilities.Conservationist
Kris Tompkins in
her living room at
Rincón del
Socorro.