Our time in Corrientes ended September 12th, so Colin and I decided to get an early start and head to the bus station for a 9:15 am bus to Formosa. We were heading to the Northern most part of Argentina, and I needed to get my visa for Paraguay so that was on our minds. As well as seeing some new nature! We were entering the Chaco region, an ecosystem dual in nature (wet Chaco and dry Chaco) that begins in Northern Argentina and continues through the whole of Paraguay! (So plenty of Chaco to come as well.)
The Gran Chaco is a huge region which is pretty unique in that it is sparsely populated, filled with animals, and very dangerous in general. There are three parts to the Chaco – Southern (in Argentina), Central (near Pilcomayo where we were headed), and Northern (mostly in Paraguay and Bolivia.) The Chaco is also divided into both wet and dry as I explained before, with the wet Chaco having many animals similar to the Amazon or Pantanal region (jaguars, tapirs, capybara, alligators, howler monkeys, deer, etc.) and the dry Chaco containing animals that fair better in the drier, thorny, almost impenetrable environment (puma and other big cats, peccary, rodents, armadillo, etc.) – though there is some overlap between the animals as the environments exist near each other. As we drove towards the Chaco, we tried sightseeing for some of these animals…
Once in Formosa we managed to find the comfortable Regina hotel – which had a fantastic dark purple duvet on it! It was siesta when we arrived, so we had to wait until 2:00 pm to get some food delivered to the hotel. It was blazing hot outside, so we decided to hide out in the hotel with the A/C on. The next day we had planned to get my visa for Paraguay sorted, as we had read about a Paraguayan consulate in Formosa online. We thought we’d take it easy and get a taxi to the consulate… but it turned out that we had the wrong address and the consulate was no where around where the taxi dropped us off! After asking locals, we finally managed to find the consulate and ask about my visa. As an American, I needed to purchase a multiple entry visa for $160 USD which lasts the ‘life’ of my passport. Colin, being a UK citizen, is a lot luckier because he doesn’t need to pay a visa fee – he simply gets stamped in for 90 days once we get to passport control. Lucky!
We were told we needed to get additional passport photos, and Colin and I walked down to the corner were there was a print and photo shop. It only took a couple seconds for them to take my photo, but we didn’t get the print out until nearly an hour later. I wondered why it was taking so long until I saw the boss behind the computer was chatting on Facebook with someone who had resized the photos. Eventually his assistant walked in off his motorcycle with my photos in hand. We believe the print shop didn’t actually have the facilities to make the glossy passport photos and had outsourced the work to another shop, from which they picked the photos up. They didn’t seem to have any working printers, actually…
We ended up waiting for ages in the consulate – it was truly an all day affair and we weren’t quite sure why because we seemed to be the only people there. At one point we actually left for lunch because the consulate’s internet had gone down and they had to pause the processing for a couple hours. The highlight of our day, we found a little hidden gem rotiseria called Listo el Pollo, which served traditional Argentinian dishes. It was here that we tried something called ‘mondongo,’ which we wanted to order solely because it looked delicious. What we didn’t know was this stew contains cow stomach! It’s tripe! The carrots, onions, potatoes, and amazingly spiced sauce really made us eat the whole thing up. Plus the food was so filling it was almost too much to have a side of potato salad! After our long lunch we returned to the consulate for some more waiting.
Around 3:00 pm we finally saw my passport again, learning the reason why the processing had taken so long. Since Formosa is really off the beaten track for visitors, I was actually the first foreigner ever to come in the consulate and ask for a visa… so they didn’t know what to do! The woman processing my visa and her boss in charge of the consulate came out to congratulate me on being the first person to get a visa from their consulate! My visa said “FOR-1” on it, proving no one had come before me. What a cool and unexpected fact! We were so happy with this we posed for a photo with them in the consulate in front of the Paraguayan flag with my passport.
The next morning we had planned to take a taxi to a nature park called Laguna Oca before catching the bus to a town called Laguna Blanca. Our taxi driver dropped us off at a pretty deserted-looking beach. You could tell from how smashed up a lot of the little huts were (and lack of facilities) that this area hasn’t been seriously used for quite some time. It was quite cold, and there were only a few people hanging around. We spent a little time walking around the lake, but there was so much trash (and signs warning to not swim in the lake due to the piranhas) that it wasn’t an amazing experience. The water was clearly polluted, and you could see the pollution where the water meets the shore. Gross. The only interesting part was watching a few southern lapwings communicating with each other in a strange social ‘dance.’ We did take another walk down a path which led out a bit more into nature – we heard birds chirping and other sounds of wildlife –but soon the taxi came to get us so we could move on.
The bus ride to Laguna Blanca was quite peaceful, and as we left the city of Formosa and drove to Laguna Blanca we saw hundreds of large and beautiful pink Lapacho trees (similar to the purple Jacarandas trees we saw in Brazil) covered in big bouquets of pink flowers in place of leaves. The native people of South America believe this tree is the ‘tree of life.’ This reminded me of my sister Christina – it was her birthday today, September 14th, and really helped me remember how special she was to me. I took some photos with the trees at the bus station.
Once we arrived at the Laguna Blanca bus station (which was really just a tiny ticket office!) we headed off to the only hotel in town – the Guarani. Luckily, it was a pretty good place! For just $23 USD per night we had a nice, clean double room with bath and a (really simple) breakfast. It took a little while of walking around the place before I was able to locate someone to check us in, but eventually we got to rest in our room. Throughout the previous day and afternoon we had been corresponding with a tour agency which had offered to bring us into the Chaco for a day. They were asking for $150 USD for one day – quite a lot of money for something we thought we could do ourselves! We were also a bit put off by how pushy the company seemed and how long it took them to respond to our emails and questions. Since the weather looked OK, we decided to just arrange for a taxi the next morning and go to the park ourselves.
We agreed with the driver to go to the Laguna Blanca entrance for Parque Nacional Pilcomayo for 150 Argentinean pesos or about $17 USD, which would bring us to a lake with a whitish colored water which supposedly holds two species of alligators and different water snakes. Truly a unique landscape, the plants were really tall, towering over us in most places to heights more than eight feet. This area had tons of different types of birds, including parakeets, Kingfishers, Great Kiskadees, Brazilian ducks, herons, and huge dark cormorants. The cormorants stayed close to the water, which makes sense since they are strong swimmers. These birds make a noise similar to a grunt like a pig and sun themselves by opening up their wings wide.
There were also lots of different trees at Laguna Blanca, some of them with signs detailing their species. We got to take a closer look at the Paratodo, the Timbo, and the Yvyra Pyta tree. These three trees are pretty typical of the wet Chaco landscape. Both the Paratodo and Yvyra Pyta (don’t ask me to pronounce that! It is a Guaraní word meaning ‘red wood’) are stunning trees filled with yellow flowers in groups of 40.
Off in the distance we saw a bird-watching tower, and we headed towards it taking a good, close look at the nature along the way... including evidence of the alligators in the lake!
The most interesting birds we saw were a couple of the scarlet-crested blackbirds, which were singing and building a nest in the tall plants. The color on this bird is stunning – bright orange and black which reminded me of Halloween – with a long sharp bill perfect for pulling insects out from the reed bed.
The three of us climbed to the top of a tall bird watching tower to get a better view of the area and the cormorants sitting near the water. We even tried to walk a ways into the tall grass near the lake but decided it was probably too dangerous a venture without a horse. On our way back out, we saw that one of the rangers had shown up and spoke with him for more ideas about where to go in the area.
Wanted to get the most out of our time at the park, we spoke with the taxi driver and agreed to go to Estero Poi, the second entrance for Pilcomayo, for another 150 pesos. Fantastic! A full day tour through the entire park for less than $35 USD. Significantly better value than shelling out $150 USD for a day trip, despite not having an English-speaking guide. This entrance seemed to be the main entrance, which included trails to walk and animals to spot. As we drove up to the park we stopped the car to speak with the park ranger in order to make sure the road conditions were ok for the taxi to drive. It was here where we noticed something interesting happen. While standing outside the ranger’s house the taxi driver started clapping his hands instead of knocking on the front door. We hadn’t seen this before, but I guess this is their way of telling people they are outside. Ironically, we noticed this same thing happen in an Argentinean movie we watched that evening called “The Secrets In Their Eyes,” and knew it must be one of those interesting cultural quirks.
The ranger came out and told us the road should be fine so we headed into the park. As we drove deeper into the park we began to see signs of wildlife in this great example of wet Chaco. These wetlands are filled with a stunning mix of pink lapacho trees and wax palm trees (water palm trees in Guarani); the latter is used to make candles by scraping away wax on the leaves. Our taxi driver showed us how waxy the leaves among the reeds were when we were at the Laguna Blanca entrance, pointing out how the water sat on the top of the wax-coated leaves.
As we kept driving, directly in front of the car we saw a flash of something large- about the size of a deer or a small horse, reddish-brown in color and quite fast. I saw what looked like a large, bushy tail before the animal ran away. It looked like some kind of fox, perhaps? But it was so big! Before we could guess what exactly it was, we saw another one, this time closer and for a slight bit longer. It turned out to be a large (in fact, the largest in South America at 3 feet high and more than 3 feet long) and rare mammal called the maned wolf. These maned wolves love the grassland areas, and are actually not that dangerous to humans. Their long legs help them survive well in the grassy environment – same as the rhea, also present in the area.
After a bumpy drive (and nearly running over tons of white-faced Ibis birds which had bright red eyes), we reached the end of the road, which stopped when we met the river which gave the park its name. While we were at the Rio Pilcomayo, I saw at least 3 large toucans fly over our heads. We climbed up to another lookout point here for more bird-spotting and had a break for our lunch.
On our way back we stopped at some more lookout points specifically for bird-watching and I spotted a couple of huge black, white, and red jabirú storks… the bird that never fails to freak me out. There weren’t actually too many birds in the area because there wasn’t much water in the ‘wet Chaco’ at the moment. (Despite the fact that it looked like it could rain at any moment!) After inspecting a dead tree that had clearly been struck by lightning we decided to make our way out of the park on the hunt for more animals.
On the drive out our taxi driver spotted a rhea in the middle of the road. We slowed down to let it run past and spent a bit of time watching it wander around the tall grass in the fields. Once we reached the park entrance there was another short walk Colin and I explored where I think, think, I might have seen the backside of an armadillo. But it was moving so fast and in such a blur it could have been some kind of rabbit or even a bird instead. Still on the hunt for an armadillo! After our little walk we spent some time looking at skulls in the on-site museum and asking a few questions about the animals before asking our taxi to return to the hotel.
We left the hotel the next afternoon for a taxi across the border. It wasn’t really a taxi though, just a group of locals driving into Clorinda. They dropped us off at the border control, where we presented our visas. We had all of our bags with us at this point and needed to grab a bus on the other side. Nevertheless, we had to walk across a bridge with all our stuff… walking from Northern Argentina into Paraguay. The bridge was high up above the water and tons of trash and it looked in pretty horrible condition. There were holes everywhere and we had to watch our step as the whole situation was intimidating. Thankfully, passport processing went fine and Colin and I got on a bus taking us to Asuncion. He’ll take it from here!
More from me later!
Francesca
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