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Spend two days and two nights at the islands


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What can you do when visiting the Paraná Delta?

The Paraná Delta

It seems unbelievable that this huge subtropical ecosystem is  located at only 60 minutes from downtown Buenos Aires, city capital of one of the larger metropolis of America. 

Since, at least, five centuries ago many chroniclers, navigators, scientists and writers have envisioned this area (which expands on 11.825 sq.mi. and for 185 miles long, comprising hundreds of rivers,  streams and islands) that inspired many texts about such different type of nature and geography. From the very start, the first Spanish expeditionary forces supplied peculiar accounts of such "huge abandoned wealth".

The Paraná Delta is the southernmost end of the Paraná-Paraguay wetlands system, which is the main water basin receiver of surface waters.

It makes up a flood plain of special ecological and biogeographic chacarcteristics which are unique in Argentina -besides being the only delta in the world that ends into an estuary- with a complex  water cycle characterized by both periodic floods of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers together with tides of the River Plate, which bear serious consequences on local population and nature due to their severe intensities.The latter provides huge quantities and varieties  of resources to the 25.000 people permanently living in the area, where they fish, harvest honey, plant trees, grow and harvest different kinds of wood, harvest reeds, and where they work manufacturing wooden and reed artcrafts. Tourism is increasingly responsible for the local population's income, specially by means of personal and construction services.  

The Paraná ecosystem behaves as a green lung, supplier of oxygen and drinking water to the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Not less important for the present era of climatic change, it acts as flood-buffer for this area where 15 million people live. These are many reasons why this population and other people arriving from different places of the world are attracted to visit and enjoy the Delta; thus, with uncontrolled tourism, social and ecological conflicts arise and puts the ecosystem at risk because such a heavy burden.

Come, discover and get acquainted with the Paraná Delta from within: with myself, on behalf that I've been going for decades back and forth traveling around, rowing and by foot, staying at my own dwelling, my Buen Vivir on an island located near the 

Paraná de las Palmas, a branch of the Lower Paraná River.

You may choose to:

·       Walk across an island along paths (firmly kept by the roots of huge trees) on flood-prone areas, contemplating varied landscapes, watching how clear water flows from within the island towards waterways, hearing a profound silence seldom  interrupted by a bird chant or the far away noise of a public transportation motorboat.

·        Talk to local people, some of whom have many generations living at the islands, to the rythm of tides pulses, mostly living off the river and woodland.

·        Harvest dandelions, persimmons or blackberries

·        Travel through streams, rivers and islands until arriving to the hugeness of  Paraná de las Palmas. And go across its 800 meters wide there and back.

·        Stay overnight and enjoy a misty morning with the polyphonic sound of the sorrounding birds.

·        Envision how the delta acts as a sponge, keeping water from high tides and releasing them during low tides, operating as a mean of flood protection for population living in coastal areas when high tides arrive, sometimes aggravated by heavy storms.

·        Walk along the towpath (right next to the river) passing by different kinds of housing and landscapes. You will also watch the dwelling of the author of the first argentinian literary best seller, who in mid-XIXth. century wrote about the Paraná Delta as the paradise.

·        Enjoy a tasty home-made food lunch while watching the river from under the shade of a wisteria.

Grocery store and restaurant "El Hornero" - Picture: M G Therin Weise/Getty Images.

·        Cool down in a pollution-free stream and swim amid the vegetation and under huge tree branches.

·        Visit, look around and have lunch, tea or a light meal in a traditional English rowing club, established in 1888.

·        Go around streams, rivers and islands on a rowing boat.

·        Rest on a hammock while watching the river flow, amid the silence of the delta.

You may even be lucky enough to contemplate the slenderness of an imperial heron, hear or watch a "boga" fish emerging out of the waters or how the biguás (wild black ducks) play on their flight with the movement of a public motor boat, diving when it stops and continuing its flight when the boat resumes its movement. 

Delta del Paraná – South America 

Horacio A. Feinstein

Whatsapp: +54 9 11 6495-2079

Email:  deltadelparana.esvida@gmail.com

http://paranadelta.blogspot.com.ar

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Information and more about
 the Paraná Delta

Inside Parana's Delta Living Culture: My Airbnb Experience

What do scientist say about the Paraná Delta?

Human beings are losing contact with Nature

The Poetic Delta

Islander's culture, of yesterday, today and tomorrow (in spanish): pajarodemimbre

 Writers from the anphibious world