The sky’s still inky, awash with stars, and I can only just make out a silhouette of two men on horseback riding slowly towards us, other steeds in tow. Luis and Olegario dismount and nod hola. Our gaucho guides to the Iberá wetlands, in north-east Argentina, have arrived.
As far as style goes, these Latino cowboys put the likes of Clint Eastwood to shame. Wide-brimmed sombreros at an angle, ornately decorated facónes (knives) tucked into belts, royal blue chaps and pink shirts (a man who’s not afraid to wear pink is a real man in my book). I wonder out loud whether we need hard hats or riding boots for our journey and suddenly feel very British and prim. Here the gauchos ride barefoot or wear espadrilles at most, and hats are just to ward off the sun. ‘Boots?’ Luis raises an eyebrow. ‘Maybe we wear them to a dance or for the rodeo.’
I’m in Argentina to explore the little-visited Esteros del Iberá, a vast area of wetlands similar to the much bigger, better-known Pantanal in Brazil. It’s a region often overlooked in guidebooks, a wild land between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers that was rife with hunters and poachers until 1983, when it became a protected nature reserve. Iberá means ‘land that shines’ in indigenous Guarani Indian, and more than 60 lagoons are spread over an area three times the size of Belgium, with a rich subtropical ecosystem which a trickle of tourists have only just begun to explore.
Our starting point is Estancia el Transito, a farm on the north-eastern coast of the marshlands, where we’ve gathered before dawn. We’ll ride for a day to the remote Estancia Alonso, isolated on an island, before flying to Rincon del Socorro, a reserve on the southern shore. An hour and a half’s flight to Corrientes and a three-hour drive brought us here from Buenos Aires and already the bright lights and tango shows of the capital seem a world away.
Saddlebags packed, we head off into the semi-light, the sun slowly rising to reveal a glistening world in pink and purple. Patches of mist hang close to the ground, dew sparkles on the long grass, bright green parrots take flight as we pass, horses and cattle graze in the distance. My travelling companions are Emily and Steve, honeymooners from Dublin, and as our little group walks on into the vast horizon, it feels like we’re the only people on Earth.
We’re following an old Jesuit route, leading east into the marshland, with the land underfoot shifting between sand, grassland, marsh and mud. We trudge through shallow lakes covered in reeds and cross seemingly endless stretches of open scrubland. The saddles are wide and comfy with sheepskin covers, stirrups are long, reins held in just one hand (the other’s for your lasso). These are criollo horses, short and stocky, sensitive to the rein and fast footed. We slip into an easy rhythm, occasionally breaking into a gallop, absorbed by the beauty of the landscape.
After a while we come to a reed house and Diego and Lopez, gauchos and boatmen, emerge. You’ll not travel far in the wetlands without crossing a river, and we’re soon on the banks of our first. As the boys strip off, Emily and I can’t help noticing that a gaucho’s life in the great outdoors does wonders for the physique.
