My friend Kale asked me what my favourite animals in Argentina have been. We actually just left a place called Esteros del Ibera, a really important wetland nature reserve in Argentina.
It was a little crazy trying to get to this reserve. First we took an overnight bus for 12 hours and then we got to this little town called Mercedes where we needed to catch a different bus but it was on a Sunday so everything was completely closed. We met a nice couple from France who also wanted to go to the nature reserve. We were standing on the street trying to figure out what to do when a nice local man from Mercedes walked by and we stopped him to try to get directions. Pretty soon this man introduced us to his whole family (the D'Angelo family) and they called some of their friends and then before we knew it a man came and picked us up in a 4-wheel drive pick up truck and drove us all the way to the reserve. I was in the back of the truck with my Dad and my sister and the French couple. It was a very bumpy 3 hour ride but it was fun. When we had to stop to go to the washroom the driver warned us that there can be snakes in the ditch on one side of the road and there can be alligators in the water on the other side of the road. I never heard that before in Canada. We went to the washroom quickly.
We finally got to the wildlife reserve and we stayed there a couple of days. My family went on an awesome boat ride with the French couple. On the floating marshland islands we saw hundreds of capybaras, they look just like giant guinea pigs. They are as big as you. Even their poop looked like giant guinea pig poop. These are the largest rodents in the world. We saw about 40 alligators on our boat ride too. We would drive the little boat along the floating wetland islands and we were only about 1 meter away from the animals. When our boat pulled up beside the first alligator I thought our boat driver was going to kill it but fortunately he didn't. Then we started to see all kinds of alligators, they were everywhere! Sometimes the alligators went into the water when our boat got close. This was really creepy because we didn't know where they were in the water. Sometimes we could see just their eyes floating above the water.
There were hundreds and hundreds of birds. Over 350 species in the park. We saw an alligator trying to eat a crane but the crane got away.
At the little hotel we stayed at we saw a dead snake and a bunch of huge frogs the size of small pumpkins just outside our door.
We also went on a tiring night walk there with a guide from the Park who had a flashlight and we saw all kinds of other animals in the forest. We saw bats, coates (tiny raccoon-like creatures), armadillos, lizards, swamp deer, and a small cat from the jaguar family. We really wanted to see the howler monkeys. They are officially the loudest animals on earth. We heard them but we didn't see any.
Our guide told us about the emus there. They look just like ostriches. Apparently they mate for life. So if one of the birds in the couple dies, the other bird will just stop eating and then it dies too.
So I have seen lots of interesting animals here in South America Kale but I think my favourite one is the capybara.
See you later alligator!
Please send me any questions.
Levi
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