Argentina and Uruguay

For our final foreign trip in 2019, we returned to Argentina and explored Uruguay for the first time. It was spring there and supposed to be the dry season.

We began the trip by flying from Dallas to Miami, and then to Cordoba, Argentina. Our guide Emiliano ‘Indio’ Garcia Loyola picked us up and we drove southwest. Indio is with Sereima Tours and had been the local leader on our Field Guides trip in 2018; it was great to travel with him again. We stopped for lunch in a cute mountain town called Alta Gracia. It turned out to be the same little town Karen’s brother Gary visited when he was a guest lecturer in Cordoba in 2018!

We began birding in the Chaco ecoregion. We stayed first in San Javier and got some good birds on the property where our resort hotel was located, as well as in the nearby Los Barrancos reserve. The Black-bodied Woodpecker was a highlight.

A second Chaco stop included the Las Higueritas and Chancani’ Reserves. We had to stay in Villa Dolores, an hour away, because there is no closer lodging. The Chancani’ Reserve was formerly a cattle ranch. It has great possibilities for ecotourism, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to have the resources or management to take advantage of this. On our drive back in the evening, we ran into a huge rainstorm! Indio (who grew up in Cordoba) said he’d never seen rain like this during the (supposed) dry season. At higher elevations, there was snow that closed the road we’d used the day before.

We drove next to Mar Chiquita, a huge (about 775 square miles) lake northeast of Cordoba. Again we got unseasonable wind and rain. The town where we stayed, Miramar, is a beach resort but it was very quiet since we were there a week or so before the start of the tourist season. The dinners were good, particularly the local fish pejerrey. At lunch one day, Terry got to try roast nutria. After seeing them all over the Texas coastal wetlands, this was a new experience. He says it tastes like pork!

Indio drove us back to Cordoba and we settled in to the Windsor Tower & Hotel in the central part of town. We enjoyed exploring the city over the next few days. Founded by the Jesuits in 1573, it was a major capital of Spanish colonial America. So the Jesuit Block in the center of Cordoba holds amazing historical and architectural treasures. Gary taught at the Catholic University, and we benefited from his recommendations on the hotel, things to see and places to eat.

We left Cordoba and flew to Buenos Aires, where we stayed again at the Feirs Park Hotel in the Retiro neighborhood. We were glad to have another tour with Lu Costa and her driver George. This time we visited the Palermo and San Telmo neighborhoods. Among the highlights were the murals in Palermo Soho (see our story on art) and the huge San Telmo market, with antiques, food, crafts, tango and more.

The next day, we walked around the Retiro neighborhood. Having seen the ‘Monumental Tower’ (called the English Tower before the Falklands war) last time, we found it was open and decided to go up to the top. We got great views of the city and chatted with a British couple. Then, when we were ready to go down, we all discovered that the elevator was broken! After many flights of steep emergency stairs, we got back down again.

After two nights at Feirs Park, we moved to the Alvear Palace Hotel in the Recoleta neighborhood. It’s another lovely city hotel, opened in 1932; we’d enjoyed the bar when we were here last year. We walked a lot here too and enjoyed lots of great food and wine. Among the restaurant highlights were Sanjuanino, which specializes in empanadas — with more varieties than you can imagine, and Floreria Atlantico, a ‘hidden bar’ downstairs beneath a flower shop. Last year it was ranked as one of the top 50 bars in the world!

Indio picked us up again and we drove north to the Entre Rios region, a large triangle of wetlands where the Parana’ River joins the Rio de la Plata (in English, the River Plate). We stayed in a lodge that could well have been in the Alps. Called ‘Grunwald’, it was run by descendants of Austrian immigrants. We birded the area, though unusually strong winds interfered. The second night here there was a huge rainstorm, also unseasonal. The dirt road into Grunwald turned to mud, so we were lucky to have a helpful local who pulled our car through with a rope! Fortunately we made it out in time for Indio to drive us back to the Buenos Aires airport in time to catch our flight to Uruguay.

We arrived in Montevideo in the evening so we didn’t see much of the city as our cab took us to the Alma Historica Boutique Hotel in the Ciudad Viejo (Old City). This hotel is an adaptive reuse of a former office building with new floors and a rooftop garden added on top; its name means ‘Old Soul’. Each room honors a famous Uruguayan. Our room was named for Dona Juana de Ibarbourou, an important 20th century poet.

We spent four nights in Montevideo. We had an informative city tour from Patricia, assisted by her driver Edgardo. It turns out that Montevideo has a very deep port, better than Buenos Aires, so much of the fighting over the years between Uruguay and its neighbors has been about control of that port as well as gaining territory. We also enjoyed great food and wine here, including the Uruguayan specialty wine tannat. The weather continued to be difficult, though, and the cold wind and rain kept us from enjoying our room’s balcony.

We left Montevideo with our birding guide, Florencia Ocampo of Birding with Me. A native Uruguayan, Florencia is passionate about her country, its birds, wildlife and ecology. We really enjoyed traveling with her and learned a lot! For example, in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Uruguay was quite wealthy from exports of beef, wool, leather, lamb and other commodities. It was considered ‘the Switzerland of South America’ because it was peaceful, economically successful and socially progressive. That economic success ended with a dictatorship and drop in commodity prices in the 1960’s through 1980’s. It is still one of South America’s most progressive countries.

Our first visit was to Quebrada de los Cuervos National Park. Given its name because the Spainards mistook the vultures here for crows (cuervos in Spanish), it’s a plateau with mountains and a steep winding canyon carved by the Arroyo Yerbal Chico. We stayed at ‘El Proyecto’, a farm that is experimenting with eco- and agro-tourism. Anjelica, the owner, made amazing meals for us that included homemade Dulce de Leche — amazingly good and more impressive when we learned it requires constant stirring over the stove for about six hours straight!

From there, we drove north to Paso Centurion, on the border with Brazil. This area is an extension of the Brazilian coastal rainforest. We stayed at the home of a charming couple, Francisco and Laura. They are working to establish ecological reserves in an area dominated by cattle ranching. We had our first vegetarian Thanksgiving here — thick slices of baked pumpkin were the main course! Laura and Florencia guided us on our birding quests. In the evenings, we had fascinating discussions with all three of them about global and local environmental issues and the work of their non-profit, COENDU (Conservacion de Especies Nativas de Uruguay), to build support for preservation.

Our last stop was in the coastal town of Chuy in Rocha Province. We stayed in the Hosteria Fortin de San Miguel, built in the 1970’s but designed to look like the historical fort across the street, built by the Portuguese in 1737. This area is a Biosphere Reserve & RAMSAR-designated wetland. We birded in wetlands and grasslands near the Atlantic Ocean despite the high winds. Our last stop was Barra de la Laguna, a sand bar between the Laguna de Rocha and the Atlantic Ocean. We enjoyed our final lunch at Parador La Bolsa, a restaurant built in the ferry that was no longer needed after a bridge was built to cross the lagoon.

Florencia drove us back through the towns outside Montevideo and we arrived at the airport in time to catch an evening flight to Miami and from there back to Dallas.

As you can see, our experiences on this trip were definitely affected by unusual weather patterns. The reality of climate change is impossible to ignore when you have these experiences in many places worldwide.

We love visiting South America and would definitely recommend Argentina and Uruguay!