We continue our journey through the National Parks of Argentina.

It is noteworthy that, as is customary in most of the parks and natural reserves of Argentina, admission is free and free, every day of the year.

The Río Pilcomayo National Park.

The Río Pilcomayo National Park preserves a representative sample of the Eastern District of the Gran Chaco, characterized by a large plain covered with estuaries and lagoons, palm savannahs, mountain islands and riverside jungle.

The climate is temperate subtropical, with an average of 1,200 mm per year of rainfall that floods the extensive grasslands with the exception of the highlands.

The average temperature is 23º C. In summer it exceeds 40º C and in winter with several days of frost, temperatures drop below zero.

Fauna.

The fauna is adapted to this climate and stands out for its great diversity: about 322 bird species, 80 fish species, 32 amphibian species, 50 reptile species and 90 mammal species.

Read also: A virtual journey through the national parks of Argentina (#4): Los Cardones, protects cardon.

The emblem animal of the park is the aguara guazu, in danger of extinction. No more than 900 copies have been surveyed.
The Rio Pilcomayo National Park has the task, not only of protecting the vegetation that grows there, but also of the fauna that inhabits and feeds on it.

We find throughout the park yacarés, the boa curiyú, the monkey carayá, fishing bats, capybara, aguara popé, aguará guazú, coati, tapir, puma, mountain fox, river wolf, ocelot, the big anteater, and other difficult figurines.
We can also count (eye to the photographers) more than 300 species of birds, storks, herons, roseate spoonbills, ducks, straw-headed woodpecker, ñenday parrot, tuyuyú, the yabirú, ñandúes, groups of red-legged chuñas and many more.

Flora.

The great environmental diversity supports a varied flora, which, favored by the subtropical climate and abundance of water, develops exuberantly.

In the open areas covered with Palmares de Palma Blanca, we will find a dense and continuous herbaceous cover forming beautiful grasslands.
Adapted to withstand floods, they are made up of grasses such as Espartillo, which grows to 50 cm in height, the Yellow Straw and the Boba Straw.

The latter generally grows in fields covered with termite nests, known locally as "tacurúes". The high mount islets are made up of stout trees.

Between 2005 and 2015, seven new species have been registered for the National Park: male Black-bellied Hummingbird, Osprey, Scaled Torcacita, Anambe Grande, Yasyyaterè Chico and Milano Tijera.

Examples worth mentioning are Lapacho, with beautiful pink flowers, Quebracho Colorado Chaqueño, Guayacán, Urunday and Espina Corona, among many others. Bordering the course of the Pilcomayo River, we find the Forest in Gallery.

Densely covered with vines, lianas and epiphytes we will observe enormous trees, up to 20 meters high, such as the Tarumá and the Higuerón, accompanied by Sauces Criollos, Alisos de Río and the Ingá, which vegetate on the banks.

We will first meet dense communities of Guajó, (the Guajozales) and Pirí (the Pirizales), which cover the edges of the lagoons, sometimes reaching two meters in height.

They are accompanied by Totora, Achira and Paja Brava. Towards the center of the lagoon we will find an enormous variety of floating plants such as the well-known Camalote or Aguapey, Repollitos, Helechitos and Lentejitas de Agua.
The National Park has two areas of public use for the visitor, Estero Poí and Laguna Blanca. Both have ideal conditions for recreation and recreation throughout the year. It is recommended as the best time of year to visit it from March to October.
We visited the two and we went on to tell them the most salient aspects of each.

Highlight "Estero Poí".

The most characteristic environment of the National Park is the savanna with palm trees, here the view is lost in the immense plain of green pastures dotted with caranday palms and the large termite mounds where anteaters find their food.

Its landscape is shaped by the alternation of fires and floods, from where the mountain islets emerge, patches of forest that you can enter through the trails and observe the plant species of these environments such as the red quebracho, the urunday and the guayacán, among others.

The more than 300 species of birds that the protected area houses make up one of the main attractions of the Park. They coexist with other, somewhat more elusive mammals, such as hoopoons, fur bears, bush foxes, lipped and collared peccaries, carayá monkeys and mirikiná monkeys.

The mirikiná monkey is a typical species of the Argentine northwest.

Highlight "Laguna Blanca".

Another point of great scenic beauty is the Laguna Blanca, a large 700-hectare water mirror, which is accessed through a system of walkways, from where you can enjoy spectacular sunsets that color a landscape featuring guajós, camalotes, pirís, and some yacarés that appear from the water.
Location: 8 km from the town of Laguna Naineck.

Services: Information office. Camping with electric light and plugs. Bathrooms with showers enabled for people with disabilities. Picnic tables. Steakhouses. Wash basins. Catwalks. Supply of treated water (non-potable).

How to access.

By vehicle: from the city of Formosa on the RN 11 to the city of Clorinda. From there, take RN 86 and travel 50 km to the town of Laguna Naineck or 60 km to Laguna Blanca. From the RN 86, which joins the two towns, 6 km and 8 km local roads depart, respectively, to the entrance gates to the National Park.

Public transport service: from anywhere in the country to the city of Formosa or Clorinda. In both places, a combination can be made towards the towns of Laguna Naineck and Laguna Blanca by the Godoy Company, Norte Bis and Flecha Bus. The buses do not reach the protected area but to the closest towns (Laguna Naineck and Laguna Blanca); Once there, you can take a taxi to reach the protected area.

The cougar is a large feline, almost like the Yaguareté (Panthera onca), even surpassing it in some external measures, although it does not reach its corpulence.

1.- The Fitz Roy is famous of impossible to huge rock walls covered with ice floes.

The Fitz Roy is also called Chalten, Mount smoking. So they had baptized the Indians, believing a volcano because of the fog that envelops the top. High just over three thousand meters, the Fitz Roy is famous for the enormous impossible cliffs often covered by ice floes and the prohibitive weather conditions. The same weather conditions that did tell Lionel Terray, the legendary French

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The Formosa Nature Reserve is an area of environmental protection at the homonymous province and was created in 1968 with the aim of protecting forest and livestock overexploitation a small representative sector of the western Chaco biome. Comprising 10,000 hectares between the towns of El Yacaré and La Florencia, limited by two major rivers: the Teuquito the north and the imposing Teuco and Bermejo in the south.

1.- Whales in Patagonia.

The southern right whale is the great protagonist of Patagonian whale watching. The point is that in the winter and when the spring comes, a large number of whales approach the Valdés Peninsula region, mainly Golfo San José and Golfo Nuevo, in the Province of Chubut. carajo From early June to the beginning of November, hundreds of right whales come near the shore to mate and breed. Some

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1.- Cycling the Abra del Acay.

Weds 14 Nov: San Antonio de los Cobres – La Poma (c. 2830m) (92km, 1350m ascent). The big day. We set off early, retracing to Los Patos and turning right. The route follows a stream through a broad valley, with a few settlements off the road. At 18km is what looks to be a good campsite (presumably the one used by Stefan Roman). 7km later there is a sandy stretch with no habitation beyond.

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1.- Walking the Black River Valley: National Apple Festival.

To celebrate the harvest, General Roca offers the National Apple Festival. It takes place over four days and includes a significant deployment of shows, competitions and fair zonal products. The National Apple Festival emerged in the Black River Legislature through Act 360, enacted on October 9, 1964, which did not determine location of your seat. Later officials enacted a new decree on

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The Toba ethnicity in their language called himself ntokóit, then began using the autoetnónimo q'om or Qom (man) and more infrequently by the use of their own language: qom'lek or qom'lik. As usually happens with the spellings of Indian names are many variations in the writing of these words.

The name is a nickname tova Guarani and means "front" because the Qom decalvación often engaged in the front of the scalp, for the same reason the Spanish called them "Frentones" (name also given to similar grounds abipones ). In Paraguay, the name also used emok, Enlhet term meaning neighbor or citizen.

In 2007 the major groupings of these people are in the east of the department of Tarija in Bolivia, in the east of the province of Formosa, center and east of the province of Chaco and northern Santa Fe province in Argentina and the Chaco Boreal of Paraguay. In Argentina are about 20,600 (19,800 speakers of the language), 700 146 in Bolivia and Paraguay. In the west of the province of Formosa have pilagás mixogenizado with being called tufa-pilagás.
 
There is intense internal migration to the Greater Rosario (Barrio Toba meeting there of Rosario) and to the northeast of the province of Santiago del Estero. Another settlement Barrio Toba (La Plata) is in the Partido de La Plata in Buenos Aires province.

As typical pámpidos are characterized by high and dominate sizes including dolichocephalic individuals.
They are considered one of the most important ethnic group called guaycurú (or guaykurú) insulting tone voice that gave the Guarani to its main opponents in the Gran Chaco.

Their language is called qomlaqtaq and from the linguistic point of view it is usually placed within the guaycurúes language group, or the macropanoanas. It is part of the linguistic family mataco-guaycurú.
History: Upon arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the ntokóit, then qom'lek, mainly inhabited the Chaco Salta and Tarija currently and from there spread (imbrincándose with other ethnic groups) along the Bermejo River and to a lesser extent Pilcomayo River. The highest population growth in the wichí made these demographic pressure exerted to force an eastward shift, territories in which mostly inhabit today.

Until the nineteenth century were a people predominantly semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer marching towards their food resources and existed between them a strong sexual division of labor: men from an early age engaged in hunting and fishing and women to the collection and incipient agriculture horticulture largely influenced by contributions ándidos and amazónidos. Thus, in small plots cultivated nachitek (squash), oltañi (corn), avagha (beans), sweet potatoes, cassava, etc.. However, such cultures were only complementary to your diet and failed to get excess to the accumulation of agricultural foods. There is an ecological explanation for this apparent delay: climate and soil science did not allow its territory sufficient yields for their agricultural products, while in the wild Chaco territory they found a source of food, especially high-quality protein . The Qom mainly hunted tapirs, peccaries, deer, guanacos and lots of birds. Complementing used to collect honey and lots of fruits, berries and wild roots.

The Spanish presence meant a great revolution for them: first they found a powerful new enemy on the other the Spanish inadvertently made a great contribution to their culture: in the seventeenth century the Toba began using the horse and Become Sound Suddenly a powerful equestrian complex in the center and south of the Gran Chaco (Chaco Gualamba). They became skilled riders although its territory was largely covered with forests and jungles (to ride a horse under the trees used to wear on their heads a hide cleverly attached to your body, as to resist the thorns of the trees and the attacks by pumas and jaguars that suddenly they could jump from the branches).
 
With the adoption of riding could extend their raids, becoming the dominant ethnic group of the Central Chaco (full moons advantage with their horses to cross the river Paraguay and raiding the villages near the left bank of the river in the nation currently namesake) . Horse domain also allowed them to advance to the Chaco Austral and even make lightning raids over the corresponding area northwest of the Pampas. From their horses, armed with bow and arrow hunting native animals but not only cattle of European origin.

The tuffs proved to be one of the ethnic groups that opposed the attempt increased resistance of acculturation and usurpation of the white man in the Chaco region, arriving in 1858 to threaten the city of Santa Fe, but since 1880, could not cope with the Argentine Army campaigns they Impenetrable Chaco cornered.
 
In 1919 the last war of resistance was shot in Napalpí Qom, in the province of Chaco, where 200 of them were massacred in the event known as Slaughter of Napalpí. Many were forced to work on cotton plantations or as woodcutters in the mills.
Culture:
The culture of the Toba was functional to their customs and traditions, living in rooms covered with straw logs, dwellings that used to measure about two meters in diameter. They made pottery, basketry and textiles primarily utilitarian purposes.

During the warm months hardly used except for simple clothing loincloth. In periods used fresh clothes complex and on the occasion of their ritual celebrations were adorned. Thus had a dress made of fibers called poto caraguata, leather and after the Spanish invasion, with cotton.

Also during cold periods came to bundle with ponchos. Adult males adorned their heads with opaga kind of headdress made with feathers and ropes caraguatá. Women and men were adorned with bracelets mean onguaghachik is originally concocted using teeth and claws of animals, seeds, feathers, shells or cochlea or snail shells and (apparently to get some of these items practiced barter trade with other ethnic groups) In making these bracelets were similar to the colaq or necklaces. As for nallaghachik these were eminently festive ornaments, very colorful, made with feathers, flowers and leaves.

Religion: For their belief system has described them animist and shamanistic, had a cult of nature beings and the belief in a deity maximum. Since the twentieth century still remain resistant oral transmission, this religious system but many have adopted Christianity in its way, including the so-called Pentecostal because their shamans in many cases became pastors. In any case even today much of the population attends Qom their shamans or pio'oxonak who are therapists or healers.

efore acceptance of Christianity was prevalent among them infanticide of newborn habit was due to the scarcity of food resources used to suffer. By contrast, children who survived were treated with special dedication and affection.

A delicate but boldly patterned finch. Long spiny crest usually laid back and crown black, contrasting with white cheeks and ear-coverts.

Face, throat and mid breast, continued over centre of belly black, contrasting with flanks and belly orangey buff. Silvery grey back; black wings and tail with pale wing coverts.

White in base of outer rectrices visible in flight. Female paler with brown tinge above and brown shorter crest.

Greyish face, eyebrow and underparts dull cinnamon buff.

Male unmistakable, and females pattern plus white in tail does not resemble other finches. Voice Song is a modest 3-syllabled phrase. Inconspicuous thin tzip-tzip call.

Hints In pairs or small groups somewhat inconspicuous in the vegetation cover or even on the ground.

Distribution and population:

Charitospiza eucosma occurs in north-east and central Brazil (central Piauí, south Maranhão and south-east Pará south through Goiás, west Bahia and central Minas Gerais to south-east Mato Grosso and central São Paulo), north-east Bolivia (Serranía de Huanchaca in Santa Cruz) and north-east Argentina (single records from Misiones in 1961 and, bizarrely, one recently collected in Tucumán). It can be uncommon to fairly common, but has a very local and erratic occurrence.

On the south shore of Río Pilcomayo, in the northeast corner of Formosa Province is Parque Nacional Río Pilcomayo, one of the great pearls of Argentina’s national park system. This reserve protecting a 52,800-hectare (130,472-acre) swatch of Wet Chaco ecosystem has been a Ramsar site since 1992.

Its Q’om name is Satalik-Lateday, Mirror of Clear Waters. Three estuaries, or esteros, lace its interior: Zanjita, which drains into the Rio Pilcomayo, and Poí and Von Sastrow, which flow into Laguna Blanca.

These waterways are carpetted with camalotales (waterlily fields) and giant bullrush sedge (totora). The land is also marked with glens, savannahs mottled with carnauba wax palm (caranday), and hardwood forests.

Parque Nacional Rio Pilcomayo’s flora and fauna are adapted to this environment of flooding and prolonged dry spells. Some adaptions are bahavioral, such as bird migrations, whereas others are physical, such as the South American lungfish (pez pulmonada) which can breathe air.

In the forests reside black howler (carayá) and southern owl (mirikiná) monkeys. Five types of big cats call the reserve home, including the jaguarundi (gato moro), jaguar (yaguareté) and puma. Other mammals present include tapir (anta), grey brocket deer (guazuncho), giant anteater (oso hormiguero), and maned wolf (agaurá guazú). Serpents include the yellow anaconda (curiyú) and the false water cobra (ñacaniná).

Near estuaries and lagoons are found capybara (carpincho), long-tailed otter (lobito del río), crab-eating fox (zorro de monte) and crab-eating raccoon (aguará popé), as well as many native fishes, including palometas, kin to the piranha. (The park has instituted a don’t-feed-the-fish policy, which has ended incidences of swimmers getting unwanted nibbles.) Both species of caiman, the southern spectacled (yacaré negro) and the short-snouted caiman (yacaré ñato or overo) hang out at Laguna Blanca and other bodies of water.
The avifauna is equally impressive, with almost 300 species recorded in the park. Among them are Slaty-breasted Woodrail (Saracura), Monk Parakeet (Cotorra), South American Stilt (Tero real), and Great Egret (Garza Blanca). A trio of storks may be spotted and three types of Argentina’s resident kingfishes are present. Cormorants, toucans, woodpeckers, blackbirds, spinetails and other species are also represented.

The best time for viewing wildlife is before 9 a.m. and after 6 p.m., when temperatures are more moderate. The best sector for land beasts is Estero Poí.

Parque Nacional Río Pilcomayo has two main ranger stations. The most popular sector is Laguna Blanca, named after the 700-hectare (1,730-acre) lagoon that is favorite swimming hole on blistering days. This lake, only three meters (10 ft) deep, is fed purely by the rain-fed Poí and Van Sastrow estuaries.

The Sendero a Laguna Blanca is a boardwalk cutting across marshlands to a series of docks and lookout towers (Distance: 400 m / 1,312 ft, Difficulty: easy, Duration: 15 min).

Sailboats and row boats are allowed on the lagoon. The reserve’s human neighbors rent canoes. This sector has an information center with a small display of skins and skulls of various animals found in the park, and jars of pickled snakes.

Near the guardaparque is a camping area. Here starts the Sendero Carayá Caaguy, a self-guided trail through a forest inhabited by black howler monkeys (Distance: 200 m / 656 ft, Difficulty: easy, Duration: 20 min). Ask the rangers for the pamphlet (Spanish only).

Sector Estero Poí is closer to Laguna Blanca village. The road from Ruta Nacional 86 goes to the ranger station and continues to the banks of the Río Pilcomayo. At the guardaparque is a campground.

This part of the park has two interpretive loop trails. Sendero Secretos del Monte is near the station (Distance: 600 m / 1,969 ft, Difficulty: easy, Duration: 45 min). Three kilometers (1.8 mi) north of the ranger station, down the road to the river, is Sendero de Caraguatá Caaguy, also called Karaguatá Guatahá.

This trail traverses areas of the vase plant (caraguatá), a wild cousin of the pineapple, and palm groves (Distance: 900 m / 0.5 mi, Difficulty: easy, Duration: 45 min). Six kilometers (3.6 mi) past this sendero is a bird observation post. Five kilometers (3 mi) further on is the Río Pilcomayo. To transit the river road, you need to report in to the rangers, to check on road conditions. (Recent rains may make stretches impassable.)

Camping is free in the park. Facilities include bathhouses, tables, grills and electricity. At the Laguna Blanca site, keep your items well protected from the monkeys’ reach. None of the sectors have provision shops or food services, so bring all supplies.
Water is potable, though some people may have problems drinking it. At Laguna Blanca, entry is charged on Sundays only (Argentines $1.15, foreigners $7; people under 16 or over 60 years old free). No fee is charged at Sector Estero Poí. The administrative office, Informes Administración de Parque Nacional Río Pilcomayo, is in Laguna Blanca village (Monday-Friday 7 a.m.-2 p.m.

Pueyrredón s/n and Ruta Nacional 86, Laguna Blanca, Tel: 47-0045, E-mail: riopilcomayo@apn.gov.ar). The center also has an excellent, bilingual research library.

The best time to visit Parque Nacional Río Pilcomayo is during the winter months (June-September) when it is fresher, dryer and there are fewer insects. Rains begin in September. The rainy season runs from December through March. Temperatures during these months reach 47ºC (117ºF).