ESTANCIA RINCON DEL SOCORRO - ESTEROS DEL IBERA (IBERA NATURAL RESERVE)

WHAT IS RINCON DEL SOCORRO?

Estancia Rincón del Socorro is a 12,000-hectare former cattle ranch on the edge of the Iberá wetlands in Northeastern Argentina that has been made into a nature reserve. Our orientation is to give guests and visitors a good understanding of the local ecosystem and an appreciation for the importance of wetlands and savanna landscapes.

Hostería Rincón del Socorro is a small, refined eco-tourist hotel in the ranch’s recycled main house.
There are six rooms in the main house and three small bungalows within 50 meters of it, all with private bathrooms and one with a sitting room and a small kitchenette. The main house has a large indoor living room, a screened veranda living room, a large indoor dining room, a terrace dining area, and a children’s game room. On the grounds are a swimming pool, a screened barbecue house, and a barn with tack room.

Meals are predominantly prepared with organic fruit and vegetables, most from our kitchen garden. Meat is all free-range. The hostería is equipped with a professional kitchen and offers a full bar service. We specialize in fine organic cuisine and honor the Argentine barbecue tradition in our well known barbeque dining area with a wide variety of free range meat, grilled vegetables, good Argentine wines, homemade breads and special deserts. When the weather is good, lunch and dinner can be served outdoors. Special diets can be accommodated with prior notice.

Services of laundry, email/fax/telephone, booking reservations, boat rides, horseback riding, biking, auto washing and babysitting with notice are also available.

RINCON DEL SOCOROO ACTIVITIES

Lagoon
One of the main activities is the visit to Iberá lagoon. We leave the estancia at 9 am and the trip takes half an hour, considering the stops to spot a deer grassing by the road or the colorful yetapá de collar little bird, hanging from a tall grass.

Martín is waiting for us at the watering canal of and ancient rice cropping and we join him for a one-two hour's boat trip. Martín who was before a hunter, he is now a local guide and knows in detail the area and shows us a world of caimans, capybaras, deer and lots of birds and aquatic plants.

Back to the land and in the open hut besides the dock, Tito offers us a traditional argentine asado and we enjoy it at this exclusive place while we rest and sight the nature life.

After lunch, we go for a walk with Martín or with a local ranger to the forest that runs besides the esteros where a numerous family of hauling monkeys live.

We can also visit Carlos Pellegrini village of 700 inhabitants that is only reached by crossing the Iberá lagoon through a long bridge.

We come back to the estancia in the afternoon for tea time by the swimming pool.

Horseback riding
Horseback riding allows us to feel, as the gaucho does, the freedom that the endless fields offer. All our guests are encouraged to ride, even the ones that never did before as the horses are very calm and well trained, the guides very professional and it is a unique experience.

Horseback riding is the quickest way to go through the different environments and sight capybaras, deer, vizcachas, foxes and other animals. The best rides are taken early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Another choice is to go for the day and have lunch under the forest freshness.

Walks
They are different path to appreciate with more attention the richness of the varied environments: the ñandubay`s savannahs, the carandayzal`s palm tree forests, the esteros, the riverside forests, the thorn bushes, the lagoons.

A walk is an excellent occasion for bird watching and for discovering bird`s habitats and behaviors. They are approximately 400 species of birds at the Iberá esteros, most of them in risk of extinction that find shelter in the tranquility of the estancia. Walks are also the best way to recognize botanic species.
Walks are suggested in the early morning or in the late afternoon or during the whole day having lunch at the fresh riverside forests.

WILDERNESS AND RANCH LIFE
Argentina´s wetlands and big-river country
5d / 4 n from Ibera to Iguazu

DAY 1 - ARRIVAL TO CORRIENTES
8:15 am, arrival at the Corrientes city airport. The province of Corrientes is in a subtropical climate zone. Spring and fall temperatures tend to be moderate. Summer usually is hot, although there are "nice" dry hot days with temperatures ranging from 25º C to 30º C. In winter (June-September), the most popular season, temperatures average 20º C, with highs of 28º C to 30º C, and nighttime lows of -0º C.
We leave the city of Corrientes and head south toward Estancia Batel, a two-hour drive. Batel is a typical Corrientes cattle ranch with over 3,000 head of Brahman-cross cattle. Beneath one of the huge timbó trees in the 2-hectare park shaded by lapacho and jacaranda trees we will have lunch followed by a refreshing siesta. This is gaucho country, and gauchos enjoy showing visitors all their colorful horsemanship and skills at herding and roping cattle.

From Batel it's a three-hour drive to Estancia Rincón del Socorro, a 12,000-hectare former cattle ranch on the edge of the Iberá wetlands that has been made into a nature reserve. Half of the trip is on a good paved road and the rest on an unpaved dirt road where, by driving slowly in the late afternoon, we are sure to spot capybaras, jaguarundis, deer and lots of birds. Dinner at Hostería Rincón del Socorro, a small, refined eco-tourist hotel in the ranch's recycled main house.

There are six rooms in the main house and three small bungalows within 50 meters of it, all with private bathrooms and most with sitting rooms. The main house has a large indoor living room, a screened veranda living room, a large indoor dining room, a terrace dining area, and a children's game room. On the grounds are a swimming pool, a screened barbecue house, and a barn with tack room from which all our rides depart.

Meals are predominantly prepared with organic fruit and vegetables, most from our kitchen garden. Meat is all free-range. The hostería is equipped with a professional kitchen and offers a full bar service. We specialize in fine cuisine and honor the Argentine barbecue tradition. When the weather is good, lunch and dinner can be served outdoors.


DAY 2 - IBERA
This is ideal horseback riding country and guests are encouraged to give it a try even if they're not seasoned riders. From the saddle you can see lots of wildlife; riding is the quickest, easiest and most pleasant way to get to know this ecosystem. The horses are well-behaved and the guides competent. Rincón del Socorro is an excellent place for birding; if you are not already a birdwatcher, it is very easy to become one here! In the four different habitats of this large former ranch, you can see an amazing number of different types of birds in a short time, including endangered species from the surrounding region that have found shelter here. You will learn about their behavior, habitats, migrations, and the problems caused by the degradation of their environment.

DAY 3 - IBERA
The Estancia offers boat trips. Groups must be small (no more than six people); if necessary there may be several trips per day. The boat trip begins at the far end of the ranch 35 kilometers northeast of the hostería; it takes about 30 minutes to get there by car. Most guests prefer to make these trips in the early morning or early evening, when more animals are about. The actual boat ride takes 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on conditions and guests' preferences. After a morning outing, a barbeque lunch is served in a beautiful barbeque hut beside the boat dock, weather permitting. Good wildlife watching is possible right by the barbeque area for those who would rather relax there and wait for the others to return in the boat.

We use two classic Iberá canoes and a flat-bottom aluminum boat with a small 20HP/4-stroke outboard engine to see wildlife and birds on the lake.
Relaxation options at Rincón del Socorro include a swimming pool, walks of any duration, a good library, comfortable reading areas, a DVD/video library and card-game areas. Children have a game room.
Day trips to other areas are additional options. Often cattle roundups are underway at our sister ranch, Estancia Iberá, and guests who wish to see this by horseback can do so. Mountain bikes are also available.

DAY 4 - IBERA
We leave the hostería after breakfast and drive north toward Estancia Santa Inés or Estancia Santa Cecilia in southern Misiones - a drive of 230 or 260 km that will take us around 4 hours. The first150 km are on a dirt road that can get muddy and slippery during the rainy season, so we use 4x4 vehicles (Land Rovers or pickups).

Driving along the southern edge of the Iberá wetlands, we pass through Carlos Pellegrini, a village that 20 years ago was home to a handful of poachers who, when the wetlands were made a reserve, learned to protect their wildlife and earn a living guiding tourists for various lodges facing Lake Iberá. There is a visitors' center, and a trekking path in a forest that is home to a small community of howler monkeys.
The last 80/110 km of the trip are on a good paved road that affords beautiful views of gentle rolling hills covered with green yerba and tea plantations that contrast with the rich red earth characteristic of this area.

Nany Nuñez, our hostess at Santa Inés, will have lunch ready for us. Santa Inés has kept its colonial aura intact, with its unmistakably English-style house surrounded by magnificent, neatly-kept gardens. The interior décor is strong on Spanish-style furniture. The thick walls, high ceiling and tiled floors keep the house cool inside and the subtropical heat at bay.

At Santa Inés one can spend hours looking at the multitude of botanical species in the two hectares of gardens, strolling along the path through the broad swath of adjoining jungle, and horseback riding through the hundred-year-old yerba plantations and up to a tacuara cane forest on a hilltop where some cane plants reach 20 meters in height. Today Santa Inés covers 2000 hectares. Its enormous drying sheds, now in disuse, provided work for 3000 employees who lived and worked here during the 1950s, producing 2.8 million kilos of yerba a year. Now the farm continues producing yerba, but sells it to processors.
The cuisine at Santa Inés deserves special mention; everything is tempting. Fruit grown on the farm - figs, papayas, cumquats - go straight from the tree to the table or canning jars. Nany is an expert in local cuisine, producing wonderful regional dishes.

The cuisine at Santa Cecilia is also exquisite. Hostess Silvia Nosiglia de Navajas prepares delicious international dishes for lunch or dinner and spectacular breakfasts featuring fresh local fruit, several cakes and delectable regional specialties made with manioc flour.
The personnel and many of the customs of this 9,000-hectare cattle ranch are from Corrientes, a province where the Navajas family has other ranches.

Estancia Santa Cecilia is a good place for enthusiastic equestrians and people who are interested in lifestyles, history, or just a good rest. Guests can accompany the gauchos on cattle drives, or go on a long guided horseback ride to the hills for a view out over the Paraná River and the southern grasslands over lunch, followed by a leisurely return to the main house in time for a dip in the pool before tea.
The cool, elegant two-story house has six spacious high-ceilinged rooms that offer views of the park and river.

Silvia very knowledgeable about Jesuit history, and is happy to orientate guests who are interested in visiting the nearby ruins of the Santa Ana mission, and the remains of the Candelaria mission - once the order's administrative center for what is now Misiones - visible in the walls of some of the older buildings in the present-day town of Candelaria.

DAY 5 - LEAVING THE AREA...
After breakfast, we depart for Puerto Iguazú, gateway to the famous waterfalls of the same name. Sixty kilometers past Posadas, we will stop at the the ruins of the San Ignacio Miní mission built by the Jesuits in the mid-16th century. The mission was one of 30 towns that the Jesuits set up for the Guaraní Indians in a region that is now shared by Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. In 1732 their population totaled 141,182. The towns broke up following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the Portuguese and Paraguayan invasion of 1816-1819. Today, the best-preserved ruins of six of the Jesuit missions located in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil - which form La ruta de las misiones jesuíticas - are open to tourists.
At San Ignacio Miní we can still admire the remains of the church built in colonial Baroque style; the priests' quarters, the school and the workshops. On the other side of the main square are the single women's quarters, and the cemetery.
After lunch -not included- at San Ignacio, we drive the last stretch of our trip on Route 12, where the struggle between man and the jungle is painfully evident; piles of timber left by loggers are constantly eating into what is left of the native forests. The spaces left by the loggers are occupied by tobacco and yerba plantations in which occasional solitary araucarias and lapacho trees - protected by law - stand out in the decimated landscape.
End of the itinerary at the hotel near the falls.

What to pack ?
Expect rain at any time. Average annual rainfall is 1200 mm in Corrientes and 1500 mm in Misiones. Thunderstorms are common.
Sunscreen and mosquito repellant are musts. Bring a rain jacket and light sweater in summer and a heavy sweater in winter, as well as good walking shoes. Rubber boots are necessary for walking near the marshes or during rainy days. For riding, boots or shoes with leggings are ideal. Don't forget a small daypack-for-outings

Program (5 days / 4 nights) includes
Day 1: Corrientes-Socorro: Corrientes airport. Lunch Estancia Batel. Dinner Socorro.
Day 2: Socorro full day: Breakfast, boat trip, birding, wildlife watching, dinner.
Day 3: Socorro full day: Breakfast, horseback riding, visit to other cattle ranches in the area, lunch, swimming pool, hike, drinks, dinner.
Day 4: Socorro-Estancia: Breakfast and check out. Transfer to Estancia Santa Inés or Estancia Santa Cecilia. Lunch. Activities. Dinner.
Day 5: Estancia-Iguazu: Breakfast, Jesuit ruins in San Ignacio. Transfer to Iguazú.

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