The Laguna Iberá at Colonia Carlos Pellegrini is the main access point and the easiest wildlife. Boat trips work the floating vegetation, drifting within metres of capybara, yacaré caiman, marsh deer wading chest-deep and dozens of waterbird species — none of which pay the boat any attention.

The grasslands around Rincón del Socorro are where the reintroduced species are concentrated. Giant anteaters, absent from the province for decades, are now regularly seen crossing the open ground, along with pampas deer and collared peccary.

The jaguar reintroduction is the headline. Jaguars were absent from these wetlands for around seventy years; animals raised in a breeding centre on San Alonso island have been released since 2021, and the free-living population has grown steadily — roughly fifty animals now, making Corrientes an unlikely stronghold for the species. Sightings are not common, but they happen, and the tracks and camera-trap footage are part of every visit.

The night drives and walks add the species that are hard by day: crab-eating fox, ocelot, maned wolf on the drier grassland, and the vast frog chorus of the marsh.

Giant otters and red-and-green macaws have also been returned to the wetland, both extinct in Argentina before the project began.

Practicalities

Carlos Pellegrini is reached by a long drive on gravel from Mercedes, itself a few hours from Posadas or Corrientes by road; Rincón del Socorro and the other portals are separate entrances and not quickly connected to each other.

Spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons; summer is hot and humid. The park is free to enter, and the local boatmen and guides in Pellegrini — many of them former hunters now employed by tourism — are the point of the whole model.