Tigre and the Paraná Delta

This past weekend had the feel of a vacation from a vacation. With our two week orientation drawing to a close and classes about to begin in the coming week, FLACSO, the program through which Georgetown runs its study abroad opportunity in Argentina, organized a short overnight trip for all of us to go to Tigre and the Paraná delta. I say vacation from a vacation because our workload has been relatively light these first two weeks as we simply get accustomed to the city and our home stays and sit in on various orientation sessions. Exploring Buenos Aires and getting to know the other students in the program up until now has filled in for the forthcoming reading, writing, and studying.

The trip itself turned out to be great. Tigre and the Paraná delta sit just outside of Buenos Aires-only about an hour train ride away. However, from Tigre we took an hour and half boat ride to delve deeply into the delta and arrive at our hotel, which rested on a small island on the bank of the Paraná.

Now to interject for a quick geography lesson that is both to help myself and any readers understand what I experienced. When I first heard that they were taking us to a delta, a vague memory from 6^th grade or so had me thinking that a delta had something to do with the mouth of a river.The ever reliable Wikipedia more specifically (and accurately) defines a delta as “a landform that is created at the mouth of a river where that river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, flat arid area, or another river. Deltas are formed from the deposition of the sediment carried by the river as the flow leaves the mouth of the river.” In other words, a delta is a series of small islands that take form from all of the dirt and sediment that a river has been carrying its entire length.

As one of the largest deltas in the world, it holds the distinction as the only major delta to flow into freshwater (the river, Río de la Plata) rather than the sea. A few other cool facts: it is 320km long, carries 200 million tons of sediment, and grows nearly 60m each year.

The boat ride throughout the delta was quite scenic; the delta is home to thousands of Argentines who have made their homes on the countless islands that make up the delta. Many of the homes sit upon stilts very near to the banks of the river-many only accessible by boat. Our hotel was much like this, as it sat on an island that wasn´t more than a half mile in circumference.

Lounging on the small beach, you would frequently see huge industrial boats come down the Paraná as they made their way to Buenos Aires. You could also see the sediment in action as large clumps of grass, leaves, and brush would regularly flow down the river.

Outside of the neat geographical context, the quick trip also held a lot of fun of activities. While the kayaking was pretty limited in how far out we were permitted to go, I can now flaunt that I’ve kayaked throughout the world´s largest freshwater delta. Pretty obscure, but maybe it’ll impress someone someday. The three hour volleyball marathon with the other coordinators was particularly fun, even though my knowledge of trash talking volleyball terms in Spanish was quite thin. Also entertaining was running countless laps around the island with a few other students that just had to get in their run for the day. The cherry on top of the trip was sitting out on the bank of the river at night and being able to see countless stars light up the sky. This was a special treat for me as DC’s and Cleveland’s light pollution mask the night sky in both places I call home-and with Buenos Aires being a metropolitan area of more than 13 million people it doesn’t fair much better. With Tigre and the Paraná delta behind, its time to embark on our next journey: the first full week of classes.