Searching for Piranhas in Argentina

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Outside Traveler 2004

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In Search of El Dorado (cont.)


	(Illustration by Jason Holley)

Jay and Carlos motored downstream in another skiff as Marcelo and I motored up. I could see great distances from the boat, because the banks of the river were barely high enough to contain the water. The boat's wake rolled over the riverbanks like a spilled drink. We passed birds perched on pieces of free-floating land, which illustrate one of the defining features of Iberá: Much of the "land" in and around the wetlands isn't land at all.

Huge, intertwined mats of floating water hyacinths capture organic particles deposited by the wind and water, forming soils that permit the growth of plants and trees. These have evolved into floating coasts, called hydrophytic forests. Currents can break the forests apart and set smaller pieces adrift. The tenuous nature of the land itself helped protect the heart of the wetlands from European settlement for hundreds of years, and in 1983 legal protection was given with the formation of the Iberá Reserve by the government of the province of Corrientes. A handful of lodges offer guided boat tours, horseback riding, and birdwatching and fishing trips, but Iberá remains a paradise for swamp rats who like their wetlands wild.

Marcelo killed the engine next to a deep pool, and I began casting out a fly that looked like a wet hamster. On about my tenth cast, I felt a powerful jolt. A dorado kicked up a large swirl of water, then launched its torpedo-shaped body completely out of the water in a blur of gold, red, and black. It shook its head about six times and landed backside-down. To make sure its teeth didn't ribbon my fingers, Marcelo popped it free with needle-nosed pliers when I got it to the boat. (Dorado are catch-and-release in the Iberá wetlands.) The fish weighed about eight pounds, but its compatriots in these parts can hit up to 22 pounds. After I caught four more, my forearm was played out.

"Now," Marcelo said, "other fish." We quickly caught a few tarihira, which look and fight like souped-up walleyes. We also caught some boga, a shadlike fish that Marcelo tossed into the cooler for dinner. He seemed to have forgotten about piranha, so I started whining again. "If I don't get a piranha now," I explained, "it will never happen." Jay and I would share a boat the next day, and I figured he would have his own ideas about what we should do. (Actually, day two would involve dorado, piranha, biting ants, a sunburn, vanishing frogs, and a delicious piranha dinner, but how could I know?)

Marcelo motored upstream and then stopped near an ankle-deep marsh. Hundreds of sabalo, which look like carp, were cruising for food in the shallow water, their dorsal and tail fins sticking out above the surface. A flock of herons came flying over, so low their long white wings rippled the water. The sabalo herded ahead of the birds in a great arc, like crumbs being blown off a table. As the fish poured back into the river, something attacked them from beneath in an eruption of splashing water. Wakes sped away, and bits of weeds floated up to the surface amid swirls of muck. I pasted out a cast.

Things then happened in a confused way. I was hooked onto something like an electric paint mixer, which turned out to be a two-pound piranha. The fish was having trouble on both ends: I was reeling it in, and a gang of other piranhas was attacking it from behind. I yanked it into the boat and then noticed blood on my foot. I wiped the top of my foot clean but couldn't find the cut. I checked the bottom. Nothing. Then I looked at the piranha and realized where all the blood was coming from: Its rear half had been eaten off. Marcelo gave me a look that said, Well, there you have it. Then he cranked the boat back to life and began puttering down the winding river path that would lead us home.

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