🇦🇷 Argentina · The Northeast
Colonia Carlos Pellegrini is the way into the heart of the Iberá Wetlands, one of the largest and most biodiverse wetlands on the planet and one of Argentina's great natural wonders. This small, quiet Corrientes village on the shore of the Iberá Lagoon —picked in 2025 by UN Tourism as one of the best rural tourism villages in the world— lives in tune with the marshes: no big hotels here and no bustle, but charming inns, guides who are passionate about wildlife and nature in its purest form.
The Iberá Wetlands are a wildlife paradise. Cruising their lagoons and channels among the embalsados (floating islands of vegetation), you come across capybaras, caimans sunning themselves, marsh deer, howler monkeys and spectacular birdlife, while the maned wolf and, thanks to remarkable reintroduction projects, even the jaguar have returned to the region. Getting close to wildlife that here has no fear of people makes every outing unforgettable.
This guide covers the essentials of Colonia Carlos Pellegrini in a practical, warm way: how to get there, which outings to do (boat safari, walks, horseback rides, night excursions), when to go, where to stay and eat, and how to make the most of the Iberá. Pellegrini is the dream destination for anyone who loves nature, wildlife and quiet living deep in the Corrientes northeast.
The Iberá Wetlands region was Guaraní territory, and the name 'Iberá' comes from that language, meaning 'shining water' or 'waters that shine'. Colonia Carlos Pellegrini began as a farming colony in the early 20th century: in 1919 governor Juan Ramón Vidal set aside land of his own for the founding of a colony, officially created by provincial Law 446 of 1923 and named in honor of former president Carlos Pellegrini. For decades it was an isolated village living off the land, off marsh gathering and off fishing. The creation of the Iberá Nature Reserve (provincial, 1983) and, later, of Iberá National Park (2018), together with the major conservation and wildlife reintroduction projects, turned Pellegrini into the main ecotourism gateway to the marshes; in 2025 UN Tourism chose it as one of the best tourism villages in the world. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Founded in 1588 as San Juan de Vera de las Siete Corrientes, it is the most Guaraní and most federalist province in Argentina: cradle of chamamé, declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, setting of the outbreak of the War of the Triple Alliance and home of the Esteros del Iberá, where the jaguar roars again after seventy years.
Read the history of Corrientes →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
At dawn, when the sun cuts the Corrientes horizon, the Iberá Lagoon lights up like a silver mirror: the Guaraní, who knew this glint long before any European did, named it with a poet's precision — 'Iberá', shining water. The Iberá Wetlands are one of the largest and most biodiverse wetland systems on the planet, a vast world of lagoons, marshes, swamps, grasslands and floating vegetation islands covering an enormous slice of the center of Corrientes province. Their origin is tied to old channels of the Paraná river, and today they make up a unique ecosystem, fed by rainfall, where water and life weave together in a thousand ways.
From pre-Hispanic times, the region was Guaraní territory. These peoples knew the marshes inside out —their wildlife, their plants, their rhythms— and lived in close relationship with the water. Guaraní place names run through the whole of Corrientes, and the Iberá is perhaps the most beautiful of them: a name that captures the luminous essence of the wetland. Guaraní culture, with its language, its knowledge and its worldview, left a deep mark on the identity of the region.
For centuries the marshes were a difficult and at the same time generous place: difficult because of their geography of water and reed beds, which kept them relatively isolated; generous because of their abundance of wildlife and resources. That condition of remote, hard-to-reach country, far from being only an obstacle, helped preserve the extraordinary natural wealth of the Iberá, which would reach our own day as one of the great treasures of biodiversity in Argentina.
Colonia Carlos Pellegrini began as a farming colony in the early 20th century, on a peninsula that pushes out into the Iberá Lagoon. The land belonged to Juan Ramón Vidal, the caudillo who governed Corrientes over several terms, and in 1919 he set it aside for the founding of a colony. Official creation came with provincial Law 446, passed on 29 November 1923 and enacted two days later by governor José Eudoro Robert. The name honored Carlos Pellegrini, the former president who had led the country between 1890 and 1892. Like so many colonies in the interior, it was born of the idea of settling and working land that until then had been little used; but the geography of the marshes, with their water and their isolation, would set it on a course different from that of other farming colonies.
For much of its history, Pellegrini was a small, remote village that was hard to reach: until the causeway that now crosses the lagoon was built, opened around 1970, the crossing was made on an oar-driven raft pulled by oxen, an image that gives the measure of how isolated the place was. Its people moved by horse and canoe through the maze of water and reed beds, lived off extensive cattle raising, fishing, hunting and gathering, and developed a culture suited to the wetland: that of the 'poblador del Iberá', the marsh tracker who knows its wildlife and its secrets. That traditional figure, with his knowledge and his bond with nature, is an essential part of the identity of the place.
Isolation kept Pellegrini out of the way of development for a long time, but it also helped preserve the setting. Human pressure on the marshes, though it existed —hunting wildlife for the hide trade, for example—, never destroyed the richness of the ecosystem. The village and its people lived alongside the marshes in a relationship that, with time and with changing views of nature, would evolve toward conservation and ecotourism, giving Pellegrini a new leading role.
The great turn in the history of Pellegrini and of the Iberá came with the recognition of the wetland as natural heritage and the commitment to conserving it. The creation of the Iberá Nature Reserve, at provincial level, was a first decisive step toward protecting the marshes, banning hunting and starting to regulate the use of the land. With that, wildlife —hunted until then— began to recover and to lose its fear of people, which would lay the ground for ecotourism: the chance to watch capybaras, caimans, deer and birds at close range.
Over the past few decades the Iberá has become the stage for one of the most ambitious conservation projects in South America, driven by foundations —in particular the one tied to the legacy of philanthropists Douglas and Kristine Tompkins— in partnership with the provincial and national governments. These projects not only widened the protection (with the creation of Iberá National Park and the donation of huge tracts of land), they also set about reintroducing species that had disappeared from the marshes: the giant anteater, the pampas deer, the red macaw, the peccary and, most emblematically, the jaguar, the great American cat. The jaguar's return to the Iberá is a world landmark in 'rewilding', the restoration of nature.
All of this turned Colonia Carlos Pellegrini into the main gateway for ecotourism in the Iberá. The village, once isolated, filled up with inns, guides and services geared to receiving the visitors who arrive from all over the world to marvel at the wildlife. And the remarkable part is that this development went hand in hand with conservation: ecotourism became an economic alternative for local people, lining up the wellbeing of the community with the protection of the marshes. Today Pellegrini is at once an extraordinary nature destination and a symbol of how conservation and responsible tourism can revive a territory and give it back its wildlife.
The process of protecting the Iberá had concrete institutional landmarks. The Iberá Nature Reserve was created by the province of Corrientes in 1983, covering around 1.3 million hectares and banning hunting, which set off the slow recovery of the wildlife. Decades later, in December 2018, the National Congress created Iberá National Park by Law 27,481, some 160,000 hectares, on land largely donated by the Conservation Land Trust foundation (later Rewilding Argentina), consolidating a combined provincial and national protection scheme covering one of the largest wetlands on the continent. January 2021 brought the most celebrated landmark of all: the release of the first jaguars on San Alonso island, which returned the great cat to the marshes after some 70 years of local extinction.
The creation of the national park came together with the donation of huge tracts of land, previously given over to cattle or forestry, and with a deliberate strategy of 'producing nature': restoring the ecosystems, reintroducing species and building up ecotourism as the economic engine of local communities. Pellegrini, as the historic gateway to the Iberá Lagoon, ended up at the center of this transformation.
The Colonia Carlos Pellegrini of today is a village of few inhabitants that lives almost entirely off ecotourism, with dozens of inns and lodges, marsh trackers turned nature interpreters, and an identity that combines its Guaraní and rural Corrientes heritage with its new role as the capital of wildlife watching. It keeps its human scale, its dirt streets and its quiet, while receiving travelers from all over the world who come to see capybaras, deer, birds and, with luck, traces of the jaguar's return. International recognition followed this transformation: in 2025 the 'Best Tourism Villages' initiative of UN Tourism chose Colonia Carlos Pellegrini among the best rural tourism villages in the world. It is one of the great stories of successful conservation in contemporary Argentina.