🇦🇷 Argentina · The Northeast
Mburucuyá National Park is one of the most interesting and least known natural corners of Corrientes: a mosaic of environments where the humid Chaco meets the Corrientes marshes, with palm groves, lagoons, grasslands, woodland and gallery forest living side by side in the same territory. Its name comes from the Guaraní 'mburucuyá', the passionflower (mburucuyá or passiflora), the emblem of the area.
The park has a singular history: it was born of the donation of the Santa Teresa and Santa María estancias — 17,660 hectares — that the Danish botanist Troels Myndel Pedersen and his wife Nina Sinding handed over to the Argentine state in 1991 so that this piece of Corrientes nature would be preserved forever. That root gives it a special character, tied to science and botany. Today it protects remarkable biodiversity — caimans, capybaras, marsh deer, monkeys, maned wolves and very rich birdlife — and offers trails that take you into its different environments.
This guide covers the essentials of Mburucuyá with a practical, warm eye: how to get there, which trails to walk, when to go, what wildlife and plants to expect, and how to combine the visit with other Corrientes destinations. It's an ideal park for nature and bird lovers looking for a quiet, authentic destination away from the crowded circuits of the Litoral.
The region of today's Mburucuyá National Park was Guaraní territory and later, in colonial and modern times, an area of cattle estancias in central Corrientes. The park owes its existence to the Danish botanist Troels Myndel Pedersen and his wife Nina Sinding, who on 27 November 1991 donated the Santa Teresa and Santa María estancias (17,660 hectares) to the Argentine state to conserve their biodiversity. Mburucuyá National Park was officially created by law in June 2001, a year after Pedersen's death. Its name comes from Guaraní and refers to the passionflower (mburucuyá). 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.
On 27 November 1991, in the centre of Corrientes province, a 75-year-old Danish lawyer signed one of the most extraordinary acts of generosity in the history of Argentine conservation: together with his wife, he donated his two estancias to the state — Santa Teresa and Santa María, 17,660 hectares of palm groves, marshes and woodland — on a single condition: that they become a national park. His name was Troels Myndel Pedersen, and he was no ordinary landowner. A lawyer by profession and a botanist by vocation and talent, he had spent half a century studying and cataloguing the plants of Corrientes, becoming an internationally recognized scientific authority.
Pedersen knew every corner of his land: the yatay palm groves that catch fire at dusk, the lagoons where the caimans sun themselves, the grasslands of the maned wolf. He also knew that ranching and the advance of farming were transforming the Corrientes landscape, and he decided his land would be spared that fate. The donation was accepted by the National Parks Administration through Resolution 002/92, but the bureaucracy took its time: ten years passed between the signature and the law.
Pedersen died on 5 February 2000, at 84, without seeing his dream fulfilled. Mburucuyá National Park was created by law only on 27 June 2001, becoming the first national park in Corrientes. Today, anyone walking the trails around the old Santa Teresa estancia buildings is walking, literally, through the gift of a man who preferred to leave his land to everyone rather than to no one.
The territory the park protects today sits at a fascinating ecological crossroads, where the humid Chaco of the west melts into the world of marshes and wetlands that characterizes much of Corrientes. That position on a natural frontier means very different environments coexist in one place — palm groves, grasslands, woodland, gallery forest, marshes and lagoons — each with its own community of plants and animals. That diversity is what gives the park its richness.
Since pre-Hispanic times, the region was the territory of the Guaraní peoples, who lived in these lands of water and woodland. The place's very name comes from their language: 'mburucuyá', the passionflower (passiflora), a climber with spectacular flowers that grows in the area and to which the Guaraní attributed medicinal properties. Guaraní place names run all through Corrientes — Iberá, 'shining water'; Itatí, 'stone point' — and Mburucuyá is an example of how the Indigenous language stayed etched into the landscape: the flower is today the emblem of the park and of the neighbouring town.
The marshes, palm groves and floodplains of the region formed part of a vast wetland system that for centuries was both a source of life and a natural barrier. Wildlife was abundant: caimans, capybaras, marsh deer, waterbirds in quantity. After the conquest and colonization, this land was absorbed into the rural economy of Corrientes through cattle ranching on large estancias, which shaped land use for generations, until a Danish family changed the fate of one of them.
The Pedersen story in Corrientes began in the early 20th century, when the Danish family acquired land in the centre of the province, at a time when export-driven Argentina was drawing European capital and immigrants into the land business. Troels Myndel Pedersen, born in 1916, trained as a lawyer, but his real passion was plants: settled at the Santa Teresa estancia, he turned the cattle operation into a base for botanical exploration that he pursued for decades.
Pedersen collected, classified and described the flora of Corrientes with a specialist's rigour. He became a world authority on Amaranthaceae — the plant family he studied all his life — and his collections fed scientific herbaria in Argentina and Europe. Botanists from different countries travelled to his estancia to consult him, and several species carry his name today in tribute. That scientific eye explains his final decision: few people understood better than he did the biological value of the mosaic of environments his cattle were grazing.
Together with his wife, Nina Johanne Sinding, he decided that this heritage couldn't be lost. The 1991 donation was the gesture of a naturalist who chose conservation over inheritance: the 17,660 hectares of Santa Teresa and Santa María passed to the Argentine state forever. In the park, the memory of the couple lives on: the public-use area preserves the estancia buildings, and the story of 'the Danes of Mburucuyá' is told to every visitor as proof that private initiative can hand over public heritage.
Since its creation, Mburucuyá has served to protect a representative stretch of the transition environments between the humid Chaco and the Corrientes marshes, in a province that is itself one of Argentina's great reservoirs of wetlands and biodiversity. The park shelters wildlife emblematic of the Litoral: caimans (yacaré overo and yacaré negro), capybaras, marsh deer, maned wolves, howler monkeys, plus very rich birdlife — more than 300 bird species have been recorded — which makes it a first-rate destination for watchers.
The diversity of environments is the key to that richness. The yatay and caranday palm groves, the grasslands, the woodland, the gallery forest that follows the watercourses and the marshes and lagoons — such as the Mburucuyá lagoon and the Santa Lucía marshes — each offer different habitats. That heterogeneity lets species of dry and humid environments, of woodland and water, live side by side in a relatively small territory. For science it's a natural laboratory of great value, and it's no accident that it was a botanist who put it under protection.
Mburucuyá is part, alongside other protected areas, of the effort to conserve the wetlands of Corrientes, a province where nature — from the Iberá marshes to the palm groves and forests — is an extraordinary heritage. Less crowded than the Iberá, the park offers a quiet, authentic experience, ideal for anyone who wants to get to know the biodiversity of Corrientes away from the crowds.
More than two decades after its creation, Mburucuyá National Park has established itself as a quiet, low-impact nature destination, part of the system of protected areas that guards the wetlands and environments of the Argentine Litoral. It keeps the transition between the humid Chaco and the Corrientes marshes intact, and maintains its original scientific vocation through research programmes, wildlife monitoring and conservation of the flora that so interested Pedersen.
Unlike the Iberá marshes, which receive a growing flow of tourism, Mburucuyá offers a more contained and silent experience: interpretive trails, birdwatching, nature photography and free camping in an almost solitary setting. From 2026 the National Parks Administration approved a general entry fee (still subject to the installation of control infrastructure), while camping remains free of charge; the agency works with the neighbouring communities of Mburucuyá and Palmar Grande to promote respectful tourism.
The challenge today is to reconcile conservation with local development. The park works as an engine of environmental education for schools in the area and as an attraction that, alongside the Iberá and the city of Corrientes, helps position the province as an ecotourism destination. Protecting the palm groves, the marshes and their wildlife — against a backdrop of climate change and pressure on the wetlands — remains, as Troels and Nina wanted, the reason this corner of Corrientes exists.