Submitted by Alexandra DiDonato on the 2013 fall semester program in Buenos Aires, Argentina…
There’s a whole community just outside of Buenos Aires in the province of El Tigre that is made up of a bunch of tiny little islands. In order to get from one island (basically one person’s house!) to the other you have take a boat, so it’s a whole society of people who instead of driving or walking from place to place, travel via boat. There were boats to take kids to school, to deliver mail, to give people groceries and clean drinking water.
The way of life in La Delta is so different from the city life in Buenos Aires. It seems like “los isleños” live a very simple life, but it also seems like it would be much more complicated to do anything outside of La Delta. Many of them only have boats to travel between the islands, so if you wanted to travel anywhere else in the country, you’d have to depend on public transportation. I also imagine that during the rainy seasons things can get risky with the possibility of flooding.
I don’t think I’d choose the Delta life personally, but I definitely admire people who do!
Fun fact: We learned that the reason this province is called El Tigre is because when settlers first arrived they thought the giant cats that inhabited the area were tigers when in fact they were cougars. Unfortunately, cougars in Argentina were nearly killed off and only a handful are left in the wild.