Thursday, January 4, 2018

Buenos Aires Ecological Reserve (1)

December 1 was the first of my wife's two-day professional commitments, so I set off by myself to explore the Ecological Reserve at greater length (more than 17,000 steps, to be quantitative). I'll be posting from that walk for the next several days.

This whole park, 3.5 square kilometers along the south bank of the Rio de la Plata river, is the result of relatively recent human activity (Wikipedia). In the 1970s and early 80s. debris from the building of urban roadways was dumped into the river. "Since then, different plant communities developed spontaneously from seeds present in the silt, windborne or dispersed by the animals. By providing refuge and food, plants helped animal populations to settle in. From the beginning, the newly formed ponds and grasslands attracted the attention of nature lovers and bird watchers who thus started to visit them regularly. As the biological diversity increased, woods and a variety of animal species appeared. This place became a meeting point for joggers, cyclists, students, naturalists and even foreign bird watchers passing through Buenos Aires."

My strongest immediate impression was of the trees: the complex calligraphy of the dark branches against the deep green leaves. On the main path through the park, the trees form a beautiful canopy over the joggers, bicyclists, and pedestrians.










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