An hour by train from central Buenos Aires, dry land runs out and a maze of islands, rivers and streams begins, where the boat replaces the bus and houses stand on stilts. This is where the Belle Époque elite of Buenos Aires rowed, gambled and summered, and where the islanders still live by the rhythm of the tides. Twelve stops between the railway station reached by the first train in 1865, the pier of the passenger launches, the port where fruit and wicker from the islands were unloaded, the river where Liniers landed to retake Buenos Aires, the old Navy workshops, the riverside promenade of the rowing clubs, the casino palace turned art museum, the bank where the Delta begins, the Sarmiento River with its stilt houses, the wooden house of the president who dreamed of settling the islands, the private town built on a wetland and the neighbourhood left on the other side of the wall. Approximate audio duration: 23 minutes.
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El Tigre y el Delta: la otra Buenos Aires que creció sobre el agua
A una hora de tren del centro de Buenos Aires, la tierra firme se termina y empieza un laberinto de islas, ríos y arroyos donde la lancha reemplaza al colectivo y las casas se levantan sobre pilotes. Ahí la elite porteña de la Belle Époque remaba, apostaba y veraneaba, y ahí los isleños siguen viviendo al ritmo de las mareas. Doce paradas entre la estación del tren que llegó en 1865, el muelle de las lanchas colectivas, el puerto donde bajaban la fruta y el mimbre de las islas, el río por donde desembarcó Liniers para reconquistar Buenos Aires, los antiguos talleres de la Marina, la costanera de los clubes de remo, el palacio del casino convertido en museo, la orilla donde empieza el Delta, el río Sarmiento con sus casas sobre pilotes, la casa de madera del presidente que soñó con poblar las islas, la ciudad privada construida sobre un humedal y el barrio que quedó del otro lado del muro. Duración aproximada de audio: 23 minutos.
Tour stops
12 stops · ~23 min of audio · 18.75 km on foot (~4 h 40 min walking) · about 5 h 15 min in total
You are at Tigre station, the end of the Mitre line. You have just stepped off the train some thirty kilometres from central Buenos Aires. A few steps further on there are no more tracks: there are rivers.
The railway reached this point in 1865. It was the Buenos Aires Northern Railway, a British-financed company, and one of the first lines in the country. Overnight, a spot of fishermen and woodcutters was little more than an hour from the capital.
For centuries this place was called Las Conchas, after the river that ran here. The name Tigre has a different origin: jaguars, which local criol…
2
The Bus That Floats
You are at Tigre's river terminal, the Estación Fluvial. Look at the long launches of wood or fibreglass, with roofs and windows, moored side by side. They are called lanchas colectivas, and for the islanders they are exactly that: the bus.
Across this river begins the First Section of the Delta Islands, which belongs to the district of Tigre. A few thousand people live there in houses no road reaches. To go to work, to the doctor or to vote, you have to take a boat.
The launches run fixed routes and timetables, like a bus. Islanders wait on their own jetty and wave to the driver to stop. To…
3
The Port of Fruit and Wicker
You are at the Puerto de Frutos. Today it is a market of baskets, wicker furniture, plants and crafts. But look at the name: for decades this was the port through which the produce of the islands entered Buenos Aires.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Delta was one vast orchard. Islanders planted fruit trees on the higher edges of the islands: citrus, peaches, apples, plums. The fruit came down the streams in launches and was unloaded here.
The frutos del país, the produce of the land, as it was called, were not only fruit. Willow and poplar timber, firewood, rushes and wicker …
4
Las Conchas and the Reconquest of Buenos Aires
You are beside the Tigre River, close to where it flows into the Luján. In colonial times this narrow waterway, now crowded with launches, was the river of Las Conchas, and a small port of the same name grew up around its mouth.
Las Conchas was a river port. Firewood, charcoal and produce coming down the Paraná passed through here, and so did a great deal of contraband with the far bank of the Río de la Plata.
In June 1806 a British force under William Carr Beresford landed south of Buenos Aires and occupied the city. The viceroy, Sobremonte, fled inland.
Santiago de Liniers, a French offic…
5
The Navy Workshops by the River
You are in front of the Museo Naval de la Nación, the National Naval Museum, on the Paseo Victorica. Look at the brick building, long and plain, with the air of a factory. That is no accident: it was not built as a museum.
In the late nineteenth century this was home to the Talleres Nacionales de Marina, the national Navy workshops. The Argentine Navy chose the site for a practical reason: on the Luján, sheltered from the swell of the Río de la Plata, ships could be repaired in calm water.
Tigre had something Buenos Aires lacked: water that was both calm and deep, and direct access to the Pa…
6
The Rowers' Riverfront
You are on the Paseo Victorica, Tigre's riverside promenade along the Luján. Look at the buildings with ramps running down into the water and big wide doors: they are the boathouses of the rowing clubs, where the long, slender boats are kept.
Rowing came to Tigre with the British. In 1873 the Buenos Aires Rowing Club was founded, regarded as the oldest rowing club in the country. In 1888 came the Tigre Boat Club, also British.
The others followed. Immigrant communities set up clubs of their own: German, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian. Each with its own building, its own flag and its own rega…
7
The Belle Époque Casino
You are in front of the Museo de Arte Tigre. Look at the white facade, the domes, the slate mansard roofs and the grand staircase. It looks like a palace from the French Riviera transplanted to the bank of a South American river.
The building opened in 1912 as the Tigre Club. It was designed by the French architects Paul Pater and Louis Dubois. It was a social club for the Buenos Aires elite, with ballrooms, a restaurant and, above all, a casino.
Picture the scene. The richest families of Argentina in its centenary years arrived by train or by yacht, dined facing the river and played roulett…
8
A Land Still Being Made
You are on the bank of the Luján. Look at the far shore: trees, jetties, the odd house among the willows. That is no longer the mainland. Those are the first islands of the Paraná Delta.
The Paraná is one of the great rivers of South America. It flows down from Brazil and Paraguay laden with sediment, and before reaching the Río de la Plata it fans out into a mesh of channels, rivers and streams. That fan is the Delta.
The islands are made of that mud. The river drops its sediment, banks form, reeds and trees take root, and the bank becomes an island. That is why the Delta is a young land, a…
9
Living on Stilts
You are on the Sarmiento River, one of the busiest waterways in the Delta's First Section. Look at the houses on both banks: almost all of them stand on stilts, with a staircase leading down to a jetty of their own.
This is not a matter of style. In the Delta the water rises. With the tide, with the floods of the Paraná and above all with the sudestada, the south-easterly wind that pushes the water of the Río de la Plata upstream and makes it overflow.
During a strong sudestada the water can cover the land and reach the bottom steps of the houses. Islanders know this and build accordingly: l…
10
The House of the President Who Dreamed of the Islands
You are in front of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's house on the Los Reyes stream. Look at it: a small, simple wooden house on stilts. And around it, a large glass structure that encloses it completely, like a display case.
Sarmiento was a writer, an educator and President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874. Before he reached the presidency, in the 1850s, he bought land on these islands and put up this house for his stays in the Delta.
Sarmiento fell in love with this landscape. He wrote about it with enthusiasm, called it the Carapachay and imagined it as a fertile land that could take in settlers…
11
The Private Town on the Wetland
You are in Nordelta, a few kilometres west of central Tigre. Look around: artificial lakes, houses with gardens and private jetties, immaculate streets, gated entrances and private security.
Nordelta is a private development begun in the late 1990s. It covers a vast area of low-lying land in the Luján basin, which used to be marshes, grassland and fields that flooded.
To build it, lakes were dug out and the earth was used to fill and raise the plots where the houses would go. That is how an entire town was born, with schools, shops and offices, reserved for those who live inside or have perm…
12
On the Other Side of the Stream
You are at the edge of the Las Tunas neighbourhood, in General Pacheco, also part of the Tigre district. Look at the streets: many unpaved, half-finished brick houses, tangled cables. Across the stream and the fence you can see the rooftops of Nordelta.
Las Tunas is a working-class neighbourhood that grew over several decades, built largely by its own residents. Many families came from the Argentine interior and from neighbouring countries, looking for work in the Buenos Aires suburbs.
The photograph of this place became famous: on one side, makeshift houses; on the other, lakes and neat gar…
How long does the "Tigre and the Delta: the Other Buenos Aires That Grew on the Water" audio tour take?
It has about 23 minutes of audio across 12 stops and a 18.75 km walking route (~4 h 40 min on foot). Plan roughly 5 h 15 min in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "Where the Train Ends and the Water Begins" (coordinates -34.42278, -58.57972). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open Tigre and pick "Tigre and the Delta: the Other Buenos Aires That Grew on the Water". No account required to start.
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No wifi needed · Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian
