River Rat to Mole
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

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Oh, to live in a place where you have to get around by boat. In the Paraná Delta, travel is mostly by water, owing to a lack of roads.

"Darn, honey. I forgot to get milk. I'll just have to run down to Tigre or we won't have any in the morning. Have you seen the boat keys?"

The delta waterways buzz with boats. No congestion, but you could sit on a dock and watch hundreds of craft of all kinds go by. This one looks big enough to have some commercial use, but today a family is taking a pleasure ride on it.

Smaller boats are the norm. A surprising number ones have inboard engines. Even more unusual, they seem to be jerry-rigged. This one is driven by what appears to be a small automobile engine.

I saw an even smaller boat propelled by an inboard lawn mower engine. Mexican ingenuity in Argentina!

A minority of delta boats are propelled by muscle power. The waterways cover hundreds of miles; distances are too great to get around using oars. You have to be strong and have a lot of time on your hands if you're planning to paddle from place to place.

This young man clearly has both. His backpack and his mountain bike aboard his extremely well-used canoe, he's doing what I would have liked to do when I was his age.

Maybe I could just go ahead and do it now. I wonder if Jean would mind...

The banks of the Paraná itself, the main channel that is, are littered with abandoned craft.

They must have considerable value in scrap metal alone. Why are they simply left here?

Some commercial activity takes place on the river. This boat is equipped with a hydraulically actuated claw for plucking floating logs out of the water and stacking them on deck.

Somewhere back in the wild parts of the delta, people are logging.

This disintegrating rowboat is part of river commerce as well. Few bridges span the Paraná, so ferrymen transport passengers across.

The rowboat's water-worthiness seems questionable, but the oarsman has no lack of trusting customers.

When I saw this thing, I burst out laughing. Only a government committee could have come up with such a kluge.

But it's way more clever than it looks. In front, it has a sort of sieve that scoops up floating plastic bottles and other flotsam. When the sieve is full, the operator raises it and deposits the contents onshore before going back to scooping.

The nautical street-sweeper is incredibly maneuverable. Two paddlewheels operate independently, like tracks on a bulldozer, so the craft can turn completely around in its own length.

It looks like a duck that can't get traction trying to take off. But I bet running it is a blast. Like a riding mower. I'd love to be the guy who gets paid to use it.