Red earth is the first thing you notice in Misiones, the thin finger of northeastern Argentina squeezed between Paraguay and Brazil. The soil is the colour of a brick, the forest is subtropical, and the roads cut through it leave long scarlet stripes on the verge. Santa María la Mayor, a small town of under two thousand, lies in this country, and its main attraction is a ruin the forest nearly swallowed.
It was one of the Jesuit reductions, the mission towns set up among the Guaraní people in the seventeenth century. The Society of Jesus founded Santa María la Mayor in 1626, and over the following century dozens of such settlements grew across what is now Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, each with a plaza, a church, workshops, schools, fields and cattle. Music mattered, and Guaraní craftsmen carved sculptures and played European instruments with a skill that astonished visitors. When the Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits in 1767, the towns declined, and many were left to the jungle. What remains at Santa María is part of the UNESCO listing of the Jesuit Missions of the Guaraníes, with red sandstone walls, the outline of the plaza and a small museum with carved stones.
Riding here is gentle and humid. Roads are mostly paved and quiet, with big skies, red dirt shoulders, fields of yerba mate, the shrub whose leaves are dried and drunk as the national infusion, and patches of tall forest where toucans sometimes cross. The heat in summer is heavy, and sudden tropical downpours turn dirt tracks into slippery red clay, so avoid unpaved side roads after rain. Livestock, dogs and slow tractors are common on the road, and nighttime riding is best avoided.
Fuel is the practical question. Santa María is small, and the larger towns of Apóstoles, to the south, and Posadas, the provincial capital on the Paraná river, are the reliable places to fill up. A thermos of hot water and a gourd of mate is the local way to wait out a storm, and roadside stalls often sell chipa, a baked cheese bread that is a staple of the region.
Visit in the cooler months of April to September, when the air is dry and the light is soft.