Poisonous snakes washed downriver by flooding have invaded beaches and forced authorities to close them to summer holidaymakers in northern Argentina.
Beachgoers also were contending with displaced otters, a wild boar and a fox cub as well as scorpions and stinging insects.
High water levels in two rivers, the Rio Plata and Rio Parana, carried off a species of water lilies, and with them countless crawling slithering creatures, and deposited them at beaches at the mouths of the rivers near Buenos Aires, reported news service AFP
"We are raising awareness of the risk and danger present today. There are otters and species of snakes that are poisonous," said Matias Leyes, an official in the coastal town of Quilmes, south of the capital.
"The beaches of Quilmes have been closed as a precaution. We were cleaning up the coast during the week and while doing so we saw the snakes under the water lilies."
Inland river beaches were also closed over the weekend in the northern city of Rosario.
Water covered the beaches and even the terraces of seaside bars in Rosario, as summer temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius.
"It is dangerous because when there is not much beach there is more risk of coming into direct contact with rodents or snakes, whose dens are all flooded," said Gonzalo Ratner, a top civil defense official in Rosario.
Experts have blamed severe flooding in recent weeks in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay on the El Nino extreme weather phenomenon.
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