We have finally arrived at our main camp in the Chacabuco valley. The drive here took two days due to the red truck, affectionately named Clifford, overheating every so often and causing us to stop and wait for it to cool down. We drove past Cerro Castillo, down the “Devil Curves”, and finally reached the gravel of the Carretera Austral. Known as the “gravel rodeo,” this major highway here is smaller than most roads we know in the States, but gets traffic from all sorts of vehicles. Farther down the Gravel Rodeo, shortly after going through a federal police checkpoint, we stopped in Puerto Tranquilo for a quick dinner along the shore of El Lago General Carrerra (or Lago Buenos Aires if you are in Argentina.) This is the second largest lake in South America after Lake Titicaca. Needless to say after a long day in the car we made this calm port pretty active. The best place we stopped was the confluence of the Baker and Neff rivers. The Baker (pronounce this like a chicken would) River was the bright blue color of a glacial melt stream and it tumbled down a big waterfall where the milky gray Neff joined up and the two waters swirled together before continuing on down the canyon together.
We camped the night between the road and a river and then, after an early morning, reached the Chacabuco on the 25th. That afternoon we took a long hike up a new park trail to a great overlook above an alpine lake. The next day we hiked the other end of the same trail to a different vista of a different alpine lake. The days are so long here, that we went out on that hike after lunch and returned 8 hours later to the sunset with a full moon rising over camp. We had hiked up to the lake, summited the mountain next to it, and learned the new skill of glissading on the way back down. A few days later we took an overnight trip connecting those two ends of the Lagunas Altas trail. Near where we camped we observed some puma prints of two different sizes, perhaps a mother and cub, and an old kill site from a puma. The kill site was the bones and skull of a guanaco where you could see the place where the puma’s teeth punctured the back of the guanaco’s skull, killing it.
Our campsite is full of guanacos, kind of like a llama, but less majestic. They run around with their necks down and make the sound of an old rusty spring. Twice they have charged past us as we have been discussing readings. We have also seen a Patagonian fox twice in the same area, and constantly hear Southern Lapwings, which are kind of like the annoying seagull of the Patagonian Steppe.
We have been trying to meet up with the people working on the park with Conservacion Patagonica, but the reality of remote fieldwork is that communication is difficult. The other day, we were trying to attend a presentation by the park biologist, but went to the park headquarters, only to learn that it had already happened, two hours before. After this minor letdown, Will decided that we needed to unwind with a romantic comedy. So, after a quick sunset hike home to Westwinds, we settled down in our shelter and watched Crazy. Stupid. Love. A hilarious movie, but perhaps the greatest entertainment was watching Will’s expressions throughout.