By Kristina Benoist (Westminster College)
The group has now entered what we like to call, “Recovery Mode” from the Fjords. This has provided an excuse for eating endless amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables, taking long naps in the sun, and constantly reminiscing about the amazing Fjords adventure we’ve just come back from; not to mention all the time spent playing with the newly arrived puppies that have stolen our hearts at base camp.
This week we’ve been acting the part of guardaparques and putting some manual labor into our conservation work. We spent our time working with CONAF (Corporacion Nacional Forestal) within the Tamango National Reserve, a wildlife conservation area located northeast of the town of Cochrane. The group began the week by hauling 250m worth of fence wire up and down the Aguilas trail within the reserve. The idea behind the fence is to keep out the stray dogs from Cochrane that may prey on the small population of Huemul deer left within the reserve.
After only an hour or so of work, our guardaparque guides gave us a two-hour siesta break. The Chilean clock took us all by surprise at first, but we learned to embrace the break and walk around the area. We were exploring around a spot near the trail that the group had back-packed to at the beginning of the semester. There was something so good about being in the still foreign, yet familiar landscape. It was great to be back in this recognizable place knowing how much we all have grown, changed, and connected since that first trip into the Tamango Reserve. After exploring the area, we completed as much work on the fence as we could, and then headed down the unpaved road back to base camp.
The next day, with only a little more fence work remaining, half of us returned to the Tamango to finish what we had started. Once again, we were on Chilean time, and the first two hours were spent drinking matte, practicing Spanish with the guardaparques, and stoking the wood-burning stove at the guardaparque refugio—all of the typical Chilean customs we’ve gotten used to. We returned to the fence and completed the project in little time. On our way back, we got distracted by the large morels, a type of mushroom, at the base of all the trees along the trail. Liz, our Pacific-Northwesterner and foraging expert, gave us all a proper lesson on the process of foraging for the mushrooms and sent us on our way, with the expectation of collecting handfuls of morels.
Male Magellanic woodpecker (photo by Eric Van Dam)
As we made our way back to the refugio, with a full stock of mushrooms, we were stopped in our tracks by a male Magellanic Woodpecker. This unmistakable, 45 cm long, pterodactyl-like bird perched in a tree less than five meters away. We all stood motionless, and speechless, for minutes just watching the bird. We heard a distant drumming noise and noticed that, in the opposite direction, there was a female pecking at a tree. We stood directly in the middle of these two majestic birds. We’ve seen amazing wildlife while on this trip, but something about the Woodpecker sighting made it the best nature find thus far.
After we got over the excitement of the afternoon, the half of us in the Tamango returned home to the others at base camp. That night we had planned to have Angelica and Gilberto, the owners of our base camp quincho, over for dinner. A reoccurring discussion in the Fjords was our most dreamed about food; cheesy pizza consistently made the top of the list, so with an oven at our disposal Blaise and Liz decided to undertake the cooking venture. Each person took a turn kneading the piles of dough, and our gathered morels made it on as toppings to the pizza.
A Patagonian family (photo by Izzy Lazarus)
Halfway through our meal, there was a knock on the door and the familiar face of our beloved gauchos, Felidor and Orlando, appeared. It seemed that the day couldn’t get any better, and then the two people to whom we thought we had said our last goodbyes, appeared at our base camp. Those two had become a part of our group through the Fjords, and it had felt like there was something missing since we got back. It had been less than a week since our return to Cochrane, but we had all missed our gauchos. The group shared our adventures with Angelica and Gilberto, and it seemed that any language barrier has disappeared for the night. All of the people around the table have shown the greatest hospitality, truest sincerity, and endless kindness to our group, and they have become a part of our Patagonian family.
Top photo: Elliott and the puppies napping in the sunshine (by Sylvia Kinosian)