Blog and Photos by Maya Morduch-Toubman, Bowdoin College
It has already been a week since we started our spring semester in Patagonia, and I know that I will continue to be in awe of the beauty here until the day we leave.
Our first night together in a hostel in Coyhaique we decided that “classmates” absolutely didn’t represent our relationship. Now, after just a week together, Team Condor is a family. With a rotating cast of instructors, locals, and dogs, we have grown close, facilitated by the fact that we spend every hour together.
After a few days getting to know each other, acclimating to Chile, learning to drink maté (a strong tea which is more about culture than the drink), and starting to practice our Spanish, we got out into nature. We drove a few hours to the Reserva Nacional Cerro Castillo where we spent four days looking for huemul deer.
Our party of fifteen in Cerro Castillo included students, instructors, a photographer, and Guardaparques (park rangers). We students, all studying environmental and earth sciences, bring some pretty varied expertise in school related topics as well as Midwest accents, rock climbing, hula dancing, guitar playing, and hunting. Of our instructors, Samara is a lover of big cats from Brazil, Scott is a glacier expert from the U.S., Manuela is a Chilean moss and lichen expert as well as humble and hardcore mountaineer, and Violeta is a plant specialist from Spain. Spending time with so many gringos, she’s working on improving her English (some new phrases being “shower beer” and “sick nasty bro”). Carolina Faundes, a huemul photographer, came along with an incredible knowledge of huemul and an infectious spirit. The Guardaparques, Mario and Pablo, were young guys working for the park service, CONAF, to preserve the huemules in Cerro Castillo. Our caravan chauffer as well as guitar player extraordinaire and the director of the Round River Patagonia program is the long-haired and mate-addicted Fernando.
In Cerro Castillo, many of the valleys are actually private land owned by cattle and sheep farmers who burned down the lenga forests in the 1940s to make pasture land. The surrounding mountains are the actual protected lands. We hiked up the valley several kilometers and spotted two huemul deer along the way. There are only about 2,000 huemuls left in the world right now and an estimated 60 of them are in this reserve.
Río Balboa at the base of the valley with beautiful clear, blue glacial water.
The following day, we split into two groups, bushwacking through chest high shrubs in search of more huemul. I went in the group up the mountain with Mario while the others followed the river. After many hours hiking up some “Class 4” slopes, we realized that we wouldn’t make it to the top or see any huemul in a area so steep. Coming down felt almost like skiing, sliding down the loose soils and holding on to trees as we went. Neither group saw any huemul, and we decided that it wouldn’t be worth returning to those areas.
A caterpillar (oruga) on Siete Camisas (translated-Seven Shirts) flowers along the trail.
Instead, the following day we hiked out and drove to the other side of the reserve to stay in the Guardaparques’ houses. There we cooked on a real stove and stayed up until 2:00am singing, dancing, and star-gazing.
We spent the next day learning about telemetry, the way they track huemuls with a VHF emitting collar sending a signal we pick up with a large antenna. We tracked two of the six collared huemuls, Lento and Seis Puntas. In the Lento group, we hiked two mountains and got signals allowing us to triangulate Lento’s position, with an impromptu lesson in dog vs. cat tracks along the trail.
Samara (right) helps Hannah Phelps (left) practice using the telemetry antenna and digital sound box to track huemul deer.
The following day, after some mate, we left Cerro Castillo and caravanned all day south on a one-and-a-half lane dirt road (likely the most beautiful drive in the world), Carreterra Austral, to our base camp in Cochrane. We met our counterparts, Team Aguila, and the other instructors who will rotate in on expeditions, Shay and Adam.
A view from Carreterra Austral on the drive to Cochrane.
A quick stop almost at base camp at La Confluencia de Los Ríos Baker y Neff (The Confluence of the Baker and Neff Rivers) where you can see the incredible glacial blue of Río Baker meeting the darker gray water of Río Neff.
I am writing this from outside the quincho (shared kitchen/dining room/living room) overlooking Río Cochrane while my “classmates” prepare a chard and beet salad from the greenhouse and freshly made pizza for a potluck style dinner. Today we’re celebrating Fernando’s birthday and will have a brigadero, a Brazilian dessert (thanks Samara!), and an potluck later.
We will stay at base camp in Cochrane for the next few days where all of Team Condor is living in the “loft upstairs”—a couple minutes’ steep climb from the quincho with a breathtaking view of the river, surrounding mountains, and southern stars on clear nights.