Written October 29, 2015
By Caitlin Eichten (Carleton College)
We spent our sixth week in Patagonia at Base Camp in Cochrane working on midterms. Although we busied ourselves the majority of the week with studying and preparing for our trip to the fjords, we managed to find time for some fun. Below is a list of the top ten highlights from the past week in Patagonia (in no specific order):
1. Our week of midterms commenced with a presentation to the Cochrane high school on the work we did with CONAF and a group of their students. We set up camera traps to investigate the possibility of feral dogs from Cochrane coming into Tamango National Reserve to hunt huemul deer; we didn’t find any evidence of the dogs, but our traps did snap a few photos of Culpeo foxes and invasive European hares. We spent a second day with the students removing invasive pine trees in the Reserve; after a few hours of pulling saplings and sawing through sap, we eradicated over 1,000 pine trees. We presented to approximately 200 high school students in Spanish.
RRCS Students prepare for their presentation with the local high school.
RRCS student Lilly Spechler presents to the local high school about our work with camera traps.
2. We discovered yet another purpose for our all-purpose table in the quincho at base camp which regularly serves as our dining, study, and classroom table. The table’s newfound, and arguably most vital, purpose is for playing Ping-Pong, a favorite pastime of mine. Peoples’ competitive edges were revealed during some intense rounds of Ping-Pong Monday night.
3. Our hosts’ new two-month-old puppy that we named Aldo (after conservationist Aldo Leopold, whose essay “The Round River” inspired our program) is constantly the center of attention.
Aldo, the new puppy on the farm!
4. After completing our natural history midterm exam in the Chacabuco Valley (we went on a hike and our instructors told us to identify plants, birds, and relationships within the ecosystem), we celebrated in downtown Cochrane with three buckets of ice cream. The ice cream had a short natural history.
5. Monday afternoon, our host Gilberto requested our assistance in rounding up his sheep into a truck to be taken to a field in the countryside. This task turned into a more challenging endeavor when three sheep managed to escape from their pen. We spent the next hour chasing these sheep around the property. We now truly understand the meaning of the phrase, “it’s like trying to herd sheep”.
6. We took a brief study break to watch the film Damnation for a Humans and Environment class on the effects of dams and dam removal.
7. We planted seeds in the garden we have been making with our host, Angelica. We planted oregano, basil, quinoa, and beets.
8. We spent Wednesday morning and afternoon conducting a huemul survey in Tamango National Reserve with three CONAF guardaparques. Our survey transects went along a hillside overlooking the winding, turquoise-blue Baker River. We saw two huemul during the survey.
9. Yesterday evening we attended a local dance contest in Cochrane. Upon exiting the local gym where the contest was held, we all attempted to mimic the Chilean Cuenca dance but were mostly unsuccessful.
After preparing for the fjords trip we took a night off to watch a regional dance competition. La Cuenca is the national dance of Chile, portraying a Gaucho wooing a neighbor farmer’s daughter.
10. Last night after returning from the dance contest we had our own Halloween costume contest. Costumes required some creativity and resourcefulness. The costumes included a Chilean flamingo, an invasive pine tree, a genetic bottleneck, and a haunted guanaco.
Our make-shift Halloween costumes included a haunted Guanaco, a macaroni penguin, a genetic bottleneck, and a Chilean Flamingo – I’m dressed as an invasive pine tree.
Now we are headed back into the field for a two-week trip surveying areas of glacial retreat in the wet fjords. We’ll be back online around November 17th!
Top photo: Author Caitlin Eichten looks over the Baker River while surveying a hillside for Huemul deer with the Chilean Forest Service.