Day 9: Patagonia- Wildlife and Waterfalls (under construction)

Dave and I got out early this morning as the sun was coming up to try to photograph the sunrise.  I soon found out that my tripod, even with my heavy backpack weighing it down, was no match for the Patagonian winds.  Dave finally had to help stabilize it while I snapped away. 

Milt appears to be on the mend, but he and Rhonda have decided to do some less demanding hiking today, so after breakfast, they headed off on their own excursion.  Speaking of breakfast, the pancakes grew this morning, still not your typical New England-size portion, but a huge improvement over yesterday.

Dave and Molly, and Jeri and I met up again with Pablo as our guide today.  A few others joined our group and we set out in search of wildlife near Lago Sarmiento.  The wind abruptly stopped and the temperature rose dramatically in the sun.  We all stripped down, including Molly and Jeri. Unlike many of the other lakes here, this is not glacial, thus, no sediment or glacial milk.  

The water is very clear and though there are no fish to speak of, there are water fowl.  We saw steamer ducks,

 greater grebes, 

and the Rufus-throated sparrow.  

We saw several guanacos and guanaco carcasses, thanks to pumas in the area.  We were not fortunate to spot a puma here, just indirect evidence.

There were some very interesting rock formations surrounding the banks of the lake.  The lake contained large amounts of cyanobacteria, which affects a change in the pH of the water allowing for precipitation of calcium carbonate deposits.  As the water level fell, these deposits lined the lake bank.

On the way back to the lodge, we saw more guanacos.  They can apparently get quite vicious.  When they fight each other (usually over a woman), they attempt to bite their opponent’s testicles off.  Personally, I’d give her up (other than Jeri, of course) before I’d go down that road.  I’m glad we didn’t see any castrations today.

We had a quick lunch back at the lodge, then off to our last excursion of the day to hike to the face of the massif and then to a waterfall, Salto Grande, that connected Lago Nordenskjold and Lago Pehoe.  One of the woman on our hike this morning, Dawn, also came with us in the afternoon.  Turns out she is a pediatric ophthalmologist that does strabismus surgery on adults.  After picking her brain a bit, I decided to look into her possibly doing my surgery in Westchester.  Pays to travel!

The views from the southern bank of  Lago Nordenskjold of the massif were breathtaking, and we heard no fewer than 4 avalanches while we stopped here for photos.  Further down the trail, we came to Salto Grande, which drops its water about 100 feet form Lago Nordenskjold to Lago Pehoe.  The wind here was even stronger than anything we had yet experienced.  At one point, Jeri had to kneel down to keep from getting knocked over.  Between the high winds and the sun’s angle, the waterfall created a nice rainbow effect. It was a short walk to our waiting van for the ride back to Explora. 

The pre-dinner talk tonight was on glaciology.  Between a Manhattan, a Flexaril (my back was killing me) and possibly the subject matter, I had great difficulty in staying awake, even with the multiple bruises I received from the blows from Jeri’s elbow.  Milt seems to be much better and actually had some dinner tonight.  Molly, on the other hand, just started coming down with a cold.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that we can stay out of the cross-hairs.  At dinner we said goodbye to the people we met here, and headed back to pack and get some shut-eye.