As the company’s most senior tour leader, I frequently get hired to lead trips to the same travel destinations, and because of this, clients often ask me if I ever get bored doing the same trips over and over again. My answer is always the same. As a wise person once said, “Going to the same location repeatedly is like visiting an old friend—it offers comfort, lowers stress, and allows for deeper exploration rather than just surface-level sightseeing.” I have always felt it turns a trip into a more intense experience with greater creativity possible and more satisfying photographs. Such was the case with my most recent Patagonia tour, my 9th trip to this picturesque, wildlife-rich southern wedge of South America.
For those who had followed our advice and flown into Argentina a day early we started the tour the next day with a short afternoon outing to the Costa Nera Ecological Reserve—the biggest and most biodiverse green space in Buenos Aires. As the local tourist office claims “Despite its proximity to the busy downtown area, with the skyscrapers of Puerto Madero in plain sight, it’s a remarkably tranquil oasis of calm, and a haven for wildlife.” Along a comfortable boardwalk we could observe a sampling of the 300+ bird species known from the area. We had good photographic opportunities with rosy-billed pochards, a Coscoraba swan, black-hooded parrots, monk parakeets, and neotropical cormorants. It was a relaxing way to recover from jet lag.
Next morning, we left on the three-hour flight to Calafate, known as the gateway to Los Glaciares National Park, the largest national park in Argentina. From the airport we took a private bus to the small mountain village of El Chaltén, the trekking capital of the country. En route, we saw countless guanacos, and lesser rheas, a large flightless bird that is the South American equivalent of the African ostrich. The small town of El Chaltén is overshadowed by a jagged array of peaks, with the 11,168-foot granite spire of Fitzroy Massif being the most prominent among them. Mount Fitzroy was named in 1877 by the famous Argentinian scientist and explorer Francisco Moreno, who was the first European to discover the mountain. He named the peak in honour of Robert Fitzroy the captain of the HMS Beagle that carried him and Charles Darwin on their legendary around-the-world voyage of discovery which included almost two years of exploration in Patagonia. For the next three days, we explored the Las Vueltas River valley and nearby grassy steppes, always beginning and ending each day attempting to capture the visual glory of Fitzroy and its accompanying peaks. The weather gods blessed us with a variable array of photogenic skies, and as a result, we captured the mountains in a range of lighting conditions. During our stay in El Chaltén we were treated to several additional photographic surprises.
- A chance discovery of a veritable Andean condor highway when, at the end of each day of scavenging, these regal vultures, with the largest wings of any bird of prey, commute between the grassy steppes to their sheltered nighttime mountain roosts. On one late afternoon, we counted over 40 condors passing by, many at eye level, providing us with outstanding photo opportunities.
- After two weeks of heavy rain, the Chorillo del Salto Waterfalls was overflowing as it plunged 65 feet to the streambed below. The rich crimson of the autumn leaves of the southern beeches providing a perfect frame for the billowing cascade.
After a final morning with sunshine and fluffy clouds highlighting the characteristic jagged profile of Fitzroy, we retraced our steps back to Calafate for a two-night stay. Before settling into our hotel, we luckily swung by the Laguna Nimez Nature Reserve. Normally, autumn water levels in the lagoon are low but with the unusual weeks of rain beforehand there were many ducks for us to photograph. Chief among the feathered fowl were Chiloe widgeons, yellow-billed pintails, red shovellers as well as upland geese. A highlight was the arrival of a hunting peregrine falcon that was summarily ousted soon afterwards by an unexpected attack by a pugnacious female cinereus harrier.
The reason for our stay in Calafate was to explore and photograph the magnificent Perito Moreno Glacier—one of the 19 glaciers that drain rivers of ancient ice from the massive Southern Patagonian Icefield into the interior of Argentina and Chile. On the tour, we planned to capture the photogenic glacier from two different vantage points. In the morning, we walked the multi-level boardwalk that gave us different viewpoints of the glacier’s three-mile-wide terminal face. Later, in the afternoon, we took a boat trip that allowed us to closely approach the northern face of the glacier. Unfortunately, in the morning it was raining so we had to contend ourselves with enjoying the icy spectacles without many photo ops possible. But then in the afternoon, the soft overcast gave us magnificent views of the ice front and the icebergs that had recently calved from its surface. The day actually yielded some of the nicest photographs, with the richest colors, I have ever taken of this glacier.
After the scenic splendor of Los Glaciares National Park, we made the all-day journey to Chile’s legendary Torres del Paine National Park, Paine meaning blue in the indigenous Tehuelche language. The night before we left it snowed, so our journey from Calafate to the border with neighboring Chile was rewarded with some unusual photo highlights.
- A Patagonian gray fox scavenging the frost-encrusted carcass of a road killed guanaco. The fox was hungry and unwary enough that it allowed us some remarkably close photographs of the scene.
- At 11:45am, we passed through an astonishing band of weather that took us from strong sunshine into blowing snow and then immediately back to sunshine five minutes later. Soon afterwards we found a group of six lesser rheas foraging for grass seeds across the snow-covered steppe.
- Just as we were approaching the Chilean border, we happened upon a gathering of local scavengers which included: six Andean condors, three chimango caracaras, eight created caracaras, and two black-chested eagles. We surmised that all were there to likely scavenge a dead sheep that was wedged in an inaccessible narrow gully.
- Rapidly changing weather invariably leads to unexpected light displays and our arrival into Torres del Paine was preceded by a drive along the shores of Lago del Toro – an immense meltwater lake filled with azure-tinted glacial runoff. The journey presented us with multiple scenic photographs of the snow-dusted autumn beech forests under cloud-cluttered blue skies.
Once we settled into our hotel in Torres, we spent the next five days exploring the wonders of this fabulously picturesque mountain park. Every morning, we spent the sunrise hours photographing the Horns of Paine, one of the most recognizable mountain features of the park. By using various locations and vantage points, we were able to take advantage of a range of photo opportunities. The fickleness of mountain weather can always ruin the best of photo plans, but the weather gods were benevolent, and we enjoyed a mix of sun and cloud that made for some exciting landscape imagery. With five shooting days at our disposal, we were able to revisit areas to view them in different lighting conditions. In our meanderings, we repeatedly photographed the famous Towers of Paine, even once having the peaks mirrored perfectly in the tranquil waters of Lago Amarga. During our days we returned twice to the cascading rapids of the Paine River to capture its beauty with the distant Towers as a backdrop. The multiple opportunities gave us a chance to explore our creativity. The great Canadian landscape photographer Freeman Paterson suggested approaching a scene with the idea “Don’t ask yourself ‘what do I see?’ Instead, ask yourself ‘what do I not see?’” What is it in the scene that evokes the greatest interest and captures the eye?
Torres del Paine is not only known for its landscape beauty but also for its wildlife richness. Because it was autumn, most of the migratory birds in the park had already flown north to gentler climes for the winter. As a result, we focused on the most conspicuous of the park’s animal residents, the photogenic guanaco which spends the winter in the low elevations of the park. The guanaco (pronounced WHAN-ah-ko) is a wild member of the camel family that is the progenitor of the domestic llama.
There was one legendary mammal, the puma, known in North America as the cougar or mountain lion, that we all hoped to see, but no one expected it to happen. Nevertheless, late on the afternoon of our third day in the park, our collective wish came true. We first sighted a solitary adult female puma resting on the crest of nearby hill. She yawned, stretched, and looked about often as if she was expecting something to happen. While she was resting, she caterwauled repeatedly. This vocalization is a loud, harsh, human-like scream meant to signal she is in heat and advertise her availability to any males in the area. After about 30 minutes her wishes were granted, a large male suddenly appeared on the crest of the hill about 20 yards from her. The male was very wary of us standing on the edge of the road and he disappeared almost immediately. After 20 more minutes of caterwauling, she stood up and walked along the top of the hill. We couldn’t see the other side of the hill so the male must have been shadowing her movements out of our view. Eventually he plucked up the courage to show himself again as the female slowly traipsed across the face of the next hill over. The whole time he was nervously looking over at us. After about 10 minutes he finally gave up the pursuit and walked out of sight. When the male didn’t rejoin the female soon afterwards, she followed his path over the hill. That was the last we saw of the pair, even though we returned to the area multiple times hoping for a reunion.
We were very lucky and had a second puma encounter that was more short-lived but equally exciting. This time we found an adult female accompanied by a large cub. They spent many hours resting in the shade of a cluster of trees, but they eventually surfaced long enough for us to grab a few photos before disappearing into the shrubbery once again. It was a photo teaser, but thrilling, nevertheless.
We had to leave Torres a day early because a pending strike of airport workers on International Worker’s Day on May 1st threatened to strand us indefinitely in Calafate. Our early departure got us safely to Buenos Aires where we spent the extra day editing the thousands of wonderful photos we had taken, and I gave a long talk on processing with Photoshop/Lightroom. All in all, it was an exceptional trip.
