Patagonia Wildlife 2017
Part 2 - 3 Just Pumas Continued...
Day 8 - Torres del Paine
We had a later start today as we had a planned morning ‘off’ from puma watching and would be heading towards Grey Lake. It was a beautiful clear morning with very few clouds in the sky and we enjoyed the wonderful clear view of the mountains as we ate breakfast at the hotel. At 8am we left, stopping at a view point before we arrived at Grey Lake.
We had a quick look at the Grey Lake Hotel before we went for a walk through the wood and then onto the lake beach to see the glacier in the distance along with some rather large icebergs. It had become quite windy & it was quite a struggle walking back from the glacier view point against the wind.
When we got back to the Grey Lake Hotel we were rewarded with the best meal of the trip (take a look at the photos) Chilean bean soup, salmon and really prettily presented dessert.
After a very relaxing lunch we started our afternoon activities, first a very quick stop at our hotel. A short drive along the road around Lake Pehoe where Alan spotted a condor up a bank next to the road. Cesar dropped some of us off so we could take photos and drove to a safe place to park the vehicle. We watched the condor take off and then be joined by its partner, they fly around us catching the afternoon air currents. Next we made our way to Cascada del Rio Paine, where we admired the cascades and a herd of guanaco.
We met up with Jorge at the location of our very first puma sighting. Jorge had spent the morning looking for yesterday’s injured puma to see if she was OK so we were starting a fresh with looking for a puma. He had seen another puma there and gave us the option to drive back to the wildlife trail to see it or stay where we were and hope to see the juvenile puma again or its mother and siblings. After a short discussion we agreed to stay where we were and look here. Jorge drove off to look and within a few minutes he called us to join him. He had spotted the mother on a guanaco kill in the distance and she was taking some interest in another young guanaco. As we arrived and jumped out the vehicle we saw this dot puma walk down a hill into the valley and creep towards a guanaco within moments of us spotting her the chase was on and she followed the guanaco out onto the plains. After the unsuccessful hunt, we were told this was unusual as pumas don’t often chase prey for this long. She came very close to catching the young guanaco, but it changed direction one last time which just too much for the puma and she lost her momentum.
The mother puma needed a drink after all that hunting and she drank for a while from a stream running through the valley before heading off. We drove back along the road to see where she was heading and in the distance we could see her move up a hill and then sit. She must have called to her ‘cubs’ as over the next 15 minutes we watched as one… two and then three pumas, almost the same size as their mother joined her. After greeting each other they started to walk along the side of the hill. This was all dot puma viewing, if you knew where to look you could see where they were with the naked eye as their golden fur caught the rays of the afternoon sun. Decent photos were impossible at this distance but through the camera we could watch what they were doing.
She was taking them to the kill she had made before we arrived on the scene. We drove back down the valley and waited by the road for them to walk along the hill side. Jorge told us this puma was not as habituated to humans as some of the other pumas we had encountered so we would need to walk towards the bottom of the hill in stages. First we needed to wait for her to get to the kill. Once the four pumas had arrived at the kill we began our slow walk across the valley. Over an hour we moved and stopped, moved and stopped until we reached a fence at the bottom of the hill. We would not risk going any closer as it was important that the family got to eat. They took their turns in eating and one of them dragged the kill to a new position. We were still a good distance from them, but it was interesting to watch and we had pumas number 1, 10, 11 & 12.
We didn’t get back to the hotel until 9pm.
Day 9 - Torres del Paine
Back to a 6:30am start time and we headed back to the Lake Sarmiento area where we had seen the mother with the two young cubs. The sunrise was stunning as we reached the lake … I have done no post processing or manipulation of these photos, this is what our eyes and the camera saw.
Sebastian our guide
We drove up and down the road and admired the views but saw no pumas. Jorge went up to the highest point to look along the valley that we had watched the mother puma walk along a few days before, but there were no signs of the family. It was likely she had made a kill away from the lake and she had taken the cubs to it.
We returned to the hotel at 12 and used the down time to get our bags packed as I knew there would likely be little time later.
At 2:30pm we drove out to the Salto Grand (waterfall) that is located on the Paine River between Lago (lake) Nordenskjold and Lago Pehoe. Back in 2014 I declined this walk because it was very windy and raining. This time the air was still and the sun was shining. We admired the view of Lake Pehoe with our hotel in the distance and then the falls themselves.
We then carried on to the estancia to meet up with Jorge and a new puma (number 13) was sitting looking down at the sheep in the valley. This was the notorious sheep killer and the gauchos were keeping a close watch on her. Jorge explained that when a puma killed livestock they would remove it from them to teach them there was no reward in hunting animals that shouldn’t be on their menu. A guanaco higher up the hill caught her attention and she moved up and out of our sight.
I asked Jorge & Sebastian if we could go back to the wildlife trail to see if we could see how no-tails sister was doing. I knew if there were no pumas at least we would have a chance of photographing other wildlife like foxes and birds. They gave in and took us there and boy oh boy was it and good call!
While Jorge got into position to scan for pumas we strolled along the wildlife trail stopping for a flock of juvenile rheas and few other birds.
It wasn’t long before we got a call from Jorge that he had spotted a puma, up and over the boundary fence onto the estancia lane and we followed Jorge’s directions towards a large white boulder. On the way up Sebastian’s radio battery died so we were walking up towards the puma without any guidance from Jorge who was across the valley (a dot in the distance). As we got towards the top of one of the hills Sebastian was looking to the right when in front of him was a puma! It was crouching as though it might pounce on Sebastian had he kept walking, fortunately Sebastian looked in front of him and as soon as the puma and Sebastian made eye contact the puma sat up. This was puma number 14, another new one and she was a beauty. She sat and posed for a several shots before walking out of sight.
We no longer had communications with Jorge so we stood still and waited to see where the puma might pop out. Moments later she appeared walking along the edge of a steep embankment and then out of sight again. Her face then reappeared right next to us only 8 metres away! Wow if this was to be our last sighting it was a perfect way to finish. She walked down the bank and lay down in amongst some rocks and plants.
We were probably blocking her route so we said our goodbyes and hiked back to the wildlife trail very happy indeed. We were excitedly talking about what we had seen when we heard the guanaco warning calls. Could it be another puma? Yes! …and better still, it was no-tail’s sister. She was lay on a mound next to the wildlife trail on the park side of the fence. The park ranger and his two Argentinian guests were next to her taking photos from the trail. The ranger beckoned us to join them so we slowly walked along the trail towards them. She was more interested in the screaming guanaco than us and she allowed us to take some photos of her before she got up.
She walked along parallel to the trail allowing us to follow her progress, we were pleased to see there was no sign of a limp. I wanted to get some video of her walking so stopped to set up the tripod and no sooner was I ready she stopped parallel to me to sniff a scent that had caught her interest. She spent several minutes getting a deep sniff and pulling that face all cat owners know (the vampire look). She was off again, walking along the trail as the guanaco went into warning call overload. The light was fading and she went further away from the trail as we carried on to the vehicle and headed back towards the hotel.
It was now dark as we drove along the road around Lake Pehoe and were only 5 minutes from the hotel when Cesar shouted puma! He stopped and reversed and we all saw puma number 15, its eyes reflecting the headlights of our vehicle back at us. It crossed the road and climbed up the steep bank out of sight. We got back to the hotel just after 9pm and finally went to bed at 11pm.
Day 10 - Torres del Paine to Punta Arenas
It had been quite a windy night with the windows banging, but it was a beautiful morning. After completing the packing we had breakfast at the hotel and were all ready to leave at 8am.
We stopped briefly at the park’s visitor centre and a couple of viewpoints before we reached Puerto Natales for Cesar to refuel the vehicle again. While he did the refuelling we walked along the sea front again giving us another opportunity to photograph some birds… crested ducks, coscoroba swans, black-necked swans, rock cormorants, imperial cormorants, chimango caracara and southern wigeon.
Onwards again towards Punta Arenas, we stopped at a hotel for a comfort break and to take a walk in their grounds to see what birds we could spot. We had a very brief look at a flock of austral parakeets before they flew away squawking. The ringed kingfisher, Patagonian sierra finch and Chilean flicker were more obliging.
We got back to Punta Arenas at 2:30pm, much earlier than usual due to the lack of wind. This gave us time to sort our stuff for our next adventure and upload a few photos to our Facebook page.
At 7:30pm we met up with the rest of the group for our farewell dinner, the other two couples would be returning home tomorrow and getting up much earlier than us. We said farewell to them and Sebastian and our Just Puma adventure was at an end.
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