The view from the lodge in the morning is beautiful! The sunrise is particularly nice. Scott and I are the only photographers out. Does that make me as nutty as him?? The common room has a nice view of the river and hills.
It’s a cold and rainy day. We are off to the Cerro Castillo Reserve to hopefully see Huemule deer. Rex tells Scott that we have a long way to go so “put your blinders on.” It falls on deaf ears.
The beech trees (Krumholst Lengas) here are incredible fall colors. The mountains have snow at the top, then an area of alpine non-vegitation and then a strip of red fall colors from the beech forests. It’s a beautiful sight.
We did get to see the endangered Huemul deer–in fact it was a mother and a juvenile.
Then we take nice photos at a waterfall.
We reach a viewpoint for the snow-covered moutaintop of Cerro Castillo but the clouds are obscuring the view so we decide to have lunch in a somewhat sheltered pasture area. As we’re starting to set up the lunch table this cow, who has escaped the fence, comes trotting at full speed towards our van bellowing like a banshee. That starts all the cows still in the enclosure to join in the chorus. In the meantime the authorities drive up and yell at the ranchers across the road. He jumps on his horse and gallops over with his dog. The dog chases the cow barking like crazy as the cow chorus continues. It was quite an experience.
Rex slices up a loaf of home-made bread for our sandwiches. I accidentally brush the heel of the loaf onto the ground. Since it looks like we don’t have any extra bread (and I don’t want to waste good home-made bread) I quickly pick it up out of the pasture dirt, blow it off and start to make my sandwich. Mari Ann is aghast! I tell her that I’ve had my hepatitis A and typhoid fever vaccines. She tells me as I’m biting into my first taste that she’s more concerned about E coli. There’s no turning back now as I continue to chew and swallow. And then I see the 2nd loaf of home-made bread. There was plenty of bread–I could have thrown that piece of bread away!
The top of the mountain does show itself;
the camera shutters are clicking away; and the cows continue to bellow. It’s been a nice lunch. If only I could forget the E Coli…
We are traveling on unpaved roads and there will be no end to that until our 2nd day in Argentina, 5 days from now. We pass ice blue streams fed by the glaciers and beautiful fall colors. Our stopping place is Villa Rio Tranquillo on the shores of an incredibly blue lake called Lake General Carreras, the second largest lake in South America. We’re tired and hungry when we arrive after dark at El Puesto Lodge and before we can run to our rooms and flop down on the beds we must take our boots off. None of us were happy to do that; we just wanted to clomp up the stairs. Oh well…Tamera and Poncho turned out to be nice hosts in spite of their concern for the floors over tired travelers.
We had dinner at a nearby restaurant. (Maybe the only restaurant in this tiny village.). Bring on the Pisco Sours!! And they were pretty good too. The wine flowed as we enjoyed a local salad of tomatoes and onions (sweetened by soaking them in a sugar & salt solution), salmon, and potatoes.
We are happy that we will be here 2 nights. Packing every morning is getting tiring.