South America

South Sea Safari

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hostal Coastal B&B, Puerto Natales. 18.42.

I had to improvise a bit today, after my original plan of jumping on a full-day tour of the Torres del Paine National Park and the Cueva del Milodón fell through. Fortunately, you don’t even have to leave Puerto Natales to enjoy some spectacular wildlife, even in the heart of winter. I was also lucky with the weather today, which was largely sunny for most of the day, making photography that much easier.

Many of Natales’ resident birds look deceptively like domesticated waterfowl, which could not be further from the truth. There are crested ducks absolutely everywhere, greatly outnumbering the smaller and daintier yellow-billed teals that are one of the few birds that remain wary of humans around here. The black-necked swans that live out in the fjord are probably the most iconic residents of Puerto Natales, but they were joined today by a few pairs of Coscoroba swans, a swan-like goose that can be found from the Antarctic waters of southern Chile all the way up to Brazil.

It’s clear who holds the reins of power, though. Not five minutes after the coscorobas came in to land, a pair of black-necked swans moved in, and one of them charged the coscorobas, putting them to flight. About the only bird I haven’t seen them attack yet are the tiny white-eared grebes – I wonder if that’s because they can’t see them?

Some of the birds here look familiar, even at a head-spinning distance of just over thirteen thousand kilometres from home. A small colony of house sparrows and feral pigeons have made the town their own, as they have in most towns and cities around the planet, and at first glance the oystercatchers look similar – but these are Magellanic oystercatchers, limited to the southern tip of South America. You can tell them apart by the yellow ring around their eyes. If other human species had survived, would we have been able to tell each other apart by similar signs?

There was one creature in particular that I was hoping to see – and I was not disappointed. After a half hour’s careful observation – having been almost certain I’d seen the silhouette I was looking for across the bay when I set out – I was very nearly scalped by an absolute giant that came soaring in from behind my post on the dock: a southern giant petrel, a genuine monster of the South Sea with a two-metre wingspan and a violent disposition.

The giant petrel will eat just about anything and has a reputation for bludgeoning and drowning birds much larger than itself, including penguins, gannets and albatrosses. It will even squabble with its kin over human waste left behind by passing ships. For this reason, it’s known as the vulture of the Southern ocean – which is probably why I was so keen to see one. Besides the simple fact that they really are incredibly impressive birds to behold.

A more friendly resident of Puerto Natales is the chimango caracara. You couldn’t miss these happy little hawks if you had even the least know-how about birds – they’re all over the place, perched on lampposts, drifting over the streets in the centre of town, wandering the dockyards in gangs of five or six and hopping along the beach in search of scraps. One of them had found the remains of a coscoroba and wasn’t about to share it with any one, flapping at any other caracaras that came its way.

The occasional passing clouds across the sun made for a tricky job adjusting the shutter speed on the new camera, but when the sun did come out, I could not have been happier with the results. It helps, of course, that so many of Patagonia’s animals aren’t that shy at all.

The old jetty is one of Puerto Natales’ most famous sights, and it hosts a large colony of Imperial cormorants in the winter months. Many of them had gone by mid-morning, seeking richer waters further down the fjord, but I must have counted nearly a hundred here the other night.

I went out for another walk after lunch, following the same circuit in the hope that the giant petrel would return. After about twenty minutes, it caught me by surprise once again, rushing so low over my head that I could hear the wind whistle in its giant wings. I hoped it might return the way it had come, but when it did not show itself again after about half an hour, I wandered back across town. I would have gone back to the hostal for a bit, but something made me press on to the other side, further south. That was where the petrel went, after all.

I didn’t quite make it as far as the fishing wharf, because there was a lovely view from the Edificio Cultural Costanera. I had only just packed away my camera when I found myself having to rush to get it back out again as a flamingo came in to land, right next to one just off the shore that I had not even noticed.

At such a close range, I could see just how heavily feathered the Chilean flamingo’s face is. It must be an adaptation to the cold, as these particular flamingos make their home here in Antarctic Chile and up in the frigid lakes of the Patagonian mountains. A far cry from the languid heat of Fuente de Piedra and Lake Turkana, for sure.

They were just the first. Soon, as the sun was beginning to set, a whole herd of flamingos came in to join them, their feathers glowing a blood-red scarlet in the evening light as they came down into the bay.

They made for quite a sight: a great herd of flamingos set against the backdrop of the snowy peaks of the Kawésqar Mountains. I certainly didn’t expect to see them again, having spotted earlier in the day that they had decamped to the other side of the bay since the day I arrived, and until recently, they had shown no signs of moving.

They were pretty quick to move, however, for one thing: a dark, powerful thing on two-metre wings, speeding towards them just above the surface of the water like a fighter plane. The petrel was back – and the mere sight of it put the fear of God into the flamingos. With much honking and splashing, they took off in a mad hurry, even when it was clear that the petrel was simply passing by.

What a spectacle they made as they flew up the fjord! It was like something out of a dream – and they kept turning this way and that, giving me every chance to snap them against the mighty mountains beyond.

It felt like the perfect ending to the trip, even though I have most of the day tomorrow as well, since my flight doesn’t leave until half four. But I come away with so many incredible memories, some of which I have written about and many of which I can print and put up on my wall. That’s how a good holiday should be, right? BB x

Wild and Free

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Café Artimaña, Puerto Natales. 20.30.

The weather is fickle. It’s still pretty cold out, but it’s warmed up enough not to need more than two layers on when leaving the house. The snow has largely melted away in Puerto Natales and the surrounding countryside, revealing for the first time the vast golden fields of Patagonia. It’s always a bit sad when snow melts, like coming to the end of a very special story, but if the forecast is to be believed, it will be back tonight.

I still can’t believe my ridiculous lucky streak in timing this adventure to coincide with the very first snowfall of winter – and all the magic that followed, right up until the last throw of my expedition today. Right up to the wire.

Fabián picked me up just after seven thirty as usual and we set out into the darkness. Beaming his thermal camera to his phone, we spent much of the twilight hour searching for life in the snow. It was eerily quiet this morning. A single caracara was our only find, shivering in the cold at the side of the road.

And not without reason: the temperature had dropped to a biting -10°C, worsened by the all consuming oblivion of a snowborn fog and an icy wind coming up off the lake. Even the lights of oncoming cars didn’t become visible until long after their engines were heard rumbling down the road.

We had quite a scare while looking for Escarcha and her cubs. The thermal camera picked up two glowing dots on the hillside not far from where we’d left them yesterday: one large, one small. One of the trackers went up into the fogbound hills to get a closer look and radioed in to confirm it was Escarcha and one cub. For a painful half hour, there was no sign of the second cub at all – until it came out from behind a rock where it had been hiding, much to everyone’s relief.

Winter may be beautiful, but it is terribly hard on the animals that live here – especially the young. Hopefully, Escarcha’s cubs make it through the winter so they can find territories of their own in this desolate idyll.

Escarcha took her cubs higher up into the gloom, which showed no signs of lifting anytime soon. Fabián suggested an alternative itinerary up at Laguna Azul, on the eastern edge of the national park, so we left the fog and set back out into the brilliant light.

Laguna Azul offers a tremendous view of the world famous spires of Torres del Paine across the surface of its crystal waters, though they were more often shrouded in cloud than not.

The towers themselves are every bit as breathtaking as you have heard. Unlike Petra (which I was arguably less exposed to before I saw it) the Torres del Paine lose nothing in reality, despite the fact you’ve probably seen them a thousand times over on the covers of photography magazines, NatGeo special editions and South American travel guides. Glowing red and white in the morning light, they might be the exposed teeth of some ancient titan, or the thrones of South America’s lord of the skies, the condor.

Fanciful imaginings on my part. Paine is a Tehuelche word meaning “blue”, in honour of the colour of the peaks in the grey morning, or the icy glaciers that lay at its feet.

Fabián’s mission was to find a tucúquere, a Magellanic horned owl, or the more well-known Patagonian speciality, a Magellanic woodpecker. But the forests around Laguna Azul were silent – completely silent. We found another chunchito (pygmy owl) watching us from the top of a dead tree, along with a couple of colourful rayaditos, but the snowy forest showed no other signs of life.

Perhaps they were all hiding from the creature that left these tracks in the woods: an enormous male puma, whose trail we followed for about an hour as it weaved through the woods, occasionally doubling back to investigate the older trails of a couple of younger female pumas.

Out on the lake, I finally tracked down a creature I missed in Peru. We have grebes in Europe, but the huala or great grebe – the largest of its kind in the world – is a truly magnificent bird, reaching the size of a cormorant. Curiously, as I descended to the lake’s shore to get a closer look, it actually came closer to the shoreline rather than diving and emerging much further away, as grebes are inclined to do.

Back in the car, Fabián checked in with his fellow trackers over the radio. Nobody, it seemed, had had any luck with pumas since Escarcha and her cubs went up into the hills. So we stopped for a snack lunch next to the thundering falls of the Cascada del Río Paine, where the meltwaters of the park’s mightiest river came hurtling down a series of cliffs amidst menacing curtains of sheet ice.

We picked a lucky spot. Two handsome condors sat up on the hilltop, sunning themselves in a posture that must have convinced the ancient Inca that the condor truly was a messenger (and worshipper) of the Sun.

The waterfall must be a reference point for the condors in their navigation, because no fewer than sixteen came flying right overhead on their way up the valley, some of them soaring so close you could hear the rush of wind in their enormous wings. They were mostly youngsters, yet to don the full black robes and smart white collars of their elders.

For me, that would have been the perfect ending to a wonderful three days: a close encounter with one of my favourite creatures in the world – again – but Patagonia was not done with us. Not yet.

The radio crackled to life as we were driving back to the south road: ‘La Petaca está en la carretera’. Fabián stepped on the gas, overtaking two trucks in the snow like a rally car and forking right back up the road to Lago Sarmiento.

The fog had finally cleared, having hung over the lake almost all day, and one of the trackers had located Petaca, the dominant female and the park’s most famous puma, following the scent trail of Escarcha and her cubs: her progeny. By the time we got there, she had slipped off the road and into the scrub, but we were still able to spot her without too much difficulty.

Not for the first time, I was disappointed with the behaviour of some of the tourists and their tracker, who came down from the road to move in as close to Petaca as possible. If she had wanted to come back up the hill, she was cut off constantly by this group that kept cutting ahead of her to get more and more photos of the big cat approaching head-on. Fabián was just as ticked off as I was (I really do appreciate a guide who puts the animal first, and not the client). Surprise surprise, the tracker was one of the ones we’d sparred with a few days prior, telling us to back off as they were there first. Go figure!

I believe that the key to magical wild encounters is patience, understanding and a healthy dose of luck. If that had been that, I would have been perfectly happy – we had already seen so much of the pumas over the last two days. I was ready to hit the road and maybe find some ñandúes on the way home.

And then Petaca reappeared.

With the shimmering waters of Lago Sarmiento behind her, she hardly cast a glance in our direction as she padded her way along the hillside toward the road, following Escarcha’s trail.

With no further obstructions to her path, she came right up to the road, mere metres away. At such a distance, you could really appreciate the power in those mighty paws. Here is an animal that didn’t struggle once in the snow like the fox and the geese from yesterday: she almost seemed to glide across the surface of the frozen hill.

I thought the fence between the road and the hill might prove a barrier, but not for this apex predator. In a single move she leapt nimbly up onto the wire and then launched herself onto the other side, just a few feet away.

Having cleared the road, Petaca climbed up into the hills toward the setting sun and disappeared among the frozen scrub. What an incredible encounter! And what a way to finish a superb three days’ tracking in Patagonia!

On the way back, we found the unnamed young male in the same spot he had been when we first saw him on Monday. It felt fitting that the last puma of the trip should also be the first. We might very nearly have witnessed a hunt, as a lone guanaco was headed right his way, until a passing truck spooked it into heading in a different direction.

The tour I had booked for tomorrow into the heart of the park itself and the Cueva del Milodón was sadly cancelled due to low numbers by the time I got back, so this will be my last time in Torres del Paine. Magical, then, that it should end with a view of the mountains at their most impressive, with ominous yellow and grey clouds rolling across its summit, turning the blue mountains of the Tehuelche all kinds of magical colours. Who could not lose their heart to such a sight?

I’ll take it easy tomorrow and explore Puerto Natales properly. There’s so much human history here that I could so easily overlook, and it will need more than a morning, I think. BB x

Diamond Dust

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hostal Coastal B&B, Puerto Natales. 19.20.

Patagonia is transformed in the sunlight. From the moment I arrived, the whole territory has been shrouded in a dense fog ushered in by the snow, concealing much of the land behind a mysterious grey curtain. Today, at dawn, everything changed. Shadows into silhouettes. Mystery into majesty. I have never been more in love with this place than I was today.

And to think there were people online who advised against coming here in winter… I can only imagine they wanted to keep something this precious to themselves. Because I think I can say without a hint of hyperbole that Patagonia in the heart of winter is one of the most beautiful sights you will ever see.

This morning’s quest began where we left off yesterday, at the frozen field where Escarcha and her cubs had gone to ground. Tracks in the snow indicated that they had moved on during the night, but there was at least one puma still in the area: an adult female, one of the offspring of the legendary Rupestre, the former matriarch of Torres del Paine. It was still dark, but following the lurching silhouette of a sight that was becoming quite familiar still set my heart racing.

She seemed to be following the scent trail left behind on the cliff – either Escarcha and her cubs or another puma entirely – as she kept pausing at each overhang and doing the Flehmen response, a technique which allows cats to analyse the scents they detect in extreme detail, ascertaining information such as the age, health and sex of the scent-bearer. Cats are remarkably intelligent creatures and the puma – arguably the most successful of all the cats of the Americas, with more names than any other species of felid and a range spanning from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego – is no exception to the rule.

The female took her leave and wandered off toward Lago Sarmiento, and we turned back in search of the new arrival from yesterday, NN, just as the sun began to crest the hills to the east, bathing everything in a golden halo. NN was where we left him yesterday, and while he popped out of his hiding place for a gnaw at his hidden kill, he promptly returned to the scrub and disappeared again.

Forging a new path, Fabián took us down a new route, past the frozen lake where we had found Lenga and Ñire yesterday and up into the foothills of Torres del Paine. We saw no pumas en route, but they had clearly been here during the night, with fresh prints along the road and across the fields beyond.

The guanacos, on the other hand, were everywhere. Apparently, in this corner of the world, only 4% of guanacos survive infancy, with the other 96% falling prey to the pumas. That figure alone goes a long way to explaining the concentration of pumas here in Tierra del Fuego – and also, the fecundity of the guanacos, since they still outnumber the pumas by at least ten to one. We didn’t get that classic “guanacos against the backdrop of the Torres” shot that Fabián was angling for, but the winter sunlight made for some breathtaking views of the guanacos on the eastern slopes.

Skittish beneath the mist, the guanacos seemed to lose a lot of their nervousness in the sunlight – perhaps because the increased visibility made them less anxious about being ripped apart by an unseen puma at any given moment. We were able to pass by so close that you could see the frost crystals on their ears.

The park’s meadowlarks were just as abundant today as they were yesterday, only this time they played second-fiddle to a natural phenomenon I have only ever heard about but never seen until now: diamond dust. A true polar experience, it is a kind of sub-zero “precipitation” that only forms under a cloudless sky: effectively, a ground-level cloud of ice crystals that seem to sparkle in the sunlight. I really should have filmed it, in retrospect, but some things never look as good on camera (though you can just about see it in the picture below). This was definitely one of those things. It was magical enough to behold, and something I’d recommend traveling all the way here to see in its own right.

Fabián drove on toward a small frozen forest of lenga trees in search of a chuncho – an Austral Pygmy Owl – that he knew to inhabit the area. I spotted it, but I think it’s safe to say he knew which tree it would be likely to be in, as any guide worth their salt would. After all, it happens to grow in a very iconic spot: right in front of the world-famous peaks of Torres del Paine.

Remarkably, the tiny little owl paid us no mind whatsoever, so I could get in so close I could see the yellow of its eyes without the help of my lens – which, of course, did a phenomenal job at close-range.

Back at Lago Sarmiento, a tip-off over the walkie-talkies alerted us to the return of Escarcha and her cubs, patrolling the edge of the lake. One guide and his group – the pike-square of supertelephoto users from yesterday – had jumped the fence and gone down to the lake and enjoyed ridiculously close views as the family passed them by, but at least Fabián and the other guides had the restraint not to insist we all go down to the shore and crowd the pumas. Instead we waited patiently and watched from a distance as Escarcha left her cubs in a safe spot and set out to go hunting.

That is not to say that we were not also treated to a close encounter. Escarcha’s route up into the hills took her right past us, passing mere feet away. Unfazed, she climbed up the snowy slope and disappeared into the descending clouds.

We waited for a while, suspecting from the approaching guanaco herd and the descending mist that she might have been hunting the herd, but Escarcha eventually appeared as if out of nowhere and went back down to hunt among the scrub by the lakeside, presumably for some smaller prey like hare. Fabián offered the choice to stay and pursue more pumas or to search for the other animal denizens of the park, and after some thought, I opted for the latter. After all, I did really want to see a ñandú. So we bade farewell to the others, who all remained with Escarcha and her cubs, and left the heart of puma country for Cerro Guido.

Like many of the places we have visited, Cerro Guido is a private ranch or estancia, but one of many that has realised that wildlife tourism can be tremendously more profitable than regular ranching. As such, a large part of the Cerro Guido ranch is given over to the local wildlife, giving the prairie-dwelling guanacos and rheas – and the puma that hunt them – a perfect haven of their own.

The ñandúes were very visible, albeit always in the middle distance, but the guanacos continued to make for good subjects against the afternoon light.

Another Patagonian mainstay was very much in evidence today: the South American Gray or Patagonian fox, a canid that is actually more closely related to coyotes and jackals than it is to the true foxes we know and love from back home. Just like they do in winter back in England, they were out looking for partners ahead of the mating season in spring, so we saw more than a dozen in all, sometimes alone, sometimes scampering about the fields in pairs. This one seemed to be limping, until we realised it was not walking with an odd gait but rather struggling with the depth of the snow, plunging up to its elbow every few steps.

The caiquén or upland goose was by far the most numerous resident of Cerro Guido, outnumbering even the ubiquitous guanacos. Caiquenes pair for life, though their fidelity is curiously one-sided: if the female dies, the heartbroken male will never pair off again, joining a bachelor group for the rest of his days, whereas if the male dies, the female will usually find a new mate within a few weeks. It’s a neat trick to ensure evolutionary stability in the long term, and – if you choose to look at it that way – a funny reflection of how men and women react to breakups.

I joked about the bus station-looking shelters, only to be told that yes, they really are paraderos – and to rub salt in the wound, a bus rounded the corner and passed us merely moments later. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the warmer months, when ranches like this one are more active, many ranch-hands travel to and from their posts this way. I caught myself wondering (and not for the first time since arriving) how amazing it would be to sack everything off and live here, way out here in the Chilean Antarctic wilderness. I’ve had madder dreams, trust me, and a little more careful thought would surely shake me out of my reverie. But I haven’t given it that much thought yet. It’s just a hunch I had – and a bottomless love for the wildest and most magnificent natural wonders of the world (and, coincidentally, places that style themselves as “the End of the World”).

We didn’t find any nearby ñandúes, and the two that had been relatively close but obscured by a bush on the way in had wandered far off by the time we turned about to make our way out. Not to be disappointed, though, Fabián spotted one near the road after we had left Cerro Guido and I jumped out to track it down.

I’ve not seen ostriches in the wild, or emus, or cassowaries, or any ratite for that matter. So I have no yardstick for truly bizarre appearance of this relatively huge flightless creature, which looks almost entirely out of place in the snowy scrubland of Patagonia. But, like the moa of New Zealand, ratites like the rhea are just as capable of adapting to cold conditions as their cousins in Africa are to the searing heat of the Namib and Sahara Deserts.

The ñandú or Lesser Rhea was brought to the attention of the world by the second voyage of the HMS Beagle, though it Charles Darwin and not the French naturalist Alcide d’Orbigny who is more often associated with the bird. I could reel off more facts about rheas, but really I’d just like to see another and another. They’re remarkable creatures, even in a country full of healthy specimens of the incomparably beautiful puma.

But we still weren’t done. The road back to Puerto Natales passes by a great wall of stone, jutting out of the slope like the outer walls of some fortress. In Spain, a cliff face this vertical would be alive with griffons and known as a buitrera. Here in Puerto Natales, they’re known as condoreras. I don’t think I need to tell you what mighty creatures makes its home here.

I am, of course, talking about the largest bird of prey of all: the Andean condor. Unlike Colca Canyon in Peru, Patagonia (especially in winter) offers the chance to see these magnificent vultures at rest, where the whites of their wings can be much more easily appreciated. As the fog began to clear, we counted well over thirty of them. Fortunately, they’re scavengers to a fault, so there was nothing ominous at all about the fact that their numbers seem to grow exponentially every time we tried to count them.

Fabián joked about looking for a condor feather at the base of the cliff, which would almost certainly have turned up at least one. However, condor feathers are almost as sacred now as they were in the time of the Inca, albeit for less divine reasons: taking one out of the country is illegal, punishable by fines of up to an eye-watering $100,000. I adore vultures and have a collection of feathers I have found in my travels at home, but I’m not mad enough to chance that one.

The sun was beginning to set as we neared Puerto Natales, casting a final golden light over the slopes and the descending mist and turning the rest of the world a gentle shade of blue. There is a huge cave known as the Cueva del Milodón near here. I will try to book a trip out there for Thursday, as it is one of a handful of things to do in Puerto Natales that doesn’t require any high-grade trekking and expensive national park permits. I’ll give it some thought.

I had another serious urge to move here as I crossed town on the way back from the bank to my B&B. Forget the fact that it’s on the other side of the planet, in a place literally named the End of the World. There’s just something magical about this place. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen: like a frontier from the Old West frozen in time, surrounded by an array of animals so spectacular that you could live several lifetimes here and never get bored.

I wonder if they have a school that needs a languages teacher?

Enough musing. Another marathon read today. Sorry. Things will calm down a bit when I start my work placement in Santiago, I’m sure, but for now, every second is diamond dust and needs recording. I already miss this place and I haven’t even left yet. I’m only just halfway through my trip, for Pete’s sake.

One more day’s tracking awaits. Hopefully the weather (and our singularly good luck) holds out. BB x

Cat and Mouse

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Somewhere in deepest Patagonia. 17.00.

When I arrived in Puerto Natales last night, the first snows of winter had already covered the great plains of Patagonia in a thin layer of snow. The snow was still falling as I made my way into town and it was still coming down hard as I turned in for the night (at the ungodly hour of 9pm). So it’s hardly surprising that I woke to a total whiteout this morning. Patagonia looked into her winter wardrobe and put on her most beautiful dress of all.

Such were the conditions as Fabián, my guide for the next few days, picked me up and set off from the lamp-lit streets of Puerto Natales into the endless night.

I shopped around a lot before choosing Fabián of Fauna Silvestrek, largely because puma tracking in this corner of the world is not a budget-friendly experience. Touring with one of the English-language conglomerates can set you back thousands of dollars for just a couple of days. Traveling solo necessarily makes wildlife tourism an expensive operation, since you inevitably have to pay the same rate that a group would cover between three or four, so I was relieved when I found a Spanish-language option which looked much more personal, reliable and affordable. Tracking pumas is easier here than anywhere else in the world, but never guaranteed, so you want to be sure you’re investing in the right guy.

Fabián, it turns out, was exactly the right guy.

It’s a two hour drive from Puerto Natales to puma country, on the edge of PN Torres del Paine. In winter, it’s arguably easier to find pumas – or mountain lions, as they’re known in North America – outside the national park, where the elevation makes for a more unforgiving climate. Along the way you pass all sorts of signs you’ll find nowhere else, warning of collisions with pumas, guanacos, rheas and even armadillos. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a ñandú – a Patagonian variant of the ostrich, and one of only a handful of words that start with the letter ñ – but we haven’t seen any yet. Maybe they’re keeping a low profile in the outer reaches of the park.

Today and tomorrow (and very probably the day after) are all about pumas. That’s what I came all the way down here for. And today did not disappoint.

We found our first cat hidden beneath the shelter of a bush not too far from the road. Fabián located it amidst the white wilderness with a thermal scope, which is a seriously useful piece of kit – especially when the whole world has frozen over. It was a youngster, unknown to the local guides, that had killed a guanaco recently. Puma kills are known around here as carneos, and are used by the trackers in their operations around the park, as each kill usually guarantees that the puma will stay in the immediate vicinity for the next three to four days, attracting other scavengers in the process.

This one – NN (No tiene Nombre) – stayed hidden in its shelter, being more wary of us than its more habituated kin in the park. So the best I could do was a digiscoped shot with Fabian’s scope. Even so, I was on tip-toes with excitement. One puma already, within minutes of arriving in puma country! Score!

The trackers communicate with each other via walkie-talkies. You can spot their cars a long way off by the antennae affixed to the roof, which allow them to talk to each other across the vast and signal-less distances of Patagonia. As such, when one tracker locates a puma, they will tip off the others.

Following one such tip-off, Fabián led me to a featureless deep (one of thousands) where a tracker and his clients had gathered, searching for a female puma and her cub which were still in the immediate vicinity. Just how immediate became apparent when I saw the back and the kinked tail of an adult mountain lion appear all of a sudden behind the scrub just a stone’s throw from the road. We stuck around for about an hour to try and locate them, but pumas are magical creatures. For a beast that can grow to a whopping 2.6m in length, they have a remarkable ability to disappear, even in a landscape covered in snow.

It wasn’t that cold, in spite of the snow, and a flock of meadowlarks kept us company in the meantime, twittering noisily among the deep footprints left behind by a previous company of trackers. The males are especially spectacular with their crimson chests. The brighter the red, the healthier the individual – so naturally, the more successful the male with the ladies. Ladies and gentleman: the gymbro of the bird world.

Nearby, a small herd of guanacos kept a wary eye on the spot where the pumas had disappeared. If the trackers don’t guide you to a puma, the guanacos just might. Their high-pitched alarm call is usually a good sign that the apex predator of Patagonia is somewhere nearby. Incidentally, guanacos complete the set: having seen alpacas, llamas and vicuñas in Peru, guanacos are the final member of the South American camelids.

These handsome beasts were once to be found across all of Chile, but hunting whittled their numbers to zero not long after the arrival of the first European settlers, and these days their range is restricted to the Cono Sur, with an outlying population in Peru.

We came across another herd further up the road, consisting of an alpha male and his three female attendants, with a fifth on lookout high up on the nearest hill. These vaulted the fence and came right past the car – or rather, the alpha managed just fine, while two of his followers looked on in confusion.

We came back to try our luck with the pumas from earlier, arriving in the very nick of time to see them leave the shelter of the scrub and strike out into the open.

This particular female is called Lenga, after a local kind of tree whose branches are distorted by the fierce Antarctic winds. Lenga’s tail is similarly misshapen, though nobody knows why. She appeared one day, as wandering pumas often do, with her oddly-shaped tail, and her attendant cub, Ñire.

We watched them cross the frozen lake and climb up into the snow-covered mattoral until they were mere shadows among the scrub before the snow clouds concealed them from sight. If that had been it for our encounter with the pumas, I’d have been quite content. But we were only getting started.

Another handsome resident of these windswept wastes is the crested caracara, known locally as the carancho (amazingly, a lot of the local birds and beasts seem to have preserved their precolonial names). Two of them were perched at the side of the road, quite unfazed by the four-wheel drive that ground to a halt right in front of them. Seeing how unafraid so many animals are in foreign corners of the world really makes one reflect on how violently we have treated the countryside in the UK for its creatures to be so innately terrified of us. Food for thought.

Arcing around a snowdrift and following the edge of Lago Sarmiento, the largest of the region’s lakes, we soon came across another group of tourists and their attendant tracker walking up the road, armed to the teeth with enough telephoto lenses to inspire envy in the World Cup press box. The reason for their almost religious procession was padding along a few metres ahead: an adult female puma, known as Escarcha (Frost), one of the park’s habituated mountain lions. We fell into line, marching for about half a kilometre before Fabian told me to press on while he went back for the car.

Cue a rather awkward incident where the tracker of the other group told me – in no uncertain words – to get lost. The implication was clear: I hadn’t paid for his services, so I shouldn’t be walking with his group. When Fabián caught up to me, another tracker working for the Others rounded on him, accosting him for tagging along “without so much as saying hello”. They were so busy chewing that one out that nobody seemed to notice that Escarcha’s calls had summoned two adorable cubs from the snow.

After a short distance, Escarcha and her cubs disappeared into the scrub. Team Territorial struck out onto a nearby hillside to get a better view, and we knew better than to follow them. Sure, from our spot on the road, we couldn’t tell whether they had the best seats in the house, but in the end it was the cubs who levelled the playing field. In their constant scampering about, up the hill and back down again, they made no attempt to stay hidden for long.

Like many cats, baby pumas are born with bright blue eyes that gradually turn a golden-brown after about six months, which helped to age these youngsters considerably – not yet a year old, but past the blue-eyed stage of infancy. The zoom lens could have told me that, but as it turns out, I hardly needed it: one of the cubs, more curious than its sibling, scampered up onto the road and sat watching us for a while. I don’t know what was going through its head, but it was clearly thinking.

Nearby, Escarcha kept a languid eye on her playful cubs. Habituated does not mean tame by any standards, and anybody with half a brain knows not to get too close to anything with lion in its name – and especially if it is a mother and her cubs. Even so, to see such an awesome predator at such a distance… I had no idea we would be so lucky on day one!

Soon, most of the trackers and their teams had arrived to try to deliver similar views of Escarcha and her cubs. However, being largely creatures of the night, they were to be disappointed: after that last bout of curiosity, Escarcha and her cubs disappeared into the snowy tangle of a mata scrub and never emerged, presumably falling into a deep and wintry sleep as the temperature dropped beyond.

Together with the other trackers, Fabián and I were on stakeout for the rest of the afternoon, but to no avail. The meadowlarks were keen to point out the presence of the pumas by flocking around their chosen scrub and twittering noisily, before a ghostly cinereous harrier drove them all up into the air.

After vultures, harriers are probably some of my favourite creatures in the animal kingdom, The way they seem to float as they silently quarter their territories, traveling in ever-widening circles… together with the silvery grey colour of the males… they’re all kinds of magnificent. Words can’t even.

Shortly before six, with the light beginning to fail, Fabián signalled it was time to head for home. Chances are we may well run into Escarcha again tomorrow. Just as well: I was shaking something awful out there. One accustoms to the cold, of course, but those first few minutes after leaving the warmth of the car are definitely the worst as the body acclimatises. I must have looked like I had the ague – which would have rendered any attempts to take a steady photograph in the fading light almost impossible!

The return journey back to Puerto Natales was a lot more scenic than the journey up this morning, if only because the clouds had begun to break apart, defogging the world below. Where before all had been ghostly white, some mysterious deity had revealed a breathtaking landscape of sheer cliffs, towering mountains and grey lakes. It was already getting dark, so hopefully tomorrow (when the weather is forecast to be clearer) will produce some better landscape results. For now, I want to remember this view: yellow grass in the snow against a hopeful yellowing sky.

I got through today’s expedition on the restorative power of six cocktail-sized chorizo bites and a Starbucks caramel waffle, so I was a little peckish by the time we got back to base. On a tip-off from Fabián, I dropped in on Artimaña, a quirky restaurant in the centre of town. And what a find! Like a lot of the local establishments, it had a condor feather nailed to the wall (this seems to be a local tradition of some sort), but the food was incredible, all of it locally sourced and rustled up on command. Friendliest staff ever, too. I’ll have to come back here again – more than once before I leave, I’d wager. I don’t usually click with a place this quick, but there’s something Artimaña gets right in one hit. It might be the condor feather, of course, but I’d think I’m a bit more subtle than that.

Mammoth post – it’s not often I have so much to record. But today really was a red letter day, and I have to get this all down before I forget.

Tomorrow, Round II: pumas, and – with any luck – the enigmatic ñandú. Topping today’s ridiculous success rate will be hard, but I am as insufferably full of hope as I have ever been, supercharged by a full twenty-four hours in a frozen paradise. Fingers crossed! BB x

Another World

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hostal Boutique Merced 88, Santiago de Chile. 16.15.

Now here’s a setup I really didn’t see coming. This time yesterday I was sitting in a living room in a comfy suburb of Santiago de Chile, some twelve thousand miles from home, knocking back a Corona Extra and watching Spain take on Belgium in their quarterfinal game. Twenty-four hours later, I’m in downtown Santiago, resting my feet for a moment after climbing up Cerro San Cristobal to see the Andes once again. If you’d asked me where I’d be and what I’d be doing at this stage of the summer back in December, it wouldn’t have been either of those scenarios, that’s for sure.

I must have been absolutely exhausted yesterday, because the last thing I remember is sitting down on my bunk bed and checking the time, which was about 18.50ish. The next thing I knew, it was dark outside, the numbers on my phone’s home screen had morphed to 03.10 and a man in the bunk above mine was snoring loud enough to rival an Amazonian thunderstorm. Maybe that was what woke me up. Either way, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I whiled away a couple of hours trying to work out what to do with the last week.

Of course, I didn’t realise that my adaptor was too big for the sockets here until my phone was down to 3%. Fortunately, the giant in the bunk next to mine (seriously, he must have been at least 6’6”) had exactly the same charger as mine, so I sneakily put my phone to charge and waited for about an hour for it to juice up just enough to guide me to a ferretería in town.

Thus armed (and breakfasted) I detoured back to the hostel via the Parque Forestal to see what I could see (after all, I did bring the lens with me). A couple of Harris hawks kept putting the local pigeons to flight with their noisy circling, and I tried and failed to catch one of the park’s firecrowns as it flitted from flower to flower at blinding speed, but the austral thrushes were absolutely everywhere – and they were much less camera-shy.

They look a lot like the Chiguanco thrushes that were all around Cusco. Come to think of it, they don’t look all that different from the American robins of Central Park, in the right light. They’re clearly a very Santiago kind of bird. I guess I’ll be seeing more of them over the next few weeks.

I hadn’t really planned what to do with my day in downtown Santiago. Honestly, I had expected this week to be spent exploring the Lake District to the south, saving Patagonia for the end of the trip, but the guide I have hired is only working July this year, so I had to change my plans.

Santiago sits in a giant bowl, ringed on almost every side by the snow-capped peaks of the Andes. One finger of those lofty peaks stretches almost as far as Santiago’s heart. Crisscrossed by cycle paths and two very popular cable-car lines, the Cerro San Cristobal was just too great a temptation. As a rule, if there is a mountain nearby, I usually try to climb it. So that sorted out my plans for the day in one go!

It’s quite a climb – about an hour and a half up the eastern slope – but it does offer tremendous views of the capital city and its famous skyscraper, the Gran Torre Costanera, the tallest building in South America.

You can also appreciate the smog, which is really quite something.

I’m still tuning into the soundscape here, but three weeks in Peru have made the job a lot easier. I know a hummingbird now when I hear one, so it was fairly easy to find firecrowns on the way up – though they were nigh-on impossible to photograph, as hummingbirds so often are. One sound I did not recognise, however, was a strange owl-like call coming from the scrub. Merlin came to the rescue: it was a California Quail. I have wanted to see one of these enigmatic little things since I first saw them in Bambi as a kid.

California quail just isn’t the right name, though. They’re clearly quaver quails. Just look at the musical note embedded in the head of this dashing young male. You tell me that this handsome fella doesn’t deserve a musical name for wearing such a showy headpiece!

Speaking of showy headpieces, this tufted tit-tyrant was a nice find near the summit. For most of the morning, I could hear some kind of tyrant species high up in the trees, but this one came right down to eye-level and stuck around for a little while.

Santiago definitely looks better when you’re facing to the east. From the Cerro, the view out west is buried under a thick cloud of smog which seems perpetually fixed just above the horizon. The shape of the valley is part of the problem, trapping the exhaust fumes in a natural bowl, but it is something I’ve never seen the likes of before. I suppose I had better get used to it, as next year is likely to see me accompany some of my top public speakers to the world championships in Shanghai, and China is no stranger to smog.

Right at the very top, there is an enormous white statue of La Virgen de la Inmaculada Concepción, and at her feet, a small sanctuary. This seems to be the spot the locals make for in the afternoon, presumably to catch the sunset, as it was getting very busy by the time I reached it. Most of them doubtless made the ascent by cable car, as the lines to get tickets back down were just as big as they had been at the bottom. Foolishly, I still had my camera set to low-light shooting after my run-in with the quails, so when a buzzard-eagle appeared out of nowhere, I was woefully underprepared. I got off a few clean shots, but as it was close enough to see the glint in its eye, it was one of those encounters best left to the naked eye.

It didn’t get the same reaction from the crowd of sightseers that the condors did back in Peru – but then, Andean condors are twice as big and five times as heavy, so they really do command one’s attention.

I’m no less impressed by the Andes than I was when first I laid eyes on them. They really are the most impressive mountains I have ever seen, dwarfing every peak I have had the fortune to behold until now. Imagine growing up in the shadow of these mighty walls of rock and ice… Little wonder the Inca thought themselves divine!

My phone is nearly charged back up. Looking at the time, I think England have just set out against Norway in their quarterfinal game. I can’t watch or even follow the game on the radio thanks to the BBC being regionally locked, so I’ll just have to go for a walk and see if I can find anywhere playing the game en route. Could be a good excuse to take myself out for dinner, though I doubt I’ll do more than grab an empanada from a stall somewhere.

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Puerto Natales. It looks like Patagonia had its first snowfall last night. I can’t wait to see the snow again. It’s been too long! BB x

A Surfeit of Films

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 10.50.

After a flight that seemed to go on forever, I have made landfall in Chile. Tomás, my host for the next four weeks or so, very generously offered to come and pick me up from the airport – an offer I found it impossible to decline, operating on about an hour’s proper sleep and six hours of sleepless shut-eye.

Being right at the back of the plane meant that I was the very last customer served dinner, by which point they had run out of everything but chicken. I hadn’t eaten much, so that was fine by me – I thought it was really top-notch, by plane standards (or any standards, for that matter). The film choices were fab too, once I’d worked out where to plug in the complimentary headset (hint: it’s in the armrest to your right). I watched The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (largely on fast forward, as I’d had it on my mind a few days prior), considered Avatar III: Fire and Ash and then changed my mind and opted for Michael, the biopic about my all-time favourite artist that I had somehow managed to miss in cinemas this summer. I’m not normally a fan of biopics, lumping them somewhat unfairly under the same “cash-grab” category as Disney’s recent slew of remakes, but I thought this one was genuinely moving. Then again, I adore MJ and his music, so that’s probably my own bias talking.

I still managed to watch a silent version of Avatar on one of the telescreens in the row in front. It looked almost identical to the previous two films, boiling down to a sequence of who-took-who-prisoner and Eywa saves the day again, but maybe I was missing something without the dialogue.

I also managed to watch The Batman before landing in Santiago ahead of schedule at 7am this morning. That’s around six or seven hours of films, plus another six trying to get some sleep – and that’s still not the entirety of the flight time. That’s an indication of just how long the journey to Santiago is. Thank goodness it was all in the dark!

It took about an hour to get through customs, largely because the immigration control was very busy for seven o’clock in the morning. I had a gut feeling I’d be assigned to Gate 13 – unlucky for some – which I was, some thirty minutes later, only to find that Señorita Allende at the control desk was writing her next novella for each customer, so the queue for Gate 13 moved at a snail’s pace. I was two clients from the desk when she put on her coat, packed her things and signalled to the rest of us that her shift was over and to find another gate. The man at Gate 12 was much more efficient: a quick glance at my passport, a stamp (yay!) and through.

I was stopped at customs, which was an interesting change, because of the marmalade I’d brought over as a gift for Tomás and his family. I’d forgotten how much of a fuss is made of preserves! They let me through without a fuss – and with the marmalade, amazingly – but maybe next time I’ll stick to chocolate.

First impressions of Santiago? I’ve barely got to know the place, but from a single drive across the city to my host’s home in residential Las Condes, it’s a very different city to Lima or Arequipa. It feels instantly more like Madrid or Barcelona in its architecture, with its tower blocks and its vast network of underground highways. A dense wintry cover of cloud is currently hanging over the city, shrouding most of the snow-capped peaks beyond a grey veil, while the thick layer of smog that hovers above the city was immediately obvious upon leaving the airport.

It feels decidedly weird leaving England with a tan and a t-shirt, getting on a plane to somewhere abroad and immediately having to throw on a jumper and some warmer socks. It’s also a positively balmy 17°C here, a point emphasised by the faraway screeching of monk parakeets, an invasive species in most European cities but just as native to this strip of South America as the puma and the condor. It’ll be even colder down south in Patagonia. I hope my winter gear is warm enough!

I’m giving up on trying to catch up on lost sleep. It’s not working, and probably dangerous to try, or I really will throw my sleeping patterns right off. I’ll get a proper night’s sleep at the hostel I’ve booked in downtown Santiago tonight, after getting my bearings and catching the Spain v Belgium game, of course. Until then, let’s take it slow. Don’t want to burn out before I’ve even started my placement now! BB x

U-Turn

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

14.02, The Flat.

In the blink of an eye, my second year at Taunton has come and gone. It’s been another hurricane season, I won’t deny that. A little easier than last year, perhaps – if only because of the repetitive nature of teaching the same course – but every bit as busy. Since September, I’ve taken my student Funk Band out to their first external gig, joined a band of my own, taken a team to the Oxford Schools Finals Day for the second year in a row and led a public speaking workshop in the form of a legal practice (which, of course, I am totally qualified for…). I have returned to Extremadura under iron skies, taken yet another school trip to Barcelona and travelled all the way to Peru in search of the Andean condor on one of the most amazing adventures of my life. I have not found Her – Somerset is proving a very dry place – but I have made some good friends at work, which is a positive. I haven’t exactly had much time to commit to the search, and I have also spent almost every day of my holidays on the road, which is terribly self-indulgent of me, but it is how I survive the manic 24/7 existence that is working in a boarding school.

True to form, my summer holidays are set to follow the same trend. After a few days’ reprieve – just about enough time to tidy the flat and pack – I will be traveling across the Atlantic again, bound this time for Chile, nearly 1,500km further south than where I left off in April. Please don’t get me wrong – this one isn’t a purely self-indulgent adventure. I’m off to work at a school out there in Chile’s capital, Santiago, for three weeks or so. As to what form that work may take, I am still completely in the dark. I imagine any rational human being might balk at the idea of being less than a week away from traveling to the other side of the planet at no small expense without so much as an address or even the vaguest idea of what to expect, but I’m at that stage of my life where I am entirely my own agent and any change is welcome. The alternative is a rather static Somerset summer, alternating between driving lessons and debilitating bouts of hayfever. With my timetable for the next academic year allowing some time for the former, I think I can allow myself to dodge the latter by switching seasons in a Spanish-speaking country.

I won’t be hiding under an austral snowstorm all summer. When my five weeks are up, I’ve a wedding to attend in Athens, which I have been looking forward to for a very long time. Once again, I’ve only planned the beginning. How I get home after four days in the Greek capital remains up in the air. Maybe I’ll find a quiet spot in Thessaloniki and soak up the Mediterranean sun while I work on my novel. Or maybe I’ll travel back home across Europe, seeing Romania like I planned years ago. I haven’t decided yet.

I really don’t know what the next two months will bring. At the very least, I hope they bring change, whatever that looks like. My boss would really like me to stop saying yes to everything. She means well, I know. But if I don’t say yes to things like this, my youth will slip through my fingers and I will find myself in the same job ten years from now, still hoping that She will appear. The apps don’t work – everyone is exhausted – so, like a good scientist, I have to go and do the fieldwork. I don’t expect to find Her in Chile (let’s be honest, at a distance of nearly twelve thousand kilometres, it would probably be better for me if I didn’t), but it can’t hurt to try – and along the way, it would be nice to make some new friends and learn something new. I have work to do, of course – this Spanish Language A: Literature course won’t write itself – but with several long flights on the cards, that shouldn’t be a problem. With one “buffer” week on either side of my placement, I should have plenty of time to explore.

In short, I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know how it middles either. But I do know how it starts. Since I’m going all the way to the far side of the world, I figured I could go a little further. Before my placement begins – the day after the FIFA World Cup Final – I will be indulging my inner Attenborough once again in the desolate wilds of Patagonia. After a little shopping around, I’ve found a respectable guide who will take me in search of one of Chile’s most magical creatures: the puma. I didn’t have any luck with the jaguars in Manu this Easter, so hopefully Patagonia will deliver.

I hadn’t planned on going back to South America so soon – but here we are. Life is full of u-turns, but they aren’t always as exciting as this. So here’s to the summer of ’26! BB x

Peru: The Perfect Introduction to South America

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Aeropuerto Internacional Alejandro Velasco Astete, Cusco. 12.27.

My journeys around Peru have come to an end – and with them, my first foray into Latin America is complete. It has taken a dreadfully long time for this Hispanist to cross the Atlantic and put my Spanish to the test in the New World, but I have done it. I return to my day job with a much stronger understanding of the South American angle of my subject.

Doubtless I won’t have much to report today, between transit after transit (leaving Ollantaytambo for Cusco, Cusco for Lima and then Lima for New York and home). As such, I thought it might be worth doing a quick TLDR version of my adventures for anyone interested in visiting Peru. Read on if you’re curious.

Language

First things first: Peru is a Spanish-speaking country, but much of its signage and a lot of its citizens (even the beggars on the streets of Cusco) have a good understanding of English because of the sheer number of tourists who come here. I stood my ground and spoke Spanish almost all the time, but I reckon you’d probably be alright out here without being fluent in Spanish – though it really does help to grease the wheels, make friends of the locals and avoid coming across as a total gringo.

Safety

One of the biggest deterrents to travel around South America is, of course, whether it’s safe to do so. I can only answer with a resounding yes. I have spent three weeks lugging a very expensive camera around the country, which ought to have made me quite the target (and, for the record, I don’t look very Hispanic, let alone Peruvian) but I haven’t had any trouble whatsoever. Naturally, you need to keep your eyes open and avoid certain areas after dark (Lima’s Callao, for example) but that advice applies just as much to travel at home as it does here. In short: Peru is a very safe country.

Oh, and while I remember, it’s not the massage vendors in Cusco you need to keep an eye on. It’s actually the painting sellers, who are really drug dealers in disguise. Just so you know.

Food

Peruvian cuisine is phenomenal. While I never did get around to trying the national favourite of cuy frito or fried guinea pig (too many bones) I have eaten some of the most wonderful dishes ever out here. Whether you’re on the coast and deciding between spicy ceviche or aromatic parihuela, or up in the mountains and sampling the delicious lomo saltado with a glass of chicha morada, there are a thousand flavours to choose from. It’s also a very vegetarian friendly country, with plenty of healthy meat-free options in most of the major cities. I come away from this place with a new obsession for amaranth in the form of kiwicha – a deliciously healthy Peruvian porridge spiced with cinnamon and clove. If I can get a hold of the ingredients back home, I’m teaching myself how to make it.

Weather

If you travel to Peru at this time of year (March/April), you need to be prepared for everything. Light clothing for the coast, where it can hit 30°C and the sun is fierce. Winter wear for the mountains, where it is a full twenty degrees colder, especially if you’re planning on hiking up to the snowbound peaks. Rain gear, for sure, as the rainy season doesn’t end until May. Finally, a high factor sun lotion, because whatever the weather, the UV risk is high here.

Cost

Getting to Peru is the expensive part – but there are ways to reduce your costs. By flying from Madrid, I took about £200 off the total cost, which was still a money-saving hack even after factoring in a flight to Madrid and a night there. I’m not sure whether the flight I found was anomalous, but there is definitely something to be said for waking up at 4am and checking SkyScanner – both of the deals I found were only that price in the small hours of the morning.

Once you’re here, it’s unbelievably cheap to get around. I’ve played it safe with the limited time I had and flown LatAm between my three main destinations of Lima, Arequipa and Cusco, but it still worked out very affordable. Travel by bus is cheaper still – considerably – but it does entail a lot of overnight rides that can last for more than ten hours. Uber is also an affordable and safe way to get around, especially to and from the country’s airports.

In total, I think I’ve managed to stick to my budget of £2000 – including flights, accommodation and everything in between – but I know I could have done it for even cheaper.

Tours and Activities

With the exception of a few days’ roaming, I have relied heavily on GetYourGuide out here, and it has not let me down yet. If you’re the type that likes everything planned out before you go, you can organise all of your activities before you even set out. Most of the day trips are rarely beyond the £40 mark and are great value for money in terms of what they allow you to access: faraway attractions like Colca Canyon and the Islas Ballestas are considerably more achievable thanks to the myriad of day trips on offer. If you’re short on time, I can’t recommend PeruHop more highly – they were incredibly warm and professional (a rare combination).

And of course, there’s Amazon Wildlife Peru. I loved my 6D/5N tour to Manu National Park so much that I’m seriously considering coming back for another tour with them someday. If you’re in the market for an Amazon adventure with phenomenal cooking but you don’t fancy a malaria-ridden location that requires a whole lot of jabs, check them out. You won’t regret it.

Wildlife

If I’m qualified to report on anything, it’s this. Peru is a naturalist’s dream come true. Over nineteen days, I’ve seen nearly three hundred species of birds, as well as dolphins, tapirs, capybara, black and white caimans, a fer-de-lance snake, bullet ants, stick insects and, of course, giant otters and monkeys galore. I could have seen even more if I’d done a few tailored birding excursions, which I passed up this time around (I thought 300$ for a private tour in search of a few endemic passerines was hard to justify for someone who isn’t really an anorak).

Peru has it all: deserts, coastlines, marshes, mountains, salt lakes, cloud forests and rainforests. Even if you only limited yourself to a week split between Cusco and Manu, you’d still see more animals than many people do in a lifetime.

I’ll be back.

Things I will miss

  • Kiwicha for breakfast
  • Coca tea
  • Hummingbirds absolutely everywhere
  • Condors
  • The snow-capped peaks of the Andes
  • Huaynos (very romantic Andean music)
  • Being visible on a dating app for a change
  • The height of the average Peruvian
  • Manu National Park

Things I won’t miss

  • Gringos in ponchos (it’s not a good look)
  • DEET-resistant biting flies
  • Rain that lasts longer than three days
  • Seceo (give me a Castilian ethe any day)

I think that’ll do for now. It’s still a couple of hours until my flight to Lima starts boarding. I’ll ask the waitress for a tres leches cake when she comes around. I could use the energy! BB x

The Sun Gate

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Ollanta, Ollantaytambo. 20.15.

Today’s mission: Inti Punku, one of a number of “sun gates” scattered throughout the Sacred Valley. Situated atop a clouded mountain spur of snowbound Huayanay at around 3.830m above sea level, it is a formidable hike from Ollantaytambo, requiring a climb of over a thousand metres.

Since I had no intention of hiking the Inca trail to the gringo hotspot of Machu Picchu, the Inti Punku of Ollantaytambo was always the end goal of this adventure – the great hike at the end of my labours. I was told by a guide the other day that, provided I was young and fit, it would be no problem whatsoever.

Young is never going to be a problem. Fitness, however, is an interesting concept. I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as unfit, but I also would freely admit that I don’t exactly do a lot of exercise – beyond running about all over the place like a bumblebee at work. So the Inti Punku would be my test in more ways than one.

I set out early, but not too early. Too early for breakfast at the hotel, but not so early that the road was dark. I was lucky with the weather today: while the sun came and went throughout the morning, I was shielded from its high altitude fury by a merciful cover of cloud for most of the ascent. It rained on my descent, true, but not in the same way I experienced in the rainforest – more of a constant light shower, which was actually quite refreshing.

All the way up to the Sun Gate, I climbed in the shadow of Wakaywillque, more commonly known as Nevado Verónica, the largest of the mountains in the Sacred Valley.

It’s not yet winter here in Peru, but the snows of Wakaywillque are here all year round. Glaciers cling to its peak like frozen tears – an apt description, as its Quechua name literally means “sacred tear”. It was so named, or so the story goes, after Manco Inca’s flight over the Abra Malaga pass, signalling the end of the reign of the Inca in Peru.

The empty frame of the Inti Punku looks out directly onto the mountain. The Inca sun gates were built with the summer solstice in mind, framing the Sun at its zenith on the right day of the year. But I can’t help but feel the fact that this one faces the mighty apu of Wakaywillque was an intentional decision on the part of its architects. It truly is a spectacular mountain.

Tourists do come up here, though not in the same numbers that visit the more famous Inti Punku at Machu Picchu. I passed one group of five gringos coming back down the mountain, topped and tailed by a red-shirted Peruvian guide, and another solitary traveler, also accompanied by her local sherpa. They seemed surprised to see me heading up the sun gate alone. It is not a hard path to follow, though the road is dreadfully steep and cannot be rushed.

It took me nearly four hours to reach the summit, which is only partly explained by constantly stopping to look and listen out for the mountain’s wildlife en route. At times I was stopping after every ten steps – a reflection of the altitude rather than my fitness, I should like to think. I have climbed a similar height before with Skiddaw back home in the Lake District, but that hike starts at around 68m above sea level, not 2.792m.

I clocked several new species during the ascent, including a mountain variety of cuy, but I was accompanied for most of the journey by hummingbirds. I counted several kinds: mostly sparkling violetears (they really are everywhere) but also lesser violetears, black-tailed trainbearers, white-bellied and giant hummingbirds, and – at the summit – an Andean hillstar. I have become quite used to the sight of them flitting about from branch to branch, holding themselves almost stationary in the air while feeding from flowers and launching themselves into the abyss of the valley on tiny, invisible wings. I shall miss them when I’m gone.

The time of the Inca is long gone, but it is clear that the locals continue to venerate the mountain and uphold its traditions. Niches in the wall of the Inti Punku contain offerings of coca leaves, dried but still pungent, while a more elaborate altar had been prepared in the largest window of the sun gate. The fruit was fresh – it can only have been laid out there less than a day ago. A bunch of wildflowers tied together with twine had been placed in one corner of the complex, facing the snowy peak of Wakaywillque.

I have heard stories of locals hiking up to these sacred places to make offerings to the old gods and the ancestors in other places, but I hadn’t seen it in practice until today. It only makes the Inti Punku a more magical place.

I think I saw a condor soaring high above the summit, but it was gone by the time I made it up there. There are other birds of prey in these mountains, but I’m fairly certain of what I saw. Nothing comes close to the size of the condor. The mountain caracaras, buzzard-eagles and Aplomado falcons that I encountered might as well be peons to that giant lord of the skies.

I gave myself nearly an hour at the summit, which I had entirely to myself. As the rain came down, I took shelter in the largest niche (which mirrors the gate itself) and had my lunch. I wondered how many others had come here over the many hundreds of years this sacred site has stood upon this ridge. What did they feel in this spot?

It took me a lot less time to go back down than it had to climb up: two hours and fifteen minutes compared to the four hour ascent. It helps that it is entirely downhill: there are no instances of climbing down and then back up again (which you certainly notice at this altitude).

I made it back to Ollantaytambo shortly after two and promptly fell asleep – I was quite spent after my exertions in the mountains. It is easily the most hiking I have done throughout the Peruvian adventure.

But it is done. I have sailed the Pacific in search of pelicans and penguins. I have walked the northernmost sands of the Atacama Desert. I have witnessed the majesty of the Andean condor at unbelievably close range and wandered the mirror lakes of the altiplano in search of South America’s three flamingos. I have beheld Cusco in its Inca glory, journeyed deep into the Peruvian Amazon and seen giant otters, macaws, tapirs, toucans and even uncontacted tribes with my own eyes. Now, as a final quest, I have climbed up to the Inti Punku and seen the entirety of the Sacred Valley under the deathless gaze of Wakaywillque.

I have achieved all that I set out to achieve. I can go home with my head held high.

There remains one last adventure before I arrive at my front door. I must return to Cusco, catch a flight back to Lima, and then journey to the legendary city that never sleeps – New York – where I have a few hours to explore one of the most famous cities on the planet before my final flight takes me back across the Atlantic to the familiar shores of England.

I have used every single day of my Easter holidays. By the time I make it home, I will have been on the road for twenty-three days. Work must resume mere hours after my return – but at least I go back to it knowing that I have not let even a single hour of my holidays go to waste.

I haven’t found Her. But then, I wasn’t looking for Her out here. I came here, quite selfishly, for me – and I could not be happier with how things have panned out.

I will ride this wave of adventure-fuelled optimism through the summer term with all of its ups and downs knowing that, whatever happens, I have rediscovered what it is to be alive once again, and to live for myself. I will treasure that to the end of my days. BB x

Boy Scout

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Ollanta, Ollantaytambo. 20.49.

I’m feeling much restored after a full day’s rest. As fun as it has been to have an extremely active holiday – chasing condors, salvaging boats and traveling the length and breadth of Peru – I definitely needed a break before the long journey home. After all, I will soon be back to the grind of lesson planning and curriculum design, so an ease-in to normality isn’t such a bad idea.

It was not an entirely unproductive day. I checked in to my flight back to Lima, packed my rucksack with the things I’m not going to need anymore and bought some supplies. I also managed to do a little wayfinding for tomorrow’s hike up to the Inti Punku – and it is as well that I did so, as the main road to the only bridge across the Urubamba River is out due to maintenance work. There is a side street that leads there by another road, but it took a couple of attempts to find, which will save me some time tomorrow morning.

I scouted out the route ahead with the zoom lens (which I probably won’t take with me tomorrow, as it is a pretty monstrous ascent). It looks to be a fairly straightforward climb, though it does zigzag a bit past the first slope. High up on the ridge, only just visible against the white sky, was my target: the Sun Gate itself. Google and AllTrails estimate a three to four hour climb, making it a seven hour round trip, there or thereabouts. An early start, then. I will need to be prepared. Plenty of water, sun cream, a few snacks and – most importantly – I will need to take it slow. I’m a regular mountain goat on mountain trails back in Europe, but we’re already nearly three thousand metres up here, and I’m not foolish enough to race up the trail at this altitude.

I sat up on a boulder just beyond the trailhead for a while and watched the world go by. The PeruRail came chugging by, moving at a crawl along the ancient rails. No wonder it takes so long to reach Aguas Calientes, the town at the feet of Machu Picchu, some fifty kilometres to the west.

I was curious about the cost of getting to Aguas Calientes, even if I had no intention of seeing Machu Picchu itself, if only because the famous Inca citadel lies within the same cloud forests that form the border of Manu. In short, I wanted to wind the clock back a week.

The train is clearly half the experience, as a one-way ticket price starts at 84$ for the unsociable hours, rising into the hundreds if you end up on the luxurious Hiram Bingham train. Tickets for Machu Picchu itself – for the curious – aren’t actually as expensive as the train fare, but they do need booking months in advance. When I checked the website, the earliest available slot was the 6th June. So it clearly can be done for considerably cheaper than the tour companies suggest. This is good to know, in case I ever get the urge to see the place one day… if there should ever be an ebb in the flow of the hordes of tourists. Somehow, I doubt that day will ever come.

The animal spectacular that was Manu, Paracas and the Pántanos de Villa is over. Ollantaytambo is full of exotic people, who have traveled from all around the world to begin their journey toward one of the new wonders of the world, but it is not exactly teeming with exotic species. Or perhaps I’ve simply acclimatised so quickly that the exotic has become normal.

I can now map my surroundings by sound. The birds, I mean. When I first arrived in Lima, I was lost. It was like being in a country where you don’t speak the language. After three weeks, however, my hearing has adjusted, and I can tell most of the common species by sound – in particular, eared doves, rufous-collared sparrows, Chiguanco thrushes, tanagers and hummingbirds. As such, I was able to identify a different hummingbird this morning on my way out, purely because it didn’t sound like a sparkling violetear at all.

I suppose it’s the same trick that I have always used with accents. I’ve recently stopped trying to alter my Spanish accent to the Peruvian, largely because it makes my Spanish sound less Spanish and more gringo. I didn’t grow up learning to use the letter S in place of the letters C and Z and I won’t start now.

Changing my accent isn’t something new. I do it all the time, even in English. The register I use varies wildly, depending on my location. The accent I employ when I’m dealing with parents at work is very different to the one I use when hailing a taxi, or when I find myself in the north of England. A friend of mine once said I was the only southerner he’d met who made their accent more northern – the reverse is a lot more common.

I may be a language teacher, but I’m not really a proper linguist – not in the strictest, grammarian sense. What I am is a pretty decent mimic, which makes accent acquisition relatively straightforward, and a good accent can mask a number of errors. But I’m done trying to adapt my Spanish out here. It’s taken years and a lot of listening to get my castellano to the stage where I can dupe even native speakers into thinking I’m a Spaniard, provided they hear me before they see me, and I’m not about to let go of that gift over an awkward desire to blend in.

I haven’t got as much reading done out here as I’d planned. I’ve been so busy during the days and I’ve fallen asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow each night, which hasn’t exactly made for good reading time. I fell asleep listening to Witi Ihimaera’s Whale Rider. It didn’t grab me like I hoped it might. Tonight I’ll give Michelle Paver’s Rainforest a try. She never misses – and now, perhaps, I will be able to picture the world she describes with my own memories.

Wish me luck on the hike tomorrow – I’m going to need it as much as I will need the oxygen! BB x