29th January - Safari

We had booked in for a half-day wildlife tour today. For this we needed to get up at 4:30 to have a quick breakfast to be ready to leave at 5:30. Here we met Caeser our guide.

We drove out through the park first of all in the darkness but then witnessed the rising sun throwing beautiful light onto the surrounding hills. 

We drove a long way as we needed to reach the area past the mountains into the surrounding steppe where the Puma are. We stopped occasionally for Caeser to look with the binoculars to pan for Puma. We stopped to observe Guanaco and learned some of their features and behaviours. 

We stopped beside a lake where there were flamingoes and we were offered some morning tea/coffee and munchies. 

We then turned around and headed back, unfortunately not having seen any sign of any Puma.

On the way back we turned off along a road that took us to the start of a walk that required a guide to take you on. The guide was required, not only because of the presence of Puma in the area but because the walk ended at a cave where there were historical native paintings. 

'Concreted?? rock'

Caeser explained different things to us along the walk. One of which was the fact that the area used to be farmland with sheep and cows and the farmers would kill the puma because they were eating their animals but they soon realised that the puma was a tourist attraction and that money could be made from bringing tourists in to see the puma. 

Sadly we didn’t see any Puma here either. However on our way back down at the start of the walk we bumped into our new friends from the Polar Pioneer. - Scott and Liz and Liz and Lewis who were just heading off on the walk. 

After we got back down, we were told that lunch was included in our tour so we went into the dining area to be welcomed by a waitress who told us that she had a special lunch for us but could we please wait till 130 as they were still serving the regular lunches. We happily waited and then were shown to our table and were told that we could have a drink of our choice with our lunch, and then the waitress served us with our lunch at our table. It consisted of a bowl of salad, some bread rolls, and a parrilla which was placed on a pan of coals in the middle of the table. There was lamb, chicken, steak and sausage meat. Then of course our choice of desert from the usual desert spread.

After this we chilled in the lounge updating the blog and generally using the wifi there as it wasn’t available in our rooms. Having said that the wifi was pretty touch and go at the best of times even there. Later in Liz came over and invited us over to their cabins for drinks at 6 pm.

When we got there we were surprised to see how spacious their lodgings were with a lovely, long sunroom where we sat, and where they had laid out some nibbles. Scott and Lewis appeared with a glass of Pisco sour for each of us, and we said cheers to each other. Lots of chatting about travel plans, families, etc and the time marched by, so much so that it was after 7:30 our usual dinner time. We rushed back to our hotel thinking we were late only to find that our dinner time was actually 8 o’clock. That was a relief. It meant we could just sit and relax and wait in the seated area next to the dining room before we were called up for our dinner.