North to South in Chile

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Tuesday, October 9, 2018 - Virginia Ann elected to stay in the casa that day, have a massage and try to relax her back. Cal, Darren and David headed out for Valle Rio Baguales. They parked at a ranch and hiked hills where they could see guanacos and beautiful waterfalls.

Virginia Ann had a leisure breakfast in the lodge where she could see Almirante Nieto from the lodge as well as our casas. The mountain had three incredible towers with snow-capped sides and clouds that floated over them. Sarmiento is the lake adjacent to the Awasi Patagonia property.

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Countryside with one of the cars back were we started out hike.
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The Awasi guides took us to the Valle Rio Baguales - Valley of the River Baguales. The headwaters are in the Serra Baguales. The mountains on our right are in Argentina - so we were very close to the border.

Along the river were high cliffs with colorful lichen and white splotches - the white color is poop from condor nests.
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Humboldt's hog-nosed skunk crossed our path on the drive into the valley.
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An ostrich-like bird, the Darwin's or Lesser Rhea is one of the most distinctive and endangered residents of Patagonian steppe grasslands.

Like the Guanaco - we were very excited to see our first one - but did see others over the course of our visit.
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Guanaco were all over the valley - they were very skittish running from us. The guides explained that they were hunted on the ranches outside the national park so they were not getting close to humans.
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Lichen was on many of the rocks but some seemed much more decorated than others with the bright colors.
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A mountain across the valley
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A curious guanaco
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Rio Baguales - We hiked along the river valley and then angled up into the foothills of the mountains.
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A running guanaco
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The path before us as we trekked along - it was cool but hiking kept us warm.
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The brown grasslands met the snow line about the elevation we were hiking
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It was cloudy on the hike - and the mountains were shrouded in fog and gusts of wind
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Our destination after a 2-hour hike was a mountain lake still covered in ice and snow.
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The Rio Baguales valley as we head back to the cars. The indigenous people used the valley to move north-south near the north end of the valley a cave was discovered with obsidian tools.

Baguales means 'wild horses' in the indigenous language - Tehuelche.
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A mountain range on the west side of Rio Baguales which wanders in and out of Argentina and Chile.
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On the way back to the hotel we took a detour to Sarmiento Lake which is the deepest color of blue.

It is named after the Spanish explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa.
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The mountains from the lookout on the Sarmiento Lake. It was so windy that I could not stand up. Fortunately the park service built a plexiglas shelter and one pane was knocked out - so I could stand out of the wind and still shoot photographs.
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After Virginia Ann had another massage by Cecilia and more rest, the boys returned at 6:00PM. We all met at the lodge at 7:00PM for drinks and dinner.

Dinner 8:00PM of Trout Tartare, salad/soup, Lamb or Fettucine and grilled vegetables. The food that featured traditional fare of the Patagonia area like rabbit, lamb or guanaco was delicious (to Cal) but if you ordered something like chicken or vegetables it just wasn't as good. Fish was hard to transfer in. This property had just reopened for the season and we think the kitchen staff and chef were still trying to get a system down.
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