November 29-30
All through Torres del Paine you’ll see dead trees. In some places, new life is growing on or around the dead trees and in other places, it’s just dead trees. Online people call it the forest of dead trees.
There is some information about fires from the last few years. 2005 attributed to a Czech backpacker and 2011 attributed to an Israeli backpacker. Apparently 18k hectares of forest was destroyed. I’m not sure which fire did the bulk of the damage, but cheers to it not being an American’s fault!
Another note on the animals we’ve seen. My apologies for any that I’ve mentioned below without pictures. I realize the rule “pic or it didn’t happen”, so take these sightings with a grain of salt. If I can get some proof from Dad B, I’ll update.
Guanaco (the llama is its domestic counterpart) – interesting fact – guanacos live in herds composed of females, their young, and a dominant male. Bachelor males form separate herds.
Rheas (which look like big ostriches) – no pics.
South Andean deer:
South American gray fox – no pictures, but we saw them. They didn’t say anything.
Condors – Dad B has a picture of the Condors we saw.
Beetles – the interweb won’t give me any information on these beetles, but there were a lot of them by Laguna Azul.
Note: I just found out that Paine means “blue” in the native Tehuelche language, which verifies my prior translation as completely inacurate, as originally believed.