Well rested from our easy day the day before, we spent day 11 tackling a longer walk - this time, the lesser-trod Loma del pliegue tumbado. This 24km return walk was far more difficult than the walk to the Laguna Torre, as it involved a 1000m ascent, but we managed it in 7 hours and 40 minutes (20 minutes short of the suggested 8 hours). The first 2/3 of the walk was relatively calm, mostly passing through nice alpine forest with the random odd wild cow lurking. However, the last 1/3 was a mad scramble up an almost vertical incline of rocks, with an ill-defined trail and the powerful Patagonian winds screaming in our ears. I'm still not sure how I managed to make it up to the top, but I do remember the feeling of overwhelming victory. And what goes up must come down. Really really slowly and carefully. While trying to not fall and break my neck (Hi mum, don't worry, it wasn't that dangerous. There were other people doing it and they didn't fall either).
View from one side
View from the other side
None of these photos really express how steep and high our climb was - this was probably the flattest surface we could rest on, and we were pretty much clinging to the side of rocky cliffs while trying to sit whenever we needed a rest for the rest of the climb
We didn't take a huge amount of photos of ourselves or the view on this walk, but I did manage to get some pictures of cool flora and fauna instead of just "ooooooh"-ing at them like I did for the past couple of days. Also, Jeremy keeps getting attacked by huge fluffy caterpillars, who seem to really like him.
Wild forest cows!
So many tiny cute plants around
Black-faced ibis (South American bin chicken)
Tiny cute flowers
Southern crested caracara (I think)
More plant matter
The little bird that lives here wasn't home when we visited
Jeremy reckons these are fossils of some sort. Anyone who knows about these things want to chime in?
No comments:
Post a Comment