Monday was our last day in Torres del Paine National Park. We decided to do one last hike. The trail took us up a ravine across a wide valley from the Towers and the Valley de Ascension, providing a dramatic view of the area we had hiked on our second day. We heard that the area had many guanaco and ñandu: the ostrich-like bird we had such a hard time finding last year in Argentina. From there, we would drive out of the park back to Puerto Natales to catch the Navimag Ferry. Along the way, we passed a glacier lake where Chilean flamingos gather.
While we were now used to seeing guanacos and were no longer stopping every time we saw one, we were looking forward to hiking among them one last time. We had no more than climbed a quarter mile up the ravine when we spotted them, everywhere. As we approached—like choreographed dancers—they would collectively raise their heads and glance our way to ensure we were of the camera-and-backpack animal type and not of the teeth-and-claws type. When assured we were of the former, they’d collectively go back to grazing. If they had to, they’d move ever so slightly off the trail so we could pass. Looking closer, we spotted ñandu dotted across the hillside and scattered among the guanaco. We were delighted to be walking so close to these animals again.
Having grown up on Wild Kingdom and having traveled to out-of-the-way places to view wildlife, I know that animals eat animals. That is how it all works. Yet, unless you spend countless hours observing wildlife, it is very rare to witness this life-and-death struggle in real time. I remember a safari in Kenya when our guide received a radio message of a cheetah kill nearby. We rushed to the kill site only to be one of two dozen other vehicles waiting in line to circle the two cheetahs feasting on an antelope. I remember thinking, “This is nuts,” yet being enthralled by the scene. Here, guanacos are the puma’s primary food source, and as we climbed higher, we began to see guanaco remains in various stages of decay scattered across the ground. This was clearly a puma convenience store.
Hiking along in our normal formation—Kevin ahead, me a long way behind—we noticed large, dark shapes on the ridge above us. Being the easily excitable amateur wildlife enthusiasts that we are, we each imagined our own version of some rare and elusive animal. Kevin pulled out the binoculars to get a better look. Instead of the long extinct pterodactyl, we were looking at Andean condors: four of them! And, as if on a movie set, two more flew over the ridge and circled above us. We were speechless as we watched these giant birds ride the air currents.
We moved up the trail to get a better look, and as we crested the ridge, we understood why they were gathering. There was a fresh guanaco kill on the trail directly ahead of us with a family of Patagonian grey foxes feasting on the carcass. We met two hikers coming down who said they had been watching the condors feast on the guanaco from above until the fox had arrived and chased them off. We watched with fascination as the three fox ate their fill while the condors circled above, waiting for their turn. Apparently, foxes trump condors in the scavenger hierarchy.
While we didn’t see the kill, it was not a stretch of the imagination to envision the death scene: In the pre-dawn hours, a puma tracks a weak member of the herd, isolating it, and then killing it with a powerful bite to the throat. Final death comes as the puma gorges itself on the entrails. At daybreak, its hunger satisfied, the puma moves on, leaving the remains to any scavenger lucky enough to be in the area. Later that day, at the ranger station below the trail, the ranger remarked that she had seen a puma in the area the day before.
Moving past the kill, we got closer to the condors. With the Torres del Paine as a dramatic backdrop, a pair sat on a rock outcrop chattering away at each other—their clicking and clacking resounding through the ravine. At one point, others were circling so close we could hear the swish of their wings. At 9 feet across, they are impressive.
The park butts up against private ranch land, and along the perimeter are the ubiquitous livestock fences. How high does a fence have to be to keep cattle and sheep contained but allow guanacos and the endangered huemul deer to jump clear? Surely someone has done research, and these seemingly high fences are high enough, but not too high. We often saw herds of guanaco divided by these fences. I told myself that the guanaco and deer could easily vault over them when they chose. Maybe they have little wings tucked under their fur that, when needed, lift them up and over any fence in their way. Yet, on this trail, we came across a juvenile and its mother on opposite sides of the fence. The agitated pair was pacing back and forth along the fence, with no apparent way for the juvenile to reach the other side. If only I had thought to pack a wire cutter.
Tragically, as we were heading down, we saw another mother and juvenile along the same fence. Both on the same side this time, but the mother’s front right leg was dislocated or broken and sticking out at an angle altogether wrong. It was horrible to watch. While I once aspired to be a wildlife biologist, I realize now I would have been terrible at it. I would have been another crazed Diane Fossie rescuing every one of my study animals rather than dispassionately letting nature run its course. I actually think nature is wickedly cruel, and I would have intervened at every opportunity.
