Los Alerces National Park and the end of 2024 - January 3, 2025

Gauchos, Los Alerces

I have received a number of sharp email nudges from readers who wondered why I left everyone suspended mid-journey on my recent Patagonia trip. Not the first time I have done this I know, but in this instance returning from Argentina and right into the midst of the holiday scramble, my journal writing priorities were turned on their heads. So let me close out the trip and the year as we all launch ourselves into 2025.

When last heard from we had completed a 4 day stint in an eco-camp in La Posta de Los Toldos in the ReWilding Argentina nature reserve. After another long day’s 12 hour drive we reached our destination for our last four days on the road, Los Alerces National Park. As an aside and since I’m writing this well after the fact, when I returned to Toronto Hugh emailed us to let us know that we covered 3700 kilometres of driving on our trip…didn’t come as as even a slight surprise!

Lake in Los Alerces

Los Alerces National Park while still in Patagonia, is in the northern portion of the region and couldn’t be less like the landscapes through which we had been travelling for the previous two and a half weeks. Whereas in the south the landscape was bleak and arid and and the climate was dry and perpetually windy, in the north the landscape replicated the Rockies and the look and feel of Banff or British Columbia. The Andes are higher here and their mountainsides are covered with rich forests while the region is filled with deep clear glacial lakes and foaming rivers coming down from the high Andes glaciers. Stunning country, postcard perfect and yet…the barren south still has a compelling attraction for me.

We spent 4 nights at El Aura Lodge on a wide blue lake which, for my Canadian readers, could have been lifted directly from Muskoka cottage country. Our days were spent exploring the local countryside led by our guide, a retired forestry professor who knew the habitat, the birds and the wildlife remarkably well. However the highlight was our final day when the four of us, Robert, Hugh, our forestry guide and I set out on a boat safari along the waterways of Los Alerces National Park. Along with the captain we were the only occupants of the boat as we crossed a huge sapphire-blue lake resting at the foot of the Andes. The most striking impression was the vast, stunningly beautiful setting with virtually no noticeable human presence, except for the very occasional cottage or country house. Our own Canadian north country must have looked very much like that 100+ years ago before every metre of lakeside real estate had been claimed for vacation properties.

Our boat captain

Our boat captain took us to a barbecue pit on the other side of the lake where he prepared a fabulous lunch of massive T-bone steaks from his own cattle and country sausages, again from his own pigs. During the course of a long carnivorous lunch he told us the story of how his family arrived in the region. His great grandfather, he said, had came from Montana. He was the sheriff of a town in that state who was sent, along with a number of deputies and Pinkerton police to Argentina to arrest Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid both of whom had fled to Patagonia in 1901 after a string of robberies in the south-west US. They had purchased a cattle farm in Patagonia but learning that the authorities were on their trail in 1905, they quickly sold it and fled to Bolivia. There is a complete mystery about their fate after that. There are claims that they were killed in a shootout in Bolivia while there seems to be conflicting evidence that suggests that they managed to return to the US under alias and lived there until 1937 when Cassidy died. Our boat captain’s great grandfather, the sheriff, had come to Argentina in 1905 on the hunt for Cassidy and Sundance and when they eluded capture, decided that he loved the Patagonian landscape, bought a farm and never left! Is there any truth to the story or were we merely gullible gringos who were being fed stories from the same bull who had supplied our lunch? I’ll never know but I’m prepared to believe it, wouldn’t you?

After leaving Argentina I had a two weeks crash reintroduction to real life. I returned home only to collapse in bed with flu for a couple of days, overtired I’m sure. That was brought to a swift end by the necessity for me to prepare for and Chair a Year-end corporate Board Meeting, as well as having a friends and family pre-Christmas dinner to plan and execute. In short, diving headlong into all the activities and events arising from the holiday season and then on Dec 23 we left for 17 days on Bequia, an island in the Caribbean Grenadines, where, with great pleasure, I now write this.

Lake in Los Alerces

I’m not sorry to see the end of 2024. As I mentioned in an earlier post the year was book-ended by the loss of our two companion cats, a heavy blow in both cases. 2024 was also the year that I hit the 80 year mark, a milestone that, at an earlier time seemed impossibly distant, and now it too has come and gone. It has felt like a year that demanded time for reflection and a year to put things right. I now feel like a new journey has begun and I’m very happy and eager to begin my next lap of the track.

I’ll be back with you all in the middle of February when V and I leave for Ladakh and the Himalayan top of India where I’m on a photo hunt for Snow Leopards.

Best wishes to everyone for a safe and healthy 2025!

More to come…

Farewell to Patagonia and 2024