Lago Vintter -- Cerro Rinon

On our way to town a few days ago a movement in the snowy field to my left caught my eye. At first all I saw was a magpie engaged in a strange dance, twisting this way and that right above the surface, fluttering up a foot before pouncing again. Only after a moment I saw the mouse, a good sized vole, rising up on his hind legs, fighting for his life. No mouse hole close, it seemed, and the cards were stacked heavily against him, even if the magpie obviously had a healthy dose of respect for its intended supper. I don't know how this played out, as I watched it only in passing, but chances of the mouse's survival were very slim.
Why is it that I find myself sympathizing with the mouse? The magpie, just like the mouse, only did what it needed to do to survive, yet it seemed unfair somehow, a David and Goliath situation.


Sometimes it is not quite as clear who the predator is and who the prey. It doesn't always have to do with size, either, as the following experience will show. Back to Rio Pico, or rather to Lago Vintter, where we - miracle of miracles! - finally arrived in the yellow camionetta after another 40 km on the bumpy gravel road leading northwest from Rio Pico. We spent four wonderful days there with Gretel and Nikita, treated royally to great food, wine, and the obligatory 'Vodka Nikita' - but more about that later.


In Patagonia, the weather is unpredictable even in the summer as we had seen two years ago when snow covered the surrounding hills one morning. Knowing this makes it very important to make use of good weather for outdoor pursuits like hiking, and thus we decided to follow our hosts' suggestion and hike up to Cerro Riñón, their ‘house mountain’, the day after our arrival.

Starting out from the lake we climbed steadily through the lenga forest for the first while, pure joy for a tree lover like me. This is real old growth forest. Nikita’s neighbours had started to harvest some of it at one time – illegally: these trees are protected. Lenga and their smaller cousins, ñire, seem to be the only trees that occur naturally right around here, plus bushes like the calafate, wild gooseberry, wild currant and a few others whose names I don’t know.  On the forest floor I found the topa topa, as the Sand Lady’s Slipper is called here, the fat yellow violets I admired on my first visit already, and, close to trickling little waterways, a beautiful flower with tubular red blossoms.


When we left the shelter of the forest behind our destination still seemed far away, and in this zone of rock and rubble we were now exposed to the wind. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, two huge birds appeared from behind us: the condors Nikita had told us about! They circled once above us, and disappeared as suddenly as they had come.

The rough, rocky, sandy road, accessible with a four-wheel drive vehicle, descended for a bit to a small brown lagoon, surrounded by a moderate expanse of green, fed by a couple of small rivulets coming from the snowfields higher up the slope. This slope was the final barrier we had to cross.

I was a bit apprehensive, the sliding and my ensuing panic on the descent from Torres del Paine still too fresh in my mind. The slippery hillside with rubble and dirt suggested more of those moments of feeling out of control. Johann encouraged me, told me this was not so steep, but when he started to climb I realized he was not following any path. Again I was scared: Nikita had talked about a path, hadn’t he? Where was it? This felt wrong!
Johann kept walking uphill, though, and I followed, soon realizing that it was not as bad as I had thought. The first little while we stepped on the sparse growth of alpine regions, and once again I was amazed at the variety of blooming plants that survived under these harsh conditions.

Soon we left that behind, entering territory of sharp, mostly small rocks that didn’t move much when we stepped on them. We kept walking horizontally along the slope, climbing slowly, in serpentines, passed between two snowfields, and after ten more minutes we had reached our final destination for the day, a rocky outcrop jutting out high over the lake.
An iron pole marked the spot from which we could finally see pretty well all of Lago Vintter. It narrowed towards the Chilean side, only an appendix at the very end. What a huge body of water, at 76 km in length! And hardly anybody lives here, no boats dotted its shining surface.  

We moved down a few steps into the protection of the rocks to get away from the wind, and unpacked our lunch, feasting our eyes on the magnificent view. Suddenly a huge shadow fell on the rocks beside us. We looked up to find the condor sailing not far above us, staring down at us, turning his head this way and that.  Not long and he was joined by another, followed by two more. Majestically they drifted past, checking us out at leisure.

It felt a bit strange to be looked at this way. Could these birds carry us away like Roc, Sinbad’s legendary bird, if they had chose to do so? No need to worry, in spite of their impressive appearance: condors are vultures and feed solely on carrion. They never attack. Knowing that we could calmly sit and watch them disappear around a corner, awed by their huge feathered feet, their enormous wings, the long-beaked head.  

We sat for close to an hour, watching them rise up on the current and disappear again, undisputed lords of the sky in this part of the world.  Nikita told us that their numbers have increased significantly in the last twenty years or so because they are under protection now, and most people abide by this. They used to be hunted mercilessly because farmers feared for their lambs and calves, but thankfully this myth has been dispersed. Nikita said they fly far to find food, up to forty kilometres per day. He thinks that they nest somewhere close to where we were.

Rested and thankful for this amazing encounter we finally started the descent. We had decided to take a different route for the way down, and shortly after we reached the lagoon we entered the forest instead of climbing again to the bare knoll where we had first seen the condors on our way up. It was beautiful, this walk through the green forest, a large swamp teeming with wildflowers to our left. Not long, however, and the road split again, one rising to the right, the other descending steeply to the left. No more uphill! we had decided earlier, even though I was a little uneasy: this was not quite how Gretel had described it. We were too tired to even consider climbing back up, however, and started to follow the rocky road down. It was a looong way down, we found – we had done quite a hike on the way up. And then this road did an unexpected turn as well, rising – oh no, this wasn’t right! We could see the island right across from where we were, and knew then that we had a fair distance to go east – and down – still until we were back home.

The forest on the downward slope was so thick that we couldn’t see the lake at the bottom, but we knew it was there, and that’s where we needed to get to, so Johann started to take the most direct route, finding his way through the dense growth along a small creek tumbling down.

It was very rough going, steep, the underbrush making progress difficult, calafate and other thorny bushes tearing at our clothes and skin. The worst thing, however, were the horseflies. Never in my life had I seen so many at once! Hundreds buzzed around us, worse than mosquitoes in a really bad year at home, eager to taste some fresh German-Canadian blood. There was no way to chase them away when attention and hands were needed to grasp tree branches and tree trunks for support. At the beginning of the hike I had used a lenga switch to keep them at bay; then there were by far not as many, and that method had worked quite well. In the open higher regions they had not been a problem. Now, however, in the relative calm, protected conditions in the forest, heat rising from our bodies, they attacked mercilessly.

Finally our helter-skelter descent ended on a road of sorts. Now, hands free, we could return to our tried and proven methods of repelling the murderous horseflies: I broke off another lenga twig, while Johann used the slap-and-kill approach.

Gretel and Nikita said it was an exceptionally bad year for these pests, and that on days like these Lino, the hired man, will not go into the forest to cut wood for fear of hurting himself with the axe; those horseflies could drive a person crazy.

As I said earlier: it is not always easy to say who the hunter is, and who the prey.