We had another early start this morning. We had an early breakfast and headed out with our guides, Patrick and April, to go horseback riding. Unfortunately we did not have the picture-perfect weather today that we had yesterday; rather, it was much colder and raining steadily.

We had a drive of about 30 minutes out to the ranch to meet the gauchos and their horses. On the way to the ranch we saw a few Austral Pygmy owls.

Austral Pygmy owl.
Austral Pygmy owl.

After saddling up we set off on a two-hour ride through the beautiful countryside. We dodged a lot of trees and crossed a few big streams along the way. We had a great time but we were a little wet and cold by the time we got back to the ranch.

Horse riding.
Horse riding.

We warmed up with a nice cup of tea and jumped in our van for the trip back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel we had a leisurely lunch and just relaxed, on the basis that we had nothing planned for the afternoon. However, we then had a change of heart and decided to go out with Patrick to look for pumas and other wildlife. We’re started with a walk through some wetlands down to the bank of Lago Sarmiento to look at some of the birds in the area. It was very nice but the biting wind made it a bit hard to spend extended periods in such an open area. So we decided to jump in the van and tour slowly around to see whether we could spot a puma. While we had a lovely afternoon driving around the national park we didn’t find any pumas. We were told that they are hard to see at the best of times and they are very spread out around the park, which is huge. We called time at about 6:30pm and headed back to the hotel for dinner. Before dinner we had a nice walk down to the shore of Lago Sarmiento.

Looking across Lago Sarmiento.
Looking across Lago Sarmiento.
Looking back at Tierra Patagonia from the lake shore.
Looking back at Tierra Patagonia from the lake shore.

On our wayback , we spotted a cute little Patagonian hog-nosed skunk that lived under the hotel building.

Patagonian hog-nosed skunk.
Patagonian hog-nosed skunk.

Once back at the hotel, we enjoyed a beautiful dinner, watching the sun slowly set over Lago Sarmiento and then watching the appearance of a beautiful full moon.

Full moon over Patagonia.
Full moon over Patagonia.

Then, it was back to the room to start the increasingly difficult task of getting everything back into our suitcases!

Tomorrow we are leaving the hotel fairly early. We have a 300km drive to the airport at Punta Arenas to catch our flight back to Santiago, which leaves early afternoon and will get into Santiago around 7 pm.