Sunday, September 22, 2019
While we were eating breakfast, we were fortunate to see a spectacular sunrise with bright red colors among the blue clouds.
We had signed up for a bus tour of the park, which left at 8 am from the hotel. We were the only ones on the bus and it stopped at several sights around the park.
We saw a few waterfalls at two different locations.
On one of the hikes from the falls, Pete and Kathy felt energetic so they jogged part of the way back to the bus.
At mid-morning, the guide treated us to hot chocolate and pastries, before we continued our tour.
As we drove around the park, we had good closeup views of the mountains and the glaciers on them.
A few times, we spotted condors catching the updrafts as the circled the mountains in search of food.
There were a lot of wild Guanacos, a cousin to the Llama and Al Paca, roaming the hills and feeding on the Spring vegetation.
We returned to the hotel for lunch and opted not to take the other half of the tour in the afternoon, but Pete, Kathy and I decided to go horse back riding instead.
We rode on paths through trees and across fields,
as well as, a shallow marshy area.
It was the first time that Pete and Kathy had gone horse back riding. It took us approximately 2 hours and when we returned to the hotel, we went for a swim in the pool and then Fr. Richard led a Sunday service for us.
We had supper at 7:30 pm and sat by a crackling fire until the evening was over.
The hotel restarted operations on September 1, after it’s annual shutdown for the winter months ( July/August ). The season starts slowly and currently only 40 of the 200 available rooms are occupied. This makes it nice for personalized excursions but it also means that some excursions might be cancelled due to lack of participation. Such was the case with the boat tour to see the glacier waterfalls. Therefore we signed up to take a hike in the morning in order to catch a glimpse of the glacier falls from a distance.
Ralf Hamm 