Southern Cone: ChAr 2016, Part 3 - South-central Chile

Jan 12

Today ended up being a write-off for birding, as the bus heading southward wasn't until late in the morning. In planning the trip, we had decided a key stop would be somewhere between Santiago and Puerto Montt, to bird the Nothofagus forests for a few specialties. The most accessible by public transit on a tight schedule appeared to be Altos del Lircay near Talca, which had the added bonus of a large-ish lake nearby, so it was to Talca we went. After sleeping in and packing our stuff, we caught a cab to the bus terminal. A four-hour bus ride later and we were in Talca. After a brief search, we found a hostel to stay at for the night - Residencial la Calma (not recommended - more on this later), which, at 8000p seemed like a bargain compared to other places we'd stayed. From there we tried to find a bus out to Lago Colbún, but it turned out there weren't any this late in the day, and a taxi would be too expensive. Accepting our fate, we used the time to buy groceries for the upcoming days and found a decent pizza place to have dinner. We then spent the evening talking with the owner and his brother in broken Spanish and English before calling it a night.

Running trip list: 172

Jan 13

We were up in time to pack our stuff and catch the 07:15 bus, but the owners were nowhere to be found to see if they could keep our stuff safe, as we wouldn't be back until later in the day. We ended up piling everything into one room and heading out with our daypacks, bound for Altos del Lircay. The bus dropped us off not far from the entrance to the park, and by 08:50 we were birding our way up the hill after paying our entrance fees and checking in at the gate house (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26880953). We spent the majority of the morning birding the Alimenmawida trail, which held loads of White-crested (Chilean) Elaenias, White-throated Treerunners, Thorn-tailed Rayaditos and Green-backed Firecrowns. We also encountered several groups of Chestnut-throated Huet-Huets, eventually managing glimpses of one individual skulking through the undergrowth later in the morning. At a small stream, we played hide-and-seek with a Magellanic Tapaculo before it eventually came out on the bridge, far too close for us to focus our cameras, and at one point it actually crawled across our shoes. Farther up the trail, we arrived at a lookout and stopped to have lunch (tuna and crackers with juice, our typical fare), while scanning the sky for raptors. Our hoped-for Rufous-tailed Hawk never appeared (we missed this and Patagonian Forest Earthcreeper for the trip), but a pair of Austral Parakeets made a few passes, giving us good in-flight views. Along the trail, Chucao Tapaculos called but remained out of sight, and somewhere along the entrance road on our way back down, we heard a Patagonian Tyrant - a species that would remain heard-only for us for the entire trip. We were beginning to lose hope on one of our main targets here, when Josh stopped us. Sure enough, a Magellanic Woodpecker was calling off in the distance, and after some brief playback, two females swooped in and gave us quite a show. We never did manage to see a male though. Patagonian Sierra-Finches were our other new bird at Lircay, before we had to catch the 14:00 bus back toward Talca.

Magellanic Woodpecker

Magellanic Tapaculo

Forest at Altos del Lircay

View from the overlook

We got off at the intersection with the highway, and walked down the road toward Lago Colbún a ways before finding a shady spot with a cherry tree to sit and wait for a bus, where we added Southern Caracara for the trip (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26882261). Filling our bellies with ripe cherries, a bus eventually arrived and took us the rest of the way to the lake. We misjudged our stop though, and ended up having to walk a fair ways to the productive area of the lake after getting off the bus (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26882385). We spent the next 2.5 hours birding the river and the east end of the lake, adding Spectacled Duck, Rosy-billed Pochard, Andean Duck, White-winged Coot, Black-faced Ibis and Burrowing Parakeet to the trip list. The lake was loaded with waterbirds, and my small scope I had brought in carry-on simply wasn't up to the task of identifying the most distant of them. One of the downsides of travelling light and cheap!

The river just above Lago Colbún

Satisfied that we weren't missing anything, we grabbed a bite to eat at a little roadside restaurant, then hopped on a bus back to Talca. In town, we booked our bus tickets southward, then headed back to the hostel, where the lady at the front desk insisted we owed her money. Not understanding why, we dropped off our stuff and went back to the pizza place, which was closed, and ended up eating dinner at a rather terrible burger place. If you're wondering why we're eating at places that sound Canadian, it's because local food in Chile seemed to be almost entirely American-style, but lower quality - it was really difficult to find anything cheap and 'local' besides empanadas in most of the towns we visited! Anyway, back at the hostel we packed up our stuff and went to pay at the desk, where they again insisted we owed more than the 8000p we had already paid the day before. They tried to tell us that was for 12h only (not for the night as is normal), and we had used the room for 30h at this point, so we owed them another 12000p each. After a bit of pointless arguing, we walked out, having paid for the one room we had put all our stuff in that morning since they weren't around to inquire about lockers or safe storage. We refused to pay their ridiculous fee for the rest of the time though. Due to this kerfuffle, we arrived at the bus station where we'd bought our tickets 1.5h early, and sat around waiting for our midnight bus. Midnight came and went, as did many other buses, but not the one we had tickets for. At 01:00 we were quite tired and frustrated, so I went up to ask the driver of one of the buses where our bus was, who told us that Turbus uses a different terminal, located a block away. Argh! We went over there, where we were informed (unsurprisingly) that our bus had come and gone. As that was the only bus to Puerto Montt until the next night, we figured we were screwed, and weren't sure what to do, as there was no way we'd find anywhere to stay at that hour, and none of us relished the thought of being stuck in Talca for another day, given our poor experiences with the town thus far. Luckily, while looking at the schedule and figuring out our options (which seemed to be that we were going to sleep at the bus station), the guy working at the counter told us there was a bus to Temuco arriving in 5 minutes, and from there we would have more options for buses to head south. So it was that we hopped on the 01:40 bus to Temuco, and gratefully settled in to our seats to get some sleep.

Running trip list: 187

Jan 14

Our bus got in to Temuco at 06:45, and we quickly found a bus headed for Ancud, departing at 07:00. This turned out to be a bit of a milk run, as it stopped in every town along the way (Valdivia, Osorno, Puerto Montt were the major stops), but we lucked out in that we did not need to switch buses in Puerto Montt as originally planned. While waiting for the ferry to Chiloé, we hopped off the bus to check out the birds around the docks. On the ferry crossing, we were treated to a load of activity, with thousands of birds foraging in the channel (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26900810). Our lifer Magellanic Penguins and Diving-Petrels distracted us from the massive flocks of South American Terns, and we also added Black-necked Swan, Imperial Cormorant, Flightless Steamer-Duck and Hudsonian Godwit for the trip. Our main target failed to appear however, the localized Pincoya Storm-Petrel which had been recently described. Once we got to Ancud, we checked in at the 13Lunas Hostel (13000p each/night), where we had a four-bed dorm room to ourselves. After a bit of a trek around town to try to find the local buses, we eventually found a bus back to Chacao, and went for another ride on the ferry, this time as walk-on passengers (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26900556). We somehow managed to get the return trip for free, but had to contend with our first rain of the trip and a fair bit of wind. The huge numbers of shearwaters we had seen earlier had mostly cleared out, but the tern numbers had built up, and we estimated at least 5000 South American Terns were foraging over the channel. We managed to pick out one Arctic Tern among them, but unfortunately still no sign of the hoped-for storm-petrels, although we saw some Peale's and Chilean Dolphins. Afterward, we caught a bus back to Ancud where we had a very late dinner before calling it a night.

Running trip list: 194

Jan 15

After a few days in a row of late nights and poor sleep, we slept in a bit. This was also partially due to the fact that our hostel had an included breakfast, which didn't start until 08:30. After breakfast, we caught a bus out toward the Estación Biológica Senda Darwin, where we hoped to pick up a few of southern Chile's specialty birds. Of course, we had no idea how to actually get to the station, so we hopped off the bus near where the pin on the map was, and walked down a side road that we figured must lead to it (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26910477). This mistake turned out to be a great decision, as we quite quickly picked up Ochre-flanked and Chucao Tapaculos and a few Des Murs' Wiretails. Farther down the road, the lush roadside vegetation opened up into some fields, where we found some Austral Negritos and a pair of Hellmayr's Pipits - the latter not supposed to be found anywhere near Chiloé. Throughout our time here, small groups of Slender-billed Parakeets flew by overhead, and we eventually got decent looks at some perched birds.

Austral Negrito

Slender-billed Parakeets

We did eventually discover that the road didn't, in fact, go to the biological station, so we walked back to the main road, finding the correct entrance road not far down the highway. We wandered around the grounds for a while after paying our entrance fees, but other than a heard-only Black-throated Huet-Huet we didn't add anything new here (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26910546). Some of the birds were quite cooperative, however, with a Plumbeous Rail posing nicely at the entrance bridge.

Plumbeous Rail

Deciding we needed lunch, we headed back out to the highway, where a bus eventually picked us up and took us back to Ancud. In town, it started pouring rain, and we grabbed lunch at a real local restaurant, having curanto - a local seafood dish that's mostly meat. Once the rain let up, we set off on foot, heading to a spot west of town that looked like it still had some decent forest, as seen on Google Maps satellite view. As the walk was a bit farther than we'd anticipated, we eventually flagged down a taxi to take us the rest of the way. The driver seemed a bit confused as to why we wanted to be dropped off at the spot we requested, but he didn't ask too many questions. Wandering up the road, we quickly discovered that we had made the right decision, and through our loop of the back roads south of the highway, most of the forest birds were fairly common (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26918240). A Bicolored (Chilean) Hawk was our only new bird of the trip, but the numbers of Chucao Tapaculos, Des Murs' Wiretails, Slender-billed Parakeets and others more than made up for that. We heard another Patagonian Tyrant that remained frustratingly out of view, and eventually we found some Black-throated Huet-Huets. These toyed with us for some time, before we eventually caught a glimpse of a dark shadow moving through the bamboo. That was to be our only look at this species though.

Blurry photo of a Chucao Tapaculo - these skulkers were tough to photograph!

Making our way back to the highway at the end of the loop, we ended up having to cross a field, as the logging road we were following ended up on someone's farm. While walking back toward town, we found a family of Flying Steamer-Ducks on the waterfront, and added Ringed Kingfisher for the trip. We eventually managed to flag down a taxi, and made it back to our hostel for a very late dinner.

Running trip list: 202

Jan 16

Once again, we had our breakfast at 08:30, and then spent most of the morning trying to figure out how to book a flight to Punta Arenas on the Sky airlines website. Eventually we had to get Josh's partner Laura, who was living in Scotland at the time, to book us tickets using Josh's card, as the website wouldn't work on any of our phones. Surprisingly, she was successful in this venture, and with tickets booked, we were off to find a taxi. On the west side of the island is a penguin colony, and that was our destination for the afternoon (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26955837). Monumento Natural Islotes de Puñihuil is a popular tourist spot, and the tours were well-organized as a result.

Loading onto the boat

After a bit of waiting around, we were loaded onto a boat and taken for a tour around the colony, where somewhere around 100 Magellanic Penguins were in residence, with at least 6 Humboldt Penguins among them. A few Magellanic Cormorants and Kelp Geese were new for us, and we had great looks at nesting Red-legged Cormorants. After our hour on the boat was up, we paid 500p each to walk up a trail to a viewpoint, where we saw at least 10000 Sooty Shearwaters streaming by offshore. While watching the shearwaters, we had a small group of Blue Whales spouting off in the distance! The scenery at the top was also well worth the trek up the hill.

Kelp Goose

Humboldt and Magellanic Penguins

View from the lookout

Patagonian Sierra-Finch

Back at the bottom, our cab driver was still waiting for us (we had negotiated this earlier), and we made it back to Ancud in time to have lunch, pack our things, and hop on the 15:40 bus bound for Puerto Montt. We again birded from the ferry, and again were disappointed by a lack of storm-petrels on what was now our fourth voyage through these waters (https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26955868). Arriving in Puerto Montt, we quickly found a hostel up on a hill (Vista Hermosa) with a view over the waterfront, where a tiny room cost us 36000p for 3 beds. Once we were checked in, we went off to find dinner and run some errands, as I'd discovered I had forgotten my pack towel at our hostel in Santiago. Luckily, they had the Chilean version of MEC there, and I found an almost identical replacement towel. We then retired to our room late in the evening and split a cheap bottle of Chilean wine to celebrate our success with this part of the country.

Running trip list: 205

Jan 17

After a bit of a sleep-in, we spent part of the morning trying to figure out Josh's credit card, which had unsurprisingly been put on hold (since it was being used in Scotland and Chile almost simultaneously when Laura booked our flights for us!). For some reason, we were unsuccessful in this venture, so we decided to head out for some birding, since our flight wasn't until the evening. Down at the docks, we inquired with the local fishermen about chartering a boat to get out on the water, with the hopes of finally seeing a Pincoya Storm-Petrel. They weren't having any of that though, so we looked at the maps and figured our best bet would be a ferry. Since we had already tried the Chacao ferry four times with no luck, we hopped a bus to La Arena where we rode the ferry that goes across to Puelche. On the way, I started to feel quite dizzy, but I powered through it and made the rather quiet return journey on the ferry (in terms of birds, anyway - https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S26955831). We did have a few Magellanic Penguins and a Diving-Petrel, but no storm-petrels.

Views on the La Arena ferry

We grabbed lunch in La Arena before hopping a bus back to Puerto Montt, and spent part of the afternoon sitting on the steps of the hostel we'd stayed at while Josh made a Skype call to sort out his credit card. By this point in the day I was feeling truly horrendous, with a pounding headache, dizziness, fever and general delirium. Popping an Advil I hoped for the best as we headed for dinner and then caught a bus to the airport. At the airport, we had made it through security when I was called back upstairs. Turns out they didn't know what my scope was, so I had to explain it and show them before they would let it through! I rushed back through security and made it on the flight just a few minutes before take-off. The three of us tried to get some sleep as we cruised southward over the Andes, bound for Patagonia.

Running trip list: 205