Horseback Riding and Rafting

I love this kind of landscape.

Getting an old man on a horse.

It was horse back walking, but fun with great views.

Trigger happy on 'Trigger'.

This dog's best friend is the lead horse which he followed after the horse was moved to a new farm.

Deserted stony beach with frigid waters.

Riding back through the typical steppe vegetation.

Safely back home.

Our after lunch serenade from Matteo.

        

Paulo and Natalie.

Let's go!

Although the water was flowing swiftly, this is as rough as it got.

Thank you Argentina.

The beautiful glacial colouration of Lake Argentina.

A guanaco, which we ate a couple of nights ago... not this one.

And the lesser Rhea, as close as we could get.

Wednesday, November 20^th.

We were picked up at 8:00 for our last day of adventure. Today it was to be horseback riding and rafting. Our driver was Matteo and our female guide was Paulo. In the van already was a young Australian from Western Australia named Natalie. We drove for an hour and a half out through the beautiful barren Patagonian steppe and rugged terrain. We saw many guanacos (llama like animals) and a couple of lesser rheas, a large flightless bird. Who knew? When we arrived at the lodge we immediately got kitted up with helmets and chaps and a horse. Paulo led us out for a two-and a half hour ride over the steppe and sand dunes to the beach on the lake. When we returned we were served an excellent lunch of empanada, steak and potatoes. Matteo entertained us with a few Argentinian songs on acoustic guitar. He was a great singer.

After lunch we went rafting. You couldn’t call it white water rafting, even Paulo called it a float. It was level one rafting down a swiftly moving river, but we had fun. We went for about an hour and only had to really paddle hard twice as we were going around a bend. When we finished we loaded the raft on the trailer and then Matteo drove us back to El Calafate. On the way back I challenged them to find some guanacos, some rheas and the beautiful glacier blue Lago Argentina for us so we could take photos. They found all three, okay the lake was easy.

Back at the hotel John and I decided to go into town before dinner and walk to Laguna Nimez which is a local environment sanctuary where we heard there were flamingos. It took about 15 minutes to walk there and then we found out there was an admission that we didn’t want to pay as we were only going to stay a half hour before dinner. So, we walked along the road on the outside and with our cameras were able to get some photos of a few of the flamingos. But, we also got some of the other birds and an owl that was flying around. At one point it was chased off by two lapwings as they defended their nest. I have put the bird pictures on the next post as I ran out of room here.

Then we went for our last dinner at the sister restaurant to the Casimiro from last night. Both of us opted for fish after the big steak at lunch. Then back to the hotel for the last time where we again made use of the pool and got ready for tomorrow’s departure.