I’ve shared of my experiences (and birds) from the Chile portion of our Birds and Wines of Chile and Argentina bird trip from February, 2024 and now it’s time to move on to Argentina. We spent eight nights there before returning by plane to Chile.
We drove from Santiago, Chile to Argentina with a little glitch. The van we were using in Chile broke down in Santiago – another one was provided but the original van was registered to enter Argentina, not the replacement. So a van from Argentina had to meet us at the border, where we transferred all our luggage to the new one. The Argentinian van took us to the customs checkpoint; we pulled into an enclosed building with 50 other vehicles. Luckily we weren’t in there long, otherwise I would have passed out from the carbon-monoxide fumes!
After clearing customs we drove up to a ski resort (remember this is during their summer) but to get there we had to go up the side of a mountain, traversing 30 hairpin turns with cars and trucks coming down toward us. In the shot below you can pick out some of the turns with vehicles on it.
Once there we had lunch at Portillo’s ski resort. The corridors of the building were covered with autographed photos of many famous skiers who had trained or skied there. One large table in the dining room was occupied by members of the Argentinian Olympic Swim Team who were there training at the high altitude in the aqua-blue reservoir seen from our dining room window below.
Our birding destination that afternoon was Mt. Aconcagua National Park. I had never heard of Mt. Aconcagua before but it turns out it is the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere – in fact it is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. We had a spectacular day with clear blue skies, although like many tall mountains the tip of Mt. Aconcagua was cloud-covered.
We spent about two-and-a-half hours there in a little valley taking in the towering Andes Mountains all around us. We managed to take our eyes off of the mountains and were able to find thirteen species of birds. One of my favorites was this pair of Andean Geese who looked like such a sweet couple as they cuddled together.
Our guide Marcello gave a shout when he spotted a Scale-throated Earthcreeper. This smallish brown bird isn’t rare but it was the only one we saw during our trip. Its long, curved bill stands out.
Perhaps not as exciting a bird but I did get a great look of some Rufous-collard Sparrows there. We saw these birds regularly throughout Chile and Argentina, but they were colorful birds that posed nicely for pics.
Our travel day into Argentina was a long one and we didn’t get to our hotel in the border-town of Uspallata until dusk. After checking in we headed into town for dinner at a local restaurant. We arrived at 8:30 PM (which is early for dinner there) and since we were in Argentina we ate MEAT. Lots of MEAT. In the first picture below the chef is loading up one of our two small grills (coals in the grill are to keep the MEAT warm, not to cook it). The MEATS included pork ribs, beef ribs, filet, chicken, blood sausage, Argentinian sausage and more. Heart-attack, here I come!
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Wow, what a tremendous trip. The scenery is absolutely stunning!