I've been here at the Estancia Valle Chacabuco for a little less than four days, but in some ways it feels like a lifetime. I'm noticing this more and more about myself, how quickly I can adapt to my surroundings and make myself comfortable. It helps me to be busy, I suppose, because it gets me into more of a routine and makes everything feel more commonplace and normal.
But this place is far from normal. The lodge I work in, like the house I live in, is beautifully constructed in a rustic way that gives the impression of its having existed for a century, even though it's barely three years old. Everything's wooden, with beautiful carved accents, big windows, and beautiful rooms and common spaces. Kris Tompkins, one of the owners of the estancia along with her husband Doug (who founded Patagonia clothing company) has stressed that the whole idea here is for this to be a luxurious place to stay, to prove that you don't have to sacrifice a quality experience when you venture out into nature. This, of course, means that all of us who work in the lodge have to be good at what we do, to add a good social aspect to an aesthetically beautiful setting. We feed and entertain our guests well, all the while explaining what our project is about and the reason they're even able to come here.
The vision for the park, which CP is carrying out, is to combine the land of the estancia with two national reserves to our southwest (Tamango) and northeast (Jenimeni) and create Patagonia National Park, conserving 650,000 acres of a hitherto unprotected, but incredible valuable, ecosystem. Though 51% of the land in the Aysén region of Chile is government protected in some form, all the reserves are found in forested areas, which, being dry cold forests, have a big deficiency of biodiversity compared to the steppe ecosystem found on our land. For this reason, CP's project is important to the survival of native species and natural wilderness, to preserve a bit of Patagonia as it would be with minimal human interference. Kris and Doug say that in ten years, they hope this park will be as popular as Torres del Paine, a national park in southern Chile, which receives thousands of visitors every year.
When you look around here, no matter which direction you face, you see grasslands extending away up and over hills, eventually giving way to rocky buttes and beyond them, snow-covered mountains. The bench, as this type of steppe is called, is perforated by various lagunas and huge lakes dotted with ducks, swans, and flamingoes; it's laced with turquoise and green rivers and countless other streams. This is unusually for this region of Patagonia: normally things down here are dry at this time of year, and this same valley on the Argentine side of the border is dried out completely. But that's part of what makes this area so unique, and so worthy of protection.
Guanacos are another crowning feature here, one that reminds me I'm definitely not anywhere close to home. A wild relative of the alpaca and the llama native to Patagonia, the guanaco looks somewhat prehistoric to me, especially the way it runs. We have hundreds here in the park, herds of males and of mothers and babies. Their shaggy fur looks tantalizingly touchable, and the babies are little fuzzy creatures that you just want to cuddle up with. They've got no fear of us, and are frequently to be found grazing outside of the lodge or my house.
Guanacos aren't the only wildlife around, either. We're surrounded by all kinds of birds, lots of flies (unfortunately), foxes, pumas, Huemul deer, fish...it's easy to spot lots of animals on my short walks around the headquarters here, much less on a drive out into one of the surrounding valleys. My favorite story that I've heard thus far sums this up well: a General from the Chilean army came down and proclaimed that he'd heard tell of a place in Patagonia with no fences and animals galore. He didn't see how it could exist, so he had to witness it himself, and as the story goes, he was quite amazed.
Our estancia seems to have that effect on a lot of people. I hosted my first group of tourists yesterday, a young couple and a group of six little old ladies, all from Santiago. Throughout the course of their stay, they all remarked on the beauty of the area and the lodge, and seemed to be impressed with the quality of what we offer when it comes to lodging and dining. I'll brag about it, the food we serve here is delicious, thanks to our two chefs, Collin and Eli, who definitely know their way around a kitchen. They're here as interns just like me, and the three of us will be working closely together while we're here, especially as we start to receive more and more visitors. They're both wonderful and interesting people, as I suspect the rest of the interns will be as they arrive. Right now, in addition to the three of us in the lodge, we have Josh, our greenhouse manager, who just happens to be a boater from Fort Collins. Funny how us Coloradoans congregate in areas like this; earlier this week I met a woman named Linde Waidhofer and her husband Lito, both from Crestone, CO. They're friends of Kris and Doug, and Linde takes amazing photographs, and has even published a book about Patagonia (check out her
website).
I'm hoping to take some photographs of my own soon. We have no new guests coming in for the next couple days, so I plan to take advantage of the brief lapse in the workload to hike on one of our trails, called Lagunas Altas, which ascends the butte behind the lodge and winds its way through several alpine lakes, all the while affording expansive views of the surrounding landscape and mountains. Come Sunday, we start receiving guests again, and they keep coming for the rest of the month. Here's to being busy and in an incredible place!
