The 3D lab

I was a lucky guy, I was told by a tour guide with more than 700 visits to Torres del Paine on his count. I had to pack my stuff and hurry to the closest casino to convert that luck to money. He never saw a puma before, on all his ranges, and I found one with barely 3 park-days. He had to thank me above all, because it was me who warned them to stop for the mountain lion in the roadside.

I was on my way back home to the hotel, the last five minutes in the park and with only a few minutes of battery left in my camera. The big cat was lurking in a ditch next to the road. It took him some time to adjust to the situation, enough time for me to stop and take a picture. He disappeared behind a bush, keeping a close eye on every of my movements.

I got one more chance as the puma quickly crossed the road to disappear in the yellow grass at the other side. A yellow cat in yellow grass, in less than 3 seconds, he was nowhere to be seen… I had to take a deep breath, and shout out my happiness all the way home.

— This post is one in a serie of posts on Torres del Paine in the Andes, the eight wonder of the world, where I spent an incredible weekend after my week of fieldwork in Punta Arenas. —

Me and my hired Nissan saw a growing friendship with every kilometer added to the counter. Without ever fearing a nasty bump or dangerously steep slope, he has shown me all the most beautiful parts of Chilean Patagonia, the land of endless roads through coin-flat grasslands and majestic mountains.

For a guy from Belgium, the wideness of Patagonia is mind-blowing. At home, it is almost impossible to follow a straight road with your eyes until it disappears behind the horizon. It happens even more rarely that you stand on top of a mountain and see the road whirling around the mountains in the distance, every now and then vanishing and appearing again over and behind yet another slope.

Discovering the world by road stays ever fascinating. In Chile, it turns out to be one of the best ways of travelling. You get all the nice views, and all the wonderful animals only a heartbeat away, like this guanaco.

It will however always be important to stay aware of the large effect of the roads on nature, like I described before. Chile clearly showed me another inevitable road effect in the shape of roadkill. The Patagonian roads seem to score bad on this, with dozens of ended lifes of hares and rabbits. Especially at night, the hares cross by thousands, making them almost impossible to avoid.

Of course, there is always the other side… Roadkill creates a real paradise for birds of prey, as they get served their rabbit as a fastfood happy meal.