Parque Pumalin and Golfo de Corcovado
We started the day in the small town of Chaiten where we met a series of vans that took us to along the Carretera Austral to Parque Pumalin. The park encompasses 1,153 square miles of temperate rainforest and is the largest privately owned conservation area in the world. The Pumalin Project was established in 1995 by Doug Tompkins, an American millionaire, who wanted to conserve some of the remaining virgin forest in Chile. There are several trails in the park that provide easy access to stands of ancient alerce trees, and we had the opportunity to hike amongst these giants. Alerces are large old growth trees that when mature grow very slowly, only about 1 millimeter every three years, and can live for 3000 to 4000 years. They were highly prized as a timber tree as the wood contains a resin that is resistant to rot, however, in 1976 the Chilean government passed a law banning the cutting of alerces to protect the remaining trees. We were able to get up close and personal with some of the large trees and marvel at their girth. We also saw some interesting forest birds along the trail. Just about everyone saw a chucao tapaculo or a black-throated huet huet, two species that inhabit the dense undergrowth of the rainforest.
In the afternoon we enjoyed the fine weather and headed towards the Golfo de Corcovado in search of marine creatures. We spied Magellanic penguins and sooty shearwaters and after awhile we encountered a surface-active pod of Peale’s dolphins that swam right under bow to ride our pressure wave. In the evening the officers on the bridge spotted two blue whales, and we all got out on deck to watch them. We ended the day with the Captain’s Farewell Cocktail Party and Dinner, a fun ending to a great trip.
