Bee on lupine
Today was a free day with no scheduled activities. We walked to the centre of town, a bit over a kilometer from the Cauquenas de Nimez hosteria. At the corner of the main street is a park, a full block square, that is about the history of this area. There were many dioramas of Pietro Moreno and also Charles Darwin, two important investigators whose work led to the preservation of this area. The park has a number of roses, which we found a bit strange as the weather here is so cold, though it isn’t extremes of weather, only going down to about -10C in winter, and up to about 15C in summer. There were also some lupine, a flower that we have seen a lot of in the ditches, both here and farther south in Chile.
After this we went into most of the stores along the main street that looked interesting, shopping for souvenirs. Enid got a small miniature of mounted dried flowers for her wall at home. I got a Patagonian wool hat, complete with ties. At least it will cover my big ears in the cold back home!
We ate a a restaurant that specialized in lamb. They were barbecuing it in the front of the restaurant, over a wood fire. The lamb was very good, but way too much food for us. We should have ordered one plate and split it.
Ducks in the Laguna Nimez nature reserve
After lunch we bought groceries, then walked back to the hotel. I went to the Laguna Nimez nature reserve, which has an entry fee of 45 pesos, and a nicely laid out birding trail around the lagoon. I saw many kinds of water birds, hawks and ducks. There were some flamingos but they were quite a long way away across the water. It was very windy and cold today; however they have a couple of permanent blinds in the park, so there you could get out of the wind and take pictures.
Flamingos in Laguna Nimez