Saturday, February 27, 2010

ACROSS THE PAMPAS: BEHIND THE EAGLE´S NEST


Beyond Santa Rosa, capital of La Pampa Province, the road becomes an unpaved rough track wisely chosen by the Dakar 2010 to test their competitors. In such road I stretch my thumb...


Traveling westwards, I get a ride with a team of biologists who monitor the few known nest of the local "crowned eagle". Thei aim is to set a camera in on of the nests. Their job combine hi-tech with psicology, needed to gain the trust of local population. Without the locals, it would be impossible to track the eagle´s nests....

One of the cahracters we met in Jorge`s ranch. He complaint on how much he had smoked along his life, but later reconsidered and quoted: "But I smoke black cigarettes, which are healthier.."...


Maxi and Oscar download images from the camera. We are just fifty meters away from the nest and we can see the neat images on the laptop screen....





And this is the place where Jorge put me up. A truly rural house decorated with pictures of the many horses Jorge had riden along his life. Rifles and munition were not absent, since hunting is the main hobby here. The trip across La Pampa province marked the start of the "off the beaten track" section of the Argentinean stage of the round the world hitch-hiking trip.

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