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No Magellanic Woodpeckers, And Also No Plane

March 5th, 2010 at 2:40 pm (AST) by Jake Richter

We just returned from Lago Escondido on the other side of the Andes mountain range here in Tierra del Fuego. Beautiful scenery along the way, and a spectacular roasted lamb for lunch, but no Magellanic woodpeckers to be found.

Roasted lamb in the Tierra del Fuego style - yum!

Roasted lamb in the Tierra del Fuego style - yum!

Returning back to the ship we found that in addition to there being no woodpeckers in sight, our charter flight to Miami was also in hiding.

Word is that the plane finally cleared all the Argentinian bureaucratic paperwork (there was a missing signature on a form, and that’s been the case for the last day), and should have finally departed Lima, Peru a few minutes ago, bound for Ushuaia.

This means we’ll be enjoying another night in the best hotel in Ushuaia, our ship, the National Geographic Explorer. It’s looking likely that we might actually leave tomorrow, but everything depends on when the charter flight actually lands in Ushuaia tonight (hopefully).

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Accommodations, Animals, Birds, Cooking, Flying, Food, Local Cuisine, Nature, Tours, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “No Magellanic Woodpeckers, And Also No Plane”

  1. Jarmila Richter Says:
    March 6th, 2010 at 7:09 am

    I am sorry for you to have to go through so much hassle with your departure. Could it be because you arrived from Falklands or is just it the usual routine bureaucracy? We are thinking of you all the time.

  2. Jake Richter Says:
    March 6th, 2010 at 7:20 am

    It’s because of the earthquake in Chile, and because Argentinian bureaucracy is Kafkaesque.

  3. Bill Says:
    March 7th, 2010 at 4:26 pm

    Sorry you didn’t see any Magellanic Woodpeckers. We were lucky enough to see and photograph some near El Chalten late one afternoon, but that was the only time we observed them during a 3-week trip to Patagonia, including Tierra del Fuego National Park in Ushuaia. I recently set up a blog devoted to this fantastic bird and it’s relatives if you’d like to take a look.

    Cheers!

  4. Bill Says:
    March 7th, 2010 at 4:27 pm

    Here’s the link: http://cwoodpeckers.blogspot.com/

  5. Bill Says:
    March 7th, 2010 at 4:27 pm

    p.s. click on my name for the link, if interested.

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