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| Burrowing Owl . This was Paul's favorite bird of the day. |
“Sometimes I think that the point of birdwatching is not the actual seeing of the birds, but the cultivation of patience. Of course, each time we set out, there's a certain amount of expectation we'll see something, maybe even a species we've never seen before, and that it will fill us with light. But even if we don't see anything remarkable - and sometimes that happens - we come home filled with light anyway.”
― Lynn Thomson
Although I love getting to know a foreign city for the first time, I always want to also step outside of it and see what the rest of the country looks like. So for this excursion, since we are not renting a car, I chose a birdwatching tour with Florencia who runs a company called Birding With Me. She's easily found on the internet and is a biologist who is actually studying the effects of wind farms on avian mortality. (The good news is that in Uruguay where 95% of energy comes from a sustainable source, few ill effects have been noted.)
We started by going out of town about 45 minutes to a wetland area. We had a lot of fun and saw so many beautiful birds there. Ubiquitous to nearly all locations was the lapwing, which is the national bird of Uruguay.
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| Lapwings. These birds were everywhere---riverbanks, marshlands and even on the side of the road. |
Florencia seemed to consider the lapwing a bit of a pest, much like we do the Eurasian collared dove. It had a nice call which it vocalized frequently and we loved the tuft coming out of the posterior head. It would be impossible to delineate every bird we saw (probably around 50-60 species), but here are some favorites.
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| Black and white monjita |
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Red Crested Cardinal
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| Saffron Cowled Blackbird |
From the marshland, we drove around to several ponds where the beauty continued:
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| Giant Wood Rail |
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| Spectacled tyrant |
We had a lovely lunch at a park full of eucalyptus trees on the Rio Plata--empanadas which are one of the local specialties and highly recommended.
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| One of the ponds where we looked for wetland waterfowl. We probably found about as many birds sitting on a wire or fence post as we did anywhere else. |
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| Paul Parris, expert birdwatcher, on the shores of Rio Plata. |
Our last set in Birdland was the shoreline of Rio Plata for shorebirds. The choices were limited in species but the numbers were good--plovers, seagulls and southern caracara.
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| Collared plover |
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| Southern caracara |
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| Two banded plover |
All in all, it was a lovely day of birding with some looks at less inhabited parts of Uruguay. We did see some improvised housing along the route. I asked Florencia if the people in these scrap built houses owned the property and she said doubtful. They most likely just occupied the land and built. We also saw a lot of farmland, especially apple orchards and winter greens as well as strawberries.
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| We look like anuses attempting a selfie, but Florencia was a pro! Go birding with Florencia. It's amazing! |
We returned to Montevideo in time to see the Andes 1972 Museum. Most people of sufficient age will remember the story of the Uruguayan soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes and 13 of 45 survived, some by eating remains of the dead. There was a movie made called ALIVE that many people have seen (and a book by the same name.) The heroic tale (referred to here as "milagro"-miracle) of 70+ days of survival with very little clothing, food or shelter is really amazing. They showed incredible ingenuity for a group of mostly 18-25 year olds. Not only were they plagued by hunger and cold, an avalanche hit the wreckage several days into the catastrophe and killed more of the initial survivors by suffocation. It is a horrendous and yet inspiring tale and this museum does a good job of describing their hardship and how they worked communally to survive. The cannabalism is not dismissed but it isn't the main focus. The survivor who went public with the fact that they ate their teammates several days after the rescue and once media and officials investigated the site and saw the evidence that they had consumed their teammates described the experience as "an intimate communion." They obviously did not relish the idea, but it was the only option they had to survive. I would recommend this museum to adults and teenagers. Not sure I would take a little kid who might find it hard to understand. Should you take a child, an explanation in advance is recommended.
The teammates who survived have had a very positive attitude. Although they agree that most of the time on the mountain was a living hell, they also believe that everyone faces mountains and rescues every day, and encourage us all to never give up trying to surmount our problems, big or small. They have inspired many people who are struggling over the decades and many of them are motivational speakers.
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| An artist's depiction of the famous newspaper photo of the survivors. The remains of the aircraft were burned shortly after the rescue. |
For our last act of the evening, we had a lovely dinner (after a shower and a short nap--making us look forward to retirement!) at Tandory Restaurant in the Pocitos neighborhood of Montevideo---which seemed less business-like than Ciudad Viejo and more upscale residential. The chef had lovely preparations and we combined shrimp arepas with a pasta and fish dish. It was tasty and filling.
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| This is a local dessert composed of cookie and mascapone ice cream. |
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| Leek raviolis. |
I am grateful for an amazing day that was mostly without struggle, some beautiful creatures of mother nature,varied and lovely scenery, and a dose of inspiration from those who bore so much pain and grief and emerged stronger and more cognizant human beings. May we all learn from their experience.
"To be affronted by solitude without decadence, or a single material thing to prostitute, it elevates you to a spiritual plain, where I felt the presence of God. Now, there's the God they taught me about at school, and there is the God that's hidden by what surrounds us in this civilization. That's the God that I met on the mountain.”
in the movie ALIVE
Paul's Ponderings: What a great day in Montevideo. We got to see a lot of rural area and some incredible birds. The temperature was cool but manageable, even though we had an early start (730 am local) and spent about eight hours out birding. After that we spent some time at the Andes 72 museum. I have vivid memories of reading the book by Piers Paul Read as an adolescent and finding it riveting. It's been a long time since I thought about that event, but here we are in Uruguay where the team was from and now there's a museum about it. The museum is pretty matter-of-fact on a topic that's very complex, but a really incredible story of human survival under extreme conditions. We finished with a great dinner after finding out our original choice closed at 5 pm on Monday!
So far, we are having a great time here in Uruguay.....looking forward to more.
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