While Dania stole the show and our hearts for most of the trip, this was the most special Puma encounter we had. The darker Puma is a shy female who hasn’t been named. The lighter one is a male. In general the males never get as comfortable with humans as the females can. We first saw these two on a hillside from the main road. They briefly mated, and then the female took a nap while the male watched attentively.
When we returned after lunch, they had moved on, but we were able to track them down in the estancia (thanks to some incredible spotting by @ojosdelpaine). We carefully closed some of the distance, using moraines to cover our movements and then quietly easing up onto the ridges. Eventually, we were close enough to see the cats calling to each other as they continued their mating rituals. With a bit of luck, in a few months there will be some fuzzy new Pumas bounding around the hills of Patagonia.
The care our guides had for the pumas was evident throughout the encounter. With other pumas, we were able to move in more quickly, still stopping a respectable distance away and letting the Pumas decide if they wanted come our way. With these shyer pumas, we took a slow and cautious approach, stopping before the Pumas felt the need to tell us we were too close. For the whole week, the sharpest reaction we got from a Puma was a brief look, both from the habituated pumas and from the shyer ones.
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