Chile – Pumas of Patagonia Photo Tour 2024

After arriving in the quaint city of Punta Arenas you will transferred to your hotel for the first night of your Patagonia photo tour. This evening, your ORYX Photo tour leader will discuss in detail the upcoming adventure focused on Torres del Paine National Park and its celebrated Pumas!

Today our travel to Torres del Paine commences with departure from Punta Arenas as we drive to Torres del Paine. On this Patagonia photography tour, this scenic drive is usually just over an hour long but with photography stops along the way, it will take us approximately 4 hours to reach the national park.

Torres del Paine, Spanish for “Towers of Paine” and “Paine”, an old indigenous word for the colour blue, is a breath-taking national park that encompasses mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers and its main wildlife drawcard, the glorious Puma. The park supports one of the largest concentrations of Puma in the wild and April is good time to be on the look-out for the big cat as females are actively hunting to provide food to their growing cubs. Over the next 4 days, our Torres del Paine tour will focus much of its attention on these sleek felines. Your local guide and Puma tracker, who regularly follow Puma family groups, will constantly be on the lookout and with the aid of binoculars and spotting scopes, will use their years of experience in the park to ensure that we catch sight of this big cat. Our time spent in Torres del Paine will be flexible as strategies are adjusted each day according to the big cat’s movements in the area. As we journey into the park (often on foot), we will also be on the lookout for other wildlife species such as Guanaco, Andean Deer, Hairy Armadillo, Chilla Fox and Culpeo Fox, the elusive Geoffroy’s cat, the endangered Chilean Huemul and the Patagonian weasel. In addition to the mammals, two sizeable birds the park is well known for include Lesser Rhea and the huge Andean Condor (which average 25lbs in weight!). And of course, a Patagonia photography tour would not be complete without a little landscape photography!

Sadly, today is our last day on our Patagonia photography tour and we will bid farewell to Torres del Paine. After breakfast, we will drive back to Punta Arenas where this amazing tour will come to an end.