thephotosocietyのインスタグラム(thephotosociety) - 12月28日 02時06分

Photo: @momatiukeastcott/@thephotosociety | guanaco | The rising sun blasts spiky neneo plants but I want to get beyond a distant rock where a pale thatch of fur just moved and quickly vanished. A guanaco, once described by Darwin as "an elegant animal, with long slender neck and fine legs." Its blood carries more oxygen than that of other mammals and allows the graceful Andean cameloid to thrive in the high country of South America. But graceful does not mean mild. During the short Austral spring love-struck guanaco bulls chase rival males and sink teeth in their necks, trying to break the thick skin protecting vital blood vessels from such assaults.

I follow the guanaco but run into a fence. Here poorly anchored toilets may march across rooms and custom officers use rulers to divide ledgers into organized columns of handwritten bureaucratese. But when it comes to fences, excellence soars. The posts are solid and the wire strands taut and closely spaced, all made to keep me out.

Really? I walk and sniff along its length, a keen animal looking for a way in. And here it is, a gully where the lowest strand rides just high enough. I swing my camera over and slither under the wire, my nose buried in dandelions. I chew a few leaves, tasting just like the dandelion roots dug out from under the snow on South Georgia Island. Dressed with olive oil they became the only fresh salad during our long sails on Golden Fleece. The leaves smell of our Antarctic, the continent which sends icy gales and iridescent clouds across Patagonia.

Alert to my presence, the guanaco moves away just enough to have room to escape: a wise herbivore of the steppe does not waste precious energy on silly gallops. I look at the huge stage set painted across the bottomless blue of the Patagonian sky, the slender towers of Cerro Fitz Roy and other peaks soul-arresting in their vertical beauty. There is a patch of snow, and the guanaco stands against it with its fine neck elegantly erected until I click my shutter. ©YvaMomatiuk
#momatiukeastcott #guanaco #Patagonia #Argentina #Fitz Roy #mountains #panorama

[BIHAKUEN]UVシールド(UVShield)

>> 飲む日焼け止め！「UVシールド」を購入する