Nahuel Huapi
Nahuel Huapi
Nahuel Huapi National Park is situated in the southwest of Neuquén province and northwest of Río Negro province. Its size is of 750,000 hectares of which 330,000 of them are a National Reserve. It is 1,700 km from Buenos Aires.
Dr. Francisco Perito Moreno donated the land on November 6th 1903 and it was originally called “Parque Nacional del Sur”, but was renamed Nahuel Huapi in 1934. The park was created to protect a vast area representative of the northern Patagonian Andean region and is open all year round. The name comes from the mapuche language, “Nahuel” meaning tiger and “Huapi” meaning island.Dr. Francisco Perito Moreno is buried in the “Isla Centinela”, near the entrance of the “Blest” arm.
To the west, the highest peaks delimit the border with Chile. Among these, is the impressive Tronador(3554 metres) and Campana, Capilla, López and Catedral (between 1800 and 2400 metres). Between these high peaks there are several deep valleys that allow easy crossing to Chile through passes such as Cardenal Samoré, Pérez Rosales and Vuriloche.
A glacial lake called Nahuel Huapi, covering an area of 60,000 hectares, is located along the eastern slope of the Andes with a maximun length of 67 km and a maximum width of 10 km. The lake resembles in its shape a “gigantic amoeba with enormous tentacles extending in all directions to form a number of arms or fjords. It is also encircled by many smaller lakes. Other lakes are: Perito Moreno, Gutiérrez, Mascardi, Los Moscos, Hess, Fonck, Guillelmo and Steffen.
The most important feature of this National Park is the diversity of habitats, such as the large lake and river system, the sub-antartic and valdivian cold forests, the dry steppes, lowland forest undergrowth and high andean ranges that host an interesting native flora and fauna.
The park offers trekkers and sightseers many areas of natural beauty. Hiking, horseback riding, mountain climbing opportunities and other recreational activities such as fishing, kayak, windsurf, ski, rafting Worthwhile any time of the year. The admission fee is of $5.
The climate is cold temperate continental, with dry summers and snowy, rainy winters.
Most days of the year (85%) are windy . The annual precipitation media is of 950 mm and the temperature media is of 10° C.
Fauna: There are endangered pudu and southern huemul deer; one of the few remaining populations of Andean otters; small opossum, guanacos, puma, patagonian hare and foxes, and birds such as the condor, flio flio, rayadito, coludito, cauquen, macáes, hualas, garza bruja, biguá, bandurria lesser rhea, several eagle and hawk species, woodpecker, the austral parakeet, the Chilean pigeon and the chucao. Various introduced trout species.
Big forests of cipreses, ñires, lengas, coihues, notros, arrayanes, guindos, lauras, radales, maitenes and alerces grow there. The exhuberant vegetation of the valdivian forest, towards the border with Chile, is made up of impressive trees like the coihues, mañiú, laura and alerce, mixed with varieties of lianas such as the pahueldín and pil pil voqui. The ever damp undergrowth is dominated by the caña colihue and ferns. Some flowers are the notros (red coloured) , the amancay (yellow), virreina (lilac), mutisia (orange)
Endangered Species.
There are many endangered species in the Nahuel Huapi area. Some of them area the Huemul, Pudu, Huillin,Gato Huiña,Red Fox and the Tuco-Tuco. They have many natural predators as the puma and other species introduced from other parts of the world that brought with them various diseases here. The main predator is the human being. Hunters kill them for their furs or as trophies. Farmers kill them to protect their crops or domestic animals.Men also brought in many plants from the rest of the world, that grew here without any control invading the territory where native species used to grow.
What can we do?
We shouldn´t light fires where it is not allowed to, we must not hunt and if we go fishing, we should ask a permit and capture only one fish per day. We should not throw garbage..
We should protect the environment because it is our home.
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