When you think of parrots, what do you see? Bright colours, squawking calls, luscious rainforests…. The first two definitely apply to the screeching, colourful flocks flying over us, but the last; NOT. Here in one of the most menacingly arid and hostile lands either of us have run through; where thorns the size of chop-sticks threaten to skewer a badly placed step; where rivers are dust; the soil is crunchy and tormenting winds curdle and spit out of nowhere. Here where you would think nothing should live; certainly not choose to live. Here live the burrowing parrots!!
In the crumbling arid “barancas”; gorges and cliff-sides of southern Argentina, they make their nests and during the day they sweep over the parched, spiky terrain in search of food. For us, in this punishing terrain where we nightly assume we and our tent will take to the sky as the winds rattle our bones and our precarious tent poles; these flashes of colours and sounds provide a brief moment to celebrate and forget the aching pains of our knees..
