Puma Watching Holidays

Though the handsome, dun-coloured puma is found from the boreal forests of Canada all the way south to Patagonia, until recently seeing one in the wild was a matter of sheer luck. On very rare occasions one might be seen on our tours to Amazonia or the Andes in Colombia, Ecuador or Peru. More frequently, a puma might be glimpsed on our trips to the Pantanal in Brazil. A few years ago, however, we began to work with a remarkable team of puma-trackers in Torres del Paine National Park in the far south of the Chilean Patagonia region.

With this move the game changed radically. Our trackers have known generations of pumas in the park and have built not only a database of observations of their lives but also an extraordinary level of trust with these famously wary cats. We now visit the magnificent snow-topped landscape of Torres del Paine confident that our clients have an excellent chance of seeing wild pumas behaving naturally. Past groups on our puma safaris have witnessed mothers with cubs, kills and many intimate details of these wonderful animals’ lives.

Further to the success of our puma viewing trips to Chile, we have recently begun working with trackers in Argentina to deliver a very similar experience. The vast open Patagonian steppe of Parque Patagonia in the north-west of Santa Cruz Province sets the stage for this spectacle, a part of Rewilding Argentina’s fantastic efforts to restore the country's wilderness areas.

Much like the dramatic landscapes of Torres del Paine, your tracker will set off early in the morning to monitor for any signs of pumas before calling you to the location with a separate driver. Once reunited with the tracker, you continue on foot until the secretive feline comes into view. Your experienced trackers are well versed in puma behaviour and will assess the situation to determine the proximity to the cat, who at times will continue in your direction as you sit patiently, providing some of the most unforgettable close range sightings.

Puma

Among the most adaptable of all the world’s cats, the exquisite puma inhabits a vast range of environments across the Americas. It is equally at home in the super-humid rainforest of Vancouver Island, the steamy lowland forest of Amazonia in Brazil or Peru, grassland above the treeline along the chain of the Andes, and in harsh, spiky deserts and semi-deserts all through Latin America. Over this extraordinary geographical range, the versatile puma catches a tremendous diversity of prey, from viscachas, agoutis, armadillos and Brazilian rabbits to huge black-tailed and marsh deer, which are heavier than the cat itself.

In the far south of Chile and Argentina, where we watch pumas, the guanaco – a wild camel which is ancestor to the domestic llama – is its favoured prey, though introduced European hares are also commonly taken. Pumas around the edge of Torres del Paine have even learned to use the fences of adjacent sheep ranches to catch guanacos. It is often these pumas living between the park and private land which are easiest for our trackers to find, not least because they have spent years monitoring the lives of generations of these handsome cats. They know their haunts, they know their foibles and in many cases they knew their grandparents.

Combine time in Torres del Paine National Park with a private ranch dedicated to puma tourism on our Wildlife of Torres Paine small group trip or if you're interested in a photography focused holiday, consider our Pumas, Condors & Landscapes in Winter tour. For photographers seeking the ultimate big cat fix, our South America’s Big Cats Photography Tour offers outstanding opportunities to photograph jaguars and pumas.

Argentina’s Parque Patagonia also offers opportunities for puma tracking, and this experience combines perfectly with the marine mammals of the Valdes Peninsula on our Best of Patagonia and Patagonia’s Pumas & Orcas group trips, or the Ultimate Argentine Patagonia for a tailormade holiday. 

Other wildlife of Patagonia

The puma is by no means the only charismatic mammal we see in the dramatic landscapes of Torres del Paine and Parque Patagonia on our puma-watching tours. In addition to abundant guanaco populations, the park's are home to South American grey fox, Patagonian hog-nosed skunk and the delightful big hairy armadillo. We spend time looking for these species on our Chile's Rare Mammals tour. Where there is southern beech forest, the culpeo fox is often seen and sometimes we encounter the very rare huemul, or South Andean deer. Over all of them a great shadow is cast, the shadow of the magnificent Andean condor, the perfect subject alongside pumas for our photography tour. 

In Argentina, our Patagonia's Pumas & Orcas group trip combines two thrilling wildlife experiences - pumas in Parque Patagonia with the unique beaching orcas in the Valdes Peninsula. We watch as the orcas hunt for unassuming young sea lion pups from the shorelines, whilst also spending time visiting one of the largest Magellanic penguin colonies in the world.

The spectacular region of Patagonia spans across Chile and Argentina, and therefore makes a great choice for a twin-centre holiday. Contact us for tailor-made itinerary suggestions to Patagonia.