Laguna Loma Alta is not in any guide books and it is not somewhere that we had heard of before setting off on our travels. However, Laguna Loma Alta is a beautiful fishing lake that we happened upon by chance and we were pleasantly surprised by what we found there! If you read our last blog about Santa Teresa National Park in Uruguay, you will know that we were waiting on our van, Phil, to arrive in Montevideo. We finally managed to collect him from Montevideo Port on 16th January. To our relief he had survived the journey (apart from a little mould growing on our rug!) and seems to be driving well! After collecting the van, we gradually made our way west through Uruguay, stopping off in the pretty coastal village of Kiyu-Ordeig and the gorgeous old town of Colonia del Sacramento (the historic centre of which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site), before taking the ferry over to Buenas Aires. Entry into Argentina, for both us and the vehicle, was fairly straightforward and we set off towards our first planned destination in the van, Lihué-Calel National Park.
To break up the 838km long journey to Lihué-Calel, we looked for a park-up on iOverlander around the halfway point and identified a spot on the shore of Laguna Loma Alta as we thought a lake-side location would be a peaceful place to spend the night. It turned out to be much more than this – Laguna Loma Alta is a stunning and enormous brackish lagoon which is home to hundreds if not thousands of Chilean flamingos! Along with the flamingos, we saw a huge variety of waterfowl: Coscorova swans, red shovelers, neotropic cormorants, white-tufted grebes, black-necked stilts, southern lapwing, lesser yellow legs, southern screamers, snowy egrets, red-gartered coots, white-faced ibis and white-faced whistling-ducks, and combined they made a right racket! Around the lagoon within the adjacent pampas grassland were also crested caracaras, pampas finches, rufuous-collared sparrows and what we think were spotted nothuras (partridge-like birds). Also hiding amongst the pampas grass was an Azara’s agouti (a very cute and chunky rodent about the size of a large house cat)!
The sunset that evening was incredible. As the sky changed through tones of orange and then pink, the flamingos took off, circling and calling as they found a place to spend the night. However, a word of warning if you decide to head here – it was not all calm and magical. As soon as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, a swarm of (luckily non-biting) midges descended on us and the van, so make sure you shut everything as soon as the sun sets! We discovered the hard way that our skylight is not fully sealed!!
How to get there
Laguna Loma Alta is around 440km south-west of Buenas Aires along Ruta 5 as you approach the city of Trenque Lauquen. To reach the overnight parkup, take the turning onto the gravel road signposted ‘Club de Pesca, La Loma Alta’. Follow the gravel road for around 1.5km and turn right on the track just after the bridge to head down onto the beach.
When to go
We are not entirely sure whether the flamingos are found at Laguna Alta year-round. However it is likely that they are there for most of the year, and definitely during the summer months.