South: A Patagonian Adventure
When I lifted my window shade I could only see clouds, hundreds of miles of them in a bumpy but unbroken line. The sun struggled up over the horizon and the pinkish glow of the clouds gave way to an endless dull white. For an awfully long time we had been heading south, over a continent, crossing the Caribbean to another; then unceremoniously – I had actually fallen asleep after five glasses of wine - crossing the equator, which wasn’t even our halfway point. It struck me that if we continued flying south eventually we’d round the Pole and find ourselves heading north up the backside of the world.
The tiniest tear in the clouds revealed a blinding white: ice. We were high above the Andes and the enormous piece of ice that covers the mountain chain like a blanket in Chilean Patagonia. It wasn’t until we were close to landing that I could at last glimpse the landscape. Way down here, the end of the Andean chain breaks up into thousands of islands then plunges into the sea before resurfacing in Antarctica. The southernmost section of on the mainland of America looked bleak and nearly lunar. Save for the deep-set bays that after miles of narrow twists reached the open Pacific, and the dotting of several lakes that looked like oil spills, this was a landscape that appeared featureless, not a tree of any size in sight. We touched down in Punta Arenas and I knew we were a long way from anywhere when I saw a massive aircraft being loaded with pallets of supplies, skis and snowmobiles, bound – I must assume – for Antarctica.
Nineteen hours of traveling and Greg and I were feeling pretty good. Our rental car seemed to be fine but upon discovering Peter’s flight delay of six hours, our punctuality did us little good. We took the car and drove into town. Punta Arenas calls itself the world’s southernmost city, which is for the most part true, since the handful of settlements to the south are significantly smaller and none could be called a city. Though 2000 miles from Santiago, Arenas has none of the frontier air of such a far-flung outpost. Driving in on the wide Avenida Manuel Bulnes, I was surprised by the size of the place; kids in school uniforms everywhere seemed to be kissing, running, teasing each other, or throwing punches. The weather was warm and it seemed as if every Arenan took to the streets. We parked the car and took a look around.
Founded in the mid-1800’s after the original settlement on the Strait of Magellan – Fuerte Bulnes – was abandoned, Punta Arenas prospered in the wool boom of that century. Large numbers of immigrant families – namely Croats, Germans and English – came here to work the massive ranches in the area and built fine homes in the city. The city has seen a more recent resurgence with a minor oil boom; even a handful of multi-story buildings line Avenida Bories, surely the highest structures for many hundreds of miles. Greg and I stopped for an empanada before perusing the rather shabby beachfront at the edge of the Strait of Magellan.
On October 21st, 1520, the flagship Trinidad, captained by Ferdinand Magellan rounded a cape (which he named “Cabo Virgenes” as it was a feast day) and entered the broad strait that now bears his name. The Portuguese explorer, sailing for Spain, believed there was a western route to the famed Spice Islands in modern Indonesia. King Charles I believed that the rich islands belonged in the part of the new world that the pope had ceded to Spain. 36 days after rounding the cape, Magellan spotted the open ocean and named it Pacific for its comparatively calm waters. No one in the crew could have expected it to be so wide.
The fleet sailed for four months without seeing land and lived off moldy biscuit powder and collected rainwater. Magellan himself was killed in a skirmish with natives on Mactan Island. Manned by 18 emaciated men, only one of the original five ships limped back to Spain. A journey of three years, the remaining crew was the first to circumnavigate the globe. The king was told such an undertaking could not be repeated ever again.
Today, the notoriously temperamental straits were quiet, at least where we stood. We left in search of one of two flightless birds we would encounter in Patagonia: the Magellanic Penguin. The colony at Seno Otway is about forty miles north of Punta Arenas. Half of that distance is via a rocky dirt road, the first of many driven on this trip. Here, the pampas spread to the horizon, dusted with thin grasses and gnarled shrubs. No fences could be seen anywhere and large hares, or maras, darted across the road. We came upon our first proper estancia after about fifteen miles of nothingness which was characterized by an orderly row of poplars, at least one barking dog, and the only roofing material suitable for withstanding Patagonian winds: galvanized aluminum. What did these people do? Their piece of land may have been as large as say, Chicago, and from what we saw, they weren’t doing anything with it. They hadn’t even gotten around to fencing in whatever was supposed to be kept in there. Surely nothing was growing in all of that dusty flatness.
We skirted the shore of massive Seno Otway and came upon Mina Pecket, believed to be the largest surface coal reserve in the world. Enormous slag heaps proved a distraction from the flatness of the landscape. Not a soul to be seen. We came upon the penguin colony at the end of the road and walked out across the bog where the strange little birds guarded their eggs and popped out of holes like prairie dogs. We had the place to ourselves at 8PM with plenty of light in the long Patagonian spring. Some inner code tells these couples (who mate for life) to come to this small stretch of coast – no more than 100 or so yards long – to lay and hatch their eggs. What’s even more amazing is how far these little flightless birds have traveled: they winter in northeast Brazil, on the equator, returning to this spot annually. I couldn’t help thinking that they take the same route as one Portuguese explorer, sailing for Spain, took some 500 years earlier.
G
lad to have had this whole spot to ourselves, Greg and I found great amusement in the rows of penguins that beached themselves, dried off and ambled into the grass in single file. Some of their nesting holes are quite far from the beach, over a hundred yards at least, so the somnolent bunch waddles through the grass, awkward surely, but proud. We bought an instant coffee at the cafeteria which would have killed me if it wasn’t indigestible, and choked on road dust all the way back to the airport.
An interesting item to note: Punta Arenas International Airport closes. This we didn’t know when we pulled into the parking lot to a dark and empty terminal, which is an odd thing to see in any city. In a dark and windy Patagonian plain, it was positively strange as we could see no one at all. I reclined to try to get a few minutes of sleep before Peter’s flight arrived, when I noticed a sole silhouetted figure in the control tower looking down at us. He too was trying to get some shuteye. Just as I was getting comfy, cars started to roll in and a guy appeared and turned on the interior lights. Doors opened and the terminal hummed to life. Within minutes, Peter had landed and we were on the road north.
The two cities of Chilean Patagonia are Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, 150 miles to the north. A smooth paved road connects the two and it’s a fast one, but since we didn’t expect to be driving it in the dark and wary of darting animals, I took it slow. I vaguely remember seeing one other car. Without ceremony we rolled into Natales at three in the morning, talking most of the way of my country’s absurd election results, just one week old. We were in the bottom of Chile, country of Neruda, Allende, Pinochet, Victor Jura, and I was finally tired.
* * * * * * * *
The five hours I slept were the most restful in recent memory. We awoke and breakfasted beside a large sound fringed by islands and snow-capped mountains. Puerto Natales is situated on the wonderfully-named Seno Ultima Esperanza, or Last Hope Sound. So named by explorer Juan Ladrilleros in 1557 while searching for the western entrance to the Strait, one need only look at a map to see how one could despair of not finding an outlet to this long and twisting ocean arm. It’s a long maze-like sail to the open waters to the Pacific. Puerto Natales is pleasant, but we didn’t linger long. After collecting some bottles of water and our park vouchers, we set off for the park, again heading north.
After a few miles the pavement ended and with it my calm. It rained as we drove through large estancias and a landscape that began to look quite dramatic as clouds clung to the tops of low but snow-dusted mountains. The three of us winced when the first large rock jumped up from the road and whacked our undercarriage. It felt like our little Nissan was under siege. We passed by the road to the Cueva del Milodon, surely one of the most famous sites among these parts, and detailed in one of the most influential travel books ever written: Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia. The discovery of the contents of this cave in 1896 – by German landowner, Herman Eberhard – sent the scientific world into a tizzy. Inside, Milward found the bones, skin and fur of an extinct animal, the milodon or giant ground sloth. As the remains were still fresh, many of the leading archaeologists believed the creature might still be alive. Later tests proved that the herbivore died out in the Pleistocene period and the frigid cave preserved its remains. A small parcel of skin in the British Museum (and some scraps on various English mantelpieces) is all that remains of the four-foot piece that Eberhard found on the cave floor. For a history of this escapade and the hysteria over the discovery of the remains, consult Chatwin’s book.
Along a particularly barren stretch of road and camouflaged by the brown grass, we spied our first flock of ñandús, or Darwin’s rheas, large flightless birds, the ostriches of South America. A mile on, we spotted our first herd of guanacos in the distance. We would see these furry camelids dozens of times. Entering the park from the east, the rainy view across broad Laguna Amarga was unspectacular. Clouds covered the range and we drove on to Refugio Las Torres, crossing the Rio Paine on a tiny suspension bridge where I scraped both mirrors of the car on the iron railings.
The mountains of Parc National Torres del Paine offer one of the most emblematic images in all of south America. Perhaps only Macchu Picchu, Iguazu Falls and Rio’s Corcovado are more recognizable. 200,000 people visit the park annually which, when compared to Yosemite, visited by 3.5 million each year – seems like nothing. The simple reason is that it’s so far out of the way, separated from the rest of Chile by miles of ice and fjords, and access is limited to Argentina due to the bumpy little Patagonian roads. We had chosen the southern Hemisphere spring to travel here, hoping to avoid the crowds of high summer while taking advantage of warmer temperatures and longer days. But as we pulled into our refugio and checked in, the day looked pretty bleak.
The centerpiece of the park is the Paine Massif, a concentrated jumble of peaks cut by deep but narrow valleys. Except for the crowds, its North American equivalent might be Wyoming’s Teton Range. But the massif is fringed by deep aquamarine lakes that are fed by the many glaciers that hang off the range. In addition, the west side of the park is hemmed in by the Hielo Sur, an icefield the size of Maine. The massif is circled by the legendary Paine Circuit, an 8 to 10-day hike which we didn’t have time to tackle. Instead, we opted for the 4-5 day portion of the Circuit called “the W” for its shape. I had booked refuges along the way so that we didn’t have to carry tents. Booking ahead here affords the trekker a bunk in which to sleep as well as a hot breakfast and dinner, and a bag lunch.
It’s a bit disheartening to put on one’s waterproof gear in a heavy rain but that’s what we did, setting off for the Valle Ascencio for our first day of trekking. The trail led down to the Rio Ascencio where we crossed the milky grey river on a suspension footbridge and headed up the valley. Despite the downpour, it was a lovely hike and I felt well rested and energized by the scenery despite the fact that the mountain tops were obscured. Massive columns of water hurled themselves off the rock faces and the river churned below us. Wisps of cloud clung to landslides like fur and as we climbed we entered and exited tiny patches of lengue forest before reaching the final leg of the hike, a steep scramble up a massive field of boulders. We all took to the challenge well, picking our way through the boulders, some of them as large as buses. With the valley receding behind us, we reached the top to experience an awesome sight: an indigo lake at the base of a steep glacier. What we didn’t have was a view of the mountains that give the park its name: the 9000-foot spires, or Torres del Paine. Clouds hung around the cliffs and, though we could see a myriad of waterfalls diving into the far end of the lake, we never really could get a clear view of the most-photographed mountains on the continent. Greg, Peter and I headed down and hoped for clearer weather tomorrow.
Somehow we managed to deplete our water supply pretty quickly so we were fortunate to hit Alburgue Chileno where a trio of Cokes sated our collective thirst. This was also our first sampling of
Kryzpos, which is a kind of Chilean version of Pringles, curiously named after the Greek god of bountiful potatoes or salt. Either that or a member of the Polish Solidarity movement. Back at the refugio we dried our clothes and showered. Strange this place: looking around the dining area that was overflowing with Europeans, we seemed to be the youngest by a good thirty years. One sturdy lady in Eurotrekkers and thick socks actually had blue hair. We ordered a bottle of wine and took notes, drinking in as well such conversational nuggets as:
“Hazel, have you seen my dentures? They were right here by the plate of butter a minute ago.”
“Put your bifocals on. That’s not schnitzel you’re eating.”
Or perhaps my translation is to blame. I never have learned German.
We were served a cannelloni cum burrito which managed to taste like neither but satisfied this stomach nonetheless. The next day would be a long one.
* * * * * * *
Weatherwise, our next day didn’t look much more promising. Low clouds clung to the mountains but the drizzle was light. Our plan today was to include around eleven hours of hiking, striking out west and hugging the underside of the Massif, heading up the middle portion of “the W” – the Valle Frances – for at least a portion, then returning down and continuing west further to Refugio Pehoe. The first portion took us under looming Monte Almirante Nieto, the large southeastern chunk of the Massif. To the south, broad rolling pampas made a strange contrast to the sudden upthrust of rock to our right. After two hours we came up beside long Lago Nordenskjöld. On the map, the lake appears as a giant shrimp. We would stay beside it, quite high above, for all morning and much of the afternoon. The horses on the trail helped explain the septuagenarian set.
On a rock high above the lake we stopped for lunch and admired the sculpted cliffs on the far shore. Our box – actually a bag – lunch was quite generous: two sandwiches, an orange, water, juice, trail mix, granola, and two chocolate bars. After a long morning slough, we consumed nearly everything though Greg’s “irrational fear of tomatoes” meant that they were left for the birds. Returning to the trail, the up and down landscape continued. We crossed dozens of river valleys, many with huge waterfalls tumbling over the water-smoothed rocks. All along this stretch one encounters the beautiful and beautifully-named Chilean firebush. Dozen of these wild shrubs dot the park, their large and vivid orange flowers providing a great contrast to the blue of the lakes. We passed through the campground Los Cuernos where some people – sensibly, I thought at this point – finished their day, but we pushed ahead. To our right, obscured by clouds, were the other most emblematic peaks in the park, Los Cuernos (Horns) del Paine. By the time we reached the Rio del Frances and turned up into the mountains, the clouds parted and the sun shined for the first time here. We crossed a 2-person-at-a-time rope bridge over the river and sat down on the rocks to look up the valley.
It took us a long time to get here – some six hours – so we knew we couldn’t get far up the valley, come down and push onto the next refugio before nightfall. Peter stayed behind and Greg and I decided to take an hour or so to hike up the valley to hear what the commotion was all about. The commotion I refer to was the muffled crack of cannons, or so it sounded. As we came to a clearing strewn with boulders and backed by a slippery chute of water, we looked out across the huge Glaciar del Frances and a parabola of mountains, the Cerro Paine Grande. I could have sat for ages as avalanches pulled great volumes of snow down the tallest mountains in the park, many of them starting just below the sharp summits, their booming sound reaching our ears several seconds later.
Back at the streambed we found Peter still patiently scribbling under a warm sun. We stopped to dip our feet in the swift garlandy water. The weather had warmed, the sky cleared appreciably and we were drunk on the scene as we dipped our feet, then continued east. The clouds lifted and we were treated to our first sight of the awesome Horns of Paine. The mountains here possess an unusual trait: the farther one is from them, the more impressive they look. Nowhere was this more apparent than now. As we pulled away from the sheer cliffs of the Horns, the entirety of these two massive hunks of granite seemed to rear itself up from the ground. The sloped semi-forested shoulders gave way to a pinkish sloped scree to two thousand feet of sheer vertical rock. They looked even more dramatic with each blue lake and firebush we put between us. But by now, we were tired. My back and legs felt fine but my feet were aching. I felt a twinging nerve in my left foot that became aggravated with each step. We picked up the pace, keeping the medieval spire of Punta Bariloche – a glacier dripping off its ramparts – on our right. Eleven hours since we set out, we embraced the comforting sight of Lago Pehoe and our refugio down in a meadow.
A couple bottles of wine and a satisfying dinner with some 
new friends from Israel really hit the spot. Orna possessed a fiery mane of hair which made for a severe contrast with that of her boyfriend, who was completely bald. Kim was a Korean-born German who was traveling South America on his own, and, by his account, he was having a fabulous time. We all gathered around a woodstove in a nice little enclave watching the Cuernos in the still vivid light of 10PM. Peter fell asleep before the fire and I wandered outside to drink a cup of tea and view the stars. It took some searching, if only for the insistent light that hung around until 11, to locate the constellations. A cook helped me out:
“El cruz del Sur.”
There it was. The Southern Cross.
* * * * * * *
Late last night, a young woman tiptoed into the remaining top bunk in our shared quarters with Kim and two South Londoners whose accent Peter found particularly whiny. She would later appear in our travels as the young Parisian, Celine, but that morning she slept in. The staff awoke her as breakfast was ending and the large, newly-built refugio emptied out.
I found out the place opened only four weeks before, which explained its spic and span cleanliness and the outer building in the distance was the old place. A labyrinth of trails eased away from the refugio and up through a thorny patch of briars and brambles. The Sendero Grey, our day three hike, was to be short and likely one of our trip’s highlights. A blue gap in the morning clouds portended a clear day and we set out up the pass and strode beside the small Lago de los Patos, named, I supposed for the two islands that vaguely resembled shoes. Meadows alternated with rock outcrops which plunged into small stands of aromatic forest. The mountains to our right – the massif proper – were still in the clouds but we could see far to the west peak after peak covered by glacier. Scrambling up a rock revealed the first view of the long finger of Lago Grey. Icebergs gathered at its far end, blown by winds that were gentle at the moment. But continuing on, we pushed to a high point where the winds whipped and we each donned an extra layer or two. Before us spread a sight so awe-inspiring, we gulped before speaking, verily genuflecting before sitting: Glaciar Grey. The Grey Glacier is but one of over one hundred arms of the Hielo Sur, the largest piece of ice in the Southern Hemisphere (outside Antarctica). It seemed as if this entire monstrous river of ice marbled with mud and stone lay before us, dipping up and down an assembly of mountains too numerous to count. Stocky icebergs increased in size and number closer to the glacier, which is about three miles wide and split by a mile-wide mountain obstruction, or nunatak. This 1000-foot hill was still heavily forested on its upper reaches, stranded in a sea of ancient and slow-moving ice.
Further on, the plume of Salto Olguin tumbled off the massif and cut through a of granite groove no more than twelve feet wide, which Peter had to desecrate with one of his many bowel movements. I never met anyone who crapped so much. Perhaps he stashed away a pantry worth of prunes, bran flakes and celery, but I never saw it. Anyway, if memory serves me correctly, (and I’m no wizard with numbers), it was his number two number two of the day.
Refugio Grey rests beside the ice-studded lake of the same name. A crescent-shaped iceberg the size of a bulldozer lazed in the still waters behind the modest building. Tomas, a young and gregarious Santiaguinero, took care of the refuge and showed us to our bunks. This refuge was easily the most primitive of our trip and therefore possessed the most charm. The two levels of the wood hut were heated by a single wood stove and the kitchen stove was powered by a generator that hummed at the lake’s edge. Peter napped and Greg and I took off to get a closer look at the glacier.
A rain started as we reached Mirador Grey, a dramatic lookout on a sloping piece of rock that pointed at the mighty block of ice. Tremendous calvings sliced off chunks and their thundering sounds reached us seconds after the pieces fell. We wound our way closer over scree-covered slopes in an obstinate rain until we reached a smooth rock platform beside the glacier. The lake’s waters had cleansed the recently-calved pieces an indigo that seemed lit from the inside. I found myself lost in the mere thought of these pieces slicing off. Their molecules had slowly inched forward out of the highest mountains since the Ice Age. Now, here before us, they took their final dive before the lake would whittle down their bergs to nothing, and they would return to water, later returning to the skies as vapour. But at this moment the cleaving had stopped. We stood instead in awe of this wall of ancient ice.
The warmth of the refugio was cozy at an enjoyable dinner fueled by wine. At a long table, a dozen or so of us squeezed in: several Brits, a pair of continent-hopping Belgians, and two young guys from Indiana on break from med school, on their own miniature Motorcycle Diaries. They were in the midst of doing the entire Paine Circuit and had made it here on the afternoon of their third day, a journey that takes most five. They had come here by way of Argentina and relayed their stories of how they punished their rental car on that country’s treacherous dirt roads, crossing into Chile in the middle of the night and hiking in the dark.
The staff at Refugio Grey offers campers the opportunity to buy dinner so a wave of folks came in while we reclined at table. All of us moved over to the L-shaped couch centered around a small wood-burning stove, and ordered another box –yes, box – of Chilean wine: El Gato Negro. After a couple of boxes, that stuff really starts to taste good I’ll tell you. Following an earlier reconnaissance mission, Peter scored us a chocolate bar the size of an oven mitt. We had a laugh over one of the postcards I purchased earlier at the little shed in the campground. Since it already had writing on it, a string of numbers adding up to eleven.
Two young dudes from Kentucky joined us, each with the look of a lost puppy. I was just thinking that they were stoned when their refusal of dinner (“no, it’s cool, man”) confirmed it altogether. Also joining us was a lively couple from St. John’s, Newfoundland. In their singsong-y Irish lilt they told us of their five days thus far on the Paine Circuit, some of which they described as downright uninteresting. When I commented that they must be exhausted, they mentioned that they could have packed a bit less. Seeing the pairs of jeans, dozens of shirts and TWO DRESSES rolled across their bunks earlier in the day, I would say they overpacked just a tad. As the wine flowed, we wondered if this guy really knew how good he had it. He easily had the most attractive mate in the greater Torres del Paine area, and therefore most likely, the hottest chick in St. John’s, Newfoundland. And here’s the kicker: she’s a brewer. For Molson’s no less! Take about hitting the mother lode.
At about 11 PM, Tomas suddenly became concerned with the handful of people (I didn’t see any) that may have retired to bed. By now, we were making a lot of noise.
“Tomás, come on. It’s early!”
A delta of lines materialized on his face, each one leading to a wide and unpretentious grin. We poured him a glass and he dropped it, the subject, not the glass. But it wasn’t too long until he entreated us again.
“I can build you a fire on the lake and you can make much noise there.”
But we are all comfortably ensconced on a large couch, by a toasty fire, with bars of chocolate and a freshly uncorked – or unboxed – liter of wine. After a while, we gave up our protest and Tomás had the crestfallen look of a parent who breaks up a play date. I’ll miss that guy, I thought. But as a postscript to a fine day, when we all retired shitfaced to our bunks and Peter turned on his headlamp to fuss with his Ipod, we caught a glimpse of the Canadian girl in a thong as she climbed into bed. Did I mention she was a brewer?
* * * * * * *
We settled up with Tomás and had a leisurely breakfast the next day. The three of us then set out for Mirador Grey to get another look at the Glacier. Though we could see no ice calving, we saw promise in a tiny band of clear sky dozens of miles back in the glacier, where it slid between the tallest mountains. This bright blue slowly spread like a blot of ink. The spot was no less fascinating today. At some point in the past before it had retreated to its present position, Glaciar Grey carved an intricate latticework of lines and waves on the promontory on which we now stood. And standing in the middle of the forked tongue of ice, a 400-foot tall mound, covered in trees – called a nunatak – rises from the lake floor. Over the millennia, ice had crept up its sides, scouring the vegetation before receding with the warming of the earth. Only the top remained untouched, covered in a dense forest of trees. It’s not surprising that nunataks – like islands – are among the world’s great examples of biological isolation.
Today was to be a day of leisure as we slowly made our way back to Refugio Pehoe, following the long pod of Lago Grey. We enjoyed a pot of tea by the lake’s edge and set out, losing Peter once or twice as he dove down into the bushes to move the bowels that wait for nothing. We witnessed the crimson hood of the Magellanic Woodpecker in a tall tree, then filled up our bottles at a rushing stream and looked back: we had climbed quite a way up from the lake’s edge, and the small envelope of blue sky we saw in the morning now broadened to cover the entire glacier. Stretching some thirty miles to the north, its blinding white was stunning. We settled on a tall bluff high above the lake for lunch. And more quickly, now, the blue drew across the entire sky and we bathed in the warmth, even napping under the cloudless sky. Only a benevolent breeze off the ice slightly disturbed a perfect silence. From here, we could take in the immensity of the ice that covered dozens of miles of mountains, the bulbous nunatak splitting the glacier in half. To our right, tiny wisps of clouds fingered the jagged peaks of the impossibly steep Cerro Paine Grande and snow stubbornly clung to the dizzying slopes. A lonely condor lazily rode the thermals above us; against the mountain brightness, we could sometimes only see its shadow. Some thousand feet below my dangling feet, small icebergs slid by and across the lake. Beyond, a row of remote mountain peaks grappled with the ice that seemed to suppress them in silence. As we got up to leave, I couldn’t help thinking that this was one of the most restful times I’ve ever spent in nature, and in a setting I would never forget. Its memory would carry me all the way to Lago Pehoe that afternoon. These words, from perhaps the greatest poet in the Spanish language, politician, socialist, diplomat and the voice of South America, came to me. Pablo Neruda wrote in Amor, America (1400):
Before the wig and frockcoat
were the rivers, the arterial rivers,
the cordilleras, on whose scraped escarpments
the condor of the snow seems immobile,
humidity and density, the thunderclap
not-yet named, the planetary pampas.
A
fter the warmth and great atmosphere of Refugio Grey, returning to the new and relatively sterile Refugio Pehoe seemed a bit disappointing. However, the good weather continued and we lounged in a wide meadow with the omnipresent Patogonian goose – or Caiquen – in these parts, falling in with a lovely Israeli couple and our friends from Newfoundland. To take advantage of the wonderful weather and the long day, Peter, Greg and I set out again after dinner, bounding through the gorse on the slopes of the azure Lago Pehoe. We hopped from hill to hill high above the lake while swallows swooped across the pampas and a terrifying mountain overhung the valley like a stern sentinel.
* * * * * * * *
The boat left at 12:30. The sun was brilliant and everyone lounged in the grass before its arrival. We boarded the catamaran that took us across the wide lake for the panoramic views familiar to all Chileans and to most South Americans. As we pulled away, the complexity of the massif, and the distance we traveled, became more revealing. Never have I seen a range or grouping of mountains which changes its appearance with every step or change of vantage. With the jewel-like foreground of the lake, the Cuernos of Paine appeared as they do on the postcards. The boat plied past Salto Grande and pulled into a dock where we boarded a bus that took us to our car, hopefully safe on the other side of the park.
A dirt road cuts through the rolling pampa at the south end of the massif, skirting miles-long lakes seldom explored by visitors. Guanacos ranged the hillsides, often stopping at the road’s edge. A flock of nandús crossed the plain toward an iridescent pond where a solitary swan drowsed. After some stunning vistas, and a bus change at the park’s entrance, we found our car, filthy but there. I was sad to leave this magical place, sadder still that I would likely never see it again. We were all tired from a long journey today, but one that involved no work on our part. We set off in the late afternoon and I looked forward to driving into Argentina. Driving away, we kept catching what we thought were our final glimpses of the Torres del Paine and the massif. Scarcely did we know that across the Argentine pampas, the sun would illuminate these mountains hours from now, and we’d see them from many miles away.
B
y now, guanacos stumbled across the road by the dozen, their heavy heads and thick necks giving them a lopsided, camelid gait. As the mountains gave way to dry mesas and huge ranches, the animals began to disappear but solitary birds of various sizes consistently loitered beside the flat and dusty track. We reached the border settlement of Cerro Castillo, a one-horse town without the horse. Leaving Chile wasn’t much of a problem and entering Argentina wasn’t difficult either. Watching the official stamp my passport, I wonder what he had done to deserve such a posting. There are only just over a dozen crossings between the two countries and this windswept patch of dust and lonely grass was surely the most remote. This sad soul sat behind a desk in a solitary white building, the only shelter of any kind for miles. He had the sad countenance and droopy mustache of a bureaucrat, and Christ and Guevara hung on the wall next to the Argentine tricolor. We pitched our leftover fruit and drove on.
Vast distances bring out the reflective in me so I 
got to thinking about Argentine Patagonia’s reputation here. It’s easy to get lost. And it’s for that reason – as well as the country’s neutrality during the war – that Argentina found herself harboring fleeing Nazis after finding herself home to anarchists, Bolsheviks and Welsh Nonconformists. But fifty years before that, the two most feared outlaws of America’s Wild West, after escaping a Wyoming jail, reappeared here. It was easy to see why Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would be drawn here. As the American west was settled, and therefore properly governed and policed, the outlaws of the era became marginalized. They sailed from New York, arriving at the place where few roads or rails penetrated the vast stretches of pastureland, where no cities had sprung up, where few laws were enforced; in essence, a place that most resembled the American west of the late 19th century. Though they would lead a quiet life in their early years, an addiction to banditry ensured that they would terrorize the populace in their final years, ultimately dying (though never confirmed) in a shootout in Bolivia in 1909, coincidentally later investigated by Rene Barrientos, the man who would end the life of another outlaw who wished to foment revolution on this continent several years later, himself an Argentine: Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Though he never ventured this far south, the young Porteño doctor became familiar with the bleak Patagonian steppe on his famous journey, made so by the publication and later, movie, of his “Motorcycle Diaries”. Looking across this bleak wasteland and then into the eyes of some shifty gas station attendants, it was easy to see how this land could breed or support the outlaw, the guerilla, the desperado. In optimistically-named Esperanza (Hope) we turned north on Route 4, a smooth, arrow-straight stretch of road. The Torres could still be seen clearly in the distance, puncturing a hole in an immense sky. We had left the park three hours earlier.
Here was an altogether different type of beauty. After days of craggy peaks, indigo lakes, rushing streams and islands of ice, it was almost refreshing to bask in the emptiness of Argentine Patagonia. For as far as we could see, we could see nothing. The land here was like a big void. Where there should have been fences, there were none. Where we should have seen wildlife, nothing stirred. Where our vantage afforded us views of great distances, nothing but a rough carpet of dust and sagebrush stretched to the horizon
Our little Altima shook as I brought it up to 100 MPH. Fortunately, above that, it well-nigh purred. But the first of many potholes shook me to my senses. Every three or four miles, a tiny rectangle of road was missing and the pavement gave way to red dirt before the blacktop resumed a foot or two later. I gripped the wheel and clenched my teeth as each one approached. For miles now, the road didn’t waver an inch. A single truck passed in the opposite direction and I saw its approach a good ten minutes earlier. At one point, we got out and lay across the stripes in the middle of the road. Almost on cue, a car coming out of nowhere nearly flattened us as we rolled onto the shoulder. The sound of the plains was awesome. A light, cooling, Andean wind massaged the spiniflex and our voices carried into the distance; with nothing to bounce off, they seemed to disappear.
To the west, the sun lowered over the still visible peaks of the Torres as well as the border peaks to its north. All in one vista at this southern tip of a continent, we were witnessing the last gasp of the Andes before they plunged below the waves. This chain of mountains, on the Pacific tectonic plate, starts in Alaska in an almost unbroken narrow line. Just beyond the mountains lay the wooded islands of the Chilean archipelago and the open Pacific. Some 100 miles away to our right stirred the frigid waters of the south Atlantic. Here in this desolate landscape, I became awed at the thought that southern Patagonia was likely the only place on earth where one could dip ones toes in two oceans in one day.
The tedium continued and as the sun lowered, a gauzy red replaced the brown hue of the landscape. The road didn’t curve; it only climbed slowly, almost imperceptibly. Then, without warning, we quite literally fell into a gaping hole. Apparently we had been climbing for miles and here, with a series of gentle switchbacks that led downward, we hurtled over the edge of a chasm that must have been twenty miles wide, carved millennia ago by glaciers, and leading all the way to the Atlantic coast. At the valley center, a thin ribbon of water wound its lazy way to the ocean and the landscape bloomed in a fiery red. We paused to take in the breathtaking view of the undersides of pink and orange clouds as the sun set at 10:30 PM. In darkness, we wound down the valley walls and into El Calafate.
Calafate is certainly one of the major towns in Argentine Patagonia, but from reading the travel books, one wouldn’t expect to see much. So it was with great surprise that we motored down the pleasant main avenue on a busy Friday night. Couples strolled and shared icecream. Restaurant patrons puffed cigars while they waited for an open table. Shops were open late. The town had a look of mild prosperity. The main drag looked a bit like a Colorado ski town. We salivated at the thought of devouring some late-night beef at one of the town’s many asadors, or smokehouses. We penetrated the darkest districts of the town in search of accommodation. Dogs howled constantly and prowled across the dusty streets. Finally we found a decent hotel.
At an asado, they pretty much keep the beef coming until you say stop. Though we could hardly see through the restaurant for the cigarette smoke, they sat us near the asador and delivered beef and wine until we were all lethargic from the meal.
If one can judge a country’s poverty by the look of its stray dogs, then Argentina fares pretty well. Calafate was positively seething with dogs. The gathered on corners like gangs; they barked at intersections like traffic cops; they hung around taxi stands like vagrants; and they ran faster and with more purpose than I’ve ever seen before in any pet. I’m not sure where they were going or what they were after but it sure seemed important. All looked fairly healthy, as if the food scraps of Patagonia were nourishing. I saw none of the emaciated skeletons I saw in Peru and that pass for meals in much of the impoverished parts of the world. The retrievers, setters, sheepdogs and collies I saw looked as if they never had far to look for food. One even found little lapdogs – like one might see in an Upper East Side penthouse – peeing on lampposts and baring their teeth against a larger aggressor.
Peter sprawled across our shared bed like he was making snow angels, so I slid into my bag and tried to ignore the howling and clawing outside the hotel window: the well-fed dogs of Calafate.
* * * * * * * *
Our clothes were in desperate need of washing so we were elated by the news that the hotel offered a laundry service.
“Just leave your clothes in the laundry bag and they will be washed”, we were told by the friendly manager who was patient with my Spanish.
We split up to explore the town. The weather was warm and clear and Calafate was in the business of doing business. Shopkeepers followed me around as I perused alpaca sweaters, gaucho hats and Patagonian bric-a-brac. Only the fellow behind the post office counter had the pissy look of a civil servant. We lunched outdoors on a decent pizza and planned the day, moving our next evening’s accommodation down the road to a less expensive hostel. The three of us were in the car at one, hurtling west down a paved road that skirted the shore of Lago Argentino, the third largest lake in South America. The lake positively gleamed like a sapphire, spilling across the rolling folds of hills which were blanketed with pampa grass. There was no activity in the lake at all, no boat traffic, no lakefront homes, just miles and miles of empty land enclosing an indigo mirage. We reached the entrance to Parc Nacional Perito Moreno, our ultimate destination of all this driving. But we were politely told that the entrance road was under construction and that it would reopen at four. Well, there’s not a lot to do, as we discovered, in the Argentine plains, with two hours to kill and 40 miles to the nearest town. My map indicated a village on the lakeshore that offered boat trips to the glaciers at the lake’s western end: Puerto Deseado. The road ended rather dramatically at the lake’s edge where three military cruisers – which passed for the Argentine Navy in these parts – gently bobbed in a water of astonishing blue. The shipshape white contrasted spectacularly with the water and the thrusting ice-clad Andes behind. We could find no sign of life in the village so we drove on rather aimlessly, hoping we’d find a cowboy that needed help mending a fence.
As we came back toward the park, I spied a sign that advertised a nearby estancia. Twenty miles down a rutted, dusty road we came to the home. Stepping inside, we were greeted by Johanna, a kind, young woman who could vaguely remember someone stopping in last summer. Greg ordered us a bottle of wine and I scored some homemade cheese and chorizo. This was one of those times where the traveler wishes time would stop. Suddenly, we were in no hurry to return to the park. Spread out before us, just beyond the wine and food on our wooden table, was the last gasp of the Argentine pampa, miles of broad, pale plain dotted with sheep. Past it, a remote arm of Lago Argentino crawled mirage-like across the flatness like a spill. And past the lake, the thick glacier-clad line of the Andes. A curious goat ambled up to us as we stood on the porch, and her babies dove under her in a frenzy of feeding. From the inside, we watched cruel winds tear up the landscape, their spouts spewing dust. Horses huddled together from the violence and we got tipsy on Malbec. Johanna came from Patagonia, but from a long way away. She told me she came down here for the work. I asked her what work she did on the estancia and she said this was it: serve customers. One would have to be seriously lost to find this place, and seriously in need of nourishment to brave the road and the distance. It was all fine for her, she said. “I always have the view and the wind.”
I could have stayed a long time here. Perhaps napped in this very chair. But we had come a long way and a particularly unique piece of ice awaited us down another dusty dirt road.
The Perito Moreno, named for the first European explorer to see it ?, is one of the only advancing glaciers in the world, outside the polar regions. It measures some ???
FLESH OUT – check books and website
B
ack in Calafate, we discovered that our dirty underwear was mysteriously missing from the hotel laundry, and the patient woman behind the desk found herself in an embarrassing situation, particularly since I couldn’t adequately convey in Spanish someone else’s misfortune upon discovering they’ve been saddled with our vile shorts and socks. She asked that we check back so we had dinner and got settled in the cheaper hostel down the street. In a confusing town of bureaucracy and underwear heists, it should have been no surprise that there was a mixup in this evening’s rooms. I had to share a dark room with three Frenchwomen, one of whom was Celine, our friend from Refugio Pehoe in Chile, which now seemed half a world away.
* * * * * * * *
Both Celine and I awoke in the dark. The slumbering women stirred in their bunks. All of us were heading north to the village of El Chalten, they by a tourbus, we by our trusty Nissan. The three of us made one final stop at the hotel to try to locate the missing underwear, though we all knew the answer. A very kind gentleman explained that they had not been located and had the crestfallen look of a deliverer of bad news. We located the hotel laundry but all we could find was four socks soaking in what appeared to ammonia. None of them belonged to Greg. As I negotiated some sort of underwear settlement in Spanish, Peter liberated the breakfast buffet of most of its pastries. We hit the road, and the cop at the checkpoint flashed a smile that seemed to indicate he knew where our missing clothes were. I wouldn’t wish my dirty underwear – and, by extension, those of Peter and Greg – on anyone, even a brace of scheming Argentines.
For those wishing to drive to El Chalten, I offer this advice: bring along at least a spare tire, copious amounts of water, some sort of mouthguard to prevent the grinding of teeth and the swallowing of tongue, as well as – if possible – a personal masseuse for the post-trip rubdown. Though strewn with stones that flew at us like missles, the rough dirt track between the two towns resembles clotted brown sugar. How my companions managed to sleep through the assault I don’t know but I gripped the wheel in terror as I dislodged every stone for nearly 200 miles, each flying up and loudly slapping the undercarriage like shrapnel.
But here the landscape looked its very bleakest and I became transfixed as I rattled the car through the dust. El Chalten rests at the base of the Andes just north of Lago Viedma, another massive lake formed by glacier melt. We thundered away from Lago Argentino and into a desert of stubborn grasses, rocky mesas and the occasional cowskull. Waves of beige dirt pushed at the horizon and rounded stone outcrops were creased like curtains, ancient rainwater carving out the sides like the canals of Mars. A wonderfully desolate place, it looked like a bleaker version of the Badlands. Every twenty miles a dirt track would intersect the road. “Estancia Los Hermanos – 56 km”. I wondered what it must be like to have to go out and get that bottle of aspirin for a sick wife in the middle of the night. The nearest stores of any kind were over one hundred miles away down bone jarring roads whose ruts swallow cars like ours. Halfway to Chalten, we passed an estancia that was actually situated on the road. The row of tall poplars, used throughout the region to buffet estancia homes from the vicious winds, was the only green we saw. As far as I looked in all directions, the land was owned by one person. No fences, no sheep, no cattle. What was this land used for? I couldn’t imagine eking out an existence in this place of bare deserts, teetering boulders, soundless save for the wind.
We neared Lago Viedma where mercifully a sealed road began. Large bluffs rose up and a lone cowboy on a horse rode fences with an eager dog. The pavement ended just as I became comfortable with the smooth ride. Miniature factories turned rocks into slightly-smaller paving stones; trucks spread them across great stretches of road. By noon, we crossed the Rio de las Vueltas and rolled into a sad and decrepit town. Opening the trunk, our packs were coated in a thick dusting of Patagonian dirt. We had reached El Chalten.
Filled with near horror at the site, we didn’t dally long before we were on the trail. Quickly ascending a hill, I looked back upon the town. Only founded, or more accurately, cobbled together in 1985, Chalten came into being to serve the tourist traffic for the region, almost entirely hikers wishing to catch a glimpse of nearby Mount Fitzroy. The immediate area offers some of the best trekking, mountaineering and ice climbing in all of South America. A grid plan was laid – streets and broad dirt avenues intersecting one other – but few seemed to settle on this windswept edge of the plain. Winds sweeping down from the Andes constantly blow this sad place to smithereens. Dogs cower under flapping blue tarpaulins used to cover squatter’s shacks and makeshift homes. On opposite street corners, two men each erected small, charmless cabins built from cinder blocks, seeming to outdo each other in ugliness. I had to wonder if the tourists would ever come.
Up in the Andean foothills, we discovered that we had taken a wrong
trail and headed for Cerro Torre, a wide, glacier-clad mountain of great beauty, but not our destination. A long, and quite steep trail heading north brought us closer on course, but we ran out of water and the dryness parched our throats to silence. Cresting a hill, the site of a wide lake lapped by wind fill us with relief. We sat on a beach of small stones and guzzled clear water. Spires of clouds whipped around the unbelievably lofty Mount Fitzroy, and we were glad to be here. The ground became boggy, then sodden, then nearly impassable. Were it not for logs, we’d be waist-deep in mud. Reaching Campamento Poincenot at a hollow before the Fitzroy massif, we had come as far as we were prepared to go.
Campers pitched tents in a small grove of trees and it was easy to see why: ferocious winds whipped down from the summits, blowing dust all over the place. A moment of calm as we rested on a log, then a violent gust threw dust across the sky and coated it in yellow. The winds could stand a hiker straight up. As much as I wanted to get closer to the mountain our detour delayed us and we had to start heading down. Crossing over streams on log bridges, we looked back at the granite spires of Mount Fitzroy, first ascended only in 1952. On its other side was Chile. FITZROY BACKGROUND.
The trail back was a long one and of a constant descent. It cut through stands of trees and bounded over bare patches of rock. We traveled high above the Valle de las Vueltas, bathed now in late afternoon light, the tiny river wending its way through the flat. Just beyond, the pampa started suddenly. From here to the Atlantic, there was nothing but empty plains. Tired now, we wound down to the edge of El Chalten, entering at the back of a field of horses. Sudden tempests of wind blew apart the dirt street. A couple walking together huddled against each other, looking like some strange animal. But just as soon as they started, they stopped. We ducked into a shop to buy some souvenirs but I was more intrigued by the town. What added to its strangeness is the fact that Chalten seemed to be blessed by some quite nice restaurants, each one spaced apart from its competitor by broad fields of partially-built shacks. We would enjoy the best meal of our trip tonight – steaks, wine, coffee, dessert – and pay next to nothing for the gourmet luxury. Our friend Celine sat at the table opposite us. We stumbled back late, enlivened by wine, and hurried by wind.
* * * * * * * *
Our hotel last night. We silently snickered as we listened in as a crowd of Japanese tourists fumbled with their room key. The reason? Our three pairs of well-worn boots just outside our door. Even the Patagonian wind couldn’t disperse that smell.
I slept well in the middle of three twin beds which rested side by side like coffins. But I was willing to let go of my passenger fear and let Greg take the wheel today. So we said goodbye to El Chalten the way anyone does: with a cloud of dust. Wild nandus bounded away from the road as the car hurtled through the pampas. I was lost in the reverie of classical music’s greatest paean to these wild regions: the ballet Estancia, by Argentina’s most popular composer after Piazzola, Alberto Ginastera. Argentine cowboy obsession is even greater than what Hollywood had for the American version for so many years in the 20th century. And Ginastera’s piece epitomizes the wide open spaces, the desolation, the harsh winds, the open strings of the guitar, and the wild frenetic dances of the gaucho, the cowboy of the plains. The raucous ending is one of the most fiery and joyous passages in the entire music literature of Latin America. Patagonia’s answer to Don Quixote arrived in 1872, also in the form of an epic poem. El Gaucho Martin Fierro by Jose Hernandez, begins:
Here I’ll sit and sing
to the beat of my guitar,
‘cause a man who’s kept awake
by a heavy sorrow,
like a lonely bird
consoles himself with song.
For over 2300 stanzas, Hernandez gave life to the plains and broadcasted the troubled voice of the gaucho, whose lands were being expropriated by the more privileged classes and who was recruited to fight in Argentina’s civil war. Eschewing possessions, the gaucho was seen as a vagrant and therefore an outlaw. Looking across rocky land as we barreled south down route 40, it was difficult to see what anyone could want with such scarcity of water, shade or arable land. But it wasn’t difficult for me to envy the life of the gaucho, at least today, out mending fences in the sunshine, a bald mesa as a backdrop. Of course, it must be a trying way to live so I leave it to them.
Route 40 – “La Cuarenta” as it is known in these parts – maintains a mythology roughly akin to America’s Route 66. Argentine road movies invariably travel it, passing through bleak desert plains, always with the shadow of the Andes just to the west. The road, paved only in portions, slices down the entire country top to bottom, rarely more than a few dozen miles from the mountains. It has inspired dozens of songs. I found it amazing that this stretch could even find its way onto the most detailed of maps. It literally looked and felt like a desert driveway, barely indistinguishable from the land it traversed. Again, huge stones bounced up and pelted the undercarriage. It felt like we were under siege. I wasn’t sure what misery might befall us first, a flat tire or a punctured gas tank. I was amazed that neither had happened yet. I put it out of my mind and listened to Talking Heads’ The Big Country.
When, after several hours we reached the sapphire shore of Lago Argentino, then, through more pampa landscape to Esperanza again, I could see the hope in the town’s name. The sign at the bar indicated that this was the only gas and beer for hours in any direction. At a petrol station, two hardscrabble characters did their level best with gristly steak, dousing the grey matter with vinegar. We moved on east and passed nothing but birds, a gaucho and his dogs, and three cars in the opposite direction. Just outside of Rio Gallegos, the tire blew. We changed it in ten minutes, well, flat.
If countries offer awards for least inspiring cities, then surely Rio Gallegos holds a place of distinction in Argentina. It had been ten days since we had encountered a settlement of any real size so the thought of going there interested me somewhat, despite the warning from the tourbooks. From what I read, we could only hope to have about as much fun as we would in, say, Akron. Here we actually encountered light traffic, in itself a Patagonian rarity, but that wasn’t going to lift my spirits. Its grid pattern of streets was boring, and even the tallest building for a thousand miles (five stories) looked like a reject of 1970s Floridian architecture. Though difficult we found a mediocre place to eat and stopped into a tour office.
Clothed in a smart business suit, Amanda looked positively cosmopolitan. We were searching for an estancia where we could enjoy a hearty dinner and bed down on a ranch. Several of those around Gallegos were the size of European countries and I fancied lazing around a campfire, while a cowboy tuned his E string. In halting English, Amanda explained that all of the ones nearby were down long and bumpy dirt roads of dozens of miles. Without a spare tire now, we had to pass. We were just a few miles from the Atlantic but it couldn’t be seen from anywhere. Even the local beach was 15 miles down a rutted road. She admitted that there wasn’t much to do anywhere. Must be an exciting job, I thought. Even watching the grass grow is not an option. So we hit the sealed road and got out of this entirely forgettable city.
The Rio Santa Cruz empties into the Atlantic to north of modern Gallegos. In 1520, the Santiago, one of the ships of the Magellan fleet, broke up in heavy storms, washing the crew onto the snowy, barren coast. The ship was on a reconaisance mission to sight the strait or search for food. The remainder of the expedition stayed some seventy miles to the north, at an inlet they christened Port Saint Julian. It was there that the crew endured its most trying time in its 60,000 mile journey. In addition to the loss of two ships, the armada endured punishing winds and darkness. Magellan also quelled a mutiny on Easter of that year, torturing, killing or stranding fifty members of his crew to set an example for the rest. The stranded crew of Santiago – led by Juan Serrano - walked some seventy miles through the brush without food to reach the rest of the Armada, first crossing the three-mile wide mouth of the Rio Santa Cruz on the broken planks of their ship. None of the starving crew had seen a single native in two months. One day that changed.
Pigafetta, the armada’s chronicler, wrote: “…we saw a giant who was on the shore, quite naked, and who danced, leaped and sang, while he threw sand and dust on his head…” The crew imitated the native’s behavior as a sign of friendship. It was thus that the Europeans made contact with the Tehuelche, the scattered group that settled the vast plains of southern South America. The Tehuelche males were exceptionally tall – over six feet – and their stature was augmented by their elaborate dress and large boots made of guanaco hide. The crew traded with the natives, shared meals and made efforts at evangelization. One native accepted the Sacrament and was christened John. But when a cache of weapons was found on shore, Magellan dropped the pretence of civility and had several Tehuelche bound in the ship’s hold. They were freed before the crew set sail, and Magellan eventually gave them the moniker pathagoni, a name which suggested the Spanish word patacones, or “dogs with great paws”, alluding to the outsized feet of the natives. Thus the Bigfoot Indians gave name to this entire third of South America, known ever since as Patagonia.
Sighting a few more guanacos now, we had swept east as we traveled south and were now only miles from the Chilean border near Cabo los Virgenes. A string of small volcanic cones punctured the plains, their lava worked into nire grasses. The Cape juts into the Atlantic like an angry finger. This piece of land made history on October 21st, 1520, when Magellan’s fleet, after a year at sea - including the freezing winter spent hundreds of miles north – reached this point and turned to the west. Could this be the water route through the Americas? He named the penguin-clad cape after the feast day on which it was first sighted. Just over a month later, the Armada de Mollucca reached the open waters of the Pacific, achieving what was thought to be impossible. 250 sailors had left Spain to claim the Spice Islands. Little did the crew know that they were half a world away from their destination. Their captain would be slain in the Philippines and only 12 sailors would return to Spain. Many would be imprisoned for the Port Saint Julian mutiny.
The border post at Punta Delgada was no less bleak but a lot more busy than that at Cerro Castillo. After passing through we sighted the Strait of Magellan, spread out before us like a gray sheet. On the opposite shore the hazy outline of Tierra del Fuego. Further on, we reached the abandoned Estancia San Gregorio, a collection of picturesque buildings dating back to 1882. These buildings and the 8000 square-miles of land surrounding them were the estate of wool baron Jose Menendez, largest landowner in Southern Patagonia. At one time, two million sheep grazed these fields. Now, the only moving thing was grass and a creaky door to a shed. I peered in to see a fallen in ceiling and coats of sheep heaped on a stone floor, piled up like stacks of dirty cotton. A series of yellow buildings lay across the shore of the strait, sad and stoic in late afternoon light. Seesawed against the beach were the skeletal remains of the Amadeo and the Ambassador, former ships of the Mendendez fleet, their ribs now rusting in the wind. Back in Punta Arenas, a decent dinner at Café La Luna where we placed a flag on a map of the world to indicate our residence. Three weeks later I would recommend that a friend stop here for dinner when her ship pulled into port. She too added a flag to the crowded conurbation of New York City.
* * * * * * * *
Next morning early. We catch the ferry to Tierra del Fuego and leave the car on the mainland. The day is absolutely perfect. Swooping sooty albatrosses dart across our broad wake, their wingtips not quite touching the waves. Our tub of a boat cuts across the strait. To the right, the distant island mountains of the Cordilliera Darwin and the southernmost point of mainland Americas, Cruz de los Mares. Certainly another important figure in Patagonia’s history is Charles Darwin, who, while exploring these waters aboard the HMS Beagle, began to formulate some of the theories that later led to the most controversial publication in the history of science, On the Origin of Species.
But it was a native to the region who would make his own peculiar contribution to history. On the first voyage of the HMS Beagle in 1830, captained by Robert Fitzroy, the crew captured a young Fuegian native. They named him Jemmy Button. Button was brought to London and was taught the finer points of English and Christianity, two things Victorian England did not think were mutually exclusive. Though he mixed with London society and became a bit of a self-possessed dandy, to the English, Button – the same as any captured specimen from any part of the world – was part freakshow, part proof that a solid grounding in Victorian values would make any person civilized. Darwin was on the Beagle voyage that returned the captive to his native lands at the bottom of the world. Apparently, Button was not very well-liked among his island counterparts. According to Bruce Chatwin, Button stood on the deck and pointed to the natives in canoes:
“’Yapoos! Dirty – Fools – Monkeys – Not men’” perhaps assisting Darwin to his biggest idea. For the mere sight of the Fuegians helped trigger off the theory that Man had evolved from an ape-like species and that some men had evolved further than others.” It was an idea borne of Victorian England.
We motored on across the wide channel toward the sloping, treeless hills of Tierra del Fuego. Isla Grande, the main island of the region, is the largest island in South America, roughly equivalent in size to England. The long body of freshwater half in two countries – Lago Fagnano – is larger than any lake, loch or lough. But despite its size, just a few thousand people call Tierra del Fuego home; most of them are to be found in Ushuaia, at the bottom of the island. It was way down there that Darwin, displaying a Victorian sensitivity to all things not English, declared the Fuegian natives, “the most abject and miserable creatures”. As to how the island got its name, Magellan noticed the smoke from the fires of natives while traveling through the Strait and christened the place, “Tierra del Fumar”, the Land of Smoke. But, according to legend, King Charles of Spain said, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. Not only the name of the island, but the phrase has survived the centuries.
Punta Arenas enjoys an orientation unique among Chilean cities: it faces east. So now we were heading in that direction to reach the opposite shore twenty miles away, the hamlet of Porvenir situated on Bahia Chilota. A lonely lighthouse guarded the harbor entrance. Strewn about were hardy yet brightly-painted fishing boats. We disembarked and took a taxi into town, asking the driver to drop us off at a place to eat lunch. There were two.
At the restaurant, we looked down the neatly-trimmed topiary of Calle Philippi to the pleasant bay. Filling lomo sandwiches and beer made for a great lunch. We set off to explore the town which, despite its niceties, didn’t take long. A quiet Plaza de Armas, centerpiece of any town in Latin America, contained some mildly interesting sculpture. A carved wooden figure of a Seliknam native stood at the water’s edge on a quiet promenade which stunk of bird droppings. But across the curve of the bay, a dozen pastel-colored houses – pink, green, yellow – called to mind a seaside town in the west of Ireland. The treeless hills and gentle wind made the comparison even more possible. Porvenir was, for a time, a goldrush town when the metal was found deep in the hills. English were the first to settle, bringing with them several scores of sheep. After World War II, a large influx of Croatian refugees followed. As can be read on the street signs, today’s population is a small but diverse mix.
We wandered around the remaining streets and returned to the corner where we had asked the same driver to pick us up. For a town that seemed to have no other visitors (where were the folks from the boat?) and few residents, Porvenir has its share of cabs. They were constantly running up and down the rather silly one-way traffic system of some six streets. We saw only one other moving car.
Watching the pastel houses and yellow boats shrink as we pulled away, I 
couldn’t help feeling sad for leaving. I had wanted to explore the island. Then again, just coming here for a brief morning was more than I had expected to do on this trip. All of the Patagonian roads delivered us to our destinations more quickly than I could have imagined, so we had more time for other things. We sat on the starboard side of the deck, sipping tea and basking in the warmth of a spring sun. The weather was benign but it was easy to be soothed by it. Craning my head around the windy bow to look to the south, I nearly became food for the albatrosses.
I wandered around on my own in our last night in Punta Arenas. November evenings are striking down here when shadows lengthen until they seem ready to snap. My camera and I had a good walk around town, to the tall statue of Magellan in the Plaza de Armas; the striking Palacio Sara Braun, reflecting the opulence of the 19th century wool boom; the smart blue and white British School, the quaint St. James Church, as well as the house of adventurer Charley Milward, great uncle of Bruce Chatwin and lengthily discussed in his epic book. It was here that Ernest Shackleton planned the rescue of the stranded crew of his Antarctic expedition, the members marooned on Elephant Island after their ship, Endurance, was crushed by winter ice.
The final dinner of our time here was on a strange, second-floor cafeteria where the ambulating citizens of Punta Arenas crossed the street below us, enjoying the warm sun of ten o’clock. I took strange comfort in seeing the words “Muera Bush” painted on a wall.
* * * * * * * *
Not with the spring are you awaited,
not in the thirst of the corolla,
not in the honey-house woven
fibre and fibre from vines and clusters,
but in the storm, the streaming
torrential dome over the reefs,
in the flaw rent by the dawn,
and even more, over the green pikes
of defiance, in the ruinous
solitude of the marine mesa.
- Not Alone the Albatross ~ Pablo Neruda
Hostal del Estrecho. Since Peter had an early morning flight north to Ecuador (en route to the Galapagos, the bastard), we thought we’d awake at the crack of dawn to see him off. I think we were all surprised that it was light when we awoke. Getting in the car, a fiery orb rose over the Strait, just at the end of our street.
I said a winsome goodbye for now to a good friend, one I had actually met several years earlier on the same continent, on Peru’s Inca Trail. Greg and I had a couple of hours before our flight so we took the only road south and were surprised to find it paved. Passing through the outskirts of town, we came upon the weatherbeaten bones of the Lord Lonsdale, wrecked in 1942, now looking like a corpse picked clean.
We drove toward Puerto Hambre, the original settlement on the Strait of Magellan. Its name – Port Famine – tells us that it didn’t quite work out. In fact, it’s a tragic story, as the Spanish and English fought over control of the Strait. The buccaneer Thomas Cavendish gave the place its name and, likely so many places in the Americas, the name stuck.
A
t a police checkpoint, we agreed that it was time to head back to the airport. I got out and breathed the clear air. Where a lazy stream entered the strait, a handful of fishing boats rested lopsided in the sand, looking like bath toys. Two gulls cried and a skua skimmed the water, its wings like chevrons. Far across the strait, Mount Sarmiento rose up from the waves like an austral Atlantis. I was on the bottommost road in the world.
We had gone south.
- Sean Hickey 2005
