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Patagonia
by foot, bus and plane Twelve hours on a bus, even a double decker, air conditioned, reclining-seat super-bus, is not always a huge amount of fun. Sure there were unexciting bits, but there were two highlights in our twelve hours, of the sort you can only get in South America. The first was crossing the Strait of Magellan in a gale. The ferry, only slightly larger than Sandbanks floating bridge at Poole Harbour entrance, bucked and rolled. We were ushered from the deck as great chunks of wet foam blew on board. The lighthouse at Punta Delgada receded as long-winged seabirds soared overhead. In the dip between two waves a lone penguin lay momentarily on the surface before resuming its fishing. Apart from the modern lighthouse, it must been little different when Ferdinand Magellan discovered this southerly Atlantic-Pacific route in 1520. The ferry shook as another wave hit. Then it turned to starboard to make the approach to Tierra del Fuego, the large island at the southern tip of South America. The engines slowed as we came into shelter of the land. The waves shrank, but the Patagonian wind still howled. Tierra del Fuego looked bleak. The paved road soon gave way to gravel, creating a vibration through our legs and bottoms. The water inside my plastic bottle grew little waves, like a miniature version of the Strait we had just crossed. We passed yet another group of guanacos – imagine a cross between a camel and an antelope – and soon afterwards the bus came to a halt. The conductor got out, walked along the side and peered underneath. It was another of those inexplicable stops that helped make the journey longer than it need have been. After a while he seemed satisfied. Earlier we had waited half an hour on the outskirts of Punto Arenas at a checkpoint. We had driven slowly past three cameras while a man in military uniform waited at the side of the road. Another bus came along and several of our passengers transferred to it. A couple of miles along the road we stopped again, this time gaining passengers from a bus coming in the opposite direction. It seemed a peculiar alternative to a bus station. We thought the second highlight of this final leg of our Patagonian exploration would be crossing back from Chile into Argentina. The background vibration and rattle of stones ceased. Some peace at last. But it was not the border yet, just a large truck coming the other way. Sheep, not wild guanacos, looked on from behind a fence. After it had passed, trailing an endless cloud of pale brown dust, we continued. The border at San Sebastian was noteworthy only by the amount of time consumed getting through it. We bought more water and biscuits at a tiny kiosk to supplement the dry sandwich and minuscule piece of cake issued by the bus conductor. As soon as we were safely across the driver washed away salt encrusted on our windows by the Magellanic spray, while an attendant filled the bus with Argentine diesel. The journey restarted along the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego. We could see out again. The actual second highlight proved to be crossing the Andes. These mountains in Tierra del Fuego are only half their height further north in the continent, but they are still majestic. We skirted Lago Fagnano and began to climb. The bus changed down another gear and engine revs rose, as did the altitude. A spectacular view along Lago Escondido (Hidden Lake) opened up on the right hand side, matched as a spectacle by an Australian in our group crashing across the bus. We all took many pictures, but he was our most active photographer. We reached the summit of the pass and started our descent into the world’s most southerly city, as Ushuaia described itself. The Beagle Channel, named after the vessel that carried Charles Darwin to these waters in 1832, formed the background. We tumbled from the bus and collected our cases, some mysteriously coated with a layer of brown dust. The next day, sailing on the channel ourselves, we felt just like modern-day Darwinians, watching seals and sea lions just as the eminent scientist must have done. Our catamaran edged ever closer to the rocks; the creatures filling our viewfinders and the stench, our nostrils. Ushuaia was almost at the end of our adventure in Patagonia, from where our little group would shortly depart to the ends of the earth, two to Canada, three to Australia, though two had first an Antarctic voyage on one of the ships that set sail for those colder waters from Ushuaia. Five British completed our group, two from England, one each from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Was it less than two weeks ago that we had met in the Hotel Bristol in Buenos Aires? It was. Two weeks to that day we had been on the tarmac at Madrid airport, in a queue of twenty planes waiting to be de-iced, as six-inch icicles hung from the wings and postage stamp-sized snowflakes fell relentlessly. In complete contrast, southern-hemisphere Buenos Aires was enjoying summer temperatures of thirty degrees. We had a day to explore before the rest of the group arrived. One woman was very late; the direct UK flight was less lucky and got caught in the heaviest English snow for eighteen years. Heathrow had shut itself, but only after she had boarded her plane. Theatre Colon was being refurbished. Our guide book said it should be completed in 2008 though the notice displayed outside spoke of 2010. But there were plenty of other things to see and do. We walked the main squares and streets, entering a variety of buildings from cathedral to café. The first day of the tour proper started with a tube and train tide to Tigre, about an hour north-west from the main station. We passed the presidential house and much less salubrious dwellings before arriving at “the delta”. We walked past expensive looking rowing clubs before boarding a boat for a couple of hours’ trip around islands and rivers. Houses perched on stilts lined each bank, with floating versions of grocery stores packed with every imaginable kind of goods passing now and then. The most memorable part of the boat trip commentary was a description of “the septical holes” found in the middle of the islands. The afternoon’s city tour visited, amongst other places, La Boca, with its football stadium and painted houses. The cemetery where Eva Peron is buried is, apparently, a must-see attraction. I was more interested in an old steam powered ice-breaker in the docks and a couple of enormous fin-rooted gomero (ficus macrophylla) trees. The next day we departed by plane to El Calafate, a three hour flight from Buenos Aires, taking us into Patagonia. From the airport we minibussed in the opposite direction to the town, stopping to photograph some of the bushes that have the name Calafate. A member of the berberis family, they gave their name to the town. The bushes, in turn, were named after the Spanish word for caulking joints in wooden sailing ships, for which they were once used. El Chalten means smoky mountain in the language of the indigenous peoples of the area. Today the mountain is called Fitz Roy, after the captain of HMS Beagle, but at 6.30am on a cold February morning, despite it being midsummer, a cloud beside the pre-breakfast peak looked just like the mountain was sending smoke signals. At 6.41am all the neighbouring peaks were set on fire, orange and red glow from the sunrise. Fitz Roy (the captain was called Fitzroy but locally they have split it into two words) just smoked a puff of pink. A little later that morning we began walking the Fitz Roy trail starting just outside El Chalten village. A well marked path rose through “beech” woods. These are the southern hemisphere “Nothofagus” version of the true beech, fagus, that grows in Britain. We ascended for an hour, emerging onto a plateau with a clear view of our mountain, still smoking. The sky was the kind of deep blue you get at high altitudes, though we were lower than England’s tallest mountain. The “smoke” stood out, a brilliant white, with the mountain itself a buff-grey rocky wall. The Indian name was a good one, the “smoke” changing constantly. A slight downhill section brought us to a wide valley, U-shaped, so glaciated. (It is in Los Glaciares National Park). A river meandered, crossed by carefully constructed bridges and pontoons over swampy ground. In places the water flowed fast, looked deep, but glass-clear. Respite was short-lived. Climbing soon restarted. We walked through a herd of tents with campers under strict instructions not to wash anything in the river. It is drinking quality. Soon after, we passed a much smaller camp site, this for climbers only. Fitz Roy and its adjacent peaks are proving a big draw because of their difficulty. It takes much planning, 48 hours of good weather and the ability to climb non-stop for 30 hours to get up and back down before the wind returns. Pedro, our always smiling guide, had climbed some of the peaks and was working up to the big one, Fitz Roy itself. He continually scanned the peaks and glaciers on the slopes for moving black dots, each one a climber. We filled our water bottles in a tumbling stream and commenced the final stretch: an hour of relentless, slow, steady, one foot in front of the other, ascent. Non-stop. As Pedro had said, we came to a ridge. But it was not the top. A further twenty metres took us to a small flat valley, then another, slightly easier climb. Reaching the second ridge, it all became worthwhile. Fitz Roy stood majestically in front, glaciers coming from every face, glistening as they melted in the midday summer sun. We rested, took photographs and nibbled snacks. A bright blue lake of cold glacier water lay between us and the peak. Pedro pointed out men on one of the high glaciers. But he was surprised by the lack of wind. Gales, he said, was the most common weather here, not the gently cooling breeze we enjoyed. Two men had passed us on the way up, laden with mammoth backpacks and coils of rope. Maybe we were in luck with good weather. Maybe the climbers would get their wind-free hours needed to conquer a summit. Too soon, Pedro, not really one for rest, urged us to master the next high point. Only slightly above but requiring a down and up, it sported several people on top. Once there, a second, lower, longer lake came into view, a darker turquoise, with a shiny black wall at the back, over which a glacier flowed. I was chatting to Pedro when, above the second lake, a slippery mass of ice slid over the glacier-sculpted rounded edge and fell a hundred or so metres into the lake. I watched though his binoculars, then captured it on camera, and observed a circle of icy white debris expand into the lake from the point of impact. Our time there was all too short. We left the hard, quartzy resistant-to-erosion hilltop and started the long downhill back to El Chalten. We stopped by a third lake for a short break, and reached the village just as it was time to eat. We took our restaurant booking, consuming excellent local lamb in calafate berry sauce. Sleep came quickly back at our hotel. We had heard a forecast for rain. If so, why were climbers on the mountain? We walked over steppe landscape from the village, this soon giving way to knobbly moraines left by retreating glaciers at the end of the most recent ice age. There was just a breeze. Smoky Mountain was almost clear, with just a tiny trademark puff close to the summit. “It looks like the climbers chose well,” announced Pedro, to no one in particular. We had a continuous climb, with no plateau to rest the legs. It reminded me of Ben More on Mull, a little over 3000 feet of steady upward walking. The difference was the terrain. Forests of cold-resistant nothofagus, doing what conifers do on European mountains, gave way about half way up to bare hillside, dotted with rocks of all sizes and types. It looked just like a giant had taken a fistful and sprinkled boulders. A giant had; but a glacier, not a person. The hillside was sedimentary. We found fossil ammonites, plus many signs of baking, presumably caused by the molten magma intruding its way into the existing rocks ready to form the Fitz Roy range. We rested before the final climb to the summit, while three condors flew overhead, looking for something dead to eat. It was when we reached the top that the enormity of the Fitz Roy mountains became clear. The smoky mountain we had seen was only about a third of the total height. Round the back it just dropped away for much of its 3000 odd metres. Yet another glacier lurked in the valley behind Fitz Roy, leading from the vast Patagonian ice sheet. We were at around 1500 metres, or about half the height of Fitz Roy. In the other direction we could see Lago Argentino, the third largest South American lake. After lunch the pace downhill was fast. I kept stopping to rest my knees, and was glad I had my trekking poles to help them. But my feet caused the most problems. I had all my blister plasters on. My boots were well worn in, so I was puzzled what had caused these unusual-for-me problems. I made it down, but the next day needed a recovery break. Saturday’s weather was more typical, a cool wind blowing off the ice cap to the west. Clouds covered Fitz Roy. You could have been persuaded there was no mountain there. We did a short walk , to a waterfall in a cleft in the rocks about an hour from the hotel. I cringed at every step – my blisters could not even cope with this. We did find moleskin in El Chalten but there is clearly a market opportunity for blister plasters. Some of our group went glacier walking, returning full of tales of ice axes and drinking Baileys, not on any old ice but on bits chipped from the glacier. Others had gone for another long walk with the inexhaustible Pedro. El Chalten has a feel of a frontier town, but is rapidly growing. It is connected to El Calafate, 220 km distant, by large air conditioned buses. Part of our course was parallel to the Andes, along Route 40, arriving in El Calafete in the late evening. Our hotel was new, testimony to the rapid growth. Tourism, especially the proximity to the glaciers, is its new reason for being. Before bed we sat in the upstairs lounge sipping Calafate liqueur, looking over Lago Argentino through a floor to ceiling window as the sun finally set. Lago Argentino is like a huge octopus. At the end of each of its tentacles is a glacier. There are plenty others in Los Glaciares National Park. We wondered what was special about Perito Moreno glacier. A loud report like a pistol shot went off somewhere in front. Then another, and another, then a loud noise like crushing rocks. At first we couldn’t see anything odd, but soon spotted a huge lump of falling ice, accompanied by a loud roar. The boat edged a little closer. A hundred cameras clicked, many just recording a cloud of white mist and a circle of ice below the glacier. The boat went very slowly by the face of what must be the most famous glacier in the park, and we could see why. It may not be the largest, or the tallest, but Perito Moreno regularly dumps bits of itself from its long face. It is also accessible. Argentina has created a series of galleried walkways to view from every angle. You can look at the north face, the south face, from high up or from low down. Even better, it is not a retreating glacier. Every few years it advances, bashing against the Magellan Peninsula. Water cannot flow from one part of Lago Argentino to the other until water pressure has built up enough to break through. During our visit, a tunnel through the glacier was allowing water to flow through. There were no rubbish bins, just lots of signs telling visitors to take their rubbish back to El Calafate. Everyone did. We ate our packed lunch from the walkways while waiting for ice to fall. Some huge blocks did so, the biggest came crashing down, ever so slowly at first, a vast triangular “cake slice”, as a climax to our lunch stop. The accompanying noise, all natural, was that of a demolition site. On Monday we went to Chile. The border appeared four hours from El Calafate, at around 11.30am. Formalities on the bus included the rapid consumption of fruit pies and sandwiches; contraband. While waiting in the queue we saw a bag of lovely Argentine apples go in the Chilean Customs’ bin. All our luggage came off the bus for a furtle. An hour later
we left the main road for the 30km drive to the estancia, or ranch, where
we were to spend two very comfortable nights. The minibus skirted a violent
turquoise lake, deep blue where in the shade of the few clouds, rippled
by white horses in the strong breeze. The Paine massif reared up the other
side of the lake, cream and brown. The buildings here are little different from Argentinean Patagonia. Wood plays a big part, usually with corrugated iron roofs and walls. Here the walls were white and the roofs a bright red. They stood out against the deep blue sky. Wood was also the main heat source, though an electric generator came on at 7 each evening for light and to pump hot water. Beside our bed was a battery operated look-alike oil lamp for those essential night time visits. My blisters
were worried about the day, a day of walking in the Torres de Paine National
Park. ‘Paine’ here actually means the colour blue, not the pain
that I felt inside my walking boots. The park boundary was very close
to our lodge, but we had to drive for an hour and a half to a road entrance
on the other side of the lake. Now on foot, the first climb brought us to a ledge where the wind struck. 60km/hr was forecast. That’s a full gale in my book. It felt like it too, as it whipped around the valley below and hit us in gusts, making me glad I had both my trekking poles. We knew the start height and the end height, but no one had mentioned the descent we were now on. The path led across mighty scree slopes disappearing out of view above and, to our right, down to the river. Soon we were back at river level, on a rickety wooden bridge. An all too short rest and back across yet another bridge. That lost height had to be regained, this time through Nothofagus forest. Inside it was darker, with the desiccated skeletons of old trees, some standing and some lying, pale grey in the dry cool air. In places it was completely calm. At gaps in the trunks the wind struck, cold and vigorous, threatening to sweep us away into the valley, now deeper, still on our right hand. All the time we were thinking of the final section, around 400 metres of boulder-strewn climb to reach the base of the towers that gave the park its name. Would there be good enough visibility to make the effort worthwhile? Would out guide think the wind too strong to be safe? When we reached the boulders we could not see the summits for cloud. We retreated into the forest to have lunch. It was a short stop because of the cold. Some decided the scramble worthwhile, others didn’t. Those who did joined us in the café some two hours and two beers behind. A large wood burning stove gave out heat from Nothofagus logs, which were piled up along the hallway. Spectacular cloud formations, a brilliant blue lake (paine indeed), another rainbow with distant mountains disappearing and reappearing through showers helped capture our attention as we relaxed on the van ride home. We’d been lucky. The walk had been almost completely dry but these new showers told of another weather system on the way. That morning we took the best guanaco pictures; running, grazing or just sitting with their periscope heads surveying the terrain. They appeared all along the dirt roads. We spotted more condors overhead. We were heading for the Pacific, to Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope Bay). It had an end of the world sound. En route, we stopped to hike for two hours in even stronger winds to see a waterfall, its spray blowing sideways like spindrift. Part way along the walk a whirlwind sprang up on the lake and gathered pace. It whirled up faster and faster, coming onshore to spatter our group with tiny bullets of water as they cowered on the path. Thirty metres on we remained dry. The Torres del Paine National Park Visitor Centre had a relief map showing the mountains’ construction. They are very similar to Fitz Roy, only a short condor flight away. But here, very unusually, the baked sediments still cover some of the 12.5 million year old granite peaks. It made for some strangely coloured mountains, dark brown tops over buff. We photographed each other cuddling a life size replica of the milodon. This prehistoric giant sloth lived in a cave just outside Puerto Natales, our destination for the night. This cave was formed by wave action on a glacial lake at the end of the last ice age, digging into softer layers. Later that evening we sampled local fish, freshly trawled from the Pacific fjords. Chile seemed a little less keen on the huge plates of meat that characterised Argentina. Chilean wine was good value and we had plenty of opportunity to compare it with the Argentine variety. We awoke to steady rain. Even mountains on islands in the bay were invisible, but black necked swans swam undeterred. Trucks, cars and buses swished as they drove the road north from Puerto Natales outside our hotel. We had the windows open to let excess heat escape. It was another of those hotel rooms where the radiator valve turned but did not reduce the temperature. Even the rain was warm; like an English summer. Two hours later we were aboard a Marc Polo bus, comfy, smooth, made in Brazil, looking at the snack seller at her trolley outside on the path. Smoking was not permitted, but a cloud of pungent smoke arrived on a local who had clearly been puffing away moments before. We departed on the dot of 10am, a 6000 peso ($10) trip of 3 hours to Punto Arenas. We passed open wild land, later cattle grazing and endless Nothofagus forests festooned with lichens. The rain soon stopped. Both Chile and Argentina are trying to encourage migration to the remote south. In Chile’s case this included duty free shops. Unlike those back home, they are open to locals, and, according to our guide, the car parks are full of Argentine cars at the weekend, as their owners stock up with everything from fridges to clothes. Magellan penguins filled the afternoon. A whole group were on the beach, drying themselves after a dip. Signs told us they were with their young, teaching them to swim. On the way back to town we explored the shops. Even here, electrical goods were similarly priced to back home at the reduced 800-odd Chilean pesos we got for each of our Browned pounds. It could have been a superstore anywhere. Food and clothing was rather less than at home, and diesel could be had for 50p a litre. Friday 13th started early. Our long bus ride to Ushuaia started at 9am and required an early check-in. We made time to photograph the harbour between check-in and boarding. We left just three minutes late on our twelve hour trip. The Canadian contingent of our group produced five furry penguins for inspection. No doubt they’d cross the Magellan Strait with us in the bus. And so we found ourselves on our final Patagonian afternoon getting off a bus in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. This is a gem, with lakes, wild rivers, glacial views, mountains, forests, and an oddly placed army post watching the border with Chile only a mile or so away. We got stamps in our passports (“the southernmost city in the world”), sampled a plateful of the local delicacy, king crab, and later that evening indulged in a Baileys on ice party, in memory of the glacier walk some of us had done near El Chalten. We succeeded in drinking the hotel dry of this beverage. Our holiday was over. Blisters had (mostly) healed, stomachs were settled, work was forgotten. New adventures beckoned. We all exchanged email addresses and said goodbye. First published in VISA issues 85-86 (Jun-Aug 2009) |