Goodbye, Patagonia

After hiking up to the Mirador Torres del Paine and down to the "Jeep," I was tired. I had driven 1.5 hours to the park and hiked about 7 hours. I had another 1.5 hours drive back to the Estancia.



As I drove, I drank water to rehydrate. The sun was still bright. I watched guanaco, condors and flamingos on my way home. The Estancia Los Tres Hijos has a small sign and a red gate. To get to the ranch house, I had to open each of five gates, move the Jeep up, shut the gate and drive toward the next gate. The sun was low in the horizon and Cerro Castillo, the local mountain for which the town is named, was silhouetted. It did look like a large castle. As I drove, groups of sheep startled and ran in front of the car. Sometimes, it felt like a stampede. For most of the drive, nothing was visible except rolling plains, distant mountains and grazing sheep. In Argentina, a "Jeep" is any SUV; I was driving a Nissan "Jeep." I had taken almost three gigabytes of photos that day and hoped I had some good ones.
I arrived at the ranch house and was greeted with the wonderful smell of roasting lamb. Dawn had a great day exploring the ranch, including the greenhouse and vegetable garden. Nicolas, 16 years of age, slaughtered a lamb in the morning. He and his sister, Catalina, 14, were at the ranch house. The third Hijo was in town in Puerto Natales. We first met the family when we stayed at their B&B in town. Dinner was lamb, fresh lettuce, potatoes, and cucumber from the garden and greenhouse. There was a tomato-based pepper sauce. After a few toasts recognizing the last night in Patagonia, we began to eat. The lamb was delicious; it had been cooked in the wood-burning oven. After dinner, we warmed ourselves in front of the large fire in the living room fireplace.

We packed our suitcases for the long journey home. Alvin turned on the generator so we could take the chill out of our room with a small electric heater. It stayed light until about eleven. The wind was howling. The wind was always howling; sometimes it howled extra strong; mostly, it just howled. I put on a fleece and long-johns and crawled under a pile of blankets. It had been a warm day, so I left off my wool cap and socks. The wind howled through the walls around the windows. The air was always moving.
In the morning. we had breakfast in the kitchen. It was warm there with the wood-burning stove. The refrigerator ran on propane. There was no phone or Internet. There were 6,000 sheep spread over eight miles of Estancia. Cafe con leche, yogurt, ham, cheese, toasted rolls and marmalade. We were ready to go. Hugs and kisses. And good-byes from Pepe and Floracita, the pet bull and guanaco. Pepe and Floracita were orphans from birth and had been brought up on the Estancia. For whatever unlikely reason, they are inseparable. We were off, driving back through the five gates to the dirt road to Puerto Natales and the paved road to Punta Arenas.
After five hours of driving, we took the plane ride to Sangiago. From the air, we could sometimes see through the clouds. We went over Perito Moreno and Los Glacieres National Park and marveled at the size of the glaciers. We flew along the coast of Chile and saw snow-capped volcanoes.
In Santiago, we rested for the night. The next day, we returned to our Spanish school and gave a presentation about our travels to our fellow students. We had successfully traveled our planned route to Bariloche, Esquel, Puerto Montt, Puerto Natales, Rio Gallegos and Ushuaia.
At 10.30 p.m., we boarded the plane for Atlanta. I told the flight attendant that our seats were "veinte siete a y b" and realized he didn't know what I was talking about. For the first time in two months, English was the expected language. We stepped into the Delta plane and crossed the line. I thought, Goodbye, Patagonia.

Torres del Paine

Torres del Paine is an icon, certainly for Chile, but more generally for Patagonia and southern South America. Guide books and tourist books prominently feature its photo. Granite peaks and towers soar from sea level to about 9,000 feet. Although these mountains sit within the Andes, they are much newer, about 3 million years old. The Torres are three pinkish, granite towers that sit in a row above a small lake formed by glacial run-off.
From the beginning of our trip, we planned to go to the national park. But because of weather, it took several tries. We got our first glimpse of the peaks, the Cuernos, from Navimag (see previous post, Navimag on good days). When we first arrived at Puerto Natales, we planned to go directly to the park; but the rain was a downpour, so we jumped on a bus to Rio Gallegos, hoping to return for better weather. As we returned by bus from El Calafate to Puerto Natales, we got our second view of the park; the Torres shined in the distance across the plain.
Torres del Paine is a long way from anywhere; it's three hours or 250 miles from Puerto Natales. Although we stayed at an Estancia west of Cerro Castillo, it was still a 1.5 hour drive. The first day I attempted to see the towers, the guardaparque thought the weather might break, but warned me they were not visible. After hiking for awhile, the rain (and snow) became more intense. I went to the Refugio de los Torres, had lunch and turned around. I waited a couple of days and tried again; I got a gorgeous, sunny day. The lower trail goes through a forest of lengua trees. Gauchos use horses to take food to the refugios. The biggest problem is that I wore too much clothes and got hot. As they say, Se vale la pena (It was worth the trouble). They are truly a natural wonder of the world.
My recommendation is to go in December or earlier. By January, the wind and the tourists are in full force. During my hike, I bumped into several groups of twenty hikers along the trail. At the mirador for the Torres, there wereover 50 people. When I stopped to take photos of guanaco,
vans stopped behind me. Right around Christmas, the park fills up and stays that way throughout the summer. Also, if you can, plan on backpacking and NOT having reservations. Backpacking makes it easier to experience the interior of the park than staying at a hotel or hosteria. If you backpack, but have reservations at the refugios, this is also problematic. What do you do if it is cloudy and you can't see the Towers? Go on to your next reservation and miss seeing them?

Perito Moreno, El Calafate

We didn't originally plan to go to El Calafate, but we are glad we did. Perito Moreno is one of the few glaciers in the world that is growing and it is big.



The wall of jagged blue ice stretches three miles across and 200 feet above the surface of Lago Argentino. The glacier itself extends as far as the eye can see up the mountain valley. The guidebooks say the glacier is so large the entire city of Buenos Aires could sit within its boundaries. While we were watching the glacier, an enormous chunk of ice split off from the wall and crashed into the lake. The glacier is very active and you can hear loud, groaning, cracking noises as it advances. The glacier is grinding the peninsula that juts into the lake where the viewpoint sits; you can see ground up rocks and dirt where it has advanced.
Starting in Junin, wherever we went, Argentinians would ask us if we had been to El Calafate. We did not plan to go because it was off our route and is known as a tourist town (if not a tourist trap). When it was time for us to leave Ushuaia, we went to buy our bus tickets and found out that Frommer's was wrong; there are no buses from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas on Tuesday. Our reservations at the Estancia began on Wednesday, so we needed to get back north. We took a plane to El Calafate with the idea of taking a bus from there across the border to Puerto Natales where we could rent a car to get to the Estancia.
We landed in Calfate about five, knowing our bus would leave about eight the following morning. We had to check into our hotel, get cash, buy bus tickets and eat dinner. Dawn asked the cab driver if it was possible to see the Glacier in the evening. He jumped on that and explained it was the best time because the light was better and there was less wind. He offered to be our personal guide. He took us to our hotel where we had problems with our reservation. Then we went to another hotel, the bus station, the store to get drinks, and off we went. The cab driver drove us the 30 miles to the glacier. He relaxed in the cab while we went off to see the glacier. Then he drove us back to town to our hotel.
I thought Perito Moreno had something to do with a lost moraine. But the glacier is named after someone famous. Perito Moreno is the father of the national park system in Argentina. You could also say he is the father of trout fishing in Patagonia. Trout are not native to South America. Moreno commissioned a study in the late 1800s to introduce them to Patagonia.

Beagle Canal, Ushuaia

We took a catamaran excursion boat into the Beagle Canal. The Canal is named after the ship that Charles Darwin sailed in while he was researching and writing, Origin of the Species. The Les Eclaireurs is the furthest south of any Argentine lighthouse.


As we slipped away from Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world, we seemed to enter a magical territory of sea animals.




The canal has many small islands where sea lions, cormorants and penguins gather.

The juvenile penguins are now old enough to leave their nest; we saw many first time swimmers enter the water.

We even saw a whale. We sailed past Port Williams which the Chileans claim as the southernmost town in the world.

Ushuaia, Glaciar Martial

We climbed to the foot of Glaciar Martial. You need technical gear and a guide to climb higher.



First we took a taxi from our hotel and then a chair lift and then we hiked. The glacier is about 7 km from Ushuaia and about 385 meters high. There's a pretty trail through some lengua trees. The glacier is interesting and the view of the city is great. On the way down, we stopped at the Casa de Tè for tea and scones.

Birds, Patagonia wildlife

Unusual birds in Patagonia include rhea, flamingos and sheldgeese.

The rhea are called ñandù. They remind me of ostrich. When they run, they have a funny gait. They run very quickly, far faster than you or I can run, especially on the uneven plains. Often they graze beside the road and run away as the car approaches. Before they move, they are extremely difficult to spot because their camouflage is flawless. When they run, the trunk of their neck is horizontal to the ground. They can't fly.
Flamingos are not unusual in Patagonia. I saw them in shallow lakes and ponds, poking around in the marsh areas for food.


There are many ducks and aquatic birds around the fishing rivers. The sheldgeese are very common. I think this is the Magellan goose.