Day: 11-14
Trajectory: In and around Ushuaia

Distance covered:   unknown but unimportant

 

Our journey south is pretty much finished now bar the last hop of the RN40 from Rio Gallegos to Cabo Virgenes, which Martín will do alone. This blog post will describe some of the things we did in Ushuaia before Tiso took the plane back home to San Martín.

Tiso and I stayed for four nights in Ushuaia and I stayed alone for one more. It is not on the RN40, but it was as far as Tiso was going and a great place to visit, with  a lot for the tourists of all ages to see and do.

Because of previous bookings we alternated between a hostel and a hosteria, practically next door to each other. Both comfortable, and the hostel (as one would probably expect) remarkably friendly.

On our first day we went on a sea trip and saw lots of wild life: here are a few examples:

Our first priority was to get the the spare wheel fixed – here’s a reminder of what it looked like after the volcanic rock had attacked it:

That done, we continued with our tourism in Ushuaia. On our second day we visited the Tierra del Fuego National Park, where we had our obligatory photograph taken at the end of terrestial Argentina.

The national park is spectacular and the weather surprisingly mild – with quite a few people camping there.

We also visited a fascinating museum in the old Prison, very well worth a visit.

The museum told a lot of the history of Ushuaia itself, as well as the lives of the prisoners and their guards who had lived there.

Tiso left by plane and I went back to the National Park to do some birding. There was evidence of beavers and the damage they have caused since their introduction almost everywhere.

And here is one of the culprits:

And I was left alone in Ushuaia, with the long journey up the Atlantic coast of Patagonia ahead of me. But that belongs to another blog.

Day: 10
Trajectory: Punta Arenas – Porvenir – San Sebastian – Río Grande – Ushuaia

Distance covered:   489 km

 

The last leg of the journey south was from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, where we intended to rest up for a few days. Tiso would then fly back to San Martín de los Andes [via Buenos Aires and Neuquén] and I would drive slowly back up the Atlantic coast, filling in the missing bits of the RN40.

We spent the night in Punta Arenas in a very strange B&B, run by an even stranger old Lady. After an early breakfast, during which she stood over us while we ate, we were off to Tierra del Fuego, jointly owned and accupied by Chile and Argentina.

It is easy to forget which country you are in down here, as there are ferrys that are not borders and inland frontiers which are not ferries. But all our crossings went smoothly and quickly, and we were blessed by good weather.

We took the ferry from Punta Arenas to Porvenir, still in Chile. One of us slept on the ferry while the other dropped into sketching mode.

As you can see, it was a comfortable ride.

Soon we were in Porvenir and on firm land again, back on the road and driving West to the border with Argentina at San Sebastian. It was good to be on the road again.

We were now in Tierra del Fuego, the Chilean part. Our road at first hugged the coastline, with some spectacular views:

Everything was fine until half away along the inland road we were given a lesson in just how sharp the volcanic rock on the roads down here can be:

These things happen, and to be fair we had been warned about this. We were carrying two spares but this one was beyond repair and would clearly need to be replaced at the first opportunity. One down and one to go. As Tiso commented, we were using just about everything we had packed for ’emergencies’ like this.

We stopped for a bite to eat and eventually hit the town of San Sebastian (Chile) where we got a bite to eat.

We drove across the two frontier posts and were now back in Tierra del Fuego, the Argentine part. Our next stop would be Rio Grande if we chose to stop there. We were accompanied along this road –as in much of Tierra de Fuego– by flocks of guanaco, some super timid and some cautiously curious of us.

The guanaco are not fenced in, but roam wild. They are excellent at jumping fences to get to greener grass or to escape passing Jeeps. I began to like the guanacos; they are dignified, independent and essentially free.

Back in Argentina it was still flat, open country. We decided to drive on to Ushuaia and drove right by Rio Grande (I would visit it on the way north). As we drove closer to Ushuaia we came back into a mountainous area – although not as high as the Andes further north they still offer spectacular views.

We arrived in Ushuaia in the evening, tired but well, and fixed up lodgings for a few nights in a hostal and a hosteria, side by side, alternating as bookings at each were tight but between the two we managed.  More in the next blog.

 

Day: 9
Trajectory: El Calafate – Tapi Aike – Punta Arenas – Puerto Hambre – Punta Arenas

Distance covered:   624 km

 

Day 9 was a day in which we drastically changed our plans, revising both route and destination in an attempt to make best use of the time left to us before Tiso had to fly back from Ushuaia. The weather also had a great deal to do with plans and execution.

We got away from El Calafate in good time and drove down towards Cerro Castillo (in Chile) from which we intended to visit the Paine National Park. It was to be another day with much gravel surface.

We drove across long flat plains, taking a short cut down the R70 and rejoining the RN40 at the remote, windswept outpost of Tapi Aike, where we fuelled and I unfortunately asked for a coffee. The coffee took forever, as the woman at the stop had to individually locate cup, water, the means to heat it, coffee and milk. It was undrinkable, but after all that I felt I had to get it down.

The couple who run this gas station live in the middle of nowhere, and it really is a cold, wet, windy and god-forsaken place. All they have is the filling station and their leaky tin house. The previous incumbents left suddenly and the current residents have only been there two months – I doubt they will stay much longer. Little traffic goes by, but it is an essential stop as it is the only filling station for hundreds of kilometres.

From Tapi Aike we reached the Chilean border at Cerro Castillo without problems and had a decent cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Cerro Castillo was a small but not unattractive town which took us all of five minutes to explore.

We had come to Cerro Castillo to visit the Paine national park, with its spectacular peaks and scenery. But visibility was appalling and to drive 80 kms there and the same back to look at dark clouds and sky seemed pointless so we cut our losses and set ourselves to study the map.

We decided to drive south through Chile to Punta Arenas and further south, and then to cross to Tierra del Fuego by ferry through the Chilean town of Porvenir. From here we could drive down to Ushuaia where Tiso had to catch his plane back to San Martín de los Andes. This fit our plans best, allowing Tiso to see some of what he wanted while ensuring he would be at the airport with time to spare. I would fill in the missing RN40 bits later by myself, most importantly the final bit from Rio Gallegos down to Cabo Virgenes, where the 0 km marker awaited a photo of Silver and I.

Initially we drove right by Punto Arenas in order to visit Port Famine (Sp. Puerto de Hambre), the geographical centre of Chile. That surprised me, but it is the midway point between the South Pole (which Chile claims) and its northern border with Peru. Just short of Port Famine we saw the grave of Pringle Stokes, who commanded HMS Beagle on its first voyage of exploration in the south Atlantic. The harsh winter conditions of the Strait of Magellan were too much for him and he committed suicide; the commander of the second voyage of the Beagle was Fitzroy.

We drove on as far as the turn for Port Famine and Fort Bulnes, some 62 kms south of Punta Arenas.

Sadly both of these have become major tourist sites which means opening hours have been imposed. We arrived at Fort Bulnes, a fort erected in 1843 to strengthen and enforce Chile’s claim to this stretch of the Magellanic Channel, just as it was closing and were only able to see the entrance:

If we had been able to enter we would have seen the reconstructed fort which looks like this:

Just south of here is Cape Froward, the southernmost point of continental South America. We didn’t attempt to go there.

From Fort Bulnes we drove the couple of kilometres to Port Famine, originally founded by Sarmiento de Gamboa in 1584 and renamed by Thomas Cavendish, who landed there in 1587. We were too late for entry there too, but took advantage to use one of our jerry cans as petrol is very expensive in Chile.

What we missed was a monument to the early settlers and a few signs of their miserable existence, but we were rather more concerned with our own miserable existence as we nearly froze to death with all the metallic contact involved in getting the petrol off the roof and into the car in the bitter cold wind.

We did see a couple of small graveyards with white wooden crosses surrounded by white picket fences, the resting places of settlers over the ages. Also a monument to famous hydrographer Philip Parker King, who surveyed so much of the coastal waters of Australia and Patagonia.

So we drove back up to Punta Arenas, passing a number of semi-sunken and abandoned ships on or close by the shoreline as we looked for somewhere to eat and sleep.

Day: 7
Trajectory: El Chalten – El Calafate (via Viedma Glaciar)

Distance covered:   214 km

 

We woke up refreshed, and for once with nothing car related to prioritise. El Chalten is one of the world’s great trekking towns, full of backpackers and hostels. The day was unfortunately rather overcast, and we were unable to get clear views of Cerros Torre and Fitzroy, but this is what they would have looked like:

After our long walk a couple of days earlier neither of us was really into much walking so for our morning activity we drove a little way out of town to visit an attractive waterfall. The road there was through woodland with great views of the river winding its way through the valley. One waterfall looks much like another when you have a 400mm lens on your camera so instead I’ll post a picture of a diucon finch that sat in our path playing with his midday meal.

We couldn’t get any money in Chalten. There is no bank and the only cash machine was out of service. To make things worse most places won’t take plastic, so this, plus the weather, decided us to make that night for El Calafate. But first some lunch – a guy with a jeep like ours whom we met in the bus station steered us to a place that did take cards and we filled our stomachs there.

Before leaving El Chalten we decided to visit the Viedma Glaciar as the weather over the lake in that direction looked a little more encouraging, so we made our way out of town to the port where we could take the catamaran up to the Glaciar. This would be a first for me, and I was quite excited; the sign awaiting us when we arrived summed up nicely how I was feeling – this was indeed another part of our Patagonian Adventure.

We got there in good time, fingers crossed that the wind would  not change direction as that would cancel the trip. We were lucky and were soon boarding the catamaran.

It was a pleasant sail, although it became colder and colder as we approached the glacier.

Finally we arrived within some 800 metres of the face of the glacier. The view was splendid, but it was tough staying on deck to take pictures. We persisted, and here is a view from fairly close.

In fact, for those of us who could brave the elements, it was a wonderful fusion of rock, ice, water, cloud and sky, …

… with the more intrepid on deck snapping away … for once hatless, because of the wind.

All good things come to an end, and we got back to the jetty and set off for the shortish drive to El Calafate. It was a straightforward drive, but we did stop off at the famous La Leona Hotel; famous because Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid holed up there for a month after robbing a bank in Río Gallegos. Maybe. These stories grow in the telling, and they may just have spent a night there, and it really doesn’t matter …

We also noticed as we drove through wide glacial valleys that there were quite a few boulders deposited by the glaciers and now sitting rather incongruously in the middle of nowhere. I remember learning about this at school in geography lessons, and it was nice to see them in the flesh, so to speak.

We arrived in El Calafate in good time and after first taking the wrong road and finding ourselves in a very unprepossessing area we eventually got into the town centre and found a great hostel almost immediately.

Calafate is another trekking town, although much bigger than Chalten and is a thriving town in its own right. We had a good meal, and off to bed, planning to visit Chile’s Paine Park the next day.

Day: 2
Trajectory:  Esquel – Trevelin – Los Alerces National Park – Cholila – Leleque – Esquel.
Distance covered:   317 km

We were up earlyish for coffee and toast and jam. Today was to be a quieter day, spent on a side trip around Esquel. More of a circular trip really, as we drove in a large loop ending where we started up.

Our first port of call was the nearby town of Trevelín, the town of the mill, founded by Welsh settlers in 1889. Here we had morning coffee with Clare Vaughan, coordinator of a British Council run Welsh teaching project across the Welsh belt of Central Patagonia before moving on. Clare’s work interests me very much, and having made contact we have arranged to meet again on my return journey.

We left Trevelín to drive through the immense Los Alerces National Park with its beautiful trees and views, and skirted a number of lakes. We passed through all weathers in the three hours or so it too us to drive through the Park with bright sun, rain and heavy snow.

The park was brimming with wildlife –we saw and heard an extensive variety of birds– and had a number of trails leading to waterfalls, panoramic viewpoints, etc. The roads were mostly well surfaced, with a little work still to do in parts, but a far cry from the last time I drove this road in the early 1980s.

Not all the animals we saw were wild; the park was also full of sheep, horses and cattle, the last of which fascinated Tiso who shot half of his photographic allowance on some cows in his bid for the ‘animal of the day’.

We came out of the National Park in time for a late lunch at Cholila, founded in 1840 but which has never really taken off and we wondered what work there would be to keep the small population there. We enjoyed a good, filling and reasonably economic lunch at Lily’s Kitchen.

Bellies full once more, we set off for Butch Cassidy’s ranch some eight kilometres outside Cholila, passing on the way a small but atmospheric cemetery – a well-cared for reminder of the first settlers in the area.

Much has been written about Butch Cassidy, and since the 1969 movie and Chatwin’s book In Patagonia interest in him and his ‘gang’ has grown, making his ranch outside Cholila a shrine for western fans. Sadly, much that has been written about him is distorted or just plain wrong, but in this case he really did live at this ranch with the Sundance Kid and the enigmatic Etta Place.

The cabin and two outhouses have recently been restored, and the cabin is accessible, containing three rooms and a surprising number of doors. No inside fireplace (and it was bitterly cold on the day of our visit). We were able to enter, and Tiso took my picture sitting inside: a great memento!

We know a little about Butch Cassidy’s life while he was at Cholila, but much is unclear. What happened to him when he left will probably never be known. He may be buried at Río Pico, but that grave almost certainly remembers another American outlaw. He may have been shot in Bolivia, but there are no records and he was never identified there. And he may have made his way back to New York, as members of his family maintain. We shall probably never know, but we do know he was at Cholila.

We left the homestead happy with having made the trip to visit it, and happy too that we had the place all to ourselves to drink up some of the atmosphere. In the height of the tourist season –and there are signs that the site is being developed for that purpose– it would have lost much of its atmosphere.

We set off for Leleque and the RN4O back to Esquel; the same last bit of the route as yesterday and the same destination. Tomorrow we set off south, to Perito Moreno. But more anon.