It started as a logistics problem.
My wife and I wondered how we could best see the western half of Patagonia, tracing the rising spine of the southern end of the Andes, along the Chile-Argentina border northward. After a simple destination wedding in Europe (mostly to cut down on the guest list size) we’d pushed back any honeymoon travel for a later date, and as we discussed various future possibilities and ideas, we had begun to settle on Patagonia. But how?
Cruises visit sections of the (often rough) open Pacific as well as the sheltered fjords and passages along the western edge. Bus tours cover the highlights of the region around the world-famous parks and nature sites in the areas between Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas on the Chillian side, and Ushuaia on the Argentinian coast.
But to see the places away from the main road, which itself was often no more than a gravel two-lane track, we’d need our own transportation.
A long-distance, round-trip car rental through Patagonia is impossible, as the likelihood of the car making it back to the original location is so unlikely that no rental company offers the option.
To cover the over 4000km roundtrip between Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales and back (the area we’d decided was “Patagonia” for this trip), we’d need more than the 12 days we had. After many hours of looking for options, we finally settled on taking the four-day freighter/ferry out of Puerto Montt for the 2000km trip down to Puerto Natales—during which our rental car would be safely stored in the hold—and then drive the 2000km back up over the next eight days.
So, from the Northern Hemisphere winter we headed south, and then even more south to the Southern Hemisphere summer, landing in Puerto Montt after a long two days of travel. The rental car was waiting as promised, along with all the specific and notarized paperwork that we would be required to take it into Argentina and then back into Chile. We headed out, first eastward into the city for the night, and then westward the next day to the docks to drive aboard the ferry heading even farther south.
In hindsight, reading my description of it here, I can see just how overly optimistic this plan was, borderline crazy, actually, especially with both of our almost total inability to speak Spanish. But despite that, we managed to stay out of trouble, cover the ground we’d planned to cover each day, and see amazing things along the way.
I grew up reading the travel tales of McPhee, Chatwin, and Theroux, marveling at their interactions with the world writ large. While my travel is normally at a much smaller scale, I feel like this trip almost reached the far-off frontiers of their writing.
FIRST OF THE LIGHT II
The Ferry Evangelistas is pushing southward through the calm waters of the Moraleda Canal. We’ve been at sea—as much as one can be “at sea” when navigating through an archipelago—since yesterday afternoon’s delayed departure from Puerto Montt. In the post dawn/pre-sunrise stillness of the morning, I lean against the railing and feel the constant, dull vibrations of the engines four decks below my feet.
The ship is starting to become familiar, as the tangled maze of stairwells and watertight doors begins to resolve itself into a mental model in my head. This time, it only took me two tries to get to the proper portside exit door. At this early hour, there is almost nobody else around, although even during the day the thirty odd passengers traveling with us tend to spread out; so other than mealtime in the cafeteria, the ship never feels crowded.
Rough with age and saltwater wear, the painted metal rail carries the engine’s vibrations through my fingertips as they rest on it in the cool air. It may be summer down here, but the mountains just to our east, pointing upward into the still-dimly lit sky, are permanently capped with snow and ice. I’m glad that I am wearing a heavy—ironically—Patagonia jacket and cap.
I stand in the stillness of the hour, waiting for the sun, watching the indistinct coastline slide by just a mile or two away. As I stare, the blueish gray of the sky takes on a pale, light-blue tone, before shifting to yellow and then orange as the ball of the sun glides upwards, silhouetting the far-off mountain peaks.
Morning is here.
LAST OF THE LIGHT
After two days of sliding ever southward on the canals and fjords through Chonos Archipelago, we have finally run out of protected water, and as we reach the exit of Anna Pink Bay, a strong Pacific swell begins to run along the length of the Evangelistas’ hull. For the past hour we have been racing the sun towards the open ocean and at this point we will have to call it a draw.
The sun drops behind Penguin Islet—although in the shadowy darkness I have no idea if there are any of its namesake birds there—and the world quickly fades through blue tones towards blackness. Overhead, stars begin to dot the night sky.
Standing on the aft deck feels like riding an elevator, as the swells pick up in intensity, and the ship begins a gentle pitching motion along its long axis. Fighting the moving deck and the wind, I walk to the bow and hold onto the railing, staring into the distance.
Ahead, the rocky shore of Point Gallegos is a black smudge between a dark ocean and an almost as dark sky. A single channel marker flashes red somewhere along an invisible horizon. Directly below me, one deck down, the ship’s crew is at work on the bridge, navigating us into the night and towards tomorrow.
DISTANT PEAKS
The road surface has been deteriorating since we drove north out of Puerto Natales. Passing the airport just outside of town, we rolled across the smooth pavement of Route 9, our wheels riding along the freshly painted lane divider line. Route 9 is the main north-south artery running through Southern Chile. However due to the impenetrable wall of mountain peaks just a few hours’ drive to the north of where we are, the road actually dead-ends; then after almost 300km of untracked wilderness it begins again, this time as Route 7. Now, almost two hours and several side roads later, the pavement is pockmarked, worn, and narrowed, the edges decaying in the dusty brush stretching away into the distance.
We are several kilometers inside Torres del Paine National Park. Traffic is nonexistent under the almost oppressively blue sky above us. At the park entrance, where we’d stopped to pay the visitor fee and pick up a map, the dirt lot was almost full. People were wandering around in various levels of outdoor adventure gear, ranging from day trippers like us in lightweight boots and small daypacks to long-distance trekkers, either heading out or tiredly returning to civilization after days in the backcountry. Now, however, we’ve mostly left the crowds behind.
The road twists and turns, climbing and descending over low hills that stretch out towards the famous jagged W-shaped ridge in the distance. The landscape is a multi-toned palette of browns and tans, transitioning towards grays and blues as it climbs higher in elevation. Large birds of prey circle on a rising thermal, and I slow to almost a stop in the middle of the road—a benefit of no traffic—to watch them, their black bodies nothing more than squiggles against the endless blue of the sky.
The road continues onward, a modern concrete bridge leaping across a narrow spot over a dark blue-tinted lake that almost matches the color of the far-off mountains. I pull into a gravel lot just prior to the bridge and shut off the ignition, the engine of our trusty steed clicking as it cools. An unused pier juts out into the flat waters of the lake, a perfect foreground for the scene. We get out of the car, stretch, and take our first breaths of pure Patagonian air.
MAIN HIGHWAY
We left the main road 30km ago. The tire tracks in the dust told the story of multiple cars and buses taking the left-hand fork where our wheels instead turned right, across the almost untracked pavement heading north. Ironically, this marginally travelled road is actually Argentina’s “main road,” the famous Route 40 that runs over 5000km from the southern end of Patagonia all the way to Bolivia in the north, while the road to the west that we passed by dead-ends less than 100km away, in the tourist-trekking town of El Chalten. You’d never know it though. The broken and scarred pavement skips and jumps underneath our tires as we follow a dry and dusty wash that is as empty as the road is.
Filling our gas tank at the service station in Tres Lagos, I had attempted to find out about the road conditions ahead, but my attempts at asking in Spanish—with my hopefully helpful hand gestures—had been met with blank stares. Driving through town afterwards, we’d passed by a few kids kicking a soccer ball around in a dusty courtyard… they had briefly stopped their game to watch us pass by.
Now, with almost no warning, the pavement ends and the road turns to dirt. I slow slightly over the drop downward and then accelerate on the new surface. Bits of gravel ping off the underside of the car, and the steering feels loose as the wheels slip and then gain purchase. Per our map, which isn’t the most accurate, we’ve got 60km more to go before we stop for the night. It could be a long afternoon, but at least the scenery is pretty good.
INTO THE PARK
A plume of dust hangs in the still air behind the rear wheels of our car as we bounce down the rutted gravel road. It’s been about an hour since we left the small village of Lago Posadas, and the sun has been steadily climbing into a deep blue sky. The road has been slowly climbing as well, as it tracks across a desert landscape, studded with dead grass and scrub brush. The distant mountains, red-tinged under their patchy snowcaps, have been drawing slowly and slowly nearer.
We descend a slight hill into a dry river valley. Despite the lack of visible water, greenery clings to the banks of the wash and small trees with leaves fluttering in the light breeze burst from its edges. On the other side of the valley, where the road travels up and over a slight hill, a large truck trundles towards us at the head of a cloud of dust, the first traffic we’ve seen today.
On the other side of the dust cloud we follow the road over the hill and down into another valley with a small farmhouse at the side of the road. Minutes later we pull to a stop out front, a thin wire stretching across the road in front of us. I shut off the motor and we step out. The air is warm and still. The base beat of a rap song floats towards us from the farmhouse. We’ve arrived at the Argentine Gendarmerie post at the border.
The room just inside the open front door is empty other than a desk and chair by the window. The music is coming from the next room over; visible through a large doorway is a kitchen with a large pot steaming on the stove. I yell hola over the music and am rewarded with a loud grunt from the kitchen and then moments later, the music decreasing in volume. It still takes minutes before a young gendarmerie walks in—his crisply pressed pants ending over bare feet and still in the process of buttoning his uniform shirt.
He rattles off some rapid Spanish that I must look puzzled enough by so that he switches to pantomiming and holds up a finger while taking our passports out of my hand at the same time. He walks to the desk and pulls out an ancient-looking laptop. While it slowly boots up, he takes out a small satellite dish on a suction cup and sticks it to the window with a practiced movement. By the time the laptop is ready to go and plugged into the satellite dish, he’s filled out the required paper forms and checks them against whatever information is showing on his screen after he painstakingly, using just his pinky, types in our passport numbers.
Satisfied with the process, he stamps both of our passports, as well as our rental car paperwork, hands us back everything, and then gestures to us to follow him outside. As we leave, I take one more glance into the kitchen and see another gendarmerie in just his uniform pants and an undershirt—but this one with shoes on—stirring the pot on the stove.
Outside, the barefoot gendarmerie shuffles through the dust to our car. He takes a cursory look inside and then pulls the wire across the road and waves us through. I slowly accelerate out of the border station into the frontier, leaving nothing but dust behind us. Ahead the road runs in a straight line towards the Chillian border, 5km away, and Parque Patagonia beyond that.
TWO RIVERS
The mid-morning sun hangs in an all but cloudless blue sky. Dust hovers above the road in the still air, the only evidence of the long-since passage of other cars. The pull-off is right where it was advertised to be, and I steer our trusty beast into the small gravel parking lot and find an empty spot near the end.
We are back in Chillian Patagonia, and after two days of having the roads and vistas to ourselves, we have returned to the world of tourist… all five cars worth of them.
As we walk towards the trailhead, we pass a family sitting in their car with the doors open and eating an early lunch or late breakfast. The father nods politely, his hands full of sandwich. We wave back and continue onward.
The trail is short and drops briskly downhill towards the water. A minute later we step out onto an outcropping of rock that towers over the confluence of the glacial blue waters of the Rio Baker, and the silted mud of the Rio Nef.
Slightly upstream from us the Rio Baker cascades over a rocky escarpment, its blue water turning a frothy white as it descends. A few people stand at the water’s edge, watching the scene, but otherwise it is just us and the two rivers that are becoming one.
ICE WATERFALL
The sound of a freight train rumbles through the forest, as we speed walk along the trail. We pause to take a quick breather at the top of a gentle slope and listen to the dull roar reverberate around us. In the silence the follows I can hear the chirping of birds and the irregular patter of intermittent raindrops splattering against the leaves overhead.
We are rushing to get to the scenic overlook at the end of this short trail and then back to our car before the gate to the park closes at 5pm. Like many sections of road here in central Patagonia, the drive north earlier today took a good bit longer than planned due to one-way construction zones, and our planned three hours of time here has shrunk down to just over an hour. With that in mind, we start walking again, climbing slowly through the thick forest, counting down the 100-meter distance-to-go markers as we do.
The trail ends suddenly at a small wooden platform. There are two other couples already there, leaning against the railing, facing up-valley. We shoulder in beside them and stare up at the rocky valley, where at the massive headwall, a stream of slushy water and ice crystals falls hundreds of feet downward from a bluish glowing glacier that sits at the top of the cliff.
As we stand and watch, one end of the glacier caves. A chunk of ice, bigger than a school bus, tips over the edge, plunging down into the valley below, where it shatters into thousands and thousands of pieces against the rocks. Moments later, the sound of that shattering roars past us, rustling the leaves over our heads.
I glance at my watch and see that we have another 20 minutes before we need to start back, so my wife and I settle in to watch the show.
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