Punta Arenas
Situated on the north coast of the Strait of Magellan, Punta Arenas is the southernmost city on the South American mainland, looking across the strait to Tierra del Fuego, the largest South American island, half Chilean and half Argentine.
The island is called land of the fires because Magellan’s group saw smoke from fires of the natives there and were fearful of attack. One possible explanation is perhaps these were signal fires indicating a desire for contact and trade with the peoples of these strange large boats.
We left the airport by bus and stopped for a tour of a small outdoor museum housing a replica of Magellan’s 16th century Caravelle-class ship. The winds here earlier in this week were reported 140kmh, but on this day were only a bit over 100kmh. But the ship, braced securely on dry land, still creaked and groaned in this breeze, giving us a taste of what it might have felt like to sail through these waters almost 500 years previously. We learned more than I expected, both from the realism of the reproduction, and as the various technologies of the ship were explained: steering, storage of cargo, living quarters, and keeping everything inside dry. Debby is adopting the new wind-swept look as she poses with the main winch.
This leg of the tour is more about scenery than culture. We spent one night in the old city of Punta Arenas before heading north by bus over 300km to Torres del Paine National Park. The road goes by Puerto Natales and across Patagonian steppe that hosts sheep ranches (estancias). The typical estancia consists of a main owner’s house, a large shearing shed, and various out-buildings such as bunkhouses for the ranch hands.
The climate of the Patagonian steppe is arid. The Chilean steppe averages ~20cm of rain per year. The Argentinian steppe receives on average around half that. Thus the native flora is limited and specialized. Yellow tussock grass (coirón) is the dominant landscape feature. Guanaco is the only large native herbivore specialized to this environment. Sheep are the only domestic animal similarly equipped, except the coirón is toxic to it, producing a condition called staggers. About four acres per animal are required in Chile, and proportionally more acres required for Argentine sheep estancias. Thus, a minimal profitable estancia will have at least 40,000 acres.
Occasionally along the highways one encounters shrines the locals erect to people they consider saints. The Catholic Church is rumored to be displeased with such populist saints. This shrine is for a woman who set out with her infant, on foot and without water, across the desert in search of her soldier husband. Her body was later found and the infant was still alive at her breast. She is honored with bottles of water.
One ranch we passed was experimenting with hybrid stock called llamanacos, a cross between two camelids, a wild local guanaco and a domestic llama (derived from wild vicuna native to the northern Andes).
Also noted along the highway were small red signs with a single word, minas. These fields were mined by Chile in anticipation of a 1978 invasion by the Argentine military junta, due to a border dispute over some islands. The mines have yet to be cleared. [Per a recommendation of our tour guide, we just watched a Chilean movie, Mi Mejor Enemigo, which recounts a soldier’s view of this time. The movie captures the feel of this landscape better than could mere words and pictures.]
At some view point, Debby and I both adopt the new South Patagonian windswept hair style.
The mountains begin to assert themselves over the landscape as we approach the national park (some pictures taken through the bus window). The park borders the great Southern Patagonian Ice Field and is primarily composed of steppe and glacial lakes surrounding a central uplift or massif. The entry station has a small air field and heliport with wind sock.
Torres del Paine National Park
Our destination lodgings are on the shore of Lago Grey, associated with Glacier Grey. The lake is deep, but sunlight only penetrates the top few inches due to heavy particulates from the glacier, giving it its gray color. It is sterile, hosting no fish or plant life. Calved ice dots the surface, measuring time while slowly melting.
The mountains of the central massif are granite intrusions into overlaying basalt. The basalt has not weathered away yet and still appears as a black cap on the lighter base granite.
From near the lodge, Debby’s iPhone captured the characteristic Patagonian lenticular cloud over the landscape.
Glacier Grey reaches Lago Grey in two tongues at the north end of the lake. This is the only glacier in the park accessible to the normal tourist. It descends 28km from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the southern remnant of the great Llanquihue glaciation that covered the Andes during the last glacial maximum. This view from near our lodge looks up the lake to the narrower east glacier tongue. The dark stripe is a sand bar (pebbles actually) stretching from the shore on the left to an island in the lake.
The path to the lake started near our hosteria and goes over a wooden footbridge across the rapidly flowing Rio Pingo just before it exits into the lake. Beyond the bridge is this beach area with a view across the lake (Debby’s photos).
Austral conures and a black-breasted buzzard eagle were visitors at the lodge.
From the island across the pebble bar, a close-up view presented of one chunk of glacial ice. Because of the opaque water, it seems to rest on a sandy beach rather than to be afloat. The close view of the dark blue interior shows drips of melting water.
We had great weather for our day’s 3hr trip up the lake to the glacier and back, a total of ~40km. Right at the starting point, the tour had kindly staged a condor viewing, this bird posing on a ledge of a cliff overlooking the lake.
Along the way were views of hanging glaciers and their waterfalls.
The boat got close enough to appreciate the mass of the glacier.
As we left the glacier, Debby and I took advantage of another windswept photo-op from the boat deck.
The cloud formations made the landscapes more distinctive. We got a good closeup of the largest chunk of floating ice mid-lake.
On departure day we headed for a hike across the local grasslands. On the way some photogenic landscapes stopped the bus. This illustrates a typical point of view on our tour.
Note the denuded hills in the foreground of these viewpoint photos. A month before we arrived, a fire, started by a backpacker, burned nearly 40km^2 of the park. This was the third major fire in 25 years at the park, burning much of the old forest there. We were told that it will take 200-500 years for the landscape to recover, due to the little rainfall the land gets here, and because the native flora is not used to natural fires, so has no evolved recovery strategy. A couple of the tour's normally planned hikes were cancelled because of this devastation.
The grasslands, untouched by the fire, are home to the guanaco and lesser rhea (and to the invisible puma which preys on both). We also saw the native gray fox from the bus. The landscape suggests a war zone, with guanaco skeletal remains littering the ground. These animals look calm in the day, perhaps because the puma is a night hunter.
Young animals group on one side of a fence, while an adult approaches from the other.
There was another scenic viewpoint as we left the park. It is here that one gets the best view of the three towers that put the word Torres in the park’s name.
Debby captured this final view in wide perspective on her iPhone. Adios, Torres del Paine.
Our bus took us to the Argentine border where we transferred to our Argentina bus and guide for the end of our Patagonia trip. The bus was held up at Chilean customs because the customs official with the key to the gate went to lunch. This sounds improbable, but if you could see the forsaken location of this outpost, you would understand how that mentality could arise.
We bused through the Argentine steppe for the rest of the afternoon, arriving at El Calafate before dinner.
El Calafate
El Calafate is a tourist town that is growing up around two related natural attractions, Lake Argentina, that country's largest freshwater lake, and the Perito Moreno Glacier that feeds it. It is thus an oasis in the rather barren and very lightly populated Patagonian steppe. It is also a support center for agriculture and governmental activities in the lake department of Santa Cruz Province of Argentina.
Our hotel, on the south shore of the lake, was originally a sheep ranch that grew into a hotel. After we arrived, there was a sheep shearing exhibition for the guests.
Our dinner on arrival night was at a touted lamb restaurant. The food and service was excellent.
We were here for the glacier, so the next day we went by bus about 2 hours west of the town to the Los Glaciares National Park. Alongside the road was another shrine to a populist saint, this one Gauchito Gil. Chileans have no corner on the miracle market. Gauchito was executed for desertion from the army. Before he died, he told the executioner that his son would become very ill; only praying to Gauchito would make the son well again. The executioner's son did become sick, his father did pray to Gauchito, and the son did get well again. For this miracle the people still venerate him over a century later.
Argentina seems to be serious about protecting the natural environment in Los Glaciares National Park; it is treated as a natural preserve, so access is strictly controlled to daylight use and in designated areas only. Thus, the risk is reduced of devastating fire such as has plagued Torres del Paine.
The glacier is one of the few in the world that is advancing; it periodically bumps up against Peninsula Magellanes on which the park is located. The lake bends in a loop around this peninsula, so the glacier periodically cuts off one part of the lake from the other. When this happens, the water level rises at the upper end of the lake with no outflow; currently it is over 5m elevated versus the main lake. As the water rises more, pressure on the glacier increases until the force collapses the glacial barricade and the dammed upper lake disgorges. This happens on average every five years. [Note: Two weeks after we left, the glacial dam broke; it had been in place since 2008.]
Moreno glacier and Grey glacier are both extensions of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, one of the largest reservoirs of fresh water on the planet. These two glaciers have their origins only ~40km from one another (although it took us two days to get from one to the other). They are approximately the same area and length.
The approach to the glacier is around the south end of the peninsula, so the first glacier view is of the south side.
From the visitor center there are a series of steps and ramps that go to various viewing platforms.
In this head-on view, one looks down the barrel of the glacier.
Here are some scenes of the of the glacier where its flow is halted by the bedrock of the peninsula in front of it.
Following is a closeup of where the midpoint of the glacier runs hard aground above water level.
After returning to town, I spent a couple of hours roaming the local wetland preserve to photograph birds. Here are a few: Chilean flamingo, red shoveler, upland goose, Andean coot, and black-necked swan.
We had dinner with another couple, then went for gelato to close out the evening. In the morning it was off to the airport for the flight back to Buenos Aires and then a day later our flight home through Lima to Los Angeles. Adios Patagonia.
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