THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412130439
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT SHELTON, TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 224 lines
MENTION PATAGONIA - as in, ``Can you tell me where Patagonia is?'' - and you're likely to draw blank stares followed by a hesitant, ``Isn't it, uh. . . ?
(The correct answer: South America, very south South America.)
Visited by individuals as diverse as Charles Darwin, who went there to study the origin of the species, and Butch Cassidy, who went there to hide out, Patagonia is a region often overlooked by travelers in a time when destinations are largely determined by the latest slick poster of bathing beauties sipping daiquiris on a white sand beach.
Many North Americans, under the mistaken impression that all of South America has the same degree of violence as countries like Columbia and Peru, frequently dismiss the whole continent in considering vacation possibilities when, in fact, Patagonia has about as much civil unrest as Wyoming.
Another reason relatively few people from the northern hemisphere venture there may be the less-than-tantalizing press the region often receives. Webster's Geographical Dictionary, for instance, describes Patagonia as a barren tableland at the southern end of Chile and Argentina.
Intrigued by the contrast between the aforementioned bland description and spectacular photographs of the snow-draped Patagonian Andes, I decided to head south to see for myself what this far off land was really like.
I had just over two weeks in January, not an ideal amount of time. But, given the reverse seasons between the northern and southern hemispheres, it was an irresistible chance to trade winter for summer.
In light of my time constraints, I decided to see what is considered to be the most impressive of Patagonia's natural wonders, a towering Andean spire of polished granite called Cerro Fitz Roy. Named after Robert Fitz Roy, captain of the H.M.S. Beagle on which Darwin traveled, Cerro Fitz Roy is one of the most dazzling peaks in the world.
Patagonia was given its name by Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, during his 1519-'22 quest for Charles V of Spain to find a westward route to the Orient; an epic voyage resulting in the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Though there are conflicting stories as to how he came upon this name, the most probable is that it derives from the Tehuelche, a race of Indians who wrapped their feet in animal skins thereby making them appear to be overly large. Since ``Pata'' is a Spanish slang word for ``foot,'' Patagonia received its exotic sounding though somewhat inauspicious name, which essentially refers to big feet.
After a flight from the Chilian capital of Santiago to Punta Arenas, a seaport town at the southern end of the Andean cordillera on the strait on Magellan, I immediately saw why the Tehuelche wore skins.
Although it was the beginning of the South American summer, the prevailing westerly winds, called the ``roaring forties'' (Patagonia is centered at wind-rich 40 degrees south latitude) put a raw chill in the air. I was glad I had a mountain parka and long underwear crammed in the bottom of my pack.
Located even farther south than New Zealand, Punta Arenas was, until the opening of the Panama Canal, an important port for ships rounding treacherous Cape Horn. Though the town is now an anarchic sprawl, evidence of the prosperity reaped from this once economically strategic location can be sean in the elaborate Victorian architecture of many of the town's buildings.
The assorted blend of new and old in this municipality, its pleasant accommodations, as well as side trip opportunities such as visiting nearby colonies of Magellanic penguins, made it a perfect place to begin the journey.
An easy half day's drive northwest of Punta Arenas is Puerto Natales. Located on the shores of glacier-carved Seno Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope Sound), this port town and its small harbor with brightly painted boats is a picturesque opportunity for travelers en route to Parque Nacional Bernardo O'Higgins and the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine to load up on provisions and relax a bit.
Wandering through the hilly streets of this Chilean town in search of white gas for my trail stove, I was impressed by the friendly dispositions of the locals. People here had time to greet one another on the sidewalks or gather in small groups for late afternoon strolls. Though lacking in some modern amenities, the people of Puerto Natales exhibited a more important quality: a good-hearted feeling of community afforded by their sensible, easygoing pace of life.
North from Puerto Natales are Chili's renowned Towers of Paine, a must-see for anyone traveling through Patagonia. The massif, and its 8,000 foot spires, are world-famous among mountaineers.
In taking a day hike terminating atop large talus blocks at the edge of a glacial laker near the base of the Towers, I was rewarded by one of the most impressive sights I had ever seen. Inset among the craggy ridges of adjoining mountains, the Towers shown in the sunlight with an ancient, magnificent brilliance. It was a timeless scene of startlingly pristine beauty.
Yet, from what I had heard, the Towers were only a dramatic prelude to Cerro Fitz Roy a couple of hundred miles to the northeast.
As the Towers floated lower in my rear-view mirror on the road east of the park, I decided to top off the gas tank for the trip across the border into Argentina. Pulling into a sun-bleached, clapboard town like the ones they used to film Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns, I located the gas station. It consisted of a solitary locked shed.
Peering through a grimy window, I could faintly make out the silhouette of an old rust-tinged gas pump. After making an inquiry at a house next door, through my pathetic Spanish I determined that the procedure was to go down the street to the proprietor's home and get someone to come back to unlock the shed.
My approach to the designated house prompted a frantic chorus of barking dogs in the rear yard. Contrary to my expectations of a Goober-like character manning the pump, just as I knocked on the door, a strikingly pretty young woman with long black hair appeared and silently came over to fill the tank.
Since my Spanish repertoire didn't extend much past words like ``gasolina?'' and ``how much,'' I didn't see any use in attempting conversation. Once the tank was full, the young woman scratched down the number of pesos due on a scarp of paper and smiled pleasantly as I paid.
With a quick adios and thanks, I drove off amused at the thought that this had been the first time I'd ever had a crush on a gas station attendant.
This was mid-afternoon, halfway down a parched 180-mile stretch of kidney-jostling dirt road strewn with oil-pan-popping rocks with dictated speeds under 25 miles an hour. The wind-blown Patagonian pampas is dominated by crusty lichens, thistles and scrubby sage possessing an Impressionist light brown tint that faded off in the distance with the curve of the Earth. What hills there are, are low, gradual rises on a scale resembling wrinkles in a rug.
In places, as the sun casts a shadowy light across the corduroy surface of the sandy ridges, the land takes on a wavy texture. Most of the way, though, the pampas fall back into their flat, seemingly endless character.
In taking a rest stop along the road, you're immediately struck by the silent emptiness of these saffron-colored plains. There is not a human-generated sound to be heard, only the constant pamperos winds blowing over the loneliness of the arid land.
Puzzled that the map I had showed this dirt track as a main road, I reflected on the geographical dictionary passage, looked around and thought that this was indeed an environment that could be described as barren.
It was somehow comforting to know that in this part of the world, so far south, the January sun would not set until 11. Although there was nothing along the road but wide as the sky open spaces, I didn't want to be traveling through such a deserted place in the dark.
Toward the end of the day, the dirt track finally intersected with a more heavily traveled paved road. A few miles on I could see in the distance, just peeking above the horizon, a spiky blue-white range of mountains illuminated by the waning sun. Overhead the clouds were deep pink.
As I drove into the small town of Calafate, I was already looking forward to the next day, and the spectacular scenes I had seen such amazing photographs of. I wondered if they would be worth the journey.
El Chalten is a speck of a town in the shadows of the Fitz Roy Range at the end of a 150 miles of dust and gravel road in Argentina's Parque Nacional De Les Glacieres. It derives its name for the Indian name for Fitz Roy.
Heavy clouds that frequently cover the upper reaches of Fitz Roy were once thought to be smoke rising from a boiling caldera. Patagonian Indians, mistaking the mountain for a volcano called it Chalten, ``God of Smoke.''
Due to ongoing border disputes between Chili and Argentina, the Argentine government, heeding the old adage about possession being nine-tenths of the law, took up the name and built Chalten to back up its claims in the area.
Wandering into one of two saltbox bars there, I was surprised to see a baby guanaco standing at the arm of the bartender. Guanacos, a close relative of the Andean llama, are often seen in groups grazing on mountain ridges in Patagonia. The establishment's proprietor told me that since they are easily domesticated animals, this one had no trouble making itself right at home behind the bar.
Loafing around Chalten, and lounging in the warm sun, the young guanaco had found a much better life than its normal existence of avoiding pumas and fighting the Patagonian winter snows in which hundreds freeze to death each year.
Patagonia's Parque Nacional De Los Glacieres has the unspoiled feel of Yellowstone without the Winnebagos. Aside from Chalten with its single hosteria and two or three places to eat, there is no development in or around the park. All of the roads are gravel, and unless you're carrying extra gasoline, you must budget what you have to make the round trip back to Calfate.
This lack of accommodations, however, adds to the park's rustic appeal. You have the satisfying feeling that you've arrived years before the throngs of tourists and tour buses that will one day surely come.
From food to sleeping bags, you simply take what you need. What inconveniences there are are far outweighed by the lack of crowds you'd be forced to contend with if the park were in the United States.
With its monolithic bodies of ice, such as the Moreno and Viedma glaciers, open wind-swept land and snowcapped mountains of the Fitz Roy Range, the Parque Nacional De Los Glacieres offers a scenic variety matched by only a few places in the world.
It is the Fitz Roy Range, its granite towers beveling upward to 10,000 feet out of the Patagonian pampas, which is the jewel of the austral land.
The approach to the range skirts the shores of Lago Viedma, an azure blue lake with a surface possessing the luminous quality of liquid metal. The lake gets its distinct color from the reflection of light off of microscopic minerals, ``glacial flour,'' suspended in runoff.
On my approach to Fitz Roy, the range was enshrouded in lenticular clouds, which allowed not a hint of the peaks I had come so far to see. It was only after the second day while taking a break from the trail on the banks of the Chorrillo del Salto, a torrent of snow-melt coursing away from the mountains, that I was able to see the dizzying grandeur of Fitz Roy unencumbered by hanging clouds.
The gray, time-streaked walls standing against swirls of cirrus clouds and blue sky had something of a surreal quality. Later this feeling was heightened as I looked up from a valley on a far side of the mountain to see two Andean condors soaring overhead.
As these black giants with their 7-foot wingspans silently spiraled above on the thermals, I could not help but think that this ethereal scene had surely remained unchanged through many thousands of years.
That night while trying to sleep in a tent buffeted by winds that sounded like a freight train coming through, I reflected on this South American journey.
Patagonia had been everything I had expected: desolate, lonely, yet possessing a mysterious beauty that would remain fixed in my memory. I felt a touch of sadness that the trip home would begin the next day.
Tempering my regret, though, was the recognition that Patagonia is one of those special places in the world that draws all who visit back, both in their thoughts and in the future. ILLUSTRATION: SCOTT SHELTON COLOR PHOTOS
The snow-capped mountains of the Fitz Roy Range, towering 10,000
feet above the Patagonian pampas, stand out against swirls of cirrus
clouds and a blue sky.
FAR LEFT: A glacial lake at the base of the Towers of Paine.
LEFT: A guanaco faces the setting Patagonian sun.
Photos
SCOTT SHELTON
This 180-mile stretch of road through the Pantagonian pampas is
serene but remote.
Chili's renowned Towers of Paine are a must-see for anyone traveling
through Patagonia. The massif, and its 8,000 foot spires, are
world-famous among mountaineers.
by CNB