Beautiful and distant Patagonia

El Spiritu de los Andes — the Andean condor, Spirit of the Andes — soared overhead. Shorter than the California condor, it’s wing span is greater, close to 10 feet.

What a welcome to Southern Patagonia and what a sublime moment. And you birders, listen up. The second day, our small group of adventures saw a flock of condors on the ground, more than 10 of them, while more swooped down for the condor caucus. Even our guide went mad over the rarity of it.

Southern Patagonia is a magical place at the far tip of South America. If you place your thumbnail on a map at the very southern end of South America, that’s Southern Patagonia — a region so remote that the next stop south is Antarctica across the Drake Passage. The countries of Chile and Argentina split the region: Chile to the west and Argentina to the east. And that’s another story.

Guanaco, a deer-like animal with large, beautiful eyes, in Chile.

I was on my way south from the small town of Calafate (pop. 8,000, 46° F) on Lago (lake) Argentino to the Parque Nacional de Glaciares, a World Heritage site of about 1.8 million acres that includes its monster glacier, the Perito Merino. Further north is Mount Fitz Roy, famous among climbers.

The drive through the Argentine pampas, or steppes, was so desolate it made the landscape between Mandan and Richardton look like the Garden of Eden, but all bets were off entering the park.

Andean mountains, lush with Lenga forests, framed the almost-impossible-to-describe enormous glacier. You get a sense of its size and power when you climb the 600 steps to see a small part of the top.

The Southern Patagonia Ice Field is the third largest in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. Glaciers are formed only by snow that loses its bubbles and compacts into a solid mass. No seawater. The luminous blue one sees in the ice is created when light passes through many ice layers, shedding the colors red and yellow on its journey.

Southern Patagonia glaciers have a great importance to global climate change: Of its multitude of glaciers, only three are not retreating: the Perito Merino, Spegazzini and Pio XL. The most important glaciers are: Upsala, Agassiz, Onelli, Spegazzini, Perito Merino and the Grey. You may be hearing more about them in the future.

In the Tierra del Fuego, the huge Pia glacier seriously retreated between 2000 and 2007, forming a larger lake, and the Marinelli glacier in Ainsworth Bay in the midst of the Darwin Range receded more than 8 miles since about 1945. In 1928, it was an immense ice field; in 2004, a lake.

A 2003 study by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that Chilean and Argentine glaciers were melting so fast they contributed to a sea level rise around .04 mm/year between 1975 and 2000. Data from the 2000 space shuttle along with data from 63 studied Patagonia glaciers found an accelerated ice loss of about .2 mm/year between 1995 and 2000.

On a less serious note, what would the pampas be without gauchos? They’re here and real and work hard — their version of our cowboys. In Chile, gauchos are called shepherds and that’s where we met Hector with his dogs herding flocks of sheep and cattle on a 17,000-acre estancia (ranch) after we crossed from Argentina into Chile. Nothing is small here.

You also might encounter wild animals: the Patagonian puma — the major predator, larger than America’s but less aggressive — still can kill nightly 15-20 sheep, guanaco (deer-like with large beautiful eyes), rheas (a kind of ostrich), red fox, Chilean huemul (the rare endangered animal that looks something like a cross between a deer and a horse with horns) and too many birds.

Dogs (the most dangerous), pigs, horses and cows also run wild. Cows? Wildlife just got infinitely richer as we entered Torres del Paine and the Paine Massif, an eastern spur of the Andes, a virtual cathedral of frosted spires.

In Torres del Paine, the paved road gave way to gravel but also to spectacular glacial waterfalls, forests, lakes and the Grey, Dickson and Tyndall glaciers.

Overnighting at Lago Grey and its imposing glacier, I crossed a narrow suspension bridge over the Rio Pingo (love the name) to walk the lake’s beach and wallow in its beauty — and sun! But what fisherpeople might love most in the park is the Serrano River. The average salmon caught in the Serrano is 35 pounds; the record is 70.

It took forever to get out of the park over rough roads but what a reward — mouth watering, perfectly grilled salmon from the river at a Ma and Pa Kettle kind of restaurant and store with a master chef.

Later on the Chilean steppes, we collapsed at Rio Reubens (another great name) for beer and tea before getting to the Estancia Rio Verde for the night.

You can have your Four Seasons and Ritz Carltons, but I’ll take this rustic estancia any day. El Patron, who presides over its 49,000 acres, greeted us with buoyant charm, great food and great Chilean wines.

Although it’s on an open Pacific bay with icy wind blasting away, the huge stone fireplaces ablaze and ready to grill meat made everything perfect.

Although Punta Arenas (pop. 133,000), cold wind included, is a dream come true, more so is a small ship voyage south of there to the wild Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.

I can hardly say the words without visceral joy. Punta Arenas on the Last Hope Sound, with its bright yellow port buildings and blue roofs overlooking the Straits of Magellan, was a strategic port before the Panama Canal was built. To avoid rounding Cape Horn, ships used the Magellan Straits, though not easy, to get from one ocean to the other.

Tierra del Fuego is where the real wilderness and my excitement begins. The names of Darwin, Beagle, Fitz Roy (Captain of the HMS Beagle) and Magellan are everywhere. Ferdinand Magellan — now there’s a brave man — in 1520 sailed his ship, the Santiago, 373 miles through the straits that bear his name, ending in a new sea he called the Mar Pacifico.

The Magellanic Forest at Ainsworth Bay is truly enchanted — a tapestry of unearthly greens, shapes, waterfalls, rock faces, lush mosses and happy flowers — so pristine you wanted to keep it in a genie’s bottle forever, the wet, mud and all. Back at the beach, the other reality wasn’t too bad. We were served hot chocolate and Johnny Walker scotch before lurching into our zodiacs. Bliss.

Nearing Cape Horn, dawn broke through a thick blackness. Feeling the swells at night, I thought there was no way we could land. About 6:30 a.m., the captain announced the wind and water were too treacherous to get ashore safely. So we had to forego the 160 vertical steps to the top of the Cape. Wind was blowing 40 knots, gusting to 60. We did get close enough to see the home, lighthouse (southernmost in the world), red helicopter, radio tower and albatross monument.

A couple with their two children live at the top for a two-year term. There’s even a small shop. Steps or not, it was a disappointment not to land. I’m sure the couple was disappointed as well. You don’t just drop in.

From Cape Horn, we sailed up the Murray Channel to Wulaia Bay on Navarino Island, site of a long-ago-abandoned tiny naval station and a sacred island to the Yamana aborigines.

A word about the aborigines south of the Magellan Straits: there are few survivors of the Yamana, less than 100. Among the earliest inhabitants were the Aonikenk people, now extinct. They were nomads, hunters and gatherers, and called the giants. Large footprints, bones and fossils give evidence of this. I asked, what does giant mean for height? I was told 6 feet. But imagine — extinct, like an animal.

We left for Ushuaia, one of my favorite cities, the world’s most southern city (pop. 50,000), and into Argentina.

Time to explore, meet some locals, shop and fall asleep over my king crab dinner and Cape Horn Pale Ale at Cantina de Freddy. A glorious end.
__________________________________
SOURCE:
“Southern Patagonia: A magical place”
By CAROL M. RUSSELL
Citizen Travel Writer
Sunday, April 11
http://www.bismarcktribune.com
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/article_a584cfc4-4421-11df-b264-001cc4c002e0.html