Travels

The wind was unbelievable. It tore at my anorak, and whipped the hood strings dangerously close to my eyes. When I faced into it, it pulled snot from my nose and sent it flying downwind. My eyes watered, and the inside of my glasses became hazy from the spattering of my salty tears.

Cathy “leaning against the wind”.

As we rounded the base of a wind-battered hill, briny Laguna Ana came into view. In this land of browns and muted greens, the pink smear far down the lakeshore looked very out of place.

Teetering in the wind like drunks, we approached the smear until all at once it lifted into the air. The hundreds of flamingos beat their wings madly but couldn’t make any headway against the wind. They had to be content with slipping sideways a few hundred metres down the lakeshore, then settling into the shallow water again to stand huddled together in defiance of the wind.

Flamingos.

Struggling to keep them steady, we looked down into the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley through our binoculars. Instead of bison or pronghorns that would have looked at home here, we saw groups of rusty-coloured guanacos, their long coats streaming behind them in the wind. Here and there, four-foot-tall rheas went about their bird-brained business. At least the foxes looked familiar.

Guanacos.

We were in Pali Aike National Park, a couple of hours drive northeast of Punta Arenas, and hard against the border with Argentina.

Pali Aike National Park, Chile.

A minefield near the border of Chile and Argentina. You’d think that two countries that have so much in common could think of better ways to deal with border disputes.

The first hundred or so kilometres from Punta Arenas were on a good paved road. The biggest challenge was avoiding being sucked in, and then spit out, as we moved in and out of the wind shadows caused by the trucks and buses we met in our cheerfully red Chev Aveo. Leaving the pavement, we bounced down the washboard and shuddered through the potholes to the park.

We pulled up to the small park compound. It was the only structure for as far as the eye could see. Someone was busy raking and tidying up behind the fence. They didn’t look up. I walked to the office door and tried to turn the handle but it was locked. “¡Hola!”, I said to the guy who was raking. He almost jumped out of his skin. In the wind, he hadn’t heard us drive up. We were almost surely the first people he’d seen that day, even though it was already 3 o’clock. We may have been the first people he’d seen all week. Turns out he was a big fan of the Canadian TV shows Due South and Fire and Ice.

Patagonian Sky.

From Punta Arenas we drove to Puerto Natales, and then to Torres del Paine National Park.

Torres del Paine is considered by most to be one of the finest national parks in South America. Great towers and horns rise up from the pampas, and glaciers tumble into milky blue lakes. Guanacos graze in the foothills, while Andean condors sail across the mountain faces. The mata guanaco was in bloom, and its fiery red/orange domes dotted the landscape.

Approaching Torres del Paine National Park.

Andean Condors Soaring in Front of the Towers.

Mata Guanaco in bloom.

When we left for the Mirador Torres at 8:00 a.m., the massif was wrapped in clouds and, high above, the wind scoured snow from the peaks and sent it streaming in long plumes eastward. As we walked, the weather gradually improved until we reached the viewpoint at noon. We were rewarded with a great view of the towers against a beautiful blue sky. A half hour later we turned our backs on the towers and headed down. Clouds descended on the peaks, and snow flurries blew through. The wind picked up. Our timing had been perfect.

Cathy is looking pretty happy for just having finished a four-hour hike that included the last gruelling 45 minutes straight up the moraine.

Torres del Paine.

Cathy said I had to put this one in to prove I’m actually on the trip!

We were almost back to our hosteria when we both looked up to search the sky for the jet we heard flying over. There wasn’t a jet. It was just the wind roaring amongst the peaks. Did I mention that it was windy in Patagonia?

Oh, and the penguins.

I guess we didn’t get enough penguins in Antarctica. We visited Magellanic Penguin colonies in both Argentina and Chile.