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Patagonian Diary
Anna Spanfeller September 14, 2007PAGES: 1 2
A young traveler's journey to the end of the world
Monday
This morning, we arrived at the end of the world. Our plane set down in Ushuaia, Argentina, the world's southernmost city. Beyond lay the steppes of Patagonia, the untrammeled region that includes parts of both Argentina and Chile, and narrows to the national park of Tierra del Fuego, and from there to Cape Horn. The plane ride from Buenos Aires was a little rough, but we were lucky to be among the few people whose bags did not get left in B.A. Our tour guide for the next day picked us up at the airport and brought us to our hotel, the roads short and uphill. Las Hayas Resort, our destination, resembles a ski lodge, the rooms small and cozy, very clean and comfortable.
Tuesday
I have never seen a bird as absurd as the Steamer Duck; it cannot fly but runs on top of the water, creating quite a commotion. They are common on the bays of Tierra del Fuego, where we spent our first day. In the morning we canoed to Lapataia Bay, surrounded by mountains. The weather was clear and cool, and very windy. The landscape makes one feel insignificant, yet privileged to be a part of it, the mountains imposing, the land relatively untouched. When we shored our canoes, we encountered a sign announcing the end of the Pan-American Highway.
Lunch was arranged by our tour guides at a campground in the park. They set up a tent around a picnic table to discourage falcons from disrupting our lunch. We were served a feast, the American style burgers with all the toppings seeming somewhat out of place next to the sausage and Alfajores, a type of cookie made of wafers, chocolate and Dulce de Leche. After lunch, we hiked up through a forest to the top of a hill where we could see the Beagle Channel, named for the ship which completed two hydrographic surveys in the early 19th century, the second of which carried Charles Darwin. We could even see some of the Darwin Mountain Range, magnificent and snow-peaked. The channel eventually leads to the Pacific Ocean, and is about 150 miles long, the eastern portion the border of Argentina and Chile. No one else was in sight the entire time. On our way down the hill we came across a beaver dam. Our informative tour guide explained that beavers were introduced to Patagonia for their pelts, yet because no natural predator lives here, the beavers don't produce adrenaline, and so their pelts are thinner and therefore less valuable. The beavers in these parts prosper, building dams, creating artificial lakes, and killing the trees around their dams by flooding them.
After our tour, we spent some time in Ushuaia, considered the portal to Antarctica. The streets are short and hilly, and the houses aren't more than a story high. Though the town is plain and unimposing, it is a duty-free zone, and so the shopping is great-everything is half the price it would be in the US.
Patagonia owes its name to the Spaniards, who referred to its indigenous population as "patagones," because of their physique, relating them to a giant called "Patagon," a character popular in novels of the time. Popular perception that Patagonia was home to a race of giants fueled interest in the region, especially as other explorers such as Sir Francis Drake seemed to confirm these accounts after their own expeditions to the end of the world.
Later, we boarded the Mare Australis, a small cruise ship that would take us around Cape Horn and eventually end up in Punta Arenas, Chile. The cabins on the ship were large and everything was very tidy and inviting. The crew was very available to our every need, and the two main lounges were extremely comfortable.
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