Patagonia: to the end of the world (part 2)

Further north in Los Glaciares National Park is El Chaltén, the base for some of the most varied hiking routes. Excursions can be done as half-day or full-day trips or, for the adventurous, as a camping circuit. The scenery is very diverse: ice-capped mountains and glaciers; blue, green and turquoise lagoons one after another; brown Patagonian steppe; dark green forests; roaring rivers running through the valleys... Red-crested woodpeckers tap away at the tree trunks and condors fly overhead.

The dominant peak in the surrounding range is Mount Fitz Roy. In the almost extinct tribal Tehuelche language, its name is Chaltén, which means “smoking mountain”, an appropriate title for a peak nearly always masked by clouds. Hikers and climbers come from far afield in the hope of catching a cloud-free glimpse. Meteorological luck was still on our side and we were blessed with sunshine, blue skies and scarcely a cloud in the sky.

But it’s not only during hikes that you get to enjoy the landscape. The road journeys from one part of Patagonia to another offer amazing panoramas of the snow-covered Andes and other mountain ranges for hour after hour. The Patagonian flag, featuring yellow mountains and a blue sky with the Southern Cross, sums up much of what Patagonia has to offer: pure colours and simple, spectacular nature. Travelling by road gives you a sense of how vast and remote the area is. The journey between El Chaltén and El Calafate, two key bases for exploring Patagonia, is about 220km. There’s very little in between except for one small restaurant, La Leona, which is worth a stop to sample some local snacks. The little lodge also boasts framed newspaper cuttings of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who stayed here while on the run after robbing a bank.

Southern comfort

Leaving La Leona, you won’t see much human life for miles. There is, however, plenty of wildlife. It’s common to spot families of guanaco, relatives of the llama, grazing on the steppe. Another regular sight is the choique, or nandu, an emu-like flightless bird that mainly depends on speed as a defence against predators. Our trip to the Seno Otway penguin colony turned out to be a true bird-sighting event. The highlight was the penguins, which would pop their black-and-white heads out of their burrows and then waddle along their paths toward the sea. We also spotted flamingos, black-chested buzzard eagles, cormorants, choique and condors.

One of the longest drives of the trip was getting to Ushuaia, which claims to be the southernmost city in the world and has a passport stamp to prove it, and is the Argentine gateway to Tierra del Fuego National Park. One walk brings you to the Chilean border in the middle of the forest. There’s just a sign saying ‘No Trespassing’ and a rather ineffectual set of  wooden poles to mark the boundary. Still, it sounds quite impressive when someone asks what you got up to that day and you reply that you hiked to Chile and back.

Walking along the shore of the Beagle Channel on the park’s southern edge, numerous hollows can be seen in the ground. This is where the Yamana, one of the area’s aboriginal peoples, built their huts. While I wasn’t tempted to imitate their way of life to the point of stripping off my clothes and living in a chilly little hut at the edge of the channel, I did venture as far as a trip in a canoe, the Yamanas’ preferred mode of transport. I didn’t have to build it myself, though, and I didn’t return with any seal for supper. The channel, named after HMS Beagle, whose passengers included Charles Darwin, is renowned for being very choppy. I looked out on the calm water and chuckled as I was told once again: “The weather isn’t usually like this.”

I was quite happy that my waterproof trousers and windproof layers had scarcely been out of my bag, but maybe I’ll have to return to experience real Patagonian weather. Whether or not that happens will depend on the truth of the calafate berry legend.