Pategonia

On to South Pategonia

Punta Arenas is an important port on the Magellan Straight at the very south of Chile. Of its 170,000 people, about a third are of Croatian decent.

In 1518, Ferdinand Magellan left Seville in Spain with five ships. After several problems including a couple of mutinies they found a route through to the Pacific Ocean. The Magellan Straight. It meant they didn’t have to deal with the unpredictable hazards of Cape Horn. One of the five ships made it all the way back to Seville but Magellan was not on it. He was killed in the Philippines.

Another historical figure who had ties to Punta Arenas was Ernest Shackleton who led three expeditions to Antarctica, not always with the best results.

I took a long walk by the water and saw some interesting things.

From there we drove to Torres del Paine national park. Along the way we came across a couple of gauchos crossing the road.

We also saw rheas, guanacos and flamingos.

Once we got to Torres del Paine we took a short hike.

We stayed in a hotel right on Grey Lake and at the end of the lake you could see Grey Glacier.

Next day we had a longer hike.

I found out that glaciers make a rumbling noise like thunder when they move. This one was moving a lot.

Northern Patagonia

Puerto Varas is a nice tourist town on lake Llanquihue with the Osorno volcano looking down on it. This area is within the Pacific Ring of Fire and has many volcanos. A lot of them are active but they do not spew lava, they throw up ash. Like a cloud. And the ash rains down on everything.

The highlight of our stay in Puerto Varas were Petrohué falls at the Vicente Perez Rosales national park. Chile has 46 national parks covering over 32 million acres. Vicente Perez Rosales was the first national park to be established in the 1930’s. Just to compare, the USA has 63 national parks that cover about 50 million acres. To put it in perspective, Chile is 292 thousand square miles, whereas the USA is 3.8 million. My math isn’t the greatest but it can give you an idea of the percentage of total land dedicated to parks. Anyway, the falls were beautiful.

We spent the evening at the home of a local family. The mother was a geriatric physical therapist and the father owned his own landscape design business. They had two teenage daughters and had built their house out of four very large shipping containers. Interesting people.

The next day it was back on the bus to catch the ferry to Chiloé Island. The main city of Castro was founded in 1567, but the island has been inhabited for over 7000 years. The island was originally called New Galicia by the Spanish settlers but soon reverted to Chiloé – land of the seagulls. The Jesuits arrived in the 17th century and started building churches. There are about 150 wooden churches on the island and some are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Chiloé is also known for its houses built on stilts.

On our way off the island we stopped at the Puñihuil Wildlife Reserve. We donned life vests and were pushed in carts out to boats in the Pacific Ocean. From there we boated around three islands. These were uninhabited islands where mostly birds are protected. We saw penguins, seagulls, ducks, other birds, and a sea lion.

Unfortunately I don’t have a telephoto lens.

Next time Punta Arenas and the south.

On to Pategonia

From Rapa Nui we made our way to Buenos Aires and a brief visit there.

Our first stop was to the memorial for the “Desaparecidos” or the “Missing”. During the dictatorship in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 they estimate over 30,000 people ‘disappeared’. We heard from a man in his 40’s whose mother was snatched off the street weeks after he was born. It was only recently through new processes that they were able to identify her remains. When his father discovered she was missing he immediately took the baby to her parent’s house and he fled. Eventually the boy and his father moved to Pategonia to get away from it all.

It was a long time before anybody was able to talk about what went on. Now there is a large memorial where names are listed on several walls like the Vietnam memorial. They list the name, the age when they disappeared, and if they were pregnant. Many children were taken away from their mothers and given to other people.

Our next stop was to the Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. It is next to one of the ports and was originally founded by a mixture of immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is a working class neighborhood that is very colorful and begging for tourists.

During the pandemic people brought stones to the main square in front of the National Palace in order to say goodbye to their loved ones who died.

We ended the day with a delicious steak dinner and lots of good Malbec wine.

Early the next morning it was back to the airport and on to Bariloche, the Lake District at the northern edge of Pategonia. It calls itself little Switzerland and has some good chocolate for sale.