Aboard the Don Baldo

Roadside campsite - Villa Maniguales

 Luc is working on an edition of his motorcycle diaries, but there may be revolutions in small countries before he has time to finish it, so I'll start another post while I have battery on this ferry ride aboard the Don Baldo from Chaiten to Puerto Montt, Chile.

from the Don Baldo

We have been in Patagonia a little over a month, and I could stay another year.  There are more national parks than towns.  The terrain is wild and varied, but there is plenty of wind and dust and bumpy gravel roads (ripio) for everyone.  The driving is a scenic delight of steppe and later glaciers and mountains and lakes, all with an aftertaste of poussiere.  Everywhere we stop (and many places we don't), I want to stay to explore.  Luckily we have been able to explore a bit since Torres del Paine: El Calafate.  The Perito Moreno glacier.  El Chalten.  5000 year old rock art at cuevo de los manos. Lago Buenos Aries (known as Lago General Carrera in Chile - the second largest lake in South America).  Next  to a bridge in tiny Villa Maniguales.  The people are reserved, as you would expect from country people, but proud of their country and shyly pleased if you talk about their home.

Perito Moreno glacier near El Calafate

El Chalten

Canyon near Cueva de las Manos

Sunset at Lago Buenos Aires campsite

Ferry crossing Lago Buenos Aires (Lago General Carerra in Chile)

I say their country.  Patagonia includes both sides of the Andes, apparently below Rio Negro, though definitions vary.  To me, the east and west parts of Patagonia (which may include Tierra del Feugo below the straits of Magellan, but I'm not sure) have more in common with each other than with their respective countries, and the parent countries themselves keep a wary eye on each other.  Photos of beribboned women presidents proudly hang in the customs houses of both countries. There is steppe and wind and ripio everywhere.  There are hitching posts outside of many houses.  The people seem to think of themselves as Patagonians first.

Our friends Fiona and Steve recently took a trip into the Amazon.  Fiona wrote about being so overwhelmed with abundance that it was hard to spot particulars without the help of the guide or her fellow travelers.  Made me think about noticing.  I have also been trying to read Darwin's book, The Voyage of the Beagle (having been to the Beagle Channel and Mount Fitz Roy, after all).  I'm not sure I'll get all the way to the Galapagos with him, but I'm happy to be trying.  His descriptions are so precise and vivid that I can see the octopus of the conical island obscuring his view with ink - perhaps because my own view is often obscured by dust.  As I drive I try to notice and describe to myself what I see as Darwin would.  I try to figure out whether the mountains I see were pushed up or flowed down or smushed together or some combination. (Thanks to Roman I read much of an Earth Science book last year.)  Darwin traveled a long time before the concept of tectonic plates and continental drift were solidified, but as he observed, it already made sense to him (I read that somewhere, not my insight).  The landscape is magnificent, but sparse enough to try to take it all in.

Here are some random shots from the van:

roadside armadillo

Chile - Careterra Austral

Careterra Austral

Careterra Austral

Another glacier around the corner