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Published: December 22nd 2023
Sprayed on, snorted on, sneezed on by three different animals on three different continents.
Riding on the back of an elephant ambling knee-deep up a small mountain stream in Laos, the graceful lady dipped her trunk into the water, took a good suck and turned her long snout upwards, backwards over her head, and let loose. Straight at me. While elephants use this practice to cool their backs, I strongly suspect she knew exactly what else she was also doing.
Get up close and personal, face to face with a camel on its haunches in Petra, Jordan. Its nostrils are already flared. Without warning the animal sneezes over my face, or more correctly, mostly over my camera and hand, with a woollen beanie protecting the top of my head.
Now a Southern right whale approaches the boat, off the Patagonian coast of Argentina, where I am perched a metre above the water, leaning over the gunwale to get a good look at her. Barely two metres away she vents through her blow-holes, the breeze carrying the light, fine spray over me.
Properly blessed for a trip to the end of
the world?
The road to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago at the extreme southern tip of South America, still stretches out ahead, but with some quiet, warm satisfaction that the legendary destination is finally coming into view.
Small dusty towns, small museums, slow pace, kindly residents, flat, flat, flat near-barren lands, long bus rides and a rash of old Ford F250 pick-ups make up the better part of central/southern Patagonia, where human interaction takes on far more meaning than box-ticking any so-called tourist landmark.
Money-changers worldwide are a breed of their own, often evincing varying degrees of dishonesty or an arrogance of 'you need me', even when this need is totally based on the principle of reciprocity. The stereotype becomes even more archetypal when the grifters are playing on the black-market.
Try and sell a few hundred dollars, all crisp, neat bills from reputable sources. A 0.1mm dot of ink on one bill has one truculent changer arguing, "no, I will not take that, or I will cut the rate by 20%". The smallest fold mark records a similar response.
"You want to change, you have other, or you want cheaper?" Flat, and functionally nasty.
One has to have some local currency. Many vendors do not take plastic, and there is a queue of people waiting behind me.
He gets perfect bills, and days later an individual more in need of foreign currency takes the so-called errant bills without hesitation.
New Argentinian president Javier 'El Loco' Milei, self-styled 'anarcho-capitalist', decides to devalue the local Peso by 50%, in an attempt "to slow or stop hyperinflation", and also to try and put a stranglehold on the black-market trade. Citizens are now officially 50% poorer than they were. In a complicated way, for tourists previously leveraging the black-market rates against the official rate, the price of everything doubles.
Make a booking for a guesthouse prior to devaluation at $x. Arrive at said accommodation post devaluation, and discover the price is now $2x.
Travellers, tourists and backpackers from a milieu of countries abroad abound, yet it takes near three months to finally meet any of African origin. Two Senegalese brothers stand out from the crowd, selling wares at their pavement stalls in Rio Gallegos, my last port of call before the final lap south.
Mohammed and Cheikh Niyane have been living in the
town, a far cry from their tropical homeland, for 15 years. This is a town of snow for six months of the year, and lukewarm summers at best. "We knew somebody, who knew somebody here, then, who told us we could make a living. It was true, and now we are well settled with local families. We have also heard poor reports of South Africa," says Cheikh when asked why they did not try closer to home.
French-speakers, both are now fluent in Spanish. Over a few days we develop a little ritual, greeting each other each day with an, "ola, senor Africano", a chuckle and hearty handshake or fist bump.
Africans would seem either thin on the ground in South America, or we don't dally in the same destinations.
Share accommodation with a Palestinian ICU specialist doctor now resident in the United States. An Instagram activist against the current state of affairs in her homeland, she expresses disgust that "her taxes are being used to buy bombs to drop on her family in Gaza".
Share different accommodation with a 20-year-old Israeli, only three months out of his military training period. A tank-gun loader, he says,
"only the skinny can get those jobs because the space is so small". He speaks rapid-fire style, nervy, expresses anger at the hostage situation, and says 350,000 Israelis abroad followed the call to return to their country to assist in their military endeavour. Why is he not there, perfectly trained for this moment, is a question I simply avoid.
I don't attempt to find the fourth-generation offspring of a few hundred Afrikaners who immigrated to Chubut province circa 1902-07, to get away from the British in the great Brit-Boer fandango. For no reason other than the core was a bit out of the way. We shall revisit the possibility on the Great Trek north.
Am hosted by a kind couple who says they have a great aunt surnamed Kruger. The internet shows them who Paul Kruger was, etc. Word has it, some of the dying-out generation still speak Afrikaans as it was spoken at the turn of the 19th century. The University of Michigan, in collaboration with Argentinian ethnography academics, have been carrying out an ongoing study for the past five years of how a totally isolated language survives, or slowly dies, how it differs from current Afrikaans,
and how local use has been infused with Spanish over 100 or more years.
Name cultures change, and probably now there are Raul Bothas, Miguel Smits, Pablo Labuschagnes and Juan van der Merwes (pr. Ghwan).
And old ear-worm ditty calls attention ... "Guantanamera, Guajira, Guantaname-e-e-e-ra".
Athough the song is attributed to Cuban Compay Segundo, also of Buena Vista Social Club fame, perhaps ironically Cuba was also part of the Great Escape from South Africa all that time ago.
"Juan van der Merwe, Guajira, Juan van der Me-e-e-er-wa".
Ja, nee.
Local tongue-twisters and conundrums that one has to deal with. The pronunciation of "LL". It can be "y", "h", "jj", or, as in Rio Gallegos, it is "sh" ... making "Rio Gashegos". Pronounce it Gahegos or Gayegos, and nobody has a clue what you're talking about, and you can't book a bus ticket either, without further ado.
Don't mention the war.
The word 'Falklands' here is only ever used to denigrate Britain's involvement in the scuffle over a small group of islands, locally known as Las Islas Malvinas, directly east of Rio Gallegos, which is nearly at the bottom of the country, and
was used as the base for the invasion/liberation of the ocean outcrops in 1982.
Every town along the country's coastline for 2,000km has a Malvinas park, plaza, square, monument, dedication or mural, and some a museum.
All are dedicated to the 649 Argentinian 'heroes' who lost their lives in the 74-day undeclared war with Britain after Maggie Thatcher dispatched a fleet to retake 'their' islands.
And all inscriptions shout out loud and proud that the Malvinas belong to Argentina, the heroes will not be forgotten, and the islands will one day be returned to their geographical motherland.
Would the Malvinas have been near China, Beijing's 'nine-dash line' that purports to include much ocean territory heavily disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia would doubtless have long included the Malvinas, and the matter might be far more settled.
The final ride of the southern shift brings up the old saw that 'the journey is more important than the destination', which is more often than not trotted out to massage the bruised ego of someone who could not successfully finish a task, or failed to get to where they wanted to go.
Destination Ushuaia, at
'the end of the world', certainly carries argument to upend the cliche, while the final bus trip also carries definite cause to hold to the maxim as well.
The 580km trip takes 13 hours, includes four border customs posts, navigates through two countries and includes a ferry ride across the Magellan Strait, which cuts off mainland South America from the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego.
Curious, historical border-line conflicts and debates with neighbour Chile shared the bottom tip of the continent between the two countries. But to get to Argentina's part of Tierra del Fuego by land, one has to go through a piece of Chile.
So, exit Argentina, with a busload queuing up at the frontier post. 10km down the road, the same machinations to enter Chile, this time with sniffer dogs and X-ray machines. Fruit is not allowed across this border, for fear of importation of pests. Fellow passenger, friendly, though temporarily not-amused, Mr Italian bemoans losing his apples and bananas. "They took all'a my fruit, but I was also carrying a big knife and they did not care about that at all."
At the border posts the wind is howling, a 'leaning wind'
that does not allow upright walking posture. The flat lands begin to find curves, slow, low, round-topped hills.
Down, down to the port (a lighthouse, coffee shop, police station and slipway) of Punta Delgada, on to a ferry, after a one-hour wait, to cross a stretch of water used for millennia by locals and discovered first for foreigners by Ferdinand Magellan in 1520.
Further, exit Chilean customs, then enter Argentina again.
Hills become sharper, steeper, and the southern forest begins. After nearly 2,000km of desolate nothing, the forest is an unexpected, pleasant intrusion. Magellan's beech is heavily the dominant species. A strange tree, at this time of the season half denuded, 5-7m high. They are gargoylish, lacking any kind of regular form, other than a bizarre, constant irregularity, gnarled, quirky, the perfect backdrop or setting for any ghost movie.
Up into the mountains the snow-capped peaks begin to reveal themselves. Visually spectacular. The woods are reminiscent of the great Siberian forests, never-ending with slush and mud as a permanent base, and small ratty, shabby wooden dwellings standing intermittently near the road. Plus there is a reminiscence of northern Pakistan's towering, snowy mountain peaks, winding roads and
verdant valleys with genteel streams running between well-curated farms.
The end of the world (Fin del mundo), as it is touted. Ushuaia.
There are two tiny settlements fractionally further south, a stone's throw across the Beagle Channel in front of south-facing Ushuaia - Puerto Williams (pop. 2,874 in 2002) and Puerto Toro (pop. 36 in 2002).
Ushuaia currently carries a population of around 100,000.
It is Antarctic-expedition central, and a magnet for cross-continental travellers. Well-heeled cruise-liner passengers, name-brand puff-jacketed, mingle along the port shoreline - gazing adoringly at their multi-decked ships - with every other kind of tourist or voyager possible. Backpackers, short-term holiday-makers, trans-continental journeymen, long-range cyclists, motorcyclists, minivans, camper vans, motor-homes, buskers, hustlers, bearded, beaded, bedraggled, sprightly, prim, proper ... if you look hard enough, you'll find somebody just like you, but who 'wanted to go there'.
A rambling town at the base of a long range of mountains. Snow-capped.
A little dream is realised. A white Christmas in summer.
A beautiful setting. Deep blue lakes and bays, forest and mountain trekking, snowy backdrops and a strange comfort that this truly is the end of the road. You cannot drive further
south.
Tourist centre of course offers a bus ride, or a boat ride anywhere, each destination claiming its own little right in the sun. A glacier, a wolf sanctuary, penguins, whales, bays ... a trekker's delight.
Sunset at 10.11pm today. The slow dimming light seems thin, rare, scarce, entrancingly blue when it wants to be.
Friday, 22 December is the longest day of the year in the Southern hemisphere. The sun will set at 10.12. It will become dark at 11.30pm.
From here, the long road north to Panama begins.
Now all I have to do is find Santa first.
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Alan Eason
non-member comment
Howdee
Lekker blog. Still in awe of your travels man. Glad the camel snot didnt destroy the camera. Now im curious to know what this tree looks like... I reckon if you put on a Bok jersey you'll draw out the VD Merwes!! Hope you find Santa. Enjoy. Your travel plans after new years?