The Carretera Austral (The end of the road...)

Trudging up the hill, the gales gusting every which way, the only thing that prevents us becoming airborne it seems is the suction of our boots to the slop. The ponchos that envelop us aren’t helping much aerodynamically, but underneath its shelter, shackled to my back, Kiva somehow manages to fall asleep, and it’s this that has us pressing on full steam ahead, despite our desire to take our son’s lead and shelter from the rain.

I’d heard it said that it’s possible to experience four seasons in a single day in Patagonia. At one stage a hail seeded wintry mix blew horizontally through the valley, above which stood a clear blue sky while the sun’s warmth somehow penetrated the squall, leading me to believe in the possibility of experiencing them all simultaneously.

Begun in 1976 by Pinochet in order to penetrate as far south as possible (lest Argentina lay claim to the territory) the Carretera Austral was only opened to traffic in 1998, and the last 100kms to the village of Villa O’Higgins (where bound by glaciers and the southern ice caps beyond, it dead ends) were only opened in 2000. The only options from this point are to turn around and go all the way back up, or take a boat across Lago O’Higgins to the two-family settlement of Candelerio Mancilla, and walk across the mountains to Argentina.

This is a Patagonia virtually unexplored at the time of the mythmaker Chatwin’s “In Patagonia” or Theroux’s “The Old Patagonian Express”. One of Chile’s last true wildernesses, a land of glacier capped mountains and virgin evergreen forests, its fearsome geography deterred settlers far longer than the country’s more pastoral regions further north.

But with man’s appearance the area has been touted for exploitation: why else would the energy to penetrate land be exerted, if it were not to profit on the robbery of the region’s resources?

This land (all land) has been carved into a possession. What was once merely a claim on map, nobody had ever actually seen now has people on the ground, ‘Chileans’, whose presence legitimizes that possession under civilizations laws. Under these laws, the leaders of that nation can do with it what they wish. They (Pinochet), sold it to the highest bidder.

A Spanish company Endesa currently plans to build five massive dams on the region’s two largest rivers (two of the world’s last remaining undammed rivers); one of which, the Baker, is the most beautiful either of us has ever laid eyes upon. The colour of turquoise-blue is as clean and wild as the day it was cast.

The creation of the dams will impact 14 national parks and protected reserves (as valleys are flooded, ecosystems altered, and forests felled, the demise of countless fish and wildlife species is inevitable). All this so that 5000 high voltage towers can line the mountain tops to power Chile’s cities to the north in exchange for the promise of cheaper electricity (on a dying planet).

If the dams are built it will just be the continuation of our dominant civilizations belief that this planet is its possession. The contemporary delusion is that the pursuit of profit or economic progress is an ideal to be sought without delay or recourse, lest some other company or nation exploit it first...even if that something is pristine, irreplaceable.
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Anticipating this trek for weeks now, we’d prepared ourselves and Kiva with ever more demanding hikes as we’d travelled south from Santiago, first through the Chilean and Argentinean Lake District, and then down the Carretera Austral.

On the morning of our departure, the rain fell lightly. The clouds promised more. After some negotiation over breakfast, we decided to subcontract the transportation of our luggage out to a man with a horse, thus trading the security of our camping gear, for speed (an optimistic word for a couple hiking with baby). And since Señor Caballero would be trotting the 26kms over the mountains in a little over three hours, we couldn’t sit around all morning waiting for a break in the clouds if our arrivals were to coincide, before the sun went down.

Fortunately, the rain cleared after an hour or so and despite having to ford a river due to a collapsed bridge and trekking on some of the worst waterlogged trails I’ve ever encountered - the trip went without a hitch. In a little over six hours we were elated to make our final descent down towards Lago Desierto, where a border guard nonchalantly stamped our passports whilst watching the latest football beamed live from Buenos Aires by DIRECTV.

We didn’t have to wait long huddled by the fire until the departure of the ferry across the lake, which, although highly overpriced at $40US per person for a 45min ride, saved us a sodden nights camping on the lakefront and a further 5 hr hike. With a curious toddler running up and down the cabin trying to sneak up to the captain´s deck at every opportunity, we were inevitably the last ones off the boat and were met by a minibus and a random car - both drivers demanded a cartel-ishly similar $50US to transport us the 22 miles into El Chalten.

The sky had reopened and the black of Patagonia’s night could be postponed no longer when the driver dropped us at the far end of town at El Chalten´s only ATM, so that we could withdraw the extra funds to cover the $130US we’d spent in little over an hour. He then took the opportunity to inform us that we should remove our luggage, and our sleeping baby, from his car since he wasn’t prepared to take us any further ...unless, of course, we paid him extra.

After a long day I was in no mood for this joker; he clearly believed we were in no position to tango, so I told him if that were his stance he wouldn’t be paid a single cent. Realising we actually wielded all the power in such a situation he changed tact and proceeded to grovel to Jennifer for payment. To stop the misery we negotiated a reduced rate of $100 pesos ($30US - still a bloody lot of money), and he sped off in his car.

We’d probably walked a block back into town when a car came screaming around the corner, causing Jennifer (who was carrying Kiva) to jump for the safety of the pavement. Out hopped our joker friend and two uniformed Argentinean National Gendarmerie (border guards), who took the lead in demanding we pay the driver what we owed, whilst joker boy stood there, grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

Jennifer laid into them in Spanish so fierce and quick fire I had trouble keeping up with it all. She immediately took the wind from their sails, and once they realised what had happened, and got a view of Kiva’s confused little eyes and rain sodden cheeks peaking out from under his hood, they were completely deflated. All that was left for them to do was give the driver the kind of pitiful look of derision he deserved, get back in the car and retreat from whence they came.

El Chalten´s popularity as a tourist destination has mushroomed in recent years, and as yet doesn’t have the means to handle it. Arriving late at night during high season isn’t the best policy if you want to find a room. This situation was compounded by the previous few days relentless rain which meant many had put their hiking expeditions on
hold, creating a back log of people refusing to leave town until they’d completed their missions. We went from hostel, to hotel, to guesthouse in the rain that night; all the while our joker friend stalked us from a distance in his SUV, and just when we were about to fall back on our tent and camp we found the last 2 beds in town (bunked).

The next morning I tried to switch the laptop on, and it had apparently died... the cold, the water, shock or an aversion to horses; I'm not really an expert¬?

We spent the next few days hiking around the glorious mountains of the Fitz Roy Range and Cerro Torre. After a beautiful trip to Perito Moreno outside Calafate to suage our Glacier fix we were able to tackle what I dubbed ´the saucepan´ at Torres del Paine (basically the ¨W¨ minus the visit to Grey Glacier, thus cutting the hike down to four days and three nights).

Preoccupied by the weather we’d encounter on arrival, due to countless travellers’ stories of relentless rain, frigid nights in damp wind-whipped tents, and elusive cloud- covered mountains; and with summer fast drawing to a close, we were gifted with the best weather we could possibly have hoped for (minus a few snow showers and gale force winds that threatened to tear the tent from its moorings). Mission accomplished, we just had to turn around and head north through the uneventful nothingness that is Argentinean Patagonia.

Though this immense rolling void of identical scrubland affixed to the bus window for 30 odd hours is virtually synonymous with word ‘Patagonia’, it was as alien to us as domesticated sheep seem to be in this inhospitable terrain. Having just travelled down through the unspoilt evergreen rainforests of Chilean Patagonia; it seemed as great a contrast as anything on earth; the sharing of the word ´Patagonia´ surely an act of geographical ignorance on the part of colonial cartographers having never set foot on the continent.

But if Patagonia’s appeal lies in its emptiness, in fifty years or so after the dammers and loggers have been through there, and countless endemic species have gone by the way side, perhaps our grandchildren can experience this particular fetish on both sides of the Andes.

In a quirk of fate, whilst in the Argentinean town of Rio Gallegos, a good 8hrs from El Chalten, who walked into our restaurant but Mr Joker + middle aged tourist. You might even say he looked like he’d seen a ghost, as he span on his heels and disappeared as quickly as he’d come. The truth is, if I’d had a car, I’d probably have stalked him - just for fun mind.

We waited until Buenos Aires to try to have the laptop fixed - but apparently it was "too new" for any of that treatment. So we shipped it back to the US to be fixed on warranty, knowing we probably wouldn’t be seeing it again on this trip. US customs took an interest in it for a few weeks before it was delivered to Silicon Valley. MSI held up their end of the bargain and fixed it without explanation though they wouldn’t ship it back to South America.

The best photos of our current trip, spanning three continents, have been saved and edited; the memories, impressions and opinions logged in my mind, but the wherewithal to blog complete with photos from the southerly portion of the Carretera Austral (which weren’t yet backed up and thus are not included in this blog) is now tucked away in a basement in Wisconsin. The bureaucracy of having it shipped here to Bolivia isn’t worth considering. Though to be honest, what with WiFi leaching into every nook of the planet, I had started feeling a little half maschina half menschen anyway.

Back in 2004 when I started this blog, I was blogger #90 to join a website called Travelblog (now boasting more than 120,000 bloggers) I travelled with a Fujitsu Lifebook™, weighing in at a little over a kilo, equipped with a hard drive capacity of 3 GB (not RAM - HARD DRIVE!). It was perfect for use as a word processor and sorting through photos before I burnt them to CD. Its latest descendant of similar dimensions is a veritable PC with all the trimmings - allowing me to watch Live Premiership matches, Skype™ home etc etal, from the comfort of our hostel room, at the far end of the planet. It seems only yesterday I remember tuning into the BBC World Service on my SW Radio and sending home things called ‘postcards’…how pure and uncluttered travel used to be!

But the truth is, despite my self righteous position of enforced luddism, now that we’ve adopted a more sedentary travel pace here in Bolivia; I do miss that laptop - ANY LAPTOP! (Preferably with WiFi) The sheer laboriousness of tapping out a blog, uploading and captioning pictures - on antiquated computers, with pedestrian internet speeds - complete with a restless toddler bouncing off your knee, has me yearning for the freedoms of an office job. Particularly when we could be down at the plaza feeding the pigeons or splashing around in rubber rings at the local pool.

So for my own sanity, I’ve taken the decision not to spend the rest of my days down here touring the internet cafes of Latin America; I´m quitting the blog.

I could catch up on the backlog of blogs stretching back to China, October 2008 (we flew into Santiago January 2nd), when we return ´home´. But our nomadism is about to face its stiffest challenge, and we’re expecting to quite busy. As the irony is, we probably have the cash to continue travelling for another year or so after our last stint in Korea, but we’ve decided to wind this current trip down in July. The reason: I’ve recently re-enrolled as postgraduate student. This time Jennifer and I will be studying anthropology (We’ve both been given a free ride - due to Jennifer’s flawless academic record and, well, I think they took pity on me) commencing September in Alberta, Canada.

The prospect of settling down in one place for two years (minus our fieldwork) is strangely exciting. Of course you can get back to me on that statement a year in, but, never having actually even been to Canada, and with the Rocky Mountains just an hour drive away, we’re hoping to find enough nature escapism to tide us over.

Kiva will also be enrolling at the local day care. Though having already completed his first ´Gap Year’ before his second birthday we sincerely hope he can adapt his nomadic life to that in the ‘real world’. And that his charismatic, intelligent, outgoing, adventurous personality developed on the road (actually, probably inherited from his father) won’t be tempered on the frozen Canadian Plains. Though on the other hand, random strangers plying him with candy, and taking his picture wherever we go can’t be ideal for his emotional development either.

He’s got quite a travel rap sheet now; having circumnavigated the globe before his first birthday, been carried to, crawled in or now toddling through Korea, USA, The Philippines, Taiwan, China, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, England, Ireland, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. Fortunately he is not yet at the age where he picks up and repeats everything he hears - else his language development would be a little labyrinthine, and he would likely believe his name is "Muy Lindo" or “Que hermoso”. Yet by his third birthday we are confident that he'll have at least a basic grasp of Spanish, as both Jennifer and I plan to conduct our fieldwork research in Ecuador circa 2010.

So this will be the end of the road for my blogging for a fair while, if in fact I ever recover from this particular bloglag - though I never was too vigorous with my postings in case you ever didn't catch one, so hopefully they won't be missed.

P.S. There are quite a few photos here (spanning Chile, Argentina and Uruguay), but ironically for this blog, it is missing a big batch from the Carretera Austral.

Go before it disappears, and you can decide whether the phrase "It´s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" is applicable, or indeed, tolerable?

Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action...The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always prevented - and then do nothing" Soren Kierkegaard.

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