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Published: January 31st 2006
"I have the feeling that Patagonia is the most desolate of places...a land of exiles, a place of de-territoriality"
(Jean Baudrillard)
Cumberland Sausage was right. El Calafate is now the worst type of tourist trap. But it wasn't always that way. Mass tourism in Patagonia is a recent thing.
Once upon a time it was very different. The old Patagonian Wild West was a land of Pirates, outlaws and rebels. (Maybe its their pirate past that explains the desire to empty the tourists wallets!)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were the most famous of the outlaws who made Patagonia their home. When things were getting too hot for Cassidy and Sundance they settled down for 5 years as respectable stock farmers. The neighbours had no idea that the polite gringos were criminals. But the rural retirement couldn't last.
Maybe it was boredom, or maybe they missed the thrill of holding up banks. But after 5 years they returned to robbing banks. This time in Argentina. So, they were forced on the run again.
Many books have been written about Cassidy and Sundance, each gives a different version of how they met their end.
At the end of the last blog I was in Ushuaia waiting to catch a bus off the island of Tierra
del Fuego. The first bus out of town was to Rio Gallegos on Tuesday 24th. It was a very early start, the bus left at 5.35am. It was a comfortable but long journey.
Rio Gallegos is not a pretty town. It is twice the size of Ushuaia. It made its fortune from the wool trade, and now is also a coal shipping and oil refining port. It has a couple of museums which were closed for refurbishment when I was there. I bought a ticket out of town for the morning and put up in the Hotel Commercia for the night. The Hotel Commercia looked very shabby on the outside, its concrete walls were very dirty, but inside its lobby looked very grand. The rooms were not as grand but were serviceable, costing 110 pesos ($US22) - with bathroom and TV.
The next morning I travelled to El Calafate. Its the height of the tourist season, I hadn't bothered booking anything in advance. So, I got stung and ended up spending much more on a room than I intended at the Hotel El Quijote. The price was 360 pesos ($US170); I had tried a number of cheaper places,
Pictures can lie!
I´m pretending to ice climb on the glacier.they were all full. So, I decided to hell with the cost. The place was well over priced. The rooms were overheated and the shower didn't work very well. The water pressure on the hot water seemed to be very low - it made it very difficult to get a hot shower.
Later, I searched for other cheaper places. Eventually I found the Cabañas del Sol, which I booked for the next day. It is a group of slightly shabby wooden shacks overlooking the Lago Argentino. But it was a third of the price and still had a private bathroom and TV.
Whilst wandering around the town centre I noticed a footpath was named in memorial of
Antonio Soto and the agricultural workers of the rural uprisings of 1919-21. My curiosity was aroused. I wondered if this was the same Antonio Soto as the man mentioned in
Bruce Chatwin´s travel book "In Patagonia"
People in the South still remember the lanky, red headed Galician...And he´d stand in the muddy street, while the wind ripped at his red flags, shouting phrases borrowed from Proudhon and Bakunin, of Property being Theft, and Destruction a creative passion.
I did some research, it was the same man. Antonio Soto was an anarchist trade unionist who led a series of strikes and uprisings by agricultural workers in 1919-21.
Sheep were originally imported into Patagonia from the Falkland Islands. The wool barons, the
owners of the Estancias, who were mostly English grew very rich on the wool boom. But by 1919 wool prices were depressed. The Estancia owners had no intention of letting the low price of wool lower their profits. So, the difference came out of the wages and working conditions of the agricultural workers.
Into this situation walked fiery agitators like Antonio Soto. The region was convulsed by a series of strikes and uprisings. Maybe Antonio Soto thought he could create his own revolution at the end of the world, in Patagonia. But he failed. The rebels had very few weapons and were no match for the Argentinian army.
The final show down came at the Estancia La Anita, not far from El Calafate, overlooking the Perito Moreno Glacier. Antonio Soto wanted to run for it, but most of the rebels wanted to surrender. Captain Vinas Ibarra agreed that if the men surrendered in the morning that their lives would be respected. Antonio Soto had no intention of being held captive and maybe he did not trust the promises of the captain. So, Antonio Soto and a few others escaped under cover of the night on their horses over
the border to Chile. In the morning all the others surrendered.
The Captain didn´t keep his word. He was under orders from his commanding officer Hector Benigno Verela, who had promised,
If it starts up again, I´ll come back and shoot the lot.
Instead the rebels were mowed down by firing squads into their own graves. Verala did what he had promised.
After shooting down unarmed men, the soldiers made for a brothel at San Julian. But the women all shouted "Assassins! Pigs! We won´t go with killers" The prostitutes were bundled off to prison for insulting men in uniform and therefore the nation.
When Verela returned to Buenos Aires he didn't get a heroes welcome. There was outrage in the Parliament, and there was graffiti everywhere that said, "shoot the cannibal of the South". In 1923 Verela was shot dead on the street by an assassin.
Antonio Soto lived till 1963. In Punta Arenas, Chile he ran a restaurant. If anyone complained about the service, he is reported as saying,
This is an Anarchist restaurant. Serve yourself.
The firing squads that killed at least 1500 agricultural labourers happened in the shadow of the Perito Moreno Glacier. Many others disappeared. A foretaste of the rise of the Dictators a few years later.
Memorial to the agricultural workers of the Patagonian uprisings of 1919-21 in El Calafate
Antonio Soto was an anarchist trade union leader - he was a leader of the industrial unrest in 1919-21. The Moreno Glacier is the reason so many tourists stop in El Calafate today, oblivious of the events of 1919-21. As was I, before I did some research with the help of Google. Of course I had to visit the Glacier, along with all the other hordes of tourists.
I took an all day tour on Thursday 26th January. I allowed my pockets to be emptied, taking a mini-trexing tour of the glacier. That means I actually walked on the Glacier with crampons strapped to my feet.
The Perito Moreno Glacier is in the Los Glaciares National Park which was created in 1937, to preserve the Austral Patagonian Andes. It covers 6000km squared and was declared a Natural Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO in 1981. The Moreno Glacier is part of the Patagonian ice field, and area of 17000km squared of ice. The glacier is at a latitude which in the Northern Hemisphere would put us in London, not exactly famous for its glaciers.
The Moreno Glacier is from 50 to 70 metres high above the level of the lake, which is only 185m above sea level. It was named after a famous Argentinian explorer who
was one of the first to explore this part of Patagonia (apart from the Indians of course who had lived here for 10000 years!)
The Perito Moreno Glacier is such a tourist attraction because it is close to El Calafate and is a very spectacular sight, with huge pieces of bright blue ice falling off into the lake. When the ice falls it makes loud creaking noises as it breaks off. Then there is a loud thundering noise as the ice falls into the lake.
On my tour of the Glacier we visited various viewing sites, and also crossed the lake close to the glacier. We then walked through the forest and onto the edge of the glacier. After an hour on the glacier we were rewarded with Whiskey on the rocks. The ice was glacial ice.
It was a long day, I was picked up from the Hotel El Quijote at 8am, returning at 7pm. When I returned to the Hotel at 7pm I picked up my backpack which I had left at the hotel all day and walked to the Cabañas del Sol.
The next day I got up late. I didn't bother moving
around till 9am. I took it easy most of the day visiting the town´s museum, which helped with my research for this blog. Later in the afternoon I went on a trip to a local Estancia. We had a tour of the farm and a demonstration of sheep shearing. The only problem for me was that the whole of the tour was in Spanish. I was the only gringo. My Spanish is not that good! At some stage maybe in Santiago I´ll stop for a few weeks to do an intensive Spanish course.
The trip ended with a meal of barbecued lamb. Whilst eating I had an interesting chat with the guy sat next to me. He is a teacher at the University in Bogata, Colombia. He had a few tips for places to visit later in my journey in the Americas. It was after 11pm when I got back to my Cabaña.
The next day Saturday the 28th I just hung around town and read some books. I also bought a ticket for the bus on Sunday 29th.
I´m now in Chile. The next blog will be about Chilean Patagonia. Stay tuned...
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Dawn Smallwood
Too Touristy
I found El Calafate too touristy for my liking although I'm glad I went for the glaciers. I'm returning there in February but it's more or less a base for making onward travel arrangements in Patagonia and also a break from exploring. Thanks for the comment on my Winter Wonderland at Home Blog. Happy Travels! Regards Dawn