Patagonia 2008

Patagonia 2008

New Years’ Day Sandwich
Buenos Aries was like a ghost town….. It reminded me of the film that began with Tom Cruise driving around an empty New York City. Here though, there were ghostly signs of life in doorways and a shimmering of an old year passing, in burnt out fireworks and a myriad of shattered glass in the streets. We wandered through these empty streets, a growling New Year hunger growing in our bellies, every scrap of food seemed to be inside one locked premises or another. San Telmo drew us with thoughts of tango dancers and shops full of antiquities; these too were either asleep or closed. Our growling bellies increased their tempo as we marched on in time to them. At last as we turned into Defensa, a welcome sight of queuing humans accompanied by the smell of grilling meat greeted our turning. Meat pieces filled the grill shelf of this open stall, lumps of ‘meat’ and sausage, huge plastic flagons of red wine and a fridge full of coke seduced our growling companions into a delicious warm and fatty silence as we sat munching sitting on the edge of the pavement amongst other humans and pigeons awake on the first day of this new year. Meat was to become our enforced choice of food for the next several weeks. Point of information…. ‘meat’ is beef and lamb is lamb!

Graveyards
If housing should ever become scarce, or the favellas bulldozed, many of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires could oust a few coffins and live in luxury in the Mausoleums of the city. The ethnic roots of the city mothers and fathers can be seen in the names and styles of these buildings. They stand crammed together like a miniature city of marble and brass, decorated with angelic hosts and personal icons. The view outside its ‘city’ walls is buzzing with reminders of the passions of the living, here they seem to be football and fashion. The remains of the fabled Eva Peron lies within this marble city. Her remains are in the company of many who’s families found themselves settling in this ‘new’ land for a myriad reasons. The leading of a life and the leaving of a mark. The city of the dead is full of travellers with cameras and guidebooks, pondering as they wander, stalked by cats through the dusty marble streets. Here too a sense of peace is disturbed by the sounds of building and demolishing, workers perhaps repairing or digging deeper into the ground to house another corpse. A small irregular shaped office is squeezed into an almost non existent space between the mausoleum, a man sits behind a desk using his phone under neon light, as though on the phone to his neighbours. We pass through the archway and out in to the city of the living.

Guanaco
The male sentinel stands on the brow of the hill, silhouetted against the receding landscape. He calls a warning to his tribe of our approach. The sound gyrates in the air, a sound strung with reminiscences of guinea fowl and horses, the troupe respond to the call and move away at speed. Guanaco have an uneasy relationship with humans, especially humans on horseback, when approached on foot they appear only slightly less afraid. It remains a mystery to me how the Fuegan Indians ever succeeded in catching and then using these animals as a staple for food and skins, their speed and quality of hearing keeps them always at a distance. The wool of this creature is soft and could be harvested by humans, if the creatures were less timid. I was told that during handling they are prone to die of fright, unless they have been handled from young. We often met these lama-like creatures on our journey south. Here on Tierra del Fuego they are the most common sign of wild life amongst the sheep, other than birds. They have no predators other than human, should they die while attempting to jump and becoming entangled in the high wire fences between the estancias, they will take their place in the food chain within the hour, when the condors descend to pick the body clean.

Plaza Trees
The pigeons rustle and nestle in the trees in the plaza; they lazily shit on the café tables and tourists below them, they descend in hordes on uneaten peanuts once the visitors leave their tables. The tree growing near our table was astonishing, the behaviour of the pigeons alerted me to its detail. A wide dark trunk emerged from the paving of the plaza, my eyes were drawn up the trunk as I scanned it for familiar structures and leaf shapes, my mind attempting to slot it into some known genus. I realised, as my attention reached the spreading branches that that was not to be, growing out of the thick dark trunk were copious large thorns emerging in seeming random form from thereon up. I was surprised and curios that I had met a tree I could not classify into one of my familiar compartments. As I contemplated it, the tree continued to live life with the city pigeons and noisy parrots!

Lupins
One of the plants that surprised me most in Patagonia, were the swathes of Lupins. I have never been very attracted to the plants, feeling them gaudy and disliking the way the lower flowers on the stem die before the topmost buds are open, they rankle with my sense of beauty and a subtle longing for visual perfection. However in this strange land of Patagonia, this stark open land, the sight of banks of these colourful flowers with leaves like fingers, filled me with a sense of awe. They seemed totally incongruous and at the same time a perfect reflection of a strange mysterious land. I imagined that they had been brought to the country by a settler from Europe and that the flowers had subsequently thrived, I do not know if that is so. One night I photographed some stems in a vase, soaking up the sun through a window at 11.30pm. The image will be one of my lasting memories of Tierra del Fuego.

Menendez
Everywhere in Argentina the Menendez family seem to have a presence. Through business, farming and viticulture the name reverberates. On the island of Tierra del Fuego, the Estancia Maria Bhety, of the Menendez family, has, what is said to be, the largest shearing shed in the world, on an estancia covering thousands of hectares. Shearing was underway in the hangar sized building when we stopped by. Barefoot men, lanolin soaked, were working, shears in hand, sheep between legs, under the belt driven shafts. 75,000 sheep enter the shed in the high summer week and leave shorn and numbered to re-grow their protective covering before the harsh onslaught of the next Fuegan winter. The Estancia Maria Bhety, established in 1897, is a village. Brightly painted corrugated iron buildings, make up the village, school, church, washhouse, library and homes, each with their lupin sentries, line the two streets. Children learn both in school and through working when required at busy times on the estancia. One young lad, eager to practice his English took us off to see his pet black sheep, a rarity in these climes.
While travelling, we sampled many Menendez wines, ate Menendez sheep, rode Menendez horses and travelled over miles of Menendez land. It seemed that much of the structure of the country was created by one or another branch of the family.

Southern Beeches
I had read about these trees before leaving Britain and had imagined them to at least resemble what I know as a Beech tree. The name Beech is the only way these trees resemble the tree known as Beech in Britain. There are supposedly four species of the Southern Beech on Tierra del Fuego, the main two are nire and lenga; their leaves are so similar that it is almost impossible to tell them apart. Argentines themselves, even those with some knowledge of trees, seem uncertain of their difference, even when it comes to comparing one leaf with another I came across much uncertainty! What is certain, however, is that the Southern Beech covers much of Tierra del Fuego. These primary forests clothe the hills and mountainsides to the tree line, above which is empty for condor vantage points. The trees support a parasite similar to mistletoe and a lichen which the locals call Old Mans’ Beard and some trunks and branches grow a knotty growth which people gather and make in to key rings and decorative posts, this knotty growth can only be harvested once a tree has died, if picked fresh, it is impossible to remove the bark covering and reveal the beautiful intricacies of the form beneath.
Only beavers and stormy gusts of wind manage the forests in an indiscriminate fashion. These forests can feel quite foreboding, they are dark and quite silent until shattered by squawking parrots, the trees are shallow rooted and support each other in the wind by their entangled roots and branches, fallen trees can make areas impenetrable even though there is little undergrowth and seedlings struggle to get a hold on life until the wind has done her work and felled the old and infirm. I feel very blessed to have walked amongst these trees as they have evolved to live in the centre of the island. In a few places the trees still grow right to the edge of the Beagle Channel as they did in the days when native Fuegans first encountered Fitzroy and Darwin. The trees are a hardwood, the forests as yet mostly growing with out attack from chain saw. Though, in studying a local map of the estancias on the island it became apparent that one multinational company is already buying up swathes of, as yet, untouched forest, I find myself making a presumption that in the long term they do not intend to protect the trees. I wonder what people will do with the money they rake in when and if there is nothing left to spend it on and all natural resources are spent!

Light at Night
At 11.30pm in the centre of the island of Tierra del Fuego in the valley of the Rio Mio the earth finally turns away from the suns’ light and darkness descends. The late light that seeps up the ancient glaciated valleys warming my heart has a quality that I feel I could reach out and touch or put on toast and eat like honey. It seeps over and gently caresses the trees on the valley sides it oozes through estancia windows melting and enhancing the lupins in the vases. This is high summer sun, it has a quality of water and paint, its fleeting yearly visit to this land has a visible effect on all it touches, it relieves some of the harshness of the rest of the year with its quality of attention and promise. The angle at which the suns rays touch the earth here has a magic quality which all in the path drink in.

Beagle Channel
I had prepared myself to meet the Beagle Channel reading ‘This Thing of Darkness’ by Harry Thompson, written about The Beagles’ adventures, as I travelled south from Buenos Aires. Taking a flight from Calafate I passed over the southern most mountains of the Andes between Chile and Argentina and finally crossed over the Beagle Channel before landing in Ushuaia ‘the uttermost city on the earth’ I imagined the Beagle, with Fitzroy and Darwin on board, sailing up the channel, while noticing the rocky outcrops from the air that had made it such notorious sailing. Ushuaia sits in a sheltered spot on the channel, the water seemed rough fast and grey even in the sunshine. Huge ocean bound container ships and cruise liners are its traffic now, long gone are the Fuegan canoes and sailing ships exploring new lands for wealth or souls to save in the name of the Lord. The early travellers who came this way must have been courageous. On this day, dust blew out across the turbulent water as new footings were dug for buildings and roads.

Dust
Having covered a swathe of Patagonia by bus, I began to feel that dust, the constant companion of the wind, was an unnamed element of this land. The silence of the wide flat places was often filled with the sound of moving air, the air sometimes full of particles of the earth it travelled over, the particles only dropping back to whence they had come when the moving air itself came to rest. Dust devils frequently tore and twirled between and over the thorn hard plants raising the fine dry earth into a whirling funnel.
Dust clung to our bus as though magnetised by the dryness, as we travelled the route 40 from Barioloche to El Calafate, creating a camouflage and including us in our barren surroundings as the earth kicked up behind us to join the travelling air.
The Guanaco, as if too, affected by this dust magnetism, rolled in the dry earthy hollows that dot the land, these scooped out over decades by the bathing creatures. Rolling in these dust Jacuzzis, cleans and freshens their skin and no doubt helps them to become deeply attractive to their kith and kin.

El Gordo
The ‘fat one’ stood in arrogant disdain as a busload of weary foreign travellers disgorged from the ‘camouflaged’ bus into the foyer of his Belgrano Hotel in Perito Moreno. Two women to share a ‘marriage’ bed only served to increase his bile and we were thrown they key of a room that looked like a place where care had left quietly in a whisper of fear never to return. We had a bed and were grateful; we scoured the menu for something we hoped would be edible. As we waited for our order to arrive, El Gordos’ mother staggered in stooped and crippled service with table settings and plates of food carried at precarious angles, reminiscent of a Julie Walters sketch. When she sat, it was possible to see in her age, her still present beauty. I wondered about the story that this mother and son held between them. We were relieved to leave this place in the morning; only to discover ourselves once more under the stare of El Gordo, while the now crippled bus was under temporary repair. This time the foreigners took over his restaurant while trying not to spend pesetas on his dubious food.

Hotels
We stayed in the sublime and in the ridiculous, the luxurious and the care worn, which all added to the sense of wild difference we experienced everywhere in this vast country.
On our arrival, hot off the plane we stayed in a room called Sami, sandwiched between buildings, aerial gardens and the sky, a moaning air conditioner and an all night party on the adjacent rooftop accompanied our dreams into 2008. In Perito Merino, El Gordo was our host in the now notorious Hotel Belgrano, I have checked and the guidebook issues no warning! Opposite the Perito Merino Glacier we slept in opulence, in a vast bed, awaking to a breath taking view over the arm of the ancient glacier and the turquoise of the lake of melt water at its base. Here we dined in ‘European’ splendour, amongst travellers of the world, the glamorous and the sad looking and eager young staff from Buenos Aires.
On the edge of the Beagle Channel and close to the People River, the UK internet search, delivered us to a new family run hotel and a room with an enormous Jacuzzi that would have taken the evening to fill. The breakfast tables each had surprising facts, written and sandwiched between plastic, about the island of Tierra del Fuego that taught us about history and geology, flora and fauna, I was inspired by this quirky attention to detail.

Gloves
I bought two left-handed or were they right handed woollen gloves.

Hostels
Hostel 1004 was situated on the 10th floor of a block with stunning views over the part of the Andes that nestles Barialoche in its arms. We ascended in the rickety service lift breathing through fears and stories of Will’s time stuck in the lift at his university halls, no well drilled fire service here for support. On arrival at door of 1004, it was opened by a welcoming woman, who led us in to a comfortable living room, reminiscent of a ski lodge. People of many lands communicated enthusiastically with each other mostly in English about their travels or prepared for walks or climbs into the mountains. Our dormitory was filled with Israeli women and another in the corner bed who seemed to be suffering from asthma through her sleep, I am glad to say she made it through the night!
During the night, reminiscences wandered through my head of a time when at 8 months pregnant, I was travelling in the French Alps in a coach full of skiers. The coach broke down and we were propelled in darkness, as a coach load, into a sleeping youth hostel, the existing sleepers confused by the cacophony of night sounds did their best to silence the farts and snores of their companions, it was not until morning that the full story emerged and they saw that the room was full of strangers!
I am becoming too something for dormitories! I even preferred the room at the Belgrano! Our second hostel experience was also in the town of Barialoche, bunking in with travellers from Rumania who were walking in the mountains. Both the hostels’ communal kitchens were buzzing, I was glad to eat out.

Wind
Patagonia has a familiarity with the cold southwesterly wind the Pampero that is propelled off the Andes. A quiet day with clear skies can quite suddenly become cold, wet and windy. The winds shapes the trees, assists water in sculpting the land and allows humans to lean at strange angles at the top of hills while imagining the flight of birds.
Bus
The third bus we travelled in broke down, in fact the air brakes failed soon after we left the two street garrison town of Perito Merino. We turned back, waited for a few hours for a successful repair and resumed our journey. At our first stop, we were greeted by feverishly happy drunken travellers who had decided to dry the bar at the fuel stop, while they waited, hoping that the bus they had planned to catch would arrive. They were all at once excited and disappointed, as we, the existing journeyers decanted to join them, while once again the drivers attempted to fix the newly waivering brakes! Much later we resumed our journey with the alcohol-fuelled travellers noisily entertaining each other. It was some distance along the road to El Chalten, the mountain with a coach as its namesake, that it was apparent that we would have to turn back to the fuel stop, the coach was not safe to drive further and a replacement would have to be summoned. Several hours later at a speed of 15mph we returned to wait over night for a relief bus. We dozed in the cold bus to intermittent engine sound and the comings and going of fellow travellers. The relief bus arrived in the morning, we resumed our journey almost a day behind schedule, it was ‘manjana’!

Time Travelling
The hours and hours of bus travel across mile after mile of almost flat pampas along the Route 40 had a strange meditative quality. The similarity in the vastness, as the land unfolded was awe inspiring and when the levels were interrupted by distant hills swelling out of the earth or a surprising twist in the road, my eyes and body slowly absorbed the differences. It was filmic in quality, my mind was conscious of a passing through, although my body was still. When the bus stopped and I left my seat, to stretch and pee on the land, I acquainted my self with the minutiae of what we had been passing through, the particular dryness of the sandy earth, the tough thorny bushes with their delicate flowers, the many bones of creatures, long dead, picked clean by scavengers, blasted by the drying winds and bleached by the sun. Back on the bus once more, I was reminded of the film the Matrix, passing from one time and space to another in speedily travelling pods, a sense of being in the web of life and at the same time passing through with out engagement. (Or the old sci-fi black and white film of humans shrunk small enough so that they could fit in to a capsule and travel inside another human body) It was a curious feeling and one in sharp contrast to the moments crouching on the earth examining the detail.

Hitching
It had not been my intention to hitch through Patagonia. Standing at the edge of an empty Route 40, we were initially excited and hopeful. It felt exciting to open up to chance after hours on an unreliable bus. In theory we would be cutting four hours off a journey that had already been delayed by most of a day. The road was simply empty, the surface had just changed from unmetaled track to tarmac and any vehicle passing could now gain a bit of speed. One or two vehicles passed by, travelling in the other direction, and then mostly turning towards El Chalten. We decided to begin to walk the one hundred and thirty kilometres to our next destination. Two coaches passed by at speed. I gave us a look over and I saw, two women, though our gender was not clear, as we were clothed in multi layers, hats and gloves. The two women I saw, were on a deserted road many miles from the nearest town pulling their wheelie suitcases behind them, I saw a curious site, I thought perhaps their car had broken down somewhere, or perhaps these two were dangerously ‘loco’. What ever we looked like, we were unexpected on this road in the early afternoon with the temperature dropping. A vehicle on the horizon gave us renewed hope. The transit van roared passed us empty of passengers, the driver completely ignoring our pleas. I had thoughts of lying down in the middle of the road! Perhaps we should turn round and head to the nearest town, we imagined we could get there before dark. By now we had covered ten kilometres and were wondering what sort of shelter we could find for the night. A fourth vehicle clattered past again ignoring our waving and shouting….. Who did these people imagine we were, we got out the guide book and looked up ‘hitching’ in case it was a complete ‘no no’ in this wild country. The directory told us to ‘be patient’ on the Route 40. Dust on the horizon again gave us hope, an old Citroen full of people swept past us, our hearts sank once again, our eyes and waving arms, following their sweeping past. The vehicle began to slow and came to a halt some distance up the road. We had a lift, our suitcases and our bodies fitted snugly into the space available in amongst this family returning from a day trip and on their way home to El Calafate, our destination! They were kind, friendly and amused by their new companions! Mad women from another country.

Farms and Farm Houses
46.000 hectares is a small estancia in Patagonia, the land is poor and livestock need a large area to glean and gain sufficient bulk and nutrition. We stayed on one such estancia in central Patagonia. The farm building was nestled into the lee of a hill, as protection from the fierce winds. The farm was far from electricity and relied on gas tanks and a generator for its minimal needs of light and for power to cook with. Here we slept in comfort, ate delicious food and only stayed one night, whisked back reluctantly to the Hotel Belgrano and El Gordo for a second night before the next coach. The family on the estancia was adding to its income by encouraging travellers to stay a night or two while visiting their jewel, el Cueva de Manos now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Cave of the Hands is a switch back ride in a 4-wheel drive and then a walk down a cliff into a lush green valley and up the other side. The rock paintings are said to date back to 7370 BC, they are new and fresh looking, nestled under an overhang in the sheer rock face. Archaeologists have studied the site, however I could not drop a suspicion that they had been over restored for the benefit of UNESCO and the estancia owner! It was a gorgeous walk to the site and the day of my 55th Birthday… so I put suspicion to one side! After the tourist fest we took a walk beside the banks of the Rio de las Pinturas and soon left all humans behind and were walking in the company of the river song and the wind in the trees. Exploring the valley I found an aged decaying condor feather, one of its long ‘fingers’ a treasure on a Birthday!
Boqueron was the second estancia we stayed on, a house of painted corrugated iron outside, again no electricity, gas cylinder for cooking and wood for heat. Most of the estancias and houses on Tierra del Fuego are of similar structure, brightly painted corrugated iron lined with wood for insulation over one or two floors. Boqueron is a refuge from city life in Buenos Aires for the owner, it is situated an hour along a rough track in a 4 wheel drive, from the nearest made up road.

Ice Colour
It is breathtaking to see the colour in a glacier close up; it is as though the ice has absorbed all the blue in the spectrum and sucked it in to lines like lightening bolts through the layers. The glacier melts during the summer months and the electric blue settles in the lake.

Rock Faces
Steep walls of rock descend to soft wide-open valleys where glaciers have once slowly travelled, I wonder if it was possible to hear the grinding of the glacier on the rock. The rock faces and the glacier faces are sisters in form, the valleys and the lakes twinned in their meeting with their tall relations, the rocks and the ice fell to become another form in the valleys.

Condors
These mighty black vultures grace the skies of Patagonia; they glide through the air on the rising thermals to the height they require to survey their territory. I began to see condors as I travelled the Route 40. Initially, the sightings were distant glimpses through the bus window. Soon, while walking in the region of the Cuevo del Manos a pair of condors passed overhead on a sweep of their territory, even the specks of them thrilling. Condors were circling above a distant carcass while we rode in the valley of the Perito Merino Glacier. The recordings on camera of these mighty winged creatures were specks in the blue sky even though my eye clearly saw them wheeling, feather fingers of their wing tips out stretched. My hunger for sightings of them increased with these distant tastings. I began a feast of sightings only when I reached the interior of Tierra del Fuego. On one of the long rides through the valleys and forested hills of the end of the Andes, we ‘climbed’, on horseback up and up through the Southern Beeches, I realised we were nearing the top of the tree line, as the trees began to reduce in size and the sky became visible. We emerged into open space and tethered our horses to the now sparse growth to continue to the peak of the mountain on foot. The wind was doing her best to launch us on her invisible limbs and carry us out over the valley, gravity won and we remained on the ridge buffeted and exhilarated. Below and above us the condors soared, we had come out above the tree line to a mountaintop from which the condors surveyed their land. Here the youngsters had shed their last juvenile feathers the wind assisting her feathered friends in riding the thermals; the young, in this flight training ground launched themselves in their first defiance of gravity. I could see, with my human eyes, how far in every direction I could survey this land. How, if this were ‘my backyard’ I would notice with my condor eyes, the slightest difference of movement, and the struggle of every last breath of every creature that was taken! Again the wind encouraged my human form to join her, my featherless arms willing, my bones too heavy. Later, once more on horse back, languidly travelling the land at horse pace I noticed that the distant empty sky was beginning to fill with black circling dots, as we riders, crossed valleys, rode ridges, negotiated fallen trees, the wheeling shapes in the sky became clear and once more we were in the company of el condor. Twenty or so mighty creatures were in the air, circled the body of a guanaco, we had disturbed their feast, they hung in the air, waiting, as we passed by their food.

Horses
The horses we rode across the interior of Tierra del Fuego, were fat and shiny with short thick necks, hogged manes and unshod feet. It was astounding how sure footed they were and if asked, despite their weight, could move with a great turn of speed. Over the days, we rode across wide open glaciated valleys, the horses negotiated, steep gorges, climbed mountains, surfed bogs and rivers, clambered over acres of fallen beeches and picked their way over all types of uneven terrain. They munched patiently as we made fires for hot water and ate our ham sandwiches and drank packet soup and as we learned the ritual of mate drinking. They tolerated rusty bits and leather girths cutting into their bulk, they carried our packs, our ponchos and us wherever we asked them to. They were gentle and strong.

Zebra Horses
Wild ones, beautiful stripped markings of their wild ancestors on their legs and down the backs of some of the horses, their spirit leaked out of these markings into their movement, their whipping around, their rearing, their champing at the bit, their wild uncertain eyes. This was their beauty, they were not yet undone.

Wild Horses
Spaniards brought horses by ship, to the land of Patagonia, when they returned to Spain they left the horses, some were adopted by the ‘Indians’ on the mainland and in Tierra del Fuego. The Indians learned to work with the creatures and used them for travel and for hunting. Some ancestors of these horses still remain in the wild, I glimpsed them as a whisper in the distant trees as I walked by.

Saddles
Big wide armchairs of saddles secured by lengths of hide slipped through metal rings and seats covered in layers of sheepskins allowed us to spend hours in the saddle in relative comfort. Wide leather buckets of stirrups held our feet in place as the horses negotiated the uneven terrain.

Meat
Meat is beef. Parrillada is the mixed grill and chimichurri, if home made, is a delicious sauce, olive oil, garlic and parsley. The staple diet is flesh and bread.

Knives
Argentineans still have a close relationship with knives. The facon are long and thin bladed with handles made of horn, wood or even rhea toes. They are an implement in constant use, for carving, cutting, slashing small branches, eating, skinning, preparing meat, sheep or lamb for the Parrillada. Many carry knives on their belt at their backs. Arguments or infidelities are still sometimes settled through the language of the knife and some, in consequence, have their bodies decorated with past conversations.

Tango
All the tango bars in Palermo Viejo seemed to be closed on New Years Eve, so we had to be content with dancing with firecrackers and waiters in the streets. Jet lag pulled us into bed the next night, though not before witnessing a beautiful daytime tango spectacle in a square in San Telmo. A couple set up their music system in the middle of the square and began to dance, they gave each other shy and overt sensual attention, they gave the dance the result, shifting between sliding and gliding over the cobbles, to high presses and leans body to body, they moved entwined with the music and the beat of their feet and their hearts. Her shoes worn through, his hat perched on the side of his head, her dress slit over rounded thighs, his waistcoat tight against his taught ribs, the dance bit them and bit us, the witnesses swirled and moved internally, in response to their emotion moving.

Bones and Death
As an avid bone collector, I was stumped! There were so many bones in different states of decay all over the lands that I crossed, that I simply had to leave them behind, skulls of horses, cattle, guanaco, fox, bird, ribs and femurs, vertebrae and toes all in disintegration, all on their way back to the earth. Death here is such a conspicuous part of life that all there is to do is to walk on by, here no reminder of the cycle is needed. Death sits fully and openly in its place in the cycle in the wide lands. Creatures that die are quickly consumed and take their place in the cycle of life once more. Our fascination with dead things was something of humour and a mystery to the people of this land.

Corrugated Iron
Most of the buildings on Tierra del Fuego were clothed in a skin of colourfully painted corrugated iron. The colours reminded me of the terraced houses overlooking the port of Cork in the Irish Republic and the row of small jewel like houses on Plantation Street in Oxford. Corrugated iron was the skin of choice to cover the wooden buildings all over the island as a protection against penetrating wind and permeating water. The colour of the buildings was beautifully off set by the steep dark snow covered mountains behind the city and by banks of lupins happily adapted to the harsh climate of the island.

Earthquakes
Information. Tierra del Fuego is shaken, by barely noticeable earthquakes, many times each day.

Gauchos
These men have fought, travelled, branded and drunk their colourful way into the mythology of a country. Their rugged residue has dried out onto postcards and mate gourds many gathering dust now in back street tourist shops. We met a wordless silver haired gaucho on the island of Tierra del Fuego; he lived on the neighbouring estancia to Boqueron for nine months of the year with his dogs and horses without human company. He attended to the numerous head of cattle during the summer months as they gleaned the goodness from the valleys. There was a silent feud between him and the younger gaucho living on Boqueron, rumbling accusations of missing tack. The former working in the traditional way with stock over the last nine years, the later newly guiding touring riders in a land that he hardly knew. One afternoon, we spotted the silver haired gaucho in the distance, he was rounding and directing a large group of cattle. Unsure of which valley to pass through the forest on our return trip to Boqueron, we asked the way, he lead us silently back through the trees and valleys, dogs at the heels of his white horse never turning to check our progress or altering his pace. He laughed, turning briefly, when we were slowed by a bog. I noticed the tack of his horse was traditionally hand made from cowhide cut into strips and twisted, I wondered if this was his own work. He still lives life through the facon, killing the lambs that were his staple when necessary. We had passed by his home earlier in the day, set in an idyllic spot on the edge of a river valley, stream running close by, protected behind by the forest. In the field by the house lay a dead horse the air full of the stink of its dying as we passed by, I was curious to know when the condors would arrive to do their work and the air would be lifted of its foul stench. I wondered if I were capable of living a life that required me to source my every need. What a long way I have moved from living at the pace of the earth and with any semblance of self-sufficiency.

Ponchos
Yvonne lent me a great thick wool poncho for added warmth out riding and to create a cocoon of warmth over the bed at night in the cold high summer of Tierra del Fuego. She had brought the ponchos back from Chile, after negotiation, it found its way home with me to Oxford.

Mate
There is much ceremony and etiquette in the drinking of mate. We made blunderous errors and were corrected with humour, everyone we shared mate with had their own version of the right way to drink the bitter tea. So…….

Find prepared gourd, a hardware store was a good source
Soak overnight and then scrape out any residue pulp
Fill the gourd half full with Yerba Mate at 45* angle
Push bombilla firmly into place
Add hot water, the temperature is important, too hot and you will insult those you share the mate with
Pass to your neighbour
Neighbour empties gourd and hands it back
Refill gourd with hot water and pass to the next in the company
This continues until people have had sufficient or the tea needed replenishing

Mate, at first drink, was very bitter, however it produces a sweet flow of saliva in response to the bitterness, it is a great digestive that produces a sense of wellbeing, and as it is often shared in community amongst friends, colleagues and strangers on buses, it also conjures up a generous spirit!

Beavers
On the island of Tierra del Fuego beavers have a price on their tail and on their pelt, the reward for handing in the body parts is 40 pesos. Beaver used to be sought after for hat material, it is no longer either fashionable or in some places, ethical to wear the remains of a beaver on your head! Beavers have taken to the island with relish, there are forests of trees, plenty of flowing water and no natural predators. A beaver dam is a wonderful construction; the dam is created with branches of beech and then made watertight on the poolside with mud. It is simple and efficient. The creatures strip and eat the bark of each of the branches before placing them in the damn. I stood down stream of one such damn, the top was well above my head, little trickles of water found their way through the damn and continued to feed the stream below and allow it on its way. The damn is necessarily mightily strong to hold back the gallons of water required for a beaver pool, I walked across the top of the dam and can vouch for is strength. Under the surface of the beaver pool, the entrances to their tunnels are obscured, the beavers dive to the entrances and then travel up the tunnels into dry homesteads. Hours of quiet sitting by one such pool, down wind, gave enormous rewards, the swimming mammals going about their business seemed oblivious to my presence. I watched them diving, swimming, eating and taking greenery to store below the surface. The felling of areas of large trees for their use was extraordinary, teeth marks like axe blades marked the felled trees and the stumps, the felled trees stripped bare of bark for food. The beavers are untroubled, the trees are being felled and the owners of the estancias want the creatures culled.

Glacier
The Perito Merino Glacier reflected the light with intensity as we took in its breadth from our hotel bedroom window. It was difficult to take in the sight, as something with physical form, the ‘romanticised’ two-dimensional imagery was so strong, and the view of it reminded me of a Karl Freidrich painting. The next morning, we took the tourist boat across the liquid turquoise lake, the water once part of the glacier seemed dense and alive in its change of form. The rock beds leading up to the glacier were clearly ground by the shifting ice, worn into an undulating smoothness like a frozen sea. Once we landed on the far side of the lake we fitted crampons and set out onto the ice itself. The ice felt alive, the quality of blues captured in its strata seeped into its melting and sang to the sky. Drinking the melt water was like nectar; I imagined it merging slowly with all the cells of my body. We snaked through and round ice roundels and valleys passing by mountains and crossing crevasses the quality of the blue singing in its outrageous intensity. I exchanged one of the jars of Thames water with melt water from the glacier, I wondered when the molecules would once more reach the clouds, I could feel the living organism of the earth.
This glacier arm, we were told, is 300 years old at its bed, it is one of the few glaciers left on the earth that is still in balance of yearly growth and retreat. Perito Merino is an arm of an ancient glacier that has been in existence for three million years.
Sitting on a rock out crop over looking the ice wall, its 40meter height above water soared over the tourist boats. The ice was working its way towards me at the Summer speed of two meters a day, the ice cracked with the sound of a cannon ricocheting around its peaks, a part of the wall of ice let go into the water below in silence, the huge sound of its splitting only reaching my ears once the ice berg was afloat and sending great waves to the shore. I was enveloped in its ice sounds and found it hard to leave.

Darwin
I was glad to be reading a novel about Darwin as I followed in some of his footsteps in Patagonia and to see some of the sights he must have seen, to face some of the same puzzles that became answers as he pondered them. I walked up a mountain near the Perito Merino glacier and found a large ammonite in a streambed at the top, I thought about this land being under water and remembered Darwin. I looked at smoothed out hills and valleys and thought of Darwin, I stood on the edge of the Beagle channel and thought of Darwin, it gave what I saw an added potency.

Parrots
I might have imagined that I was in a Celtic landscape had it not been for the small green parrots that flew, swift as arrows squawking through the trees of Tierra del Fuego. They felt incongruous and they woke me up to more of the differences around me as my mind was trying to tell me I knew where I was!

Clothing
I packed for all weathers and all seasons in preparation for the heat of high summer in Buenos Aires and the chill and wet of high summer on Tierra del Fuego. I was cool enough and warm enough.

Clown
As we sat watching the tango dancers in the square of San Telmo, a young man near by painted his face white, marked it with a ruby red smile, drew a tear at the corner of his eye, pulled on stripped baggy trousers and enormous rubber shoes and then slowly drank his way into oblivion, smudging his adorned smile across his face and walking unsteadily away without inviting the clown to play. He and the clown had missed each other.

Colonialism
Argentina was colonised only in the last four hundred years by many many European essences, a pot of passion that oozes out in kisses in the street, dancing, drunkenness, knives and fighting and a strong spark of life that health and safety has not yet dampened. Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Spanish, Italian, ex-Nazis and many more ingredients have been poured into the human soup of this land. It feels vibrantly rich as many struggle in the arms of severe poverty.

Sandwiches
Three pieces of white bread without crusts, sandwiching processed ham and cheese was the staple Argentine sandwich, I got to quite like their awfulness. There was often a ‘nursery’ quality to the food out of the city, strange cottage pie, that people ate with copious amounts of sugar, a thick brown sweet goo called Dulce Leche was eaten with almost anything, terrible coffee was freely available everywhere. It was a culinary mystery to me, in a country that stretches through most of the latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere and can therefore grow almost anything that it has not translated into easily available delicious food.

Desert
Much of the wide Patagonian pampas feels very close to desert. The plants that grow are tough and thorny though they produce some beautiful delicate flowers, in some places small lily-like flowers squeeze themselves out of the arid ground to stand delicately for a day or two without the protection of foliage. The soil is close to sand in its dryness and texture and hardly looks nutritious enough to support plant life let alone animals. In one place I came across what may have once been a small pool, though now only a series of large puddles remained, each teeming with tadpoles, I wondered if any would make it to walking on the earth such a sumptuous feast they looked for some creature.

Carts
In one or two places I came across large wooden wheeled wagons, placed as a portable history, most were in reasonable condition and I wondered how long ago the carts had been in active service in this land of 4X4s.

Bikers
As we waited at the Hotel Belgrano for the bus to be repaired, I noticed a leather clad biker finishing his breakfast. As he prepared to leave I asked him about his journey. He was from Switzerland and had decided to travel in South America for six months to find a place that he would like to settle for a while. He was about to set off on to the uninhabited section of the Route 40; he said he was nervous and unsure of his ability to make any running repairs to the bike. I thought of him as we travelled the Route 40 ourselves and noticed when vehicle drivers passed each other they usually stopped momentarily for a chat. When the bus brakes finally gave up, one of the drivers was soon given a lift to the nearest telephone to call for assistance. We did not pass the motorcyclist so I imagine his fears were born of a European imagination!

Cyclists
The couple on bicycles at the start of the Route 40 filled me with amazement! I would not have considered a crossing with foot or pedal power! Lack of water and distance between outposts would have stopped me from taking the risk! I was impressed by their courage and silently wished them well through the bus window as I passed by.

Lichen
Many of the beeches of southern Patagonia were covered in soft pale green hairy lichen that the locals called ‘old man’s beard’. Some felt it was responsible for the deaths of trees. The lichen gave the trees a look of being clothed, an animated quality that might allow them to become moving beings the moment a back was turned or ‘ents’ in ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

VIP
The VIP lounge at Calafate airport was full but not as crowded as the main waiting area, with Argentine Airways on strike and many flights delayed, passengers were all short of space. There was the advantage of a wall of windows to watch the few flights take off and land against the backdrop of the Andes. Oh how much fun it was to jump the queues I would normally be in and to wander through the barrier with a glorious hint of self-importance, I wondered if my nose was in the air!

Ushuaia
The flight over the Beagle Channel was spectacular; the sight of Ushuaia nestled colourfully at the base of the final rising of the Andes, a quickening sight. We landed parallel to the channel between a grey sea and snow-caped mountains. We took a taxi to the hotel, which was in the middle of an area of dusty new development to the East of the main town. Later we returned to town for food. This is a tourist town in summer, the streets walked by hundreds of travellers hot off cruise ships on their way to the Antarctic. Restaurants serving fresh spider crab or stoking the open BBQs in preparation for cooking lamb, copious numbers of shops selling ‘end of the world’ goods to be taken to loved ones on home territory as a memento. The post cards we bought and posted had still not arrived eight weeks later; perhaps they too were travelling by boat! The town had a derelict air amongst all its building works, I wondered how its inhabitants live in the winter when the land is under snow, there is little day light and the tourists are in their homes or in a warmer place on the earth. The houses were optimistically colourful and were supported in their reverie by banks of lupins that danced to the eddies of the wind.

Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is the largest river flowing through Tierra del Fuego, it lends its name to the second largest town on the island. The town of Rio Grande, as it now stands, was created through tax incentives on a wide band of earth at the mouth of the river. A manufacturing town that spills itself across the inhospitable mouth of a world-renowned fishing river seems misplaced. Acres and acres of new identikit housing is mushrooming around the edges of a soulless town, here people earn cash without tax in factories that stare with faceless walls out on to a turbulent southern sea. A taxi driver in Usuaia was proud of his catch of trout from the formidable river and showed us fishing photos. I am still curious about the governments’ motivation when it was decided to attract manufacturing through tax incentives to the mouth of a rich fishing river on this distant land.

Rock Faces
I walked through a narrow valley where the faces of the red rocks looked out at my passing. As I walked through the valley, the faces seemed to become more and more animated. I was told that the ‘valley of angry faces’ was an important place for the native peoples of Patagonia, tribal elders ordered wrong doers to run through the valley and listen to the spirits of the rocks. The spirits would make judgements on their actions and ask the wrong doer to take responsibility for what they had done and ask the spirits for forgiveness.

US Customs
I approached the customs desk in Washington with the usual trepidation. Even though I was in transit I had had to collect my suitcase and re-present it for the forward flight to London. The customs form that I had filled in on the plane required acknowledgement of visits to farmland, this I had done. The contents of my suitcase, as usual were the cause for my concern, bones and wood and water from various sources across Patagonia. The woman in front of me was being questioned about a necklace she had bought made from a string of seeds. The female customs official went on to plumb the depths of her suitcase. When it came to my belongings I was surprised that the customs official seemed happy checking my poncho covered in horsehair and spraying the soles of my boots. However when I retrieved my case from the belt at Heathrow it had had the lock cut off it and information inside to say that it had been checked for the sake of ‘Homeland Security’, I was relieved to discover that bones and water were not a risk to the homeland!