By: NIGEL AND SUE WRIGHT
The travel bug bit Nigel and Sue Wright when they lived and worked in South Korea during the 1980’s. Since then they have travelled all over the globe whenever circumstances have permitted. They have lived in the Algarve for the last four years and this is an account of their journey through Patagonia.
IT WAS a dream coming true. All our lives we had yearned to sail along the Beagle Channel in the footsteps of Charles Darwin.
The weather was perfect, although chilly, and the snow-covered mountains were reflected in the calm sea whose waters were only disturbed by diving penguins, storm petrels, albatrosses, cormorants and the occasional sea lion. Absolute magic!
We were in Tierra del Fuego, a wild and almost deserted mountainous archipelago in southern Patagonia, at the very the pointy bit of South America. This is just about as far as you can go before bumping into Antarctica.
Patagonia covers a vast area of southern Argentina and Chile but has a population density of less than two people per square kilometre. Although most of the landscape consists of vast steppes bare of vegetation, Patagonia has the spectacular southern Andes mountain chain with sheer rock walls and active volcanoes. These high mountains support a huge ice field that spawns many superb glaciers. For the active tourist there is world class hiking, climbing, skiing and fishing, and for the more sedate, the enjoyment of breathtaking land and seascapes, tasty food, an interesting culture and wonderful wildlife.
We arrived on a 13-hour flight from London to Buenos Aires. We enjoyed the ambience of this laid back city with its very European feel. It has splendid colonial architecture and the widest boulevard in the world – 140 metres across! However, it was the La Boca area that oozed the most charm. This is a poor district where the original Italian immigrants arrived and now their higgledy-piggledy wooden houses are painted in different jazzy colours. The huge Boca Juniors football stadium towers above the narrow streets full of artists’ studios and the compulsory tango demonstrations. It is difficult to escape the tango in Argentina’s capital.
Wales
 La Boca |
 |
We then took a two hour flight south to Wales. Not literally, of course, but to the arid flat part of Patagonia, home to many Welsh immigrants. We stayed in Puerto Madryn, a rather run down seaside resort. Our guide soon had us on the way to Gaiman, the original Welsh settlement. It actually looked and felt like rural Wales, even down to the Ty Gwynn tea shop! But we had come here to see wildlife and were not disappointed. It was a 100 kms ride on a dirt road to the unbelievable Punta Tombo penguin paradise. Half a million Magellanic penguins live here and you can wander almost at will among them. The colony covers a huge area and the members of our little tour party soon became completely separated from each other, as each person followed, quite entranced, their own particular penguin group. Humans behave in a most peculiar manner in the company of penguins and, crouching on all fours, try to hold conversations with them. Extraordinary. The following day we visited the barren and wild Peninsula Valdés, a UNESCO world heritage site, with its noisy seal, sea lion and elephant seal colonies, backed by sea cliffs full of shell fossils.
It took another two hours by plane down to Ushuaia, which is nicknamed the city at the end of the world. Its 30,000 inhabitants rely on fishing and tourism, living in rudimentary colourfully painted houses that appeared to be built largely of corrugated iron. We loved this quirky frontier town, from which we explored the Beagle Channel and visited Estancia Harberton, the oldest settlement in Tierra del Fuego. Here we were lucky enough to meet the owner, a descendent of Mr Bridges, an early British missionary, who proudly showed us his splendid display of English cottage garden flowers! Most tourists, including those from visiting cruise ships, head for the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, a superb area of mountains, lakes and rivers, laden with wildlife. Instead of being herded on to the National Park’s Patagonian Express with the masses – it was a narrow gauge miniature train – our guide drove us quietly in the other direction where we hiked in glorious solitude along the shores of beautiful Lapataia Bay.
Glacier
For our last leg of Argentinian Patagonia, we flew north to El Calafate, a modern town and the gateway to the lake-district. We had come with one mission in mind – to stare in awe at the mighty Perito Moreno glacier. This we did the following day after yet another long dusty journey for 80 kms through rolling bleak countryside and lots of sheep.
The glacier has the ultimate ‘wow’ factor. It is enormous, six kms across, 35 kms long and 60m high. Even better, due to a geographical fluke, you can watch it cast icebergs as big as tower blocks in absolute safety from a promontory of land opposite and very close to its snout. We watched the show for three hours. The following day, we took a boat trip on Lago Argentina, a huge lake filled with icebergs, and visited more of the many glaciers that descend from the massive Patagonian icecap. Air temperatures dropped from 25 degrees to freezing point, accompanied by gale force winds as we approached the front of the glaciers from the lake.
Finally, courtesy of an efficient daily bus service, we travelled westwards for six hours across the Andes and left Argentina for Chile under the watchful eyes of the huge circling Condors.
Next week, Nigel and Sue Wright’s journey continues through Chile.
