Friends, in order to get the most from this story, please be sure you’ve read the previous 14 chapters on this same web site.

Frirday, January 25, 1991

I was up early again, in time for breakfast. Already packed, I then made my goodbyes and left the hostería, walking with my backpack over to the “Sur” bus terminal. Nice bus, and very full. Sitting with 2 Frenchman, we talked non-stop for the 3-hour ride south to Punta Arenas, the major city of Chilean Patagonia. Once there, I ran a few quick errands and was on my way to the Pinguinos bus terminal for my reserved seat to Río Gallegos, when a curious thing happened. Out on the street, I bumped into a family I had met only a few days earlier at a restaurant in El Calafate in Argentina. They were Joerg and Siggi Henninger, and their 2 children Phillip and Alexandra. They had their own vehicle and asked me if I wanted to ride with them to Río Gallegos – well yeah! It was a nice, new, comfy Mitsubishi 4WD. They were Germans, living in Asunción, Paraguay – he worked there for the German government, doing some kind of environmental consulting work. Although we all spoke Spanish, I relished the thought of enjoying their company and having a day of speaking English, which they all spoke fluently.

We soon set off, heading north out of the city and driving for quite a while along El Estrecho de Magallanes, another historic place I’d read about since childhood. We stopped to stretch our legs near Estancia San Gregorio where I snapped this photo.

After another while, we came to the Punta Delgada area, where the strait narrows to about 2 miles in width. There, a ferry runs across to Punta Espora on the other side, which is all still in Chile. We stopped and had lunch.

Another 20 miles brought us to the international border, where we spent a long time going through the hassle of exit visas to leave Chile and then a repeat performance to enter Argentina. This was exacerbated by the extra paperwork that needed to be done just for the vehicle, and the whole process seemed to take forever. Chile and Argentina have had this love-hate relationship going back almost forever, and there seems to be no love lost between the two, especially when it comes to border issues. The last miles to Río Gallegos were flat and featureless, but made better by the Joni Mitchell cassettes and conversation. My new-found friends dropped me off in the center of town, where I retrieved my bag from the travel agent with whom I had left it a week before. After some walking around, I found a particularly cheap and ugly flophouse where I spent the night. Six months later, I had the good fortune to see the Henninger family once again, spending a week at their home in Asunción. 

Saturday, January 26, 1991

After a quiet night, I got up and was ready to go. Unable to find the owners, I left money and the key in my room and headed out. I hailed a cab to the airport, and after some delay my flight took off. It was a quick 45 minutes north to the city of Comodoro Rivadavia, a city of 200,000 on the Atlantic coast of Patagonia. Oil was discovered here a century ago and has made it something of a boom-town. The airport held nothing of interest, and, being about 5 miles north of the city, was kind of out in the middle of nothing.

With time to kill, I walked with 2 girls for a mile to a restaurant at a highway junction. An American and a German, they were exchange students and were doing the same as I, seeing as much of the country as possible. We spent 2 hours there over a meal and copious amounts of good Argentine wine, while watching a video of a Phil Collins concert that the owner had playing in the bar. We hitched a ride back to the airport in time for our plane. It felt hot, actually like summer for a change, something I’d forgotten about during these past weeks.

Our plane was late, but eventually we boarded and made the 1-hour flight north to Trelew. At the airport, I left a bag of gear with the Austral ticket agent, then caught a ride out to the highway. There I stood, hitching a ride in the company of an older couple while a wild thunderstorm threatened nearby. A kindly motorist picked up the 3 of us and gave us a ride the 35 miles north to the city of Puerto Madryn. This city, also right on the coast, felt hot. Although only about 80 degrees F., this was positively tropical compared to my time farther south.

One of the reasons I had come here was to see some sights along this part of the coast, so the first thing I did was to pay for a tour to Península Valdés the next day. The evening was coming on, so I found a 6-dollar room at the somewhat-seedy Hotel Paris, left my stuff and went for a walk along the beach. Later, back at the hotel, I met Brigitte and Martin, a German couple whom I’d met at Fitzroy. Together we picked up a few groceries and had a picnic on the promenade, passing the time while it cooled down a bit. Even so, the hotel room felt too warm to sleep well.

Sunday, January 27, 1991

An impressive thunderstorm rocked the city overnight. In the morning, I walked to the tour bus which was waiting along the promenade.

This was some nice bus, a new 20-seat Mercedes, complete with guide and running commentary. A bit out of town, we passed a huge aluminum smelter, Argentina’s only, and apparently it produces some of the best in the world. Our real goal today, though, was a series of touristy spots, mostly to do with marine life. At Isla de los Pájaros, where we looked through powerful binoculars at many types of birds, my favorite being the flamingos. From there, it was a long drive to Punta Norte, the northernmost tip of the peninsula. A few penguins, but mainly elephant seals – the big draw, they lay about on the beach like huge slugs.

The above photo shows you that we weren’t allowed to get too close. The huge bulls can move surprisingly quickly when angered. These were southern elephant seals, larger than their northern cousins – they can reach 20 feet in length and 8,800 pounds. This colony is the fourth-largest in the world.

From Punta Norte, it was another long drive on a dirt road across the peninsula to a place called Puerto Pirámide, where we stopped for lunch. There was a girl on the tour bus who sat next to me – we had a great time chatting about everything. There was just one problem, though – this 22-year-old was so distractingly good-looking that every man on the bus was trying to hit on her. María Angélica was the embodiment of everything that is beautiful about Argentine women – she knew it, and loved the attention. She was so distracting that at times I wished I weren’t sitting next to her.

This seemed to be a popular spot with locals – many were enjoying the beach and swimming in the ocean. Nearby was a sea lion colony, and we looked down at them from the clifftop. They are called sea wolves in Spanish instead of sea lions, so the colony was a lobería. They were really active – the bulls, the ones with big manes, were fighting and had big, bloody bites on their bodies. The whole colony made a lot of noise, even the babies, who were jet-black and sounded like bleating lambs.

This was the last stop on our tour, so we headed back to Puerto Madryn, arriving at 7:00 PM after a very long day. Since I had checked out of my hotel room before the tour, and since the driver told me that he was heading all the way back to Trelew where his company office was located and I could ride for free with him, I jumped at the chance. By the time we arrived, it was dark, cool, overcast and threatening to rain. A five-dollar room at the Hotel Playa was more than adequate, and after a meal nearby I settled in for the evening to plan the next phase of my travels. There was some serious inflation going on in Argentina at this time. When I arrived in the country the exchange rate was 5,950 Australes to the US dollar – today, it was 7,000. This works well for me, because the price of goods and services here stays at the same number of Australes from day to day.

Monday, January 28, 1991

I spent hours walking around Trelew, just killing time. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see in this boring, featureless town. Finally, pack on my back, I walked over to the bus station where I caught one out to the airport junction, then walked the better part of a mile to the airport. There, I bumped into Jean-Pierre and Yvette, two French nationals I’d previously met at Fitzroy. He’s a mountain guide and had climbed Annapurna in 1982. We sat together on the 105-minute flight to Buenos Aires, consuming mass quantities of wine en route. It was almost dark by the time we arrived. I caught a cab downtown and ended up once again at the Hotel Mediterraneo, with the same room I’d had weeks before but at a lower price due to the inflation going on (as I was exchanging US dollars all the time).

Tuesday, January 29, 1991

This was a day to take care of errands and all kinds of necessary business. After sleeping late, I did laundry across the street, then walked many blocks to the office of Sr. Messina, the business associate of my friend Rodolfo Molesini (the climber from Mendoza). He kindly allowed me to pick up my tent and sleeping bag, and let me leave other gear I wouldn’t be needing for the next leg of my trip. After that, I walked to the main office of Austral Líneas Aéreas. Something had been bugging me ever since I’d come back to the city from climbing Aconcagua. I’d purchased an air pass which allowed me, as a foreigner, to take a certain number of flights within the country on Austral, but there was some confusion as to what actually constituted one flight. A nice lady at their office agreed with me and added one more flight on to my pass – this was huge, as it now allowed me to explore another part of the country and still fly back to the capital (instead of taking expensive land travel). After shopping for souvenirs to take home to the U.S., I picked up pizza and beer to take back to my room. In retrospect, I’ve done a lot of drinking on this trip, probably too much, but that’s easy to do in a country where wine is cheaper than bottled water. Tomorrow I’ll fly away to a different area far from here for more adventures.

Please stay tuned for the next installment of this story, Part 16.

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