Patagonia

We'd been in Argentina just over a month and it was time to explore some of the country. One of the purposes of this first trip was to scout, in advance, potential anchorages along the Argentine Patagonia coast. One of the strategies of cruises heading for Chile is to spend time in Mar de Plata before heading straight for the Straits of Le Maire and on to Ushuaia, minimizing exposure time to bad weather. The other option is to take a more leisure approach and make several stops south of Mar de Plata, including Isla de los Estados located on the south side of the Straits. At this point, the second choice will be our strategy.

Patagonia is generally defined as everything south of the Rio Colorado, covering a region of contrasts and extremes, from the desolate cliff-lined coast rich in marine mammal breeding grounds (penguins, sea lions, dolphins and right whales), across barren desert steppe to the massive peaks of the Andean cordillera.

The popular way to travel throughout this part of the world is by bus, which comes in various classes from comfortable seats to those that become full reclining sleepers. Since our first leg, Buenos Aires to Puerta Madryn, would be overnight, we decided to begin the journey in comfort with a sleeper. We found the trip to be quite comfortable, and included 3 meals and 2 movies (almost always in English with Spanish subtitles).

Our first stop, Puerto Madryn, is known for its marine mammals. It is the summer (Nov-Dec) breeding grounds for the southern right whale, and sealions. It’s also popular with divers. The whales were gone, and most of the other marine mammals off visiting other, areas so we opted not to spend the money to travel all the way out to the end of the peninsula to perhaps see a few orcas offshore. We found the town much larger than we anticipated, but dealing very nicely with its rapid growth due to tourism.

An hour south of Puerta Madryn is the town of Trelew, an agricultural center into which a major Welsh immigration took place in the mid 1800's. Small villages along the Rio Chubut still retain some of their Welsh heritage. The major reason for stopping here was to visit Bryn Gwyn Paleontological Park, a 40 million year journey through strata of different geological formations. Though the literature stated the park was open year round, much to our disappointment, it was "Closed". We made use of our time by visiting one of the Welsh villages and enjoying a wonderful lunch in an old flour mill.

Back on the bus, it’s an all day trip to Puerta Deseado. The journey crosses hundreds of seemingly endless miles of barren landscape, broken occasionally by large dry river valleys, sparse flocks of sheep and small frightened herds of the long necked guanaco trying to cross the highway. Infrequent ponds, much to our delight, exhibited pink dots that on further inspection proved to be flamingos, until then known to us to only exist as lawn ornaments in North America.

Most travelers we met by passed Puerto Deseado and Puerto San Julian, fast-tracking instead to Rio Gallegos to connect west to El Calafate and the Andean glaciers, or south to Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego. But we have a weird fascination for towns at the end of roads to nowhere. Besides, Magellan, Drake and Darwin each stopped in these spots on their respective voyages around South America and we wanted to walk in their footsteps, and examine these locations as potential anchorages, as they are reputedly very difficult to enter due to enormous tidal ranges.

Puerto Deseado, a small port, is a 425 km roundtrip detour off the main highway. There were three cruising boats in harbor when we were there; an Argentine heading north, a French boat needing serious repairs, and a Belgium boat heading south. (There was also a Germain boat stored on the dry.) The one excursion we wanted to take was a 45 km trip up the Ria (estuary) Deseado to Miradores (lookout) de Darwin, retracing Darwin's journey in 1833. Once again to our disappointment, the river tides were too low to get up the river. Despite this, we had a pleasant stay and got a good look at the port and moorage possibilities.

Puerto San Julian, our southern most stop, had its heyday from 1930-1970 when sheep and wool were king and it was the region's major wool port. Outside town is the abandoned carding, washing and bailing facility which once housed 100's of workers and exported shiploads of bailed wool. The decline in wool prices in the 1980's left San Julian almost a ghost town. The Italian Bennetton family has since bought hundreds of estancias and is now the largest single landowner in Argentina, owning five estancias in Patagonia totaling over two million acres. Little of the commerce in or out of their property outside San Julian passes through the town.

New life has been brought to San Julian in the form of new gold mines and tourism. During the Falkland War, San Julian was a major staging area for the air force.

It had now been almost two weeks and we still had no wind to speak of. Strange, for an area know for its extreme winds.

Along the west side of the bay leading to Puerto San Julian is a dramatic headland composed of layers of fossil rich sediment. Exposed by the revenges of the sea and the river, this particular fossil record stimulated Darwin's thinking about the evolution of life on earth, and gave him early proof of the adaptation of species to changes in their environment.

It was time for a change of scenery and to head west for the mountains. The two day trip took us through the oil and gas fields that stretch for over 100 miles west of the port of Comorado Rivadavia into the foothills of the pre-cordillera. Our destination, Los Antiguos, is a very pleasant settlement with extensive orchards, most notably cherries, located on Lago (lake) Buenos Aires with the Andes as a backdrop. The area is popular for its trout fishing. It was Easter weekend and one of the local activities was a day of Gaucho horse racing at the local track.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the track taking in the local color and scenery, eating charizo sandwiches and drinking good cheap red wine. As evidence of the decline of the importance of sheep and wool to the region, the quantity of woolen clothing worn by attendants of the race could have been supplied by a single shearing of a single sheep. Plastic fleece is a popular in Patagonia as Pittsburg.

This part of the trip had not really been planned out. Due to lack of information on available busses we really had to leave the rest of the trip to chance and whim. Public transportation north on the next 200 km of highway ceased to be available after April 15th. In order to continue north along the western corridor, we had to travel back to Comodora Rivadavia and then west again along another road linking to the road north. This allowed us to stop at Sarmiento to visit the petrified forest located outside the town.

Having missed the geologic site at Trelew, and the trip up the river at Puerto Deseado, we were determined to get in something to keep Nancy's rock appetite happy. And we weren't disappointed. We have both seen petrified forests but this site was quite impressive. Some of the trees that once dominated this area are said to have been over 100 meters tall. The only sad note was that Nancy left the camera at the museum in town and didn't get any photos! Luckily its memory chip contained all of the images of the trip and we were able to retrieve it on our return to town.

There always seems to be at least one major tourist attraction that is a must, and for us this was a ride on the Old Patagonia Express, one of South America's classic train journeys. We would have liked to have traveled the 165 km from Esquel to El Maiten but that trip is only offered occasionally. So we settled for the 22 km roundtrip tour from Esquel, that, due to its 35 kph speed, stretches into a four hour trip, including a stop at a native hamlet before returning. The scenery was beautiful and chatting with the other passengers, all from South America, was fun.

By now we had decided to skip the popular resort of Bariloche and spend the rest of our time in the town of El Bolson, halfway between Esquel and Bariloche. It's popular with young travelers and hikers due to its easy access to many trekking opportunities. We spent the time enjoying the local street fair and taking local hikes, a pleasant way to end our journey. We booked an overnight sleeper for the trip back to Buenos Aires. And after making a bus change in Bariloche we were glad that we had not decided to spend any time there since there are so many other smaller more pleasant places in this part of the world to visit.

So we're back on the boat at Club San Fernando already planning our next excursion!

Hasta Luego