Chile and Argentina. March to May 2007..

Songline, Club de Pesca, Cartagena, Colombia. 10 September 2007

Dear friends

On 24 March Songline was hauled out of the water for the second time in twelve months, this time to be stored at Todomar Boatyard just outside Cartagena while we went travelling in southern Chile and Argentina and then returned to Europe to see family and friends. The yard had run out of stands and our haul-out had been delayed by 24 hours while the metalwork shop worked overtime to produce six new ones to support the boat while she was on the hard. By 1400, after much frantic activity, she was safely chocked and blocked with all our bits and pieces stowed away and packing complete. It was a close-run thing - our flight to Panama City left at 1640! We had planned a couple of days in Panama for Barbara to get the all clear from her knee surgeon, since our legs were likely to face some stiff challenges in the mountains of Patagonia!
Two months later we arrived at Heathrow from Buenos Aires. We had travelled 16,000 miles (26,000 km) by air, 4,500 by road (mostly by bus) and 1,500 by sea, plus many (uncounted!) miles on foot, but what a trip it had been!
Here's the story and yes, there is a version with photographs on our website (www.johnandbarbara.com) if you would prefer to read it there!

We arrived in Santiago in the early hours of 27 March, clutching a sheaf of standby tickets which included a side-trip to Easter Island (Rapa Nui). We hardly dared hope that LAN Chile would have space for us on any of their flights, which only operate four times per week - but to our amazement by 0830 the same morning we were on our way to one of the smallest and most remote inhabited dots in the Pacific, nearly 2,500 miles away. The little town of Hanga Roa in the south-west of Rapa Nui is home to virtually the entire population of 3,800, so unless you are camping, the choice of accommodation lies within the town’s perimeter. At the airport we were greeted by about a dozen guest-house owners offering rooms to suit most budgets, and we quickly settled on Chez Cecilia for our six-day stay. A few minutes’ walk from the centre of town and with views of the Pacific, Cecilia’s turned out to be an ideal base from which to explore.
Despite the island’s size - from west coast to east is only about fifteen miles (24 km); from north to south no more than seven (12 km) - there is plenty to see and do on Rapa Nui. The principal attractions are, of course, the Moai, the giant statues for which the island is famous. Three hundred of them lie or stand around the perimeter of the island, mostly on stone ceremonial platforms (Ahu). Most Moai were erected facing inland, suggesting that they may have been representations of powerful clan chiefs set to watch over the ancestral village.
Little is known of the history of the island. The first settlers are believed to have come from other islands in the Pacific some time between 450 and 800 AD, with Rapa Nui’s population growing to a few thousand by the 16th century. When the first western travellers reached Rapa Nui - a Dutch expedition in 1722 - they found a population well dispersed around the island, living mainly in caves or in stone-built elliptical boat-shaped thatched houses. There were plenty of trees and vegetation, which, coupled with wonderful fishing, provided a healthy subsistence living. Only three more western expeditions set foot on Rapa Nui in the latter part of the 18th century - Spaniards, who claimed the island for Spain in 1770, Captain Cook in 1774 (too late to claim it for England!) and the Frenchman, La Perouse in 1786. All reported seeing at least some of the statues standing on their Ahu. However, by the early 1800s, nearly all of them had been toppled, probably as a result of a period of inter-clan strife in which victory was signalled by knocking over the rival clans’ Moai. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami may also have had a hand in the destruction. Today the only Moai standing are those which have been restored.
Sadly, nobody knows why the destruction was so total. Inter-tribal warfare coupled with raids by slavers, followed by diseases brought in by whalers, planters, missionaries, sheep farmers and other colonizers in the 19th century reduced the native population to a few hundred and their history and culture were lost. It is commonly thought that the internal wars may have been caused by over-population and competition for increasingly scarce resources. Today the trees reported by the 18th century explorers are gone, replaced by rolling grassland. If this is true it would make Rapa Nui one of man’s earliest self-inflicted ecological disasters.
What is known is that all the Moai were carved out of solid rock in a quarry towards the south-east of the island. Today about four hundred of them, some ready for the journey to their coastal Ahu, others uncompleted as the work of carving them gradually came to a halt, remain there, in one of the most fascinating sites on the island. One of the many mysteries of Rapa Nui’s past is how the Moai were moved from the quarry to their Ahu, often a distance of several miles. The statues vary in size from about 6 ft (2 metres) to over 70 ft (21 metres). The largest to be erected on a coastal Ahu is 35 ft (10 metres) tall, weighing many tons. Is that what all those trees were used for? When time travel becomes available to us, we'll head back to Rapa Nui in the 16th century, to find out how they did it!
Although the three corners of the island are formed by the craters of long-extinct volcanoes, the interior reminded us of the Isle of Wight. Green and peaceful, with gentle rolling hills - though we don‘t remember too many guava bushes (mmm… delicious!) growing wild in the English version! In contrast the coastline is wild and inhospitable, much of its length consisting of steep cliffs and rocky beaches. Meeting its first land for thousands of miles, even in mild conditions the Pacific swell roars towards the shore in a series of spectacular breakers - we could only imagine what it might be like in a storm! We were certainly glad not to be on board one of the three cruising yachts off the town as we watched them roll sickeningly in the island’s only (marginally safe) anchorage! Despite the forbidding aspect of most of the coastline, we found two sandy beaches which provided sheltered swimming, plus a natural rock pool in town which was a popular evening spot. Even for us ‘tropicalised’ swimmers, the temperature was acceptable - a little bracing, but bearable - and such CLEAN water. Pollution has a long way to travel before it reaches Easter Island! We walked a lot, but we also hired a car for a day to get to some of the more inaccessible spots, and to allow us to watch from the quarry as the sun rose over the 15 restored (standing) Moai on Ahu Tongariki - a magical morning. We covered most of the island's roads during our 24 hours, driving with even greater care than usual, acutely aware that this was the first place we had ever driven where the opposite of compulsory insurance prevails - car insurance simply isn't available on Rapa Nui!

We could happily have extended our stay to celebrate Easter on Easter Island, but we knew that Patagonia was already in the grip of southern autumn and that we'd better get there before winter set in. So back we flew to Santiago and on the Thursday before Easter, LAN Chile managed to squeeze us into the last two seats on their flight to Punta Arenas. Now we were to discover why we had brought warm clothes with us, and that what we had brought was really not enough! Punta Arenas, situated on the Strait of Magellan with Tierra del Fuego on the far side of the Strait, has very much of a frontier town feeling. It is one of the principal gateways to Antarctica and much of its industry is connected with supplying the ships which sail there during the brief summer season. The centre of town boasts some beautiful houses and civic buildings, built more than a hundred years ago from the proceeds of the wool, fur and whaling trades, but much of the rest of town is a ramshackle collection of clapboard housing. After trudging around in search of our first-choice guest house (closed for the season!!) and our second choice (razed to the ground by fire!!), we ended up at the very welcoming Hospedaje Tres Hermanos, heated throughout to tropical temperatures. We apologise to the three brothers for wasting so much valuable heat through the open window, desperate for a bit of fresh air! Next stop in town was the agency which sells cruises to Antarctica (by now too late in the season, and in any case rather beyond our budget!) and to Ushuaia (in Argentinian Tierra del Fuego) via Cape Horn. We were offered a special price on the 3-day/4-night cruise, the last but one of the season, which was leaving in 48 hours. Knowing that the agency would close in half an hour for the whole Easter weekend, a quick decision was needed. With the promise of a landing on Cape Horn (weather permitting) on Barbara's birthday, the decision could only go one way - and now the hunt was on for more cold-weather protection. Fortunately, in addition to its many high priced specialist outdoor gear shops, Punta Arenas has several far cheaper options and we were quickly able to equip ourselves with all that we needed, including $2 fake-fur Russian-style hats with earflaps (made in China, of course), which were to help keep us as warm as toast and became the envy of our fellow-passengers! The cruise, on the purpose-built 130-passenger Mare Australis, exceeded all our expectations. The route from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia took us westward along the Strait of Magellan, briefly out into the Pacific and then south and east again along the Beagle Channel. Having both just read Harry Thompson’s “This Thing of Darkness”, a biographical novel about Robert Fitzroy, we were intensely aware of the history of the area and could hardly imagine how Captain Fitzroy and his crew could have sailed the tiny engineless HMS Beagle through these unknown waters, let alone at the same time charting them and providing his companion Charles Darwin with the discoveries that would eventually lead to his revolutionary “The Origin of the Species”.

Each day we spent a few hours ashore (the ship’s inflatable Zodiacs often having to push their way through a mass of ice floes on their way from the ship), to look at spectacular glaciers, Magellanic forest, wildlife (including a group of lugubrious elephant seals) and stunning mountain ranges. Under way the ship wove through a system of narrow channels while we feasted on three major meals per day, went to lectures on the flora and fauna and the history of Tierra del Fuego, chatted to our fellow-passengers, walked around the wind-swept and sometimes rain-lashed decks or took shelter on the bridge, to which the crew extended an open invitation to all on board. Winds of up to 60 knots (over 100 km per hour) were not uncommon, and on the second night the crew recorded a maximum gust of 95 knots! For the landing on Cape Horn to happen, company regulations stipulated wind speeds of less than 30 knots and calm conditions at the beach where the Zodiacs were to land. On 9 April the forecast for the following day was not good - wind speeds in excess of 35 knots (gale force) and correspondingly high swell. However, dawn on 10 April found us in a small, sheltered bay just east of Cape Horn with the anchor and chain rattling into the depths below. The only wind was a gentle breeze (weather forecasters in Chile get it wrong sometimes, too!) and by 0645 we were all being ferried ashore to spend the next hour and a half on Cape Horn itself. Not quite the storm-battered desolation of popular imagination (and frequent reality), but what a way to spend a birthday morning! That evening we sailed into Argentinian waters and docked in the port of Ushuaia. After a final night on board and a big breakfast to fortify us for the day ahead, we disembarked, to be greeted, appropriately enough in the world's southernmost city, by a snowstorm. By early afternoon, the snow had thawed and the streets were clear, but the surrounding mountains were still capped by their new covering of brilliant white.

Ushuaia, established in the early 1900s as a military prison garrison, is today a bustling city with a population of 60,000. The former prison, which in its heyday was home to more than 800 prisoners, is now a multi-themed museum, each cell housing a different display! These range from the history of early Patagonian and Antarctic exploration to present-day resource exploitation in Argentina as well as some bizarre exhibits about the more notorious prisoners held in the prison! Like the town, it warranted more time that we had expected! We were particularly fascinated by the beautiful watercolours painted by Dr Wilson, one of Scott’s companions on his last fatal expedition. The scenery around Ushuaia is outstanding, with mountain and glacier views on both sides of the Beagle Channel and there are plenty of trails to be walked below and above the snowline in the mountains behind the city. Our stay also happened to coincide with a visit by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, which offered free seats to anyone interested in attending their rehearsal. We spent a spellbinding morning listening to Brahms’s Academic Overture and a Rachmaninov piano concerto (parts of them several times over as the Argentinian conductor got to grips with his guest orchestra!). In the end it was six days before we could tear ourselves away from Ushuaia and our departure coincided with the only other heavy snowfall of our trip, making us wonder if the bus would reach its destination. It did, and that in spite of having to make four stops for Immigration and Customs during the 13 hour journey as we crossed back and forth between Chile and Argentina. Because of the peculiar way that Tierra del Fuego and the rest of Patagonia are divided, there is no road north enabling travel entirely in one or the other country!

Our next objective was the Perito Moreno glacier - a huge icefield situated in Argentina's southern Andean foothills. The weather gods must have been smiling on us again, as the day we chose for our trip to the glacier was perfect - blue skies all day. The glacier itself, a jumbled river of blue and white ice pinnacles and crevasses, flows some 10 miles (16 km) from its source in the high mountains behind, and has the distinction of being one of the few glaciers in recent years to have advanced more than it has retreated. It terminates in a 2.5 mile wide, 200 ft (60 m) high wall of ice overhanging the Canal de los Tempanos (Iceberg Channel). As the relentless pressure of the ice behind builds up, great chunks of the wall split off from the main body of the glacier and plummet into the water below. The sight and the sound of these huge icebergs crashing into the Canal is quite unforgettable, and during our few hours at the glacier we saw three major portions of wall collapse, in addition to the smaller falls which punctuate the silence all day long.
A little further north in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares lies the Fitzroy range of mountains, dominated by the 11,200 ft (3,400 m) summit of Mount Fitzroy itself. This is one of the most spectacular areas of the Andes, and the skyline offers a breathtaking view of soaring spire-like peaks, with Mount Fitzroy a wondrous cathedral in rock at its centre. The tiny village of El Chalten, built in the valley beneath Mount Fitzroy, is an ideal starting point from which to explore the many trails which radiate into the surrounding mountains, some on open terrain with magnificent views in all directions, others through forests of Patagonian notofagus (a variety of beech) which, in late April, were turning from green to yellow to russet to brilliant red - a display of autumn colour to match any in New England. El Chalten is also home to many condors which nest in the cliffs above the village, emerging with the daylight to spiral up into the sky like paragliders, in their never-ending search for tasty morsels of dead meat.

From El Chalten we wanted to head for northern Patagonia, to the Lake District around Bariloche, another of Argentina's outstandingly beautiful areas. We looked at two ways of getting there. Either we could take the bus for several hundred miles across the flat expanse of the Argentinian pampas, or we could return south again for 150 miles to the Chilean port of Puerto Natales. A weekly ferry service operates from Puerto Natales, taking three days and nights to travel the 1000 miles or so to Puerto Montt, quite close to our objective. Needless to say, we opted for the ferry! Though a far cry from the luxury of the cruise we had done earlier in the month, the route through the fjords of southern Chile promised to be equally spectacular, and this trip came easily within budget!! Our fellow passengers of the human variety were a mixture of young and old, almost all backpacking tourists like ourselves, while on the cargo decks of the ferry we were joined by several hundred cows and sheep tightly packed into open-topped trucks. Our cabin overlooked the upper cargo deck, and we were lulled to sleep each night by a chorus of mournful mooing and baaing. True to expectations, the scenery was wonderful, though sometimes seen through mist or driving rain as the ferry picked its way along the rock-infested buoyed channels, some of which seemed scarcely wide enough for anything larger than a fishing boat. We all gathered expectantly on deck as we sailed across the bay which is a sanctuary for one of the world's largest mammals, the blue whale. Shouts went up as spouts were seen in the far distance, and one enormous tail was seen as its owner dived for the depths below, but none came close enough for us get a true idea of the size of these mighty animals. One section of the trip crosses an area of open water exposed to the full ocean swell. Happily for us, the weather at the time was quite settled and we were spared the ordeal of the passengers on the ferry two weeks before which had to turn back and shelter for two days and nights before making the crossing, while the Pacific storm to the west blew itself out.

The eight-hour bus ride from Puerto Montt to Bariloche took us through more wonderful mountain scenery as we crossed the Chile/Argentina border once again. However, by the following morning the rain had set in and for two days we experienced the worst weather of the whole trip - a mixture of low cloud and heavy rain. Even this was short-lived and when we set off in a hire car to explore the Seven Lakes region to the north, the clouds had all but vanished. The road through the seven lakes to San Martin de los Andes is one of Argentina's most popular attractions, but with winter just around the corner we had it almost to ourselves, and when we arrived in San Martin we had the pick of the accommodation at absurdly low prices. We chose a different, dirt-road, route back to Bariloche which is not even mentioned in the guide books but which took us through some of the most stunning country we had yet encountered, with whole mountainsides clothed in their bright red autumn colours.

Winter was fast approaching and reluctantly we decided it was time to move on from Patagonia. We'd been disappointed last year while we were in Argentina that we had not had time to visit the Iguazu Falls, rated by many as Argentina's most spectacular natural attraction of all. We were keen to fit the falls into our itinerary this time if we possibly could. The chief impediment to this plan was that the falls happen to be in the opposite corner of the country, on the Brazilian border, meaning a journey of more than 2,000 miles to get to them. We knew we could get there via Mendoza, the heart of Argentina's wine-growing country, and after perusing various bus timetables, we concluded that we had time to make the trip. We still had ten days before our flight left from Buenos Aires to London and even though a good proportion of that would be spent on the road, our experience of long-distance bus travel in Argentina suggested that this would be relatively painless. The overnight 16-hour bus trip from Bariloche to Mendoza, in seats which reclined almost flat confirmed this. In fact we felt so well rested when we arrived in Mendoza that we immediately jumped on another bus heading for the small town of Uspallata, high in the Andes close to the mountain pass which forms the border with Chile. After reading our Lonely Planet on the bus, we had decided to swap the delights of vineyards and wine-tasting for the pleasures of high-altitude hiking (well, you knew we were a bit strange, didn't you…?!) and we spent the next couple of days in another wonderland of incredible rock structures and snowy vistas. This included a four-wheel drive trip into one of the more remote corners of this extraordinary barren area, in search of the shy guanaco (a wild relative of the llama). Never mind that we only saw a few guanaco grazing in the distance - the trip was fantastic.

Back in Mendoza, we booked our seats for the 1,300-mile, 35-hour bus journey to Puerto Iguazu, leaving late the following evening: £50 ($100) each, including all meals and drinks!! Once again the super-wide, leather seats reclined almost flat and we slept soundly for much of the journey, managing to avoid the diet of bad films on the video screen. Our 0900 arrival in Puerto Iguazu gave us three full days to explore the falls before the final overnight bus ride to Buenos Aires. Now we were back in lush, sub-tropical jungle and we could pack away our cold-weather gear at last. The Iguazu river separates Argentina from Brazil, and the falls can be viewed from the National Parks on either side, both of which have an extensive network of trails and viewpoints. We knew we were in for a treat, but nothing could have prepared us for the wonder in store, especially with the river in spate after heavy rainfall further inland. The falls extend right across the full 1.3 mile (2 km) width of the river, breaking it up into dozens of separate cascades which thunder over the edge of a precipice up to 260 ft (80 m) high. The most impressive is the Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat), a huge horseshoe-shaped witches' cauldron where the force of the falling water creates a permanent cloud of spray which can be seen for miles around. Close up, from the place where the swirling brown water disappears over the edge, the noise is deafening and a soaking is almost unavoidable. A viewing platform has been built, sturdier, we were pleased to note, than the one which was swept away in floods some years ago. The platform is right on the edge of the chasm, so that visitors can not only see but also feel the full power of this amazing spectacle.

We were afraid, having made a beeline for the Garganta del Diablo as soon as we arrived, that the rest of the falls would be a disappointment by comparison. Far from it. As we made our way round the Circuito Superior later that afternoon, the breathtaking extent of the falls gradually opened up before us, each vista as impressive as the last. Our second day, we took the bus to the Brazilian side for more spectacular views. Before lunch, as we were drying out from the inevitable soaking at the end of one of the viewing platforms, we were surrounded by an amazing array of colourful butterflies - brilliant blues, greens, reds and yellows and some almost transparent. Walks in the jungle close to the falls revealed even more butterflies as well as an abundance of bird life. We also came across several families of coatis, comical animals a little like racoons with long pointy noses and even longer tails. We could have spent many more days absorbing the sights of this incredible part of the world, but a flight to London awaited us and on 13 May it was time to head for Buenos Aires.

We had planned to spend time when we got back to England writing about our travels and adding to our website. As usual, however, we were immediately caught up in the excitement of visits to family and friends, sorting out our postal mountain and looking after various jobs that needed doing both at Port Solent and elsewhere. Our three months in Europe included a visit to Turkey, with a wonderful week exploring Cappadocia with Sally, time in Scotland visiting Peter and Jilly and lots of time with our Mums in Yorkshire and Wiltshire. Before we knew it, and just as the worst UK summer weather on record was beginning to show signs of a change for the better, August was upon us and it was time to return to Songline. Since we got back to Cartagena a month ago, we have had numerous jobs to do, some planned and some not. We made two unwelcome discoveries on our return. The first was that half of our containers of new engine oil stored in the bilge had cracked and leaked nearly a gallon of their contents - requiring a messy and tedious clean up operation. Perhaps it was as well that the automatic bilge pump had temporarily seized up, or the oily mess might have been squirted all over the boatyard instead of being contained inside the boat! The second problem that we were less than happy to discover was that while the boat next to Songline had been receiving a paint respray, some of its new white paint had blown in our direction. This would have been no problem if the contractor had taken the normal measures to protect Songline (large sheets of plastic or other material everywhere the paint was likely to blow). He hadn't. At least we (with the help of the yard management) succeeded in persuading him to remove the white spots from our newly-varnished woodwork and paint on another coat of varnish. Removal of the spots from other areas of the deck and cockpit proved too much for him, and it will be a while before we manage to rub them all out ourselves. Never mind, it could have been worse…and indeed it did get worse! After we had relaunched Songline we discovered a hole in the bottom of our holding tank (the tank used to flush the toilets when you don't want to discharge them directly into the water)! Luckily we had emptied the tank while en route from Panama to Cartagena and had hardly used it since, so the extent of the potential olfactory disaster was limited! However, we are now faced with a major carpentry job to get at the offending tank so that it can be removed and replaced. Fortunately with easy access to shore facilities while we are here, there is no great urgency to get the job done! In spite of these little difficulties, it is lovely to be back on board again, and we are really enjoying being able to spend some more time in Cartagena, one of our favourite places. Our immediate plans are a little uncertain. We hope to spend some time travelling in Colombia while the boat is still in Cartagena, but at the moment we have a list of dental and other appointments stretching well into September, so it will be several days before we can set off. Barbara is also hoping to go back to England for a while to spend some more time with her mother, who was ill during the summer with an attack of shingles. So it may be late October or even November before we set off again from Colombia. Then we hope to return to Panama for several weeks, before continuing north towards the Bay Islands of Honduras and maybe Belize and southern Mexico.

Our website has remained untouched since March, but Barbara has spent some time over the past few days bringing it up to date with our more recent travels. We hope you'll find a minute to have a look - and maybe you'll feel tempted to head for Chile and Argentina too. We strongly recommend it!

With love and best wishes and, as always, looking forward to hearing some of your news.
John and Barbara