Day 506 - Torres del Paine, Chile
Departing for Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas
I gazed at Grey Lake and the sights beyond as we packed our bags. The blue iceberg we had seen the day before was still there, bobbing on the lake, tiny, unmoved. It was a sad Valentine, after spending nine days in this extraordinary part of the world.
Televisions are rare in Patagonia. You may find one in a bar or restaurante, but almost never in hosterias. It had probably been six weeks since we watched a TV. In my view this was a blessing. But at Lago Grey we checked the news anyhow, most of it bad, as news always is. That is why it is called news after all. Conflict — read drama — gets our attention and attention means ratings. At Lago Grey my old alma mater CNN informed us of a mass shooting, this one at Michigan State (when would this madness end?) while a massive storm was battering New England. The Kansas City Chiefs had beaten the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl (since beginning our odyssey we had missed two World Series, two Super Bowls, and one World Cup); and a Chinese balloon had been shot out of the sky creating concerns that either China or aliens might be preparing to attack. If the aliens were coming, Cyn and I guessed a Chinese invasion was moot.
With these uplifting thoughts in mind, we began a rattling departure from Torres del Paine back on gravel-strewn roads to Puerto Natales, fervently hoping all car parts would operate since we needed to unload the Symbol and then catch an afternoon bus a few hours south to Punta Arenas.
The weather, as usual, was changeable, and the views, as usual, were spectacular. We circled the backend of the great towers, made our way to the roundabout at Cerró Castillo and rolled at last back onto the fine cement highway to Puerto Natales. Once we had dropped the car we grabbed a taxi to the bus station. After two nights in Punta Arenas we would board a ship destined to take us through Tierra del Fuego (land of Fire) around the tip of South America to Ushuaia, the southernmost city on the continent. We were a long way from Pittsburgh.
Puerto Natales - Afternoon - 4:09 PM, 50°. It’s raining at the Puerto Natales bus station, but inside it is clean and dry. Massive, two-decker autobuses sit beyond the the big glass windows in their parking slots with names like BusesFernandez, Bus-Sur, BusesGomez. They disgorge backpackers from Asia, Europe and the United States. They’re like deer that have been caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
At 4:15 sharp, our Fernandez autobus departs and we’re soon pulling smoothly through the corrugated suburbs of Puerto Natales, rolling three hours closer to the bottom of planet earth. The bus is clean and mostly quiet except for the 20-year-old Chilean watching a thriller on his phone at high volume. The word “helado” keeps coming up in the movie. It means cold or frozen. Somehow I figure I must be mispronouncing the Spanish because this is not a Disney movie.
Despite the racket I get some notes down, read Paul Theroux's The Great Train Bazaar and eventually fall asleep. We awaken to a thin rainbow on a horizon of fluffy white and steel blue clouds. There’s so much land I feel and could swallow all of Texas. Buildings with names like Komatsu and Standard Wool sweep by, and an industrial port with warehouses of bright yellow and red, blue and white. A 1950s era fighter jet sits suspended, flying nowhere in front of an unnamed building. The structures are new, big, and brilliant in the now radiant sunshine. We pass along a broad boulevard with parks and immense trees that branch over top of the rumbling bus. A building with the unlikely name THE BRITISH SCHOOL written in wrought iron over the archway of its entrance passes us by, and a minute later we pull into the bus station, not far, says our GPS, from our hotel.
After arriving at our tidy, but sterile Apart Hotel, food is on our mind. But it's not easy to find. It's Valentine's Day and every restaurant is packed. We eventually decide on Mista Pizza in the town's restaurant row figuring it couldn't take long to get a pizza. In this we are quite wrong, but an hour later we get seated and find that guanaco pizza is on the menu. Though I am not generally a fan of eating dead animals (unless they are fish or chicken or unusual), Cyn and I agree that we have to try this Chilean delicacy, especially since we never got around to trying guinea pig which is a Peruvian specialty.
The guanaco was tasty, meatier than chicken, but not as rich as beef or buffalo or as gamey as deer can sometimes be. (My favorite so far is ostrich, which I once tried in South Africa.) It fit right in with the Parmesan, arugula and provolone atop a thick splash of tomato sauce. All was right for us in a world below latitude 40º.
On the way home we gazed at the stars, kissed for Valentines and thought how odd it was to be a couple of gringos walking in the middle of summer, the temperature hovering at 39°. I knew what it meant: it meant we were closing in on Antarctica.
Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas Recommendations
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