Floating off Patagonia

I passed my winter a couple of years ago reading three classics of polar exploration:  Fridtjof Nansen's Furthest North, Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, and Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage.  It was this final book that really caught my imagination, and upon completion I immediately began to look for a sea journey that take me to the waters of Cape Horn.  And I found one, sort of.  While it wouldn't take me (this time) to Antarctica or South Georgia Island, it would take me through both the Beagle Channel, and the Strait of Magellan.   

The true journey starts further north at Peninsula Valdes.  I'd been interested in seeing the old settler villages that Chatwin discusses (and offends), but we chose wildlife over the Welsh.  It is a long drive out to a beach best known from that David Attenborough nature film, where the orcas race ashore to take sea lion pups.  While I didn't really want to see that, I did want to see the fins of the great beasts cutting the cold grey waters offshore.  I was denied this (as I was while kayaking Canada two years ago), but bizarrely I saw an entire pod from the ship the following afternoon....

...our Defender seems to skip across the boggy surface of the Falklands, where roads are a recent and still untested concept.  I'm amazing at the light touch of this strong and heavy vehicle, like the kinetic grace of an NBA player in a slam dunk contest.  It is a world of green out here, framed by the grey of sea and sky.  I imagine it must look the Orkneys or the Shetlands, far away at Britain's other end.  The people too are conservative and hardy, as they would have to be.  But it was the penguins we came to see, hundreds of them, all standing at odd angles like at a cocktail party. (If you've got a few penguins, you've got a tourist industry.) We tail a few as they make their way out to the water, heads arcing like a metronome.  Watching them, one can't help but laugh. 

Town itself is small and very English.  There is an iron bust of Maggie down by the water, not far from the wrecks of older ships.  This far-flung outpost has a long seafaring tradition, as the last outpost before the Horn.  While the Panama Canal brought an end to that, the island appears healthy, if not a bit self-contained.  And I can't stop thinking of Brexit in that regard...

...the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans must not get along because the waters between are among the most turbulent in the world.  A day after leaving the Falklands, the rocking was horrendous, but we got what we paid for.  I jokingly thought while bouncing across the bogs of the Falklands that it was rougher than the boat. Not any longer.  Albatross skimmed these towering waves the entire day, oblivious to the tempest beneath.  The passengers however walked along the breakfast buffet as if doing dance steps they'd learned from the penguins the day before.  I'd hear later from the assistant captain that the wind speed was 87 knots, a record for this 24-year old ship...

...re-reading Theroux's In Patagonia (of course), the perfect accompaniment as his book is a meandering journey with little regard to destination.  We too weave through these islets, seeking calmer water....

...as an American who has lived at both ends of our broad landmass, the notion of traveling from Atlantic to Pacific is something of a wonder.  I remember feeling that during my single day's traverse of the Panama Canal.  And though this passage through the Beagle had taken two days, it was nothing short of magic...

...the Rocky Mountain feel of Ushuaia, its multiple outdoor shops overhung by glaciers. Our lunchspot too not unlike those in towns populated by mountain hipsters, this bakery with sandwiches, craft beer, and rummage sale decor.  But rather than hipsters it is immigrants who made this town.  Reading a little history later in the maritime museum, finding it incredible the number of people in Patagonia who had roots in former Yugoslavian countries.  The end of the earth as opportunity and adventure as opposed to the end of the earth as nowhere else to go...

...I spent the morning kayaking the Strait of Magellan, as dolphins curled across the waters nearby.  We'd picked up our gear in a small ranchero house built beside a compact rodeo grounds. In fact Punta Arenas itself feels a bit like a small town in central Texas, but that association may have been brought about by the similarity in flags.  We visit the former house of Bruce Chatwin's great-uncle, the inspiration for his journey.  And a travel classic was thereafter born.  From here it is a long ways out to the trio of historic ships just out of town, recreated to a greatly refined detail, and good fun to clamber around.  Shakleton's egg-like is a small space for six men to spend two weeks.  And Magellan's Nao Victoria was so narrow and tall it hardly looked seaworthy...       
...on the way to Lake Llanquihue, driving through forests scented with pine, though bespeckled by the light leaf of eucalyptus.  Enjoying rural still-lifes unseen by ship: old man making his way slowly down dusty lanes by cane, a trio of sleeping dogs, women working in the forest.  Plus strawberries, vineyards, corn, and a volcano the replica of the familiar Fuji...


On the turntable:  Jackie McLean, "Demon's Dance"             
On the nighttable:  W. Somerset Maugham, "The Summing Up"