On the Road in Patagonia - Part 4

And so it came to pass, our three amigos had packed up the Renault and ventured into Argentina where they landed in the fabled El Chalten, the realm of the smoking mountain. It was here where they were reunited with their Irish partners in crime, to go forth and delve into the Fitz Roy cordillera. They had come to feel right at home in Chalten, and flow with the wind and rhythm of summer nights. But soon their time in the magic kingdom would come to an end, and the long journey home would begin down a wide-open road. In other words… It ain’t over quite yet. 

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THE HOUNDS OF EL CHALTEN
We had noticed it that first night in Chalten while having dinner at a restaurant. We were sitting at a window table, watching the passersby stroll up and down San Martin Avenue. But what really caught our eye was not the people—it was the dogs. Big handsome dogs. And they were unleashed and doing their own thing, trotting down the sidewalk, or crossing the street to say hi to a four-legged friend, or just sitting in a shop doorway, watching the world go by. While we were eating, I saw a yellow lab dart across the street in front of a car. The driver—who was going slow, thank goodness—slammed on the brakes, but his front bumper struck the dog on his hind quarter and knocked him off his feet. The pooch quickly recovered and scampered down an alley. I saw him the next day. He had a slight gimp to his stride.

Dogs are everywhere in this town, coming in all shapes and sizes. Clearly some were pets (though I rarely saw one on a leash), but many appeared to be strays, wandering around on their own volition. But stray or not, all of them looked very healthy and well fed. One day, I saw two young men with daypacks coming down the street with a shaggy black dog trotting along beside them. I asked if it belonged to them, and they said no. The dog had adopted THEM, and slept on the porch of their cabin every night. They named him Karl. And that would be his name until the two Australian trekkers departed for home in a week.

A dog named Karl

  

On our last day in Chalten, Kevin took Denise up the Rio Blanco Trail to the Piedras Blancas Glacier overlook, while Pete and Nicki hiked to Laguna Torre with the intention of—maybe, hopefully—catching a glimpse of the elusive Cerro Torre. Since I had done both of these hikes already, I opted to explore the town… and maybe uncover the story behind the town hounds.

One young lady that I passed had a beautiful German shepherd striding at her side with no leash. When I asked if it was hers, she eyed me suspiciously, like “Who wants to know?” She relaxed when I explained that I was curious about all the dogs and was taking photographs of them. Yes, the dog was hers. She explained something else in broken English that possibly implied that none of the dogs were strays: they belonged to everyone, or the town, or something to that effect—which makes them legitimate citizens of Chalten, I suppose. Every one that I came across was friendly. They approached you with a big grin and a wagging tail, like they were running for mayor and wanted to shake your hand and say “Vote for me, and while you’re at it, scratch me behind the ear.” 

But then a different picture emerged as I talked to shopkeepers, hotel desk clerks, even the sergeant at the police station. They summarized it as: “We have a dog problem.” One shopkeeper complained about the poop. A restaurant owner complained that dogs would get into his trash out back, and then the wind would blow it all over town. There are no neutering requirements or leash laws. At the police station, I got the lowdown on what happens when winter comes and all the tourists and half the residents leave town. With their food supply vastly diminished, hungry canines prey on the wildlife in the surrounding hills—the very same wildlife that Los Glaciares NP rangers have been tasked to protect. “It’s a mess,” one hotel manager lamented to me.

But it’s the lazy days of summer right now, when “Man’s Best Friend” is lounging in the shade, or on the front lawn or doorway of a shop. Now and again tourists stop to pet them. One particular collie rolled onto his back so he could get his belly scratched. So until winter comes, it’s a dog’s life in Chalten.

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AN AFTERNOON AT THE MADSEN RANCH
Andreas Madsen came into this world in 1881, growing up in a coastal hamlet in Denmark. His was a tempestuous childhood of family struggle and poverty, and at the age of fifteen, he jumped aboard a merchant ship and fled to the high seas. He lived the roving life of a merchant marine for several years before landing in Buenos Aires in 1901, where he signed on with the newly-formed Boundary Commission. The next thing Andreas knew, he was in the Patagonian Andes as camp cook for a survey team that was tasked with demarcating the Chilean-Argentine border. Over the next decade, he would pick up and hone various skills in the Viedma and San Martin Lakes region, working as a mountain guide, horse wrangler, puma hunter, boat pilot and river explorer. In 1912, at the age of thirty-one, he returned to Denmark and married his teenage sweetheart, and soon after, went back to Patagonia with his bride and homesteaded a sector of rugged land—50,000 acres—that was granted to him by the Argentine government for his services with the Boundary Commission. He built a cabin on the Vueltas River with a magnificent view of Cerro Fitz Roy (which was part of the land granted to him), and in this remote alpine paradise, he and his wife would raise their four children. Two of their sons, Fitz Roy and Peter, would become the first rangers of Los Glaciares National Park after it was formed.

  The Madsen family, circa 1930s. L-R: Peter, Fitz Roy, Richard, Steffany, Anna and Andreas.

I had read about Andreas Madsen just before our trip, and his story intrigued me. A poor Danish boy runs away from home and leads a life of adventure in Patagonia, eventually to marry and raise his family in spectacular country that is now a National Park. The day we checked into Anita’s cottage, I had spotted the pamphlets on the counter in her office that advertised tours of the Madsen ranch, formally known as Casco de La Estancia Cerro Fitz Roy. When I asked if any of the family still lived in the area, she said yes, there was a great-grandson—or at least that’s what I thought she conveyed, but her answer might’ve been lost in translation. At any rate, she said the ranch was worth a visit if I had the time. And I did have the time on our last day in town.

The tour started at three o’clock, and Anita had advised me to not be late. She gave me directions to the meeting place, which was directly across the Vueltas River from town, at the end of the bridge that spanned it. Just wait there, she said. It was a short walk. I got there early and sat on the leeward side of a big boulder, where the river hugs close to a 300-foot high rock cliff. Naturally I started scoping out the granite walls, looking for potential lines of ascent, since it all looked very climbable. It didn’t take long before a subtle, metallic glint caught my eye. A bolt! And another one! There were established sport routes all along here!

Vueltas River

I was so preoccupied with ogling routes that I didn’t notice the other people who had gathered at the end of the bridge, six in all. At three o’clock sharp, a man on a bicycle pedaled across the bridge and parked his ride under a nearby tree. Our docent had arrived. He was lean and fit, and looked vaguely familiar, like I’d seen him before. He was fluently bilingual, so as we walked down the dirt track to the ranch, he would first give his presentation to the other visitors in Spanish, and then walk with me and reiterate in English. It was on this mile-long stretch to the ranch house where I mentioned that I’d been told Andreas Madsen might have a great-grandson living in town. He stopped and looked at me.

 “That’s me,” he said. “I’m Fitz Roy Madsen.”

It was like striking gold. Our docent, who went by the name Roy, was a direct descendant of the pioneer who had settled this land over a century ago. And Roy’s grandfather, Peter, had been one of the first Los Glaciares park rangers. It didn’t get any better than this.

Roy Madsen and me at La Estancia Cerro Fitz Roy.  

The red, single-story house stood in a copse of giant poplar and redwood trees that had been planted long ago by Andreas’ wife, Steffany. Out back, on a rise overlooking the house and river, was a small family cemetery. Inside the house, Roy led us from room to room, weaving a thrilling yarn of history and events that were right out of a Jack London novel, substituting the Alaskan outback for Patagonia. Roy brewed some espresso and mate, and then we sat at the dining room table for a solid hour, listening to pioneer lore while leafing through the weather diaries and journals that Andreas had meticulously kept. Since the town of Chalten didn’t exist at the time, Andreas hosted many of the early alpinists who had come to make first ascents: Maestri; Egger; Terray; Magnone; Comesaña; Fonrouge… They had all sat in the dining room where we were sitting, sharing a meal with the Madsens. (If walls could only talk.)

While Roy conversed in Spanish with the others in the dining room, I wandered through the house and gave the old family photographs on the walls a closer look. That’s when it struck me why Roy had looked so familiar when we first met: He looked like his great-grandfather! Their resemblance was amazing. 

The ranch house today. (El Chalten across river in the distance.)

Ranch house in 1918. (photo provided by Roy Madsen)

Andreas' resting place in the family cemetery.

Roy sharing family lore in the dining room.

The government took back most of Andreas’ land when they created Los Glaciares National Park in 1937, leaving him with 185 prime acres along the Vueltas River where the ranch house is located. However, much of that prime acreage is now entangled in a legal dispute, to which Roy is leading the fight. It appears that unscrupulous bureaucrats transferred title of the Madsen parcels to their own family members many years ago—even though Roy has legal documents showing that the land belongs to the Madsen estate. He has been battling tenaciously, piece by piece, to get it all back.

Roy and I chatted a great deal on the walk back to the town bridge. His temperament is just as dauntless and complex as his great-grandfather’s. He’s an engineer; father; world traveler; rock climber; saxophone player... and has a deep passion for his family heritage. We shook hands at the bridge.

 “If you get down this way again, we’ll go climbing,” he told me. “You can stay at the ranch.”

You know, I might take him up on that.

Climbing routes galore, five minutes from the front porch!

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ADIÓS, MIS AMIGOS

I was walking up the dirt street that led to Pete and Nicki’s apartment, my head reeling from a wonderful day of photographing dogs and hanging out with Roy Madsen, when up ahead, I spotted our dusty Renault bearing down on me. Kevin was at the wheel. Denise was riding shotgun with Team Belfast in the back seat. I put my thumb out to hitch a ride, and luckily they stopped for me.

“Where the hell have you been?” they wanted to know. “It’s six-thirty. Happy hour, for Jaysus sake.”

I jumped in the car and off we went.

It was our last night in Chalten. In the morning, we would be starting back south, while Pete and Nicki would fly on to Buenos Aires for the next leg of their trip. To celebrate, we started with chips and beer on the rooftop patio of a saloon, where Nicki got into an altercation with the bar manager over the bill. She and Pete had insisted they pick up the tab, but when the manager charged them full price for the drinks instead of the half-price happy hour special, a “discussion” ensued with Nicki not backing down. The manager threatened to call the police. Nicki handed him her phone and said: “Okay, call ‘em.” He folded right away, and Pete completed the transaction—at happy hour prices—with the suave tact of a legal counseler. No wait… He is a legal counseler.

In the morning, we rolled out of bed to dazzling bluebird skies. Not a cloud anywhere! Thirteen days in Patagonia, and we had never seen it so crystal clear. And alas, there was Cerro Torre! If there were any climbing teams at its base, they would’ve launched a summit bid during the night, and by now, would be high on the spire. That was the game here: wait for the weather window, and then go fast and light.

Kevin dropped Pete and Nicki off at the bus station bright and early, and we left town a couple hours later. We had 180 miles of highway to cover to reach the Moreno Glacier, our objective for the afternoon. In the rearview mirror, the Fitz Roy cordillera slowly shrank on the horizon. Bittersweet it was, leaving it all behind. Denise made herself comfortable in the back seat. We were on the road again.

Leaving El Chalten.

Cerro Torre!

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EL CALAFATE

It is said that if you eat the berries of the calafate bush, you are destined to return to Patagonia. (I didn’t eat any berries from the bush—they weren’t ripe yet—but I did drink a calafate pisco and spread calafate jam on my toast one morning. Does that count?) The Tehuelches had long utilized the berries for food and medicinal purposes, the thorny berberis microphylla common to the region due to its resistance to strong winds, drought, and extreme temperatures. With the arrival of Europeans, it was the plant’s tenacity to survive in adverse conditions that prompted the supply/trading outpost on the south shore of Lake Argentino to be called El Calafate. A few dozen people lived here in the 1920s, most of them in the wool trade. Today the town has swelled to 20,000, tourism being the economic driver now. The headquarters of Los Glaciares National Park is here. There’s even has a small international airport.

El Calafate.

We stopped in town long enough for lunch and a quick browse of the Los Glaciares Visitors Center. Then we headed straight out to the star attraction of the area: the Moreno Glacier. It’s named after Francisco “Perito” Moreno, the explorer/scientist who put Cerro Fitz Roy on a map, led the Boundary Commission (and hired Andreas Madsen), and is considered the father of Argentina’s national park system. Getting there was a 48-mile drive along Lake Argentino, the scenery vast and easy on the eye.

The road ends at the glacier terminus, where one can then wander along various trails and elevated walkways to view the spectacle from different angles. The Moreno Glacier is three miles wide and nineteen miles long, about the same area size as Grey Glacier in Torres del Paine, but twice as thick. What makes Moreno unusual is that it’s one of the three (out of 48) glaciers fed by the massive Southern Patagonian Ice Field that it is not retreating. In fact, the flow of ice creeping down has increased, currently at a rate of about 6½ feet per day. Since the glacier terminus remains in roughly the same position, that means 2,400 linear feet of ice calves into Lake Argentino every year, some of the chunks up to two hundred feet tall.

This same ice dynamic also pushes the glacier over the outlet between Lakes Argentino and Brazo Rico and acts like a dam. With no outlet, the water level on Brazo Rico begins to rise, sometimes as much as sixty feet above the level of Argentino. The increasing pressure from this head of water eventually causes a spectacular breach of the ice dam, resulting in an outpouring of water into Lake Argentino until the levels of the two lakes equalize. This dam-rupture cycle recurs naturally every two to four years (the most recent one occurred two months after our visit).

   

   

  

   

Back in Calafate, we checked into our little bungalow in the hills above town (which took ages to find because there are no street signs in the hills above town), and then we headed downtown for a late supper. Once again, Kev used clairvoyant powers (Yelp and an iPhone) to find us the best beer tap in town. It was called La Zorra. You know a place is good when it’s packed with locals. All the tables were taken, but a young man offered to share his with us. His name was Tomas. He was a guide at one of the eco-tour outfits in town, an engaging lad and good company. Beer, ribs, and hanging out with the local crowd… What more could you ask for?

Calafate is a vivacious town at night, even at ten o’clock. People strolled along the boulevard, peering into shop windows or chatting with friends on a street corner. A few blocks down, we ducked into an ice cream parlor for dessert. It seemed appropriate: We had started the afternoon with a giant glacier, and would end the day with an ice cream cone.

Good times at La Zorra.

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WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

The morning of Day 15 brought sapphire skies and a scrim of high clouds. We ate breakfast and relished the view of Lake Argentino in the distance, finding it hard to believe that in thirty-four hours we would be on a plane for home. Packing up, my momentum seemed to be lagging a bit. Road-weary maybe? Naww. 

Our bungalow in El Calafate.

We had three hundred miles of highway ahead of us to make Punta Arenas. I took the first stint at the wheel, leaving Calafate and Lake Argentino behind and roving south down Route 40. In Esperanza, which is nothing more than a truck stop at the highway fork to Rio Gallegos on the Atlantic coast, we gassed up and kept moving south. The Torres del Paine cordillera beckoned far to the west, a distant a ship on an otherwise flat horizon. But we carried on southbound, along the Turbio River, a valley of cattle and verdant pastures. It was all so serene. There was no denying that I’d fallen captive to the boundless and desolate beauty of this land, where time and space are nearly immeasurable.

At the coal-mining/power plant town of Rio Turbio, we cut up to Dorotea Pass (a small ski resort here) and crossed back into Chile. We had the border-crossing routine wired by now, and skated through without a hitch.

“Welcome to Chile,” the customs agent said as he handed back our passports.

Menacing clouds and then rain met us on the flat plains of Laguna Blanca, the windshield wipers sporadically working overtime. We were in and out of showers for the remainder of the drive. But at the end of a long day, the Magellan Strait came into view and the sun broke free to dance on its surface. We were back.

In Punta Arenas we made our way to the harbor, where Kevin had secured a one-bedroom apartment for the night. I took the fold-out couch in the living room. We were famished, and once settled in, had no trouble finding Restaurante La Luna on foot, where the table on the ceiling was taken. Afterwards we sought out the Shackelton Bar for the evening finale—because after all, the Shackelton was where it all began. Glenfiddich. Neat. Water back.

Median park along Avenida Cristobal Colon, Punta Arenas.

Back at the Shackelton Bar.

Our flight home didn’t leave until 5:30 pm the following day, so we had all morning and early afternoon to knock around town and catch some of the sights we didn’t see on the front end of the trip. We had breakfast at the Wake-Up Café—the best coffee house in town, across the street from the police station. We shopped for more souvenirs on the waterfront, where Kev bought Denise a ring and proposed to her right then and there. Dee insisted that I take a photo. And then, with the prenuptials out of the way (never mind that they’ve been married for 32 years), we toured the Braun-Menéndez Museum, housed in the opulent Menéndez Mansion where one can get a glimpse of how the city’s trade barons lived a century ago. 

Living proof.

Chandelier in Menéndez Mansion

The very last thing that we did was drive up to Cerro de La Cruz, which overlooks the city and the Strait. By now the morning overcast had burned off and the sun was shining bright. It was an immaculate afternoon at the edge of the world. Denise asked a tourist standing nearby if he would take our photo. And then, with the snap of a camera shutter, the trip was over.

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BY THE NUMBERS...

We spent sixteen days on the ground in Patagonia, putting fifteen hundred miles on the rental car and hiking over eighty miles of trails. We also traveled twenty-five miles in the Magellan Strait in a motor launch.

Punta Arenas has the most to provide in services, accommodations, etc. There is not another city of this size in six hundred miles. Puerto Natales is the gateway town for Torres del Paine Nat’l Park, and El Calafate is the hub for getting to Las Glaciares Nat’l Park and El Chalten. There are no services, markets, or stores in Torres del Paine NP, so buy everything you need in Puerto Natales before driving the fifty miles out to the Park. 

Chile’s Route 9 and Argentina’s Route 40 are both fully paved and in great shape. The spur road from Route 40 to El Chalten is paved as well. The road leading to Torres del Paine NP is in the process of being paved (we had to detour around a section that was torn up), but the interior roads of the Park are still graded dirt and become dusty and bumpy with traffic. Also, it is not uncommon to come across sheep, cattle or guanacos crossing the highway. Driver beware. Also, plan your refueling stops ahead of time, as there are not many gas stations once you leave Punta Arenas.

BEST FOOD & DRINK...
Shackelton Bar, Punta Arenas
Los Argentinos, Punta Arenas
Wake-Up Café, Punta Arenas
El Muro, El Chalten
La Zorra, El Calafate

BEST HIKES...
Valle Francés, Torres del Paine NP (12 miles)
Mirador Base Las Torres, Torres del Paine NP (12 miles)
Laguna Cerro Torre, Las Glaciares NP (15 miles) 
Laguna de Los Tres via Rio Blanco Trail, Las Glaciares NP (16 miles)

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...
I would like to acknowledge Nicki Clarke, Peter McGettrick, Fitz Roy Madsen, and Juan Luis Mattassi for the life, color, and inspiration that they added to the journey. It wouldn’t have been the same trip without them. And lastly, many big thanks to Kevin and Denise Feldman for allowing me to tag along on their adventure. Kevin did all the planning and lodging arrangements, and it played out perfect. Kevin taught me that everything works out in the end. Denise taught me to beware the Selk’nam sorceress.



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