On Saturday, I lounged around the plaza reading my book ´In Patagonia´ by Bruce Chatwin. I looked at the newspaper that day and saw that half of the front page stories were stories from the United States. Most notable was about the Obama rescue plan for the economy and secondly the story that Michael Phelps had been caught smoking marijuana. I also found it interesting in the newspaper that there were still news stories about people trying to resolve court cases about holding people responsible for the disappearance of family members
during the Pinochet regime over 30 years ago. I met up with the Spaniard and we began the long journey south to ¨the end of the world¨ (or at least that´s what name the very Southern tip of Chile has acquired). I rode along in the truck that he uses to transport his motorcycles for his clients with two seats up front for the both of us. He´s from Spain, lives in Brasil, and works in Chile, so he definitely gets around. Being that his clients are pretty well off he only has to work 4 months out of the year in Punta Arenas, Chile and then the other 8 months he´s soaking up the sun and enjoying the Brazilian women. Didn´t sound like a bad deal. A little ways out of Coyhaique and the comfortable paved road turns to gravel for around a 80 mile stretch. After passing through the A
ndes to the Argentine side of the border, you are faced with the vast nothingness of the Argentine Pampa as compared to the green landscape of Chile. Nothing but dirt and small shrubs as far as the eye can see with small fences marking the property lines. I was expecting John Wayne to gallop up on
his horse any second. The colors in the sky majestic as the sun set over the horizon. Every so often rabbits would scurry out of the way as the truck came barrelling by. I must say at times we were doing a little more of drifting than actually driving on that dirt road which spiced things up. We stopped at some random gas station to spend the night where music could be heard blaring from the nearby town. The gas station was closed at 11:30 but it was suprisingly a popular spot. I´m not really sure what all the people were doing there. We cleared out the back of the truck and laid out our sleeping bags for a good night´s sleep as cars blaring their music would drive by every so often.On Sunday we continued on to Comodoro Rivadivia to complete our traverse of Argentina and then turned south towards Punta Arenas. Southern Argentina: Patagonia; where every town is a speck in the vast Pampa. I wondered at times how the people that live in these towns survive financially because it seems that farming is out of the question with poor soil quality and there cannot be much of an economy within the small town. We barrelled down the highway si
pping maté and listening to Maná (a really good Mexican band) blaring through the loudspeakers as I tried to pick out the Spanish words. Horatio and I both helped each other out, I with his English and he with my Spanish. Farther down the coast you began to see the oil fields with the pump jacks scattered out across the land pumping away. It seemed to be dominated by foreign companies, including those of the United States although I cannot remember exactly the specific companies. At one of the gas stations tha
t we stopped at, instead of a drink machine, I found a hotwater dispenser for those to fill up their thermoses for drinking maté on the road. Almost everyone had thermoses and would put the couple of coins into the machine to fill their thermoses. We made sure to fill up as well before we went on. In the late evening, we crossed the border once again back into Chile to make the final stretch down to Punta Arenas, but not before stopping for lamb at a trucker´s resturaunt. We pulled in Punta Arenas after dark but it was definitely unlike any other city I had been in in Chile. The only word I could think of to describe it was vintage New York for architectural design and the stone buildings and the atmosphere. This night was a comfy hostal bed.
pping maté and listening to Maná (a really good Mexican band) blaring through the loudspeakers as I tried to pick out the Spanish words. Horatio and I both helped each other out, I with his English and he with my Spanish. Farther down the coast you began to see the oil fields with the pump jacks scattered out across the land pumping away. It seemed to be dominated by foreign companies, including those of the United States although I cannot remember exactly the specific companies. At one of the gas stations tha
t we stopped at, instead of a drink machine, I found a hotwater dispenser for those to fill up their thermoses for drinking maté on the road. Almost everyone had thermoses and would put the couple of coins into the machine to fill their thermoses. We made sure to fill up as well before we went on. In the late evening, we crossed the border once again back into Chile to make the final stretch down to Punta Arenas, but not before stopping for lamb at a trucker´s resturaunt. We pulled in Punta Arenas after dark but it was definitely unlike any other city I had been in in Chile. The only word I could think of to describe it was vintage New York for architectural design and the stone buildings and the atmosphere. This night was a comfy hostal bed.
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