Month: December 2024

Chile is a country of major earthquakes and great changes, many in recent years, making us question the wisdom of the old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” We experienced a minor quake during our stay with just a bit of swaying on the 13th floor, although enough to send others in our group rushing down the stairwells. We were surprised that this was a first for our Argentine guide, although it’s in Chile that the toughest standards for construction prevail, for good reason.

The US supported coup led to a very harsh 17 year military dictatorship (with plenty of “disappeared” people) which ended when General Pinochet consented to a plebiscite, and lost. What has followed has been a stable democracy with a vigorous, inflation free economy, the electorate evenly split between those who would be more rightist and those who would be more leftist, none apparently having an appetite for pushing further in either direction. Chile is a more or less pure capitalist country, with no social safety net, currently provoking resentment that the government is providing social support to a very large wave of immigration from the more troubled countries in our hemisphere, primarily Venezuela. Very serious riots and mass demonstrations in 2019 and 2020 were the consequence of the extreme disparities in living conditions generated by such an unforgiving capitalist system, dampened by the pandemic and currently in a state of calm. Indeed, our local guide Ivan, whose family went into exile after the coup when his Air Force officer father resigned his commission in protest, believes the pandemic saved his country from civil war.

Having spent a week here around 1980, Jim recognized nothing except the mountains, as the city has doubled in population in that time (to roughly 7-8 million or 40% of the country’s population) and spread out to those mountains. Gone were the lovely 19th century shopping arcades, everyone out walking with an ice cream cone in the late afternoon, looking forward to dinner at 11, and uzi toting men most everywhere. It’s now a bustling modern city with South America’s tallest skyscraper (in a country where doctors don’t need malpractice insurance, but architects do).

Having barely 48 hours in Santiago and its environs, we were fortunate to be able to visit two exceptional small museums of Latin American antiquities, which had been private collections. We were especially grateful for the chance to see the extraordinary pre-Colombian textiles and feather work, as the Andean region has produced some very unusual and wonderful work. Knotted strings, of course, comprised the written language of the Inca.

Although collected from across America, much was local, such as these Mapuche statues. Per the helpful English language signage: “These remarkable wooden statues were placed on top of tombs in ancient Mapuche cemeteries. They reflect the spirit (am) of those buried there and are intended to assist them in their journey to the afterlife. Chiefs and great warriors were sent to the East after death, to roam among the volcanoes of Kalfumapu, the ‘blue land.’ All others went to the West, to eat bitter potatoes beyond the sea.”

Our last stop in Chile and our adventure into Patagonia was an old winery where roses are planted at the ends of the rows as wary sentinels, like sacrificial canaries watching over the vines.

Then, renewed with a sense of wonder, it was off to the airport for an overnight flight to the other ends of the earth where Christmas in the chill north awaited us.

Before hiking, is simply arriving; and, Torres del Paine National Park is remote by any definition. We were grateful for a steady hand at the wheel for exceptionally long twisting turning journeys on minimally maintained gravel roads pocked with quite impressive potholes. Here, Jorge (also very adept at spotting animals) is enjoying maté, a social habit, typically shared by passing it among friends, each successively draining the cup freshly filled with almost boiling water over a caffeine rich herbal mix. Not getting any takers among the clients, Jorge would share with our Argentine principal guide Georgina and our local guide Nicholas.

Believe it or not, the wonderful blues you’re seeing in the lakes are pretty true, except for in the photo, below, of Nicholas.

Nicholas explaining the fate of a lake with no outlet. Just like the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea, the water has become very saline with a high mineral content, leaving crystalline deposits around its shore.

Mummified milodon skin in Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. When first discovered, people assumed it was from a still living animal, rather than one that had been extinct for 10,000 years.

The presence of humans here in southern South America has been documented to about 12,000 years ago. The animals in gray, above, are still around. The largest extinct one is the milodon. The model looming over Amanda is somewhat exaggerated in size and apparently wouldn’t have been able to rear up like that to intimidate us puny hominids.

We’re admittedly suckers for this sort of thing. Both of us in our work lives wouldn’t hesitate to take up the offer of a plant tour, being fascinated with how things work. In the past, we’ve taken advantage of visits to the bridge that turned out to be perfunctory walk throughs, but this was an engaging and informative discussion with the crew (exceeding expectations, as they say).

We did appreciate the news about all the watertight doors to maintain buoyancy during any incident on this Chilean built vessel and understood from experience why we were issued hardhats on entry into the engine room down below.

Without land based accommodations, except when nearby Ushuaia, starting any hike meant first boarding a Zodiac.

It is an impressive operation, without which we’d have been restricted to simply looking at amazing scenery from aboard the ship. The Zodiacs transformed the entire experience.

Meanwhile, back in Tiera del Fuego, there was an abundance of this fungus known by the European settlers as Indian Bread because the groups of native peoples who spent their lives in canoes kept masses of the fungus with them not only as food, but because it is a great source of water. We popped some and found they’re not bad. The canoe dwellers also kept a fire going in their canoes and, like their forest dwelling neighbors, almost always went naked, smearing themselves with fat for some bit of protection from the elements (the climate being more temperate than we supposed). As with the experience of native people almost everywhere, efforts to exterminate them were largely successful.

The vegetation was lush even in what seemed like the most inhospitable locations, what with the thin soil and ferocious winds, even on a gravel plain aside a glacial stream. Venturing into the forest was to be struck by the overwhelming richness of it all. There were numerous species of orchid and, most familiar to us, plentiful lichen thriving only in this abundance of clean fresh air. The one non-native plant shown here is the red sorrel, introduced for who knows what reason, as there’s nothing chooses to eat it, so if it must have a purpose, it’s to add its own touch of beauty.

The wallowing trudge up the 200 steps from the Zodiac landing and back down again had been well worth it as we looked forward to many more Zodiac excursions.

There are three ways to cross by sea between Atlantic and Pacific at the bottom of the world: the Drake Passage (that great open stretch of ocean to Antartica), the Strait of Magellan (the convoluted waterway defining Tiera del Fuego, the land of islands to its south), and the Beagle Channel almost to Cape Horn. That is where we find Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, on the northern shore of the Beagle Channel, the jumping off point for ships destined for Antartica or, as are we, a rounding of Cape Horn and an onward journey through islands and up glacier-headed fjords on our way to Punta Arenas, Chile.

While enjoying long December days in a city closer to the South Pole than to Buenos Aires (a 3 1/2 hour flight away), we also became aware that it is actually a much more temperate climate here than we had expected and closer to that at home than the climate in, for instance, Alaska. Very maritime and a less extreme latitude than up north. We were also incredibly fortunate in being spared the usual excessive rain and cloudiness for which the region is infamous.

Beyond spectacular nature, the only tourist attraction in town is an old and rather notorious prison (why else do utterly remote regions exist?) that supplied forced labor for mining, enabled by the world’s southernmost railway. We did find a good café for coffee and baked goods and lots of shops for outdoor gear and end of the earth mementos.

With a quiet walk in an Argentine National Park, we began our exploration of how nature feels in Patagonia and in Tiera del Fuego before boarding the Chilean vessel that would take us further and further into what remains wilderness, barely touched by man. Fortunately, the two nations reached an amicable resolution to national borders that enabled our smooth journey through this region.

How difficult it is to capture the essence of a city in a short visit, especially a place like Buenos Aires, a city bursting with vitality and a kind of hubris, yet smothered in layers of sophistication, corruption and sorrow. It is a beautiful city and relatively easy to navigate, with quite distinct and vibrant neighborhoods where one can feel safe, if cautiously so.

The Teatro Colón (Columbus Theater) is, for example, one of the world’s great opera houses (ranked by experts as #1 in the world for acoustics for opera), with the current structure opening in 1908. It was built in that 50 year period (1880-1930) when Buenos Aires and Argentina were on top of the world, with a prosperity attracting huge influxes of immigrants, surpassing even the United States. We were fortunate when visiting the theater to be able to slip in to overhear some auditions for principal roles in an upcoming production.

Best known as the home Cathedral of Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, the Catedral Metropolitana (1827) is also the resting place of the great liberator General José de San Martín guarded by three enormous statues representing Argentina, Chile and Peru, reburied here in 1880 from his home in Paris (being a bit of an absentee liberator), along with two other generals and Argentina’s Unknown Soldier. Elsewhere in the Cathedral is a statue of the Virgin of Luján with a memorial to the victims of both the holocaust and the bombings of Jewish sites in the 1990’s. In addition to very large Italian and German immigrant populations, Buenos Aires has always had a very large Jewish community.

Occupying one entire end of the Plaza de Mayo, the city’s most important square, the Casa Rosada (“Pink House”) is the seat of Argentina’s government and the official office of the President. Famously, in the 1940’s and 1950’s it’s from this balcony that Juan and Evita Perón addressed the nation.

La Recoleta, the city’s premier cemetery (on a par with its famous counterparts in New Orleans and Paris) is the eternal home of many illustrious characters, many who died too young, but none still inspire a respectful queue of admirers like the immortal Evita Perón. And, yes, the country is still divided almost equally between Perónists and rightists, with a recently elected libertarian economist President Milei making strides in stifling absurd levels of inflation, albeit with draconian measures.

And then there are the neighborhoods, like the colorful La Boca,

enjoying ice cream in a galleria or the alfajores bought in the shop just above,

as well as walking the public spaces,

and wondering why Argentinians are so obsessed with fútbal (how many times were we reminded of the triumph of their World Cup win?), even more than with the tango born along the docks of this proud city, as it struggles to overcome the trauma of the brutal dictatorship with the thousands of “disappeared” whose mothers were a constant presence at the Plaza de Mayo and those years upon years of devastating inflation. It’s easy to feel the allure of Buenos Aires.