BACKPACKING PATAGONIA
Backpacking by R L Stevenson!
‘For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly …’
I am a self confessed nomad, never more alive than when travelling, my kicks come from learning the skills needed to get around in a new country in a foreign language. Stuff happens, when travelling without a fixed itinerary, following your nose, taking every opportunity to divert. Chance discoveries are almost always fun, the bits you remember best.
Joan is not quite the same her initial aim is to visit the places she has read about and almost always they include the popular tourist destinations of the particular country, but she often plans to coincide with local festivals, to visit national parks, indeed anything novel that takes her fancy in a backpacker’s guidebook.
In this talk I hope to blend the flavour of our ad-hoc travel whilst giving a picture of the wonder of the ‘el fin del mundo’.
Initial Appeal
When we set out just over a year ago we had intended to travel down the south western coast of South America. ‘Exploring-Chile’ I entitled my dairy kept in the form of a computer blog. Ever since hitch-hiking deep into the Artic Circle, in my second year at university, this southern extremity had attracted me. Cape Horn represented the ultimate in western isles – beyond Scotland, Norway, Alaska and New Zealand. Little did I realise that the map did not convey the real story of hundreds of miles of uninhabited land, not desert but very much tree green and sea blue – even the ice was blue. Neither had it sunk in that in the absence of people there would be no roads for this was still virgin wilderness. In direct contrast to the vast western deserts of China which have been tamed by civil engineers with motorways. If you wanted to travel independently to the deep-south of Chile there is only one option, a ferry boat, and the bigger of the two available had been put out of action in the festive period between Christmas and New Year
The Reality, Patagonia
In this talk I will be concerned not only with Patagonia but also about our style of travel. It’s backpacking because I still carry my belongings in a rucksack, although with two artificial knees Joan now trails a small wheely-bag instead, and because we make our way by local public scheduled transport, sometimes train or air, but mainly by bus with a few improvised sections, and because we never book accommodation ahead relying on a traveller’s guide book usually the Lonely Planet, nor do we even think more than a few days ahead.
The first thing to realise is about modern backpackers is that they walk with their rucksacks only when there is no realistic alternative, that is when there is no other form of transport available. Things aren’t what they seem. It’s a far cry from the backpacking we used to indulge in years ago trekking the long distance footpaths in France en famille with our tiny lightweight tents, cooking gear, food and water on our backs.
Neither can we tell you much about the gregarious youngsters on their gap years for our paths seldom cross, though we did study their methods closely during our novice stage at 55+ in Thailand. In general they get their kicks from meeting up with other travellers from other developed parts of the globe, whereas we always hope to make contact with the locals. They are budgeting for accommodation on a shoestring and bargain very hard, but these days we generally go for hotels, and ask politely for and usually get discounts. We do however meet a sprinkling of people taking mid-life gap years, and with increasing frequency people of our own age group, with similar attitudes to our own.
The biggest contrast is with the organised tour groups, which we see at the key tourist spots. Tours are sold by packing as much as possible into each day so as to make the trip seem as attractive as possible. We admire those displays of stamina but we wouldn’t swap the luxury of being able to rest when we want to. On this trip as you will see later we had to take 6 days out for recovery from health problems – and missed very little as a result. What a tour squeezes into two weeks we will cover and much more but in two months and at lower cost. Of course it helps to be retired and have a good pension! The only option for the younger set of permanent travellers is to dropout, but we’re content to know we have paid our passage.
We found a way to visit all the major ice fields and that set the mind racing. Glaciers in Chile like San Rafael which can only be reached by several hours on a boat meandering through the mists of the Western Isles, because unlike the others this one walks right into the sea. Torres del Paine, the most picturesque mountain region of South America – but for trekkers not sailors, famous for its limestone pinnacles and glaciers galore. We hadn’t intended to visit El Chalten, the Argentinian rival to Torres del Paine with the chief attraction Mount Fitzroy (so named after the captain of Darwin’s boat who spied it as they sought the passage through to the Pacific. Then just a little to the south El Calafate with glaciers galore liked the famed Moreno (which you may have seen in the photo exhibition outside the Industrial Museum), and by far the best (and cheapest) day long boat trip by the large catamaran of Fernando Gonzales to the largest of the southern ice-field named Upsala after the Swedish university which, like Mr Moreno, helped convince the world that they belonged to Argentina not Chile.
These faces of these glaciers are all receding as they edge forward and break off spectacularly, as always, but are no longer being replenished sufficiently quickly so that the loss is dramatically obvious in the case of San Rafael, which may disappear as one of the world’s great sights in a decade. No doubt it will be classed as another sign of global warming, but one can’t help but wonder how an area nearer the equator than Britain and no higher higher (the treks would not even qualify as Munroe’s, became so cold in the first place. All to do with the contrast of the cold Humbolt, and our warm Gulf Stream, both of which run up our western coasts and drastically alter the local climate. Since this ice, like that of the continent of Antartica is land based this melt water will cause an increase in sea level. The amazingly deep blue of some ice is testament to the method of formation, we were told this ice was formed at high altitude altering its crystalline structure, but from observation it is normally prevalent at the lower point of the glaciers where it will have been under huge pressure for thousands of years. At San Rafael they send a rubber Zodiac to collect ice from the vicinity and serve whisky with a thousand year old ice.
HISTORY
Inhabited since 12,000 BC by people who had migrated to the far south of the Americas after crossing the Baring Straits at the end of the last ice age. However there was no written history until the Spanish colonisers led by Pedro de Valdivia arrived in the sixteenth century, followed by 5,000 colonisers. At which time the far south was populated by four nomadic tribes two, Selknam and Tehuelche (6 foot monsters normally considered the Patagones), hunted guanco and rhea on the steppes, and Yamana and Chono who hunted seals. Further north the Mapuche were starting to farm the land.
Christopher Columbus is credited as being the first European to reach America in 1498.
The first European to visit was the Portuguese explorer Magellan seeking a route to the Spice Islands. He was the first to sail through the Magellan Straits which join the oceans north of the island of Terra del Fuego. Although his boat completed the first circumnavigation of the world 1519-23, he was killed in battle in the Philippines. Drake followed with his circumnavigation 1577-80.
The Beagle started its first voyage in 1826 but the second 1832-36 is more famous for the discoveries of Darwin in South America.
The export trade was at its height between 1830 and 1870, the chief goods being silver and copper ore and then nitrates and finally the bulk export of frozen lamb wool and candle fat to Europe. The great days of their copper trade of course coincide with the pre-eminence of Swansea in smelting copper. Those were the days of sail and the route was by way of Cape Horn where the great Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet. Punta Arenas in the south was an important port, a refuge to those ships who had rounded the cape. It was also the port where all the Antarctic expeditions of Scott and Amundsen started. With the arrival of steam ships Punta Arenas was bypassed as the ships stopped further north in Conception for coal from its great under sea mines. Once the Panama Canal opened in 1914 the ships no longer had to round Cape Horn to pass between the great oceans.
POLITICS AND NUEVA CANCION
Simon Bolivar from Caracus descended from Spanish aristocracy 1783-1830 drove the Spanish out of the north of South America finishing with Peru which then included Bolivia. In fact Simon Bolivar had formed a single huge alliance which quickly began to break up.
Che Guevara 1928-67 joined Castro’s revolution in Mexico in 1956 and helped him ‘free’ Cuba. Batista fled on 1 Jan 1959. Che left Cuba in 1965 to pursue new revolutions in the Congo and Bolivia, but was killed by the Bolivian army in 1967.
Years of struggle for a poplar government coincided with the rise in the early sixties of the Nueva Cancion, lead by the singer Violeta Parra, as a way to voice social and political comment. It was like the French Chanson under Georges Brassens, a tradition which remains to this day as songs ‘a la texte’. In fact many of Violeta Parra’s recordings were made in Paris. She died in 1967 and the movement was taken up by Victor Jarra and the guitar became the ‘gun’ and the words the ‘bullets’ of political revolution. The group we were to hear Inti Illimani (Sun of Illimani- a mountain in Bolivia) was formed by students in the same year and is going strong today, having been exiled in Europe for the Pinochet years, still promoting the traditional music of the Andes and Nueva Cancion.
Salvador Allende was elected as the first socialist president in 1970 with a small majority, but lasted a few days over three years. He was forced out by a military uprising under General Pinochet in 1973 with the assistance of the CIA and their $8 million budget and not helped by the world oil crisis and the resulting crash in the copper price. There followed a terrible period of military dictatorship when thousands of political opponents disappeared or were tortured. The popular singer Victor Jarra had his hands smashed to ensure he could never again play guitar and his body was found a few days after the uprising riddled with bullets. Many were exiled, like the world famous poet Neruda of El Postino Fame, and a number of Chileans fled to Swansea in the 70’s. Pinochet was voted out in a referendum in1988 and was replaced by a democratic government in 1989.
There were similar problems in Argentina just a few years later and 30,000 political dissidents disappeared in the ‘dirty war’ between 1976 and 1983. It is said that many were thrown from planes into the Atlantic so that there would be no remains. In fact Operation Condor was a conspiracy of Argentina, Chile and several other South American states. General Galtieri was deposed as a result of the Falklands War in June 1982. More recently there was the financial crisis in Argentina in 2001, when a run on the banks caused the government to prohibit bank withdrawals.
BRUCE CHATWIN's Visit 1974
Backpacking by R L Stevenson!
‘For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly …’
I am a self confessed nomad, never more alive than when travelling, my kicks come from learning the skills needed to get around in a new country in a foreign language. Stuff happens, when travelling without a fixed itinerary, following your nose, taking every opportunity to divert. Chance discoveries are almost always fun, the bits you remember best.
Joan is not quite the same her initial aim is to visit the places she has read about and almost always they include the popular tourist destinations of the particular country, but she often plans to coincide with local festivals, to visit national parks, indeed anything novel that takes her fancy in a backpacker’s guidebook.
In this talk I hope to blend the flavour of our ad-hoc travel whilst giving a picture of the wonder of the ‘el fin del mundo’.
Initial Appeal
When we set out just over a year ago we had intended to travel down the south western coast of South America. ‘Exploring-Chile’ I entitled my dairy kept in the form of a computer blog. Ever since hitch-hiking deep into the Artic Circle, in my second year at university, this southern extremity had attracted me. Cape Horn represented the ultimate in western isles – beyond Scotland, Norway, Alaska and New Zealand. Little did I realise that the map did not convey the real story of hundreds of miles of uninhabited land, not desert but very much tree green and sea blue – even the ice was blue. Neither had it sunk in that in the absence of people there would be no roads for this was still virgin wilderness. In direct contrast to the vast western deserts of China which have been tamed by civil engineers with motorways. If you wanted to travel independently to the deep-south of Chile there is only one option, a ferry boat, and the bigger of the two available had been put out of action in the festive period between Christmas and New Year
The Reality, Patagonia
In this talk I will be concerned not only with Patagonia but also about our style of travel. It’s backpacking because I still carry my belongings in a rucksack, although with two artificial knees Joan now trails a small wheely-bag instead, and because we make our way by local public scheduled transport, sometimes train or air, but mainly by bus with a few improvised sections, and because we never book accommodation ahead relying on a traveller’s guide book usually the Lonely Planet, nor do we even think more than a few days ahead.
The first thing to realise is about modern backpackers is that they walk with their rucksacks only when there is no realistic alternative, that is when there is no other form of transport available. Things aren’t what they seem. It’s a far cry from the backpacking we used to indulge in years ago trekking the long distance footpaths in France en famille with our tiny lightweight tents, cooking gear, food and water on our backs.
Neither can we tell you much about the gregarious youngsters on their gap years for our paths seldom cross, though we did study their methods closely during our novice stage at 55+ in Thailand. In general they get their kicks from meeting up with other travellers from other developed parts of the globe, whereas we always hope to make contact with the locals. They are budgeting for accommodation on a shoestring and bargain very hard, but these days we generally go for hotels, and ask politely for and usually get discounts. We do however meet a sprinkling of people taking mid-life gap years, and with increasing frequency people of our own age group, with similar attitudes to our own.
The biggest contrast is with the organised tour groups, which we see at the key tourist spots. Tours are sold by packing as much as possible into each day so as to make the trip seem as attractive as possible. We admire those displays of stamina but we wouldn’t swap the luxury of being able to rest when we want to. On this trip as you will see later we had to take 6 days out for recovery from health problems – and missed very little as a result. What a tour squeezes into two weeks we will cover and much more but in two months and at lower cost. Of course it helps to be retired and have a good pension! The only option for the younger set of permanent travellers is to dropout, but we’re content to know we have paid our passage.
We found a way to visit all the major ice fields and that set the mind racing. Glaciers in Chile like San Rafael which can only be reached by several hours on a boat meandering through the mists of the Western Isles, because unlike the others this one walks right into the sea. Torres del Paine, the most picturesque mountain region of South America – but for trekkers not sailors, famous for its limestone pinnacles and glaciers galore. We hadn’t intended to visit El Chalten, the Argentinian rival to Torres del Paine with the chief attraction Mount Fitzroy (so named after the captain of Darwin’s boat who spied it as they sought the passage through to the Pacific. Then just a little to the south El Calafate with glaciers galore liked the famed Moreno (which you may have seen in the photo exhibition outside the Industrial Museum), and by far the best (and cheapest) day long boat trip by the large catamaran of Fernando Gonzales to the largest of the southern ice-field named Upsala after the Swedish university which, like Mr Moreno, helped convince the world that they belonged to Argentina not Chile.
These faces of these glaciers are all receding as they edge forward and break off spectacularly, as always, but are no longer being replenished sufficiently quickly so that the loss is dramatically obvious in the case of San Rafael, which may disappear as one of the world’s great sights in a decade. No doubt it will be classed as another sign of global warming, but one can’t help but wonder how an area nearer the equator than Britain and no higher higher (the treks would not even qualify as Munroe’s, became so cold in the first place. All to do with the contrast of the cold Humbolt, and our warm Gulf Stream, both of which run up our western coasts and drastically alter the local climate. Since this ice, like that of the continent of Antartica is land based this melt water will cause an increase in sea level. The amazingly deep blue of some ice is testament to the method of formation, we were told this ice was formed at high altitude altering its crystalline structure, but from observation it is normally prevalent at the lower point of the glaciers where it will have been under huge pressure for thousands of years. At San Rafael they send a rubber Zodiac to collect ice from the vicinity and serve whisky with a thousand year old ice.
HISTORY
Inhabited since 12,000 BC by people who had migrated to the far south of the Americas after crossing the Baring Straits at the end of the last ice age. However there was no written history until the Spanish colonisers led by Pedro de Valdivia arrived in the sixteenth century, followed by 5,000 colonisers. At which time the far south was populated by four nomadic tribes two, Selknam and Tehuelche (6 foot monsters normally considered the Patagones), hunted guanco and rhea on the steppes, and Yamana and Chono who hunted seals. Further north the Mapuche were starting to farm the land.
Christopher Columbus is credited as being the first European to reach America in 1498.
The first European to visit was the Portuguese explorer Magellan seeking a route to the Spice Islands. He was the first to sail through the Magellan Straits which join the oceans north of the island of Terra del Fuego. Although his boat completed the first circumnavigation of the world 1519-23, he was killed in battle in the Philippines. Drake followed with his circumnavigation 1577-80.
The Beagle started its first voyage in 1826 but the second 1832-36 is more famous for the discoveries of Darwin in South America.
The export trade was at its height between 1830 and 1870, the chief goods being silver and copper ore and then nitrates and finally the bulk export of frozen lamb wool and candle fat to Europe. The great days of their copper trade of course coincide with the pre-eminence of Swansea in smelting copper. Those were the days of sail and the route was by way of Cape Horn where the great Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet. Punta Arenas in the south was an important port, a refuge to those ships who had rounded the cape. It was also the port where all the Antarctic expeditions of Scott and Amundsen started. With the arrival of steam ships Punta Arenas was bypassed as the ships stopped further north in Conception for coal from its great under sea mines. Once the Panama Canal opened in 1914 the ships no longer had to round Cape Horn to pass between the great oceans.
POLITICS AND NUEVA CANCION
Simon Bolivar from Caracus descended from Spanish aristocracy 1783-1830 drove the Spanish out of the north of South America finishing with Peru which then included Bolivia. In fact Simon Bolivar had formed a single huge alliance which quickly began to break up.
Che Guevara 1928-67 joined Castro’s revolution in Mexico in 1956 and helped him ‘free’ Cuba. Batista fled on 1 Jan 1959. Che left Cuba in 1965 to pursue new revolutions in the Congo and Bolivia, but was killed by the Bolivian army in 1967.
Years of struggle for a poplar government coincided with the rise in the early sixties of the Nueva Cancion, lead by the singer Violeta Parra, as a way to voice social and political comment. It was like the French Chanson under Georges Brassens, a tradition which remains to this day as songs ‘a la texte’. In fact many of Violeta Parra’s recordings were made in Paris. She died in 1967 and the movement was taken up by Victor Jarra and the guitar became the ‘gun’ and the words the ‘bullets’ of political revolution. The group we were to hear Inti Illimani (Sun of Illimani- a mountain in Bolivia) was formed by students in the same year and is going strong today, having been exiled in Europe for the Pinochet years, still promoting the traditional music of the Andes and Nueva Cancion.
Salvador Allende was elected as the first socialist president in 1970 with a small majority, but lasted a few days over three years. He was forced out by a military uprising under General Pinochet in 1973 with the assistance of the CIA and their $8 million budget and not helped by the world oil crisis and the resulting crash in the copper price. There followed a terrible period of military dictatorship when thousands of political opponents disappeared or were tortured. The popular singer Victor Jarra had his hands smashed to ensure he could never again play guitar and his body was found a few days after the uprising riddled with bullets. Many were exiled, like the world famous poet Neruda of El Postino Fame, and a number of Chileans fled to Swansea in the 70’s. Pinochet was voted out in a referendum in1988 and was replaced by a democratic government in 1989.
There were similar problems in Argentina just a few years later and 30,000 political dissidents disappeared in the ‘dirty war’ between 1976 and 1983. It is said that many were thrown from planes into the Atlantic so that there would be no remains. In fact Operation Condor was a conspiracy of Argentina, Chile and several other South American states. General Galtieri was deposed as a result of the Falklands War in June 1982. More recently there was the financial crisis in Argentina in 2001, when a run on the banks caused the government to prohibit bank withdrawals.
BRUCE CHATWIN's Visit 1974
