On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
way2blue
Patagonia. A friend, a colleague at work, gave a slide show a few years back of a trip he & his wife took in Patagonia. They rode horses accompanied by gauchos from ranchero to ranchero with the stark Torres del Paine massif as a backdrop. Sheepskins on the saddles. Ever since I’ve wanted to visit. I would need to forego horseback travel though as I’d torn my meniscus in 2020 on a long pack-trip ride in the Sierras (previous OTR).
I pinged several people who’d spent time in Patagonia about what to see and how to travel. After a few false starts, I booked a U-shaped trip from the U.S. to Buenos Aires to Ushuaia to Punta Arenas to Torres del Paine to Valparaiso. This first batch of photos is from the core of the trip. A five-day cruise on M/V Ventus Australis through the fjords.
Ushuaia is situated on the southern shore of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, at the base of the Martial Range, where the Andes meet the Beagle Channel. Lots of backpackers on our flight from Buenos Aires. Ushuaia claims to be the southernmost town in the world at latitude 54° 48’S, however Puerto Williams in Chile is situated a few miles further south at 54° 56’S… We embarked the evening of March 8th and traveled overnight to Cape Horn (Cabo de Hornos).
Got up just before dawn on March 9th for a quick coffee then at 0645 climbed aboard a zodiac for Cape Horn (Cabo de Hornos), the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. Cape Horn marks the northern boundary of the Drake Passage—where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. A family with a young child live at the lighthouse and enjoyed chatting with the passengers who spoke better Spanish than me…
Hiked on a boardwalk up to the monument—a diamond shaped sculpture defining a cut-out of an albatross. Everyone wearing their PFDs (personal flotation devices).
Passengers lining up for a zodiac ride back to the ship & breakfast. We were lucky that the weather was relatively calm (albeit windy) as it’s often too rough for passengers to get in the zodiacs and travel to the island.
After returning to the ship, we headed along the Murray Channel to Wulaia Bay (Bahia Wulaia) on the western side of Isla Navarino. (Apparently Darwin stopped here on the H.M.S. Beagle.) This became the pattern over the next 4 days. A morning zodiac trip, breakfast & lunch while the ship travels on, followed by an afternoon excursion. In between we glided along the fjords with mountains on either side. Glorious.
I don’t know why these trees have died…. My *guess* would be a wildfire. A nomadic people, Yahgan, lived on this island for thousands of years before Europeans arrived, leaving middens to mark their seasonal settlements.
Mike Field
This is my dream trip. How recently was this? I am intrigued.
There go two miscreants
Nice pix! I did not see the albatross until after I read your caption; my initial take was that the monument showed two stylized faces in profile, the two oceans “talking” to each other.
Trivia Man
Is buenos Aries itself worth a visit? It has always intrigued me in some vague and mysterious way.
eclare
Looks like an interesting trip!
OzarkHillbilly
I have long wanted to go to Patagonia. At this point in my life it is time to accept the fact that I won’t. It’s ok, I have many other things I can still do that won’t cost near so much.
J.
Beautiful! 😍
pieceofpeace
What a beautiful area this is.
Gin & Tonic
@Trivia Man: I’m not the OP, but I have been to Buenos Aires three times in the last 15 years or so. It is an enormous, fascinating, wonderful, complex city. Well worth a visit, in my opinion.
I don’t think I posted any pictures from the city, but maybe I should. However, if you search back through the “On the Road” posts, I did a series on the Argentinian side of Patagonia some time in the last year, I think.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
I love this and would love to have been able to do a cruise like this when we were in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in Dec 2019!
Fire will kill the Austral beeches (Nothofagus antarctica) like that but it may be North American beavers too. They were introduced as a fur animal and have gone wild in a big way in the area along the Beagle Channel.
Looking forward to your Torres del Paine pics. That is one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited!
Frodo
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m also not the O.P. but I agree about Buenos Aires, of course I’m biased, I live in Greater Buenos Aires :P
StringOnAStick
@Trivia Man: Buenos Aires is a very interesting city; Argentina at one time was one of the top 10 wealthiest countries in the world due to silver and wine exports, but their economy was destroyed by pegging their currency to the US dollar in the 1980’s (Milton Freidman strikes again). The core old city is gorgeous old ornate buildings and there’s lots of history, plus food and lodging is very good and very affordable. It felt a lot like Europe to me. We did a similar “U” between Argentina and Chile a few years ago, and I loved Argentina and the friendly people; I’d love to go back.
Every park has people walking around saying “cambio, cambio”; they are trying to get tourists to sell them dollars as a hedge against the extreme inflation this country can’t seem to get out from under thanks to many things. Given the economic stress they are experiencing, you might want to travel in a group unless you are a pretty seasoned traveler.
Almost Retired
Wonderful photos! Some years ago, we took a self-designed three week trip throughout Argentina with our boys (then 16 and 9). Ushuaia was a highlight – especially since the boys could brag about snowboarding in August. The entire trip was magnificent – Iguazu Falls, a stay on a hacienda near the colonial city of Salta, wine-tasting in Mendoza and – best of all – Buenos Aires. It’s more of a “soak up the atmosphere” destination than a place where you check off famous sites from a list. And affordable! Thanks for bringing back these memories with your photos.
way2blue
@Mike Field:
We left March 1st (this year) and returned on the 25th. At the tail end of tourist high season and the start of their autumn, but good weather nonetheless.
way2blue
@Trivia Man:
We only stayed two nights. Mainly to catch our breath after the long flights from San Francisco to Houston to Buenos Aires. And stayed at a small place in a small town near the airport (only two restaurants, so just my size). The first day touring Buenos Aires we bought tickets for the yellow on/off bus. Which was a good way to get our bearings. Spent most of the time in Bohemian quarter of La Boca which was fun but crowded. For me, two days was enough, but we didn’t visit any museums…
way2blue
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s definitely a long way away! And for us—a ‘now or never’ trip…
way2blue
@Gin & Tonic:
I remember that photo series—which prompted me to get going on this trip… If I go again to Patagonia again, I want to visit the Argentinian side. I’d like to see Monte Fitz Roy after reading ‘A Wild Idea’ [Jonathan Franklin] about Doug Tompkins’ quest to save unique landscapes in Patagonia.
Frodo
@StringOnAStick: You are exaggerating a bit, like any other city there are parts of Buenos Aires where you don’t want to go at night, but for the most part there is no need to go in groups.
way2blue
@Gin & Tonic:
p.s. (I’m not much of a city person.) Our second day in Buenos Aires, we decided to walk from La Boca to the renovated waterfront & ferry terminal (6 miles). Being dumb gringos we ventured into a sketchy part of the city, and were warned by an elderly woman sitting in a chair on the sidewalk—pointing for us to go back. Then by a young woman unloading crates of soft drinks who explained we needed to backtrack & walk on the main road with all the buses. Grateful for their intervention.
way2blue
@Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):
Yes. Beavers are a huge invasive problem, including on this island. To make things worse, their fur isn’t dense enough to be viable for harvesting. N.B., A devastating wildfire in Torres del Paine (late 2011 to early 2012; apparently started by a tourist trying to burn his toilet paper) killed huge swaths of trees and the park may never recover unless perhaps they undertake substantial replanting.
Gin & Tonic
@way2blue: Weird, maybe Frodo can correct me, but from La Boca to Puerto Madero is a short walk, maybe a mile, none of it really sketchy.
Frodo
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t really know La Boca too much, I think there are some sketchy zones around there, but not in the way to Puerto Madero I think.
This may be a case of the argentinian tendency to exaggerate the level of crime in Argentina, Buenos Aires is statistically one of the safest cities in South and Central America, but you are never going to convince a Porteño of that.
way2blue
@Gin & Tonic:
FWIW. Google Maps says ~5 miles from southernmost La Boca to the ferry terminal. So the extra mile is probably wandering La Boca and also making the detour. We had tried to walked entirely along the waterfront, but there was a part blocked by cyclone fence that pushed us into a warehouse part of the city. Trying to walk through this section is when locals advised us to backtrack a bit…