The Land of Last Hope

Like all unplanned ventures, our visit to the southern tip of Chile had the added flavor of a jump into the unknown. We had intended to visit the Argentinian side of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia alone, but the intricacies of the tourist agency business had included Punta Arenas at the last minute as a sine qua non part of the whole tour.

After a few days in Buenos Aires renewing old ties — my wife and I are former Argentines — early one March morning we set out southward on a transport plane. Soon the pampas unrolled below us, an endless patchwork of cultivated fields fat with greens and golds under the autumn sun. Then the land hardened; brownish hills knifed by deep canyons set the tone for the next four or five hours. It was Patagonia, its windy vastnesses an unhospitable cover for a substratum rich in oil, coal, and other minerals. At times the airplane in its course down the continent flew over the Atlantic, and we saw the coastline as a gray unbroken cliff etched against the dark earth beyond, bringing the gulfs, capes, and peninsulas into sharp relief.

After Río Gallegos we turned southwest, where the hills flattened and meandering rivers left behind patches of green along the shallow valleys. Here and there the redroofed buildings of an estancia added color to the dark-brown soil. Suddenly a great body of water appeared through holes in the clouds. “We are about to cross Magellan Strait,” crackled the pilot’s voice over the loudspeakers. One November morning 447 years before, Fernando Magalhães sighted the passage for the first time, calling it “All Saints.” As he entered the strait he noticed along the southern shore a number of bonfires, and thus named that region Tierra del Fuego — “Land of Fire.” It appeared to us as an indistinct line over the horizon.

Minutes later we landed at the Punta Arenas airport and were met by a huge, jovial young man who introduced himself as Henton Rocamora; he would be our guide and invaluable companion for the next ten days. Expertly he disposed of the customs formalities, and we were soon on our way toward Chile’s southernmost town. Considering its remoteness, we were all the more surprised to discover that Punta Arenas is a pleasant, busy city of 70,000, with well-paved streets, handsome banks, theaters, movie houses, social centers, an active ski club, and a first-class hotel, the Gabo de Hornos. On the main square, dark and welcoming with shade trees, there is a bronze statue of Magellan high on a pedestal flanked by two reclining Indians. We noticed some people touching the foot of one of the Indians, and on inquiry learned that according to an old belief whoever touches the foot will sooner or later return to Punta Arenas.

The population includes large Yugoslav, German, and English colonies, the reason one finds so many Slavic and blond, blue-eyed people among the olive-skinned Chileans with their coal-black hair and, often, the broad features of local Indians.

Two days later in Henton’s comfortable station wagon we began the long trip north toward the land of Última Esperanza, or Last Hope, one of the three departments of Magellan Province. Oddly enough, in that region of frequent rains and fog the sky was a clear blue, the air as crisp as a spring morning’s awakening. At first the gravel road took us through an area of wide, treeless valleys dotted with sheep grazing the short grass called coirón. Now and then a cluster of poplars added their stiff note; and among the trees we could see the white buildings of an estancia, presided over by the administrator’s residence. Nearby was the long shed used for shearing sheep.

A harsh wind began to blow from the northwest, where white-crowned mountains played sentinel over the horizon. Peons on horseback trotted stiffly alongside the road. Their summer work over, they were now checking the wire fences for possible breaks. When in two months winter snows cover the pastures, they will be busy shaving the sheep around the eyes to prevent their being blinded and unable to find food; or they will roam the fields in search of buried sheep. These animals are easy to locate because instinct moves them during snowstorms to seek the protection of the calafate, a fruithearing shrub common to all Patagonia. If snow covers the calafate, the animals’ breathing will form a chimney. As a last resource, snowbound sheep will eat their own wool until rescued.

After lunch in the Hotel Ruben the scenery changed under threatening clouds; occasional squalls turned into wet snow. We crossed rushing streams, drove by small lakes swarming with black-necked swans (and, according to Henton, the home of some of the world’s biggest salmon). The mountain slopes were now thick with birches, oaks, larches, and coihues, Patagonian trees with round parasitic growths which often develop shapes closer to man’s handiwork than to nature’s ingenuity.

We reached the bay of Última Esperanza at Puerto Natales, a town of six thousand people mostly of Indian descent — gentle people, hardworking, and happily improvident, employed mainly in sheep shearing, meat packing, and coal mining. At the western end of the bay looms Balmaceda Mountain, the southernmost bulwark of the Patagonian Andes, which at this latitude are broken up by a vast system of inlets, fjords, canals, and bays several hundred miles long.

Late that afternoon we arrived at estancia Cerro Castillo, a number of white buildings neatly lined up along a spacious street; on the front of each building a sign identified its occupant: “Carpenter,” “Accountant,” “Teacher,” “Mechanic,” “Electrician,” and so forth. One felt that in such a well-ordered community everything must function with chronometric precision; and indeed, as we wandered about the street and stopped to chat with some residents, it became abundantly clear that nothing unsettling ever happened in that contented village. Half a mile beyond, the administrator’s building sat in the center of a clump of poplar trees. It is a splendid structure which bears witness to the expensive tastes of its former occupants — former, because not long ago the owners of a number of estancias in the area, appalled by the high cost of their administrators’ personal budgets, which included the wages of a butler, valets, maids, cooks, gardeners, and a liveried chauffeur, summarily fired the whole lot and turned the houses into hostelries. This is why the land of Last Hope now offers to the traveler several inns; they combine a typically British atmosphere—all administrators were fastidiously British — with modern comfort. The Hosteria Pionero del Cerro Castillo is under the care of a young Austrian couple with a keen sense for simple hospitality; somewhat neglected since the dismissal of two full-time gardeners, the garden is a tumult of lupins, calendulas, poppies, columbines, and oversize white daisies blooming pell-mell among enormous bushes of musk roses.

Dinner that night consisted of noodle soup, Swiss chard omelet, lamb meat with rice — a specialty of the region — and fresh fruit with whipped cream. Later we relaxed in the living room warmed by a generous fire and an abundance of upholstered armchairs in the finest English tradition. In one corner three young agricultural experts were discussing experimental farming; they had tried several hundred types of grass and were comparing their respective properties and advantages. Eagerly they told us that thanks to the new resistant seeds large areas would soon be turned into pastureland. Sturdier grasses meant healthier sheep, thicker wool, expanded opportunities for all. Their eyes were aglow with honest enthusiasm. Then they talked about the fabulous fishing in the lakes and rivers around the Paine massif, where they would spend the next day with line and rod. Henton Rocamora had organized an excursion to the same area, picnic lunches and all, for our own party of seven.

The next morning was radiant with early sun, dew, and the clamoring of birds; the hills made long shadows on the awakening valley. As the car sped northward, a panorama of high mountains dominated by the Paine massif unrolled before us. Almost alone, the Paine advances through the eastern spurs of the Andes like a gigantic fortress crenellated with towers and pinnacles. At our passage flocks of great bustards known as caiquenes took clumsily to flight. We turned on a westerly course along Lake Sarmiento, where black-necked swans kept a disdainful distance and patos a vapor (steam ducks), which are unable to fly, sped over the surface of the water propelled by rudimentary wings with such violence as to make them resemble the paddles of a side-wheeled steamer.

The road narrowed to a winding roller-coaster path cut here and there by streams. The wind blew with savage force over a stark landscape of ravines and rocky hills. Not far beyond, the snows and towers of the Paine massif played hide-andseek amid a turbulence of murky clouds. A lone condor flew aloft, its motionless wings spread as if crucified. Suddenly Henton said, “Look! Guanacos!” Two hundred yards to our right a number of those llamalike animals were nibbling at the grass, their tawny-colored bodies silhouetted against the mountain.

By then we had come so close to the Paine massif as to make out in detail its configuration. To the northwest hovers the tallest peak, the Paine Grande, a huge tower 10,000 feet high encrusted with ice that glitters in the infrequent sunlight with different shades of aquamarine. Its base is covered by a mantle of snow which ends abruptly at a sheer wall of ice several hundred feet high. To the east a deep valley links the Paine Mountain with two gigantic pyramids rising almost vertically from the shores of Lake Nordenskjöld, like two monstrous shafts; they are the horns of the Paine. The massif ends in the Almirante Nieto Mountain, famed for its three granite towers, and challenging to mountain climbers.

As we stood on a hill with our backs to the buffeting wind, the great mountain was revealed in all its magnificence. Thick clouds swirled around the upper reaches and rolled down the icebound inclines like gray unfurling waves. A shaft of sunlight briefly burned the three towers into incandescent crimsons. Henton shouted against the roaring wind that seldom had the Paine looked so awe-inspiring. We descended toward the Salto Grande del Paine, a churning mass of foamy water that plunges down a precipitous rockbed to form Lake Pehoe. It is in character with the wild mountain and the stern, windtormented landscape.

Gasping and numb with cold, we soon repaired to the station wagon, which took us to Estación Pudeto to have lunch. Estación Pudeto turned out to be a small stone house standing by a narrow bridge half a mile below the Salto Grande del Paine. When Henton rapped at the door it was opened by a dark-eyed young man in an old sport shirt and baggy pants. He let us in while shyly apologizing for his unshaven face.

The room was furnished with a wood-burning stove, an open cupboard, and a rustic table flanked by two benches; a portable radio played some popular Chilean tune. As keeper of Lake Grey National Park, Sergio Gallardo prevents stray cattle and sheep from wandering into his territory, watches for forest fires, and in general is responsible for maintaining order inside the park. He lives alone the year round, dozens of miles away from the nearest habitation, connected with the outside world only through his radio and occasional visitors like ourselves. In all seasons and weathers he spends most of the time on horseback (the brown mare we had seen grazing nearby is his only companion), going over his realm, always on the alert. Did solitude weigh heavily on him? He shrugged his shoulders. Well, sometimes. It had been hard at first, but now he had become used to it. He had a faint smile. He couldn’t complain after all. There were the mountains and the lakes, and besides, there was his yearly vacation in Puerto Natales, where girls abounded. Yes, everything considered, his was a good life.

Henton had planned an outdoor picnic, but the wind was now blowing with hurricane force, so we decided to eat inside a shack near the keeper’s house. It was a flimsy construction erected a few years ago by the crew that had built the bridge. We could see on the walls traces of a fancy wallpaper used partly as protection against the cold but mainly to put some cheer into the dismal rooms. A few boards became our table, and Sergio Gallardo let us have his benches for seats. As Henton emptied the big box that carried our food his face showed surprise, then bewilderment, then outrage. He swore under his breath. “The fools!” he snarled. “They changed boxes with the other party!” Anxiously we gathered around him: sure enough, there was food for three only. “At least we can have hot soup,” said Henton as he pulled out a big thermos bottle. It held hot water. He produced another thermos bottle. “This one must contain coffee,” he said hopefully. More hot water, intended no doubt to be used for mate, the traditional South American drink sipped from a gourd by means of a sieve-bottomed silver tube. He scratched his head in dismay, then broke into a bitter laugh. “I can see the faces of the other fellows when they discover the mix-up,” he commented sourly. However, by apportioning the cold breaded veal, the ham, the lettuce and tomatoes, and the fruit, we found that no one would really starve, not even Eliberto Togni, a vast man with a walrus mustache who had gallantly pretended a lack of appetite. We began to laugh at our predicament and at Henton’s discomfiture. With the help of several bottles of wine we all ended up in good spirits.

Early the following morning, after a copious dinner — courtesy of a chagrined management - and a restful night at the Hostería Pionero del Cerro Castillo, we returned to Puerto Natales, where another excursion organized by the indefatigable Henton awaited us. Under gray skies and a drizzling rain we boarded the 27 de Mayo, a fishing trawler converted into a pleasure boat for the occasion. Tall, densely forested mountains shrouded in mist loomed ghostlike as we chugged along the Bay of Última Esperanza, actually a fjord linked to the Pacific Ocean by a complex network of canals, saltwater lakes, and other fjords. Sea lions on ledges along the rocky shore mournfully shook their heads at us. By noon we arrived at the end of the bay and landed under a downpour to visit the Serrano glacier, its higher reaches invisible in the fog. A path that wound its way through thick foliage led to a steep embankment. Once at the top the head of the glacier suddenly appeared before us, an eerie expanse of jagged ridges, dark caverns, and wrinkled crags and pinnacles that glimmered with icy blues.

On the return voyage the sun broke through the clouds as we stopped briefly before Balmaceda glacier, the largest of them all. Sweeping down the mountain like a petrified river, it had a massive grandeur that caught our breath. When we approached Puerto Natales in late afternoon a high wind chased the last clouds away. Far to the northwest a becalmed Paine was settling for the night in undiminished majesty. Peace descended upon the elemental, fiercely beautiful world of Ultima Esperanza.

Two days later we bid farewell to Punta Arenas, the touch of our fingers still warm on the Indian’s foot.