THE MOTHER OF ALL WINDS LIVES IN PATAGONIA
Till late in my childhood I seriously doubted that Patagonia existed. I thought that just like Busmantsi it was nothing more than a melodious language figure used by adults to express derisive irritation at someone’s fantastic and imbecile longing for unattainable undertakings. When I learned in school that Patagonia really existed, it easily turned for me into a symbol of geographical unattainability—which it actually was for the whole post-war generation restricted in their travels abroad.
Actually—its euphonious name aside—Patagonia has always been an object of romantic yearning and adventurous nostalgia for travellers of various epochs. With its physical remoteness from Europe, Asia and North America, with its severe environment and exciting horizons, this land deserves its semi-mystical status which makes it even much more attractive. But what could be so attractive in the fearful weather-beaten solitude of the southernmost inhabited piece of land on the globe? Less than two million people live here scattered on almost one and a half million square kilometers—the combined territory of Argentinean and Chilean Patagonia—which means just over one person per square kilometer… The statistics shows that the Horn of South America is among the most sparsely populated regions on earth. There is nothing here to attract settlers to the desert steppe surrounded to the west by a dense cobweb of impassable fiords which, choked by glaciers, descend to the Pacific from unique mountains with granite vertical walls that congeal the blood. Here are Torres del Paine, Cerro Torre, Fitz Roy and a whole gallery of gigantic rocky formations of the Patagonian Andes. The living conditions to the east are also very desolate: the thorny steppe grass becomes even pricklier; the water sources get sparse; the wind gets stronger and dries everything to the sharpness of a gnawed fish skeleton; and the desert is replaced by the scorched shores of the cold South Atlantic Ocean, being inhospitable for ships. Although Patagonia repels settlers, it turns with all this to an easy temptation for all people who don’t like staying at home.
The European discoverer of this area is, of course, Fernando Magellan who gave the present-day name to Patagonia. The Spanish seafarer thought the local people had far too big feet, so he called them “big feet” or “patagon” in his mother tongue. The first contemporary traveller in Patagonia, and its open admirer, was Charles Darwin. During his round-the-world voyage of many years with the ship Beagle, the author of On the Origin of Species visited not just one or two places, but he writes: “In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all as wretched and useless. Why then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory?“ He couldn’t answer for sure but he thought it was due to its open horizon and the wild open spaces provoking the imagination. Prophetical is also his observation that the Indian tribes will be killed to the last person “over the next fifty years”. After the so-called “Conquest of the desert” by the Argentinean general Roca in 1879 and the sheep-breeding boom in the area several decades earlier, the indigenous population of Patagonia was almost entirely exterminated. Today, their descendants can be counted on the fingers of your hand and are completely assimilated by the immigrants who started coming to the south at the end the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. As it turned out, Bulgaria had also quite a lot of representatives in this migration. We met Patagonians of Bulgarian origin in the north Patagonian cities of Sarmiento and Comodoro Rivadavia, where we arrived at the end of our travels along the dusty and always stormy roads of Patagonia under the wing of the mother of all winds.
The travels began at the southernmost point of Santa Cruz province where the Strait of Magellan separates the island of Tierra del Fuego from the mainland. We set out to the west towards the foot of the mountains and the unique and disgusting Patagonian climate showed its hospitality right away. If Patagonia had a national coat of arms, it would have been a tridimensional representation of the wind.
Because of their comparatively low altitude (about 3000 meters), the Patagonian Andes can’t stop the almost permanent Pacific storms hitting from the west. The mountains only take away the moisture from the storms, turning it into heavy precipitation, but they let through the strong winds that—already completely dehydrated—unceasingly lash the lifeless steppe to the east, parched by the dry wind.
Of course, the local Indians have a different explanation for this meteorological anomaly. According to the legend, the Spanish conquistadors captured a young chieftain who refused to reveal the location of the tribe’s gold-diggings, and that’s why he was sentenced to death. Before he passed away he invoked his god for help and the god immediately sent the wind, his messenger to collect him. However, the wind couldn’t find the dying chieftain and since then it keeps ceaselessly looking for him in every corner of Patagonia.
There shouldn’t be any doubt that the wind is all-penetrating and merciless in its desperate “search”. The windows of the Patagonian houses never open; they are tightly sealed against the incursions of the heavenly messenger. I have had the opportunity to visit also other windy places—from the Atacama desert to the Tibetan plateau—but I have never experienced such a grasping, unabated wind which devastates the human psyche.
The national parks Torres del Paine and Los Glaciares are the magnet of the Patagonian Andes. Well-run, they attract a lot of tourists, most of whom are so intimidated by the ill fame of the Patagonian climate that they only cast a glance at these natural wonders and get back on the plane. We, however, wanted to feel Patagonia’s elements with all our senses. A suitable place to do so proved to be Lago Argentino—a lake shaped like a scorpion whose pincers and head stick to the steep slopes of the mountains by means of a multitude of fiords, while its elongated body stretches dozens of kilometers southwards in the yellow steppe, breaking the Patagonian monotony with its desert-blue waters.
New Year was drawing near and we had pitched a camp by the southern arm of the lake in the immediate vicinity of a mighty swelling glacier. (Just for information, the local glaciers are the only glaciers outside the Antarctic whose size increases and not the opposite—as the global tendency is with a view to global warming.) The wind was now accompanied by rain—a drizzling lasting rain—and to stay outside became too masochistic. Yet, after six to seven hours in the sleeping bags Patagonia allowed us to leave the tent and feel some of its charm. In the distance, in the twilight of the summer night, the sinister jagged outlines of the glacier were shining with neon radiance. Different sized fragments of ice rattled and broke away from the front part of the glacier before crashing down into the silvery waters of the lake. The insatiable western wind took up the rumbling of the cannonade and forwarded it to the black shores of the fiord, trying at the same time to penetrate into each forgotten slit of our clothes. High above us the Southern Cross was peeping through the running clouds.
Several days later we continued our way to the north along the backbone of the Patagonian Andes, and by the time we reached the region of Fitz Roy the weather was puzzlingly good. Even the wind had grown less intense and we weren’t paying any attention to it anymore. The most difficult rocky alpine climbing destinations in the world were arranged here as if at an exhibition. Needless to say that what doubles their extraordinary difficulty is undoubtedly the Patagonian climate.
In Chalten, an impersonal small town at the foot of the mountain, we were told that such sunny days are a mistake of nature in these places, so we bolted straight away along the trekking route leading to the peaks. Our enthusiasm only lasted two days and was replaced by despair because of the low-pressure system that set in lowering the snow line to 700 meters. And it was the height of summer!
In a bad mood and chased by the wind (luckily blowing at our backs during the descent) we went from a snowstorm into a dust storm. We are already a little bit nervous, yet before us lies the most difficult part of the journey: 800 kilometers on the notorious Ruta Cuarenta (National Route 40), which is a an obligatory part of extreme adventure events like the Patagonia Rally, Eco Challenge, Raid Gauloises etc. No matter how you look at it, this is 800 kilometers of loneliness on a rutty dirt road that winds beyond a fathomless horizon. It passes by two petrol service stations resembling the ones from the rerun films, by some ramshackle pubs crowded with gauchos who have tied their horses out front, as well as by godforsaken “estancias” (sheep-breeding farms) having overly hope-inspiring names for these grim surroundings, like Bella Vista, Harmonia and Confianza (respectively Good Views, Harmony and Confidence). Otherwise the absolute desolation outside is occasionally disturbed by ñandús (a South American ostrich variety) dashing hastily across, by herds of guanaco (the wild archetype of the Peruvian llama) anxiously looking round, or by a tree absurdly sticking up, pressed to the earth and curved by the constant pressure of the western wind.
However rich in impressions the journey on Ruta Cuarenta may be, we can’t help sighing with relief when we finally reach the asphalt-paved part of Patagonia—the Atlantic coast and the largest city of Chubut province, Comodoro Rivadavia. From the sheep paradise we cross into the kingdom of petrol. The region is the main source of black gold for Argentina. As in most lands rich in petrol, here also nature has artistically played about with the limestone ground. We listen to the Patagonian wind symphony for several more days while we travel over the moon landscape of clear-cut valleys dotted with petrified trees—remains of remote geological epochs. We feel like in a prehistoric saw-mill suddenly deserted by its workers– but not by its eternal/everlasting master, the wind. In the end we go looking for a shelter on the red-orange shores of the Atlantic but there is no repose there either. We obviously have no other choice than to gladly say good-bye to the Mother of All Winds and set off for the more hospitable urban surroundings of Buenos Aires. As strange as it might sound, my mixed feelings bred by my contact with Patagonia quickly polarized and even before we got on the plane to Bulgaria I was sure that I wouldn’t be avers to another Patagonian adventure.
August 21st, 2013 at 04:15 PM
Страхотен разказ! Сякаш и аз бях там!
August 5th, 2017 at 08:21 PM
Благодаря за пътеписа. Патагония ми е любимото място в Аржентина. Тя “спаси” и оправда присъствието ми в тази страна, останалото основно Буенос Айрес бе едно огромно разочарование, най-голямото за мен досега.