I’ll never forget Matus
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Porvenir, provincial capital on Chilean Tierra del Fuego. 2009
The man walking towards our small Sierra has black hair to his shoulders, black eyes, a black denim jacket with a motif now beyond recognition, hands layered with grease, and jeans that have earned their blackness. He is short and has a limp and is not smiling.
The Sierra stuttered into Porvenir last night. It’s the largest Chilean town on Tierra del Feugo with about 3000 people, and is the provincial capital.
This man is Matus, perhaps a mechanic. When we asked about getting a mechanic to help people said to find him, but no-one could say where. After several vague directions we stopped next to a house and called his name and he arose from under a car.
He looks carefully at the engine, moves his hands over every part, and we wait. On our 800 km journey to the almost bottom of the world our old Sierra is struggling, her engine missing a beat and stalling, her radiator sometimes steaming sometimes not. She - like me - can't endure long or steep hills.
But the lure at the heart of Patagonia - that restless chaos cloaked in infinite monotony - seems to draw her - and us - on. Our worry is she will be vanquished by the task we have set, despite her courage.
Just two days ago in Puerto Natales we gave her the sort of makeover you'd get in a reality TV show: cleaned her spark plugs and points, checked leads and hoses, replaced the water with anti-freeze and gave her new headlamps in place of the fading ones. We even bought her a makeup kit - two screwdrivers, pliers and a wheel brace.
She's a simple girl, no computer, no fancy brakes, just a solid small motor and drive train, all a little bit old.
Our first leg is from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and then down the length of Tierra del Fuego to the city at the end of the world - Ushuaia. We knew about a third of the distance was on gravel roads but what we didn't know is how isolated they are.
And how immense and engaging the vistas are: there are no trees, just clumped grass over gravelly soil, no houses near the road, no fences, few hills and no other traffic.
Occasional groups of loping guanaco, haphazard rhea, bolting hares, slinking foxes, gliding caracaras, and a few listless sheep and that's it. Nothing to draw the eye but the horizon up to hundreds of kms away, the immense wind-ripped sky, and the grey road running to infinity.
Our first rocky road runs roughly parallel with the Argentinian border a few kms north. The map says this will shorten by about 50 kms what could be a trip around sealed roads, and we believe the Sierra is tough enough to take it.
About half way along this 150 km stretch we decide we should try to capture the foolhardy emptiness in my small digital camera, so I drive off road to the top of a small hill in the middle of nowhere, climbing through rocks and clumps of grass.
The wind rocks the car and we play with the cameras, trying to drag into them the fear and longing of this incredible place. We don't succeed. No image can contain the wind and the relentless silence.
When we're ready to leave there's no life in the Sierra - no kick, no battery, no spark. A roll start is possible but there are rocks and the ground is uneven. I start down, the engine kicks on the first attempt and I get her back on the road and away, and we feel a little easier.
An hour later we should be nearing the end of this road and fuel is getting low. At a triple fork we go right, because it’s south and that feels right. The scale of the simple map we have is too great to even show this road, or perhaps it’s been deliberately left out.
After 20 minutes fences appear with red signs on them. When we get closer we can see the signs say, in three languages, Danger Minefield Keep Out.
In the distance there seem to be buildings which we are expecting to be at the major road. But this road enters a small valley and more fenced minefields and, on the hills, concrete lipped bunkers freckled with bullet marks. The buildings in the distance now look like derelict trucks and tanks.
We watch to see what will happen if a herd of guanaco jump the fence into a minefield, and agree we are on the wrong road.
We turn back and the imprecise map suggests we can get petrol about 80 km ahead - after we cross the Estreches de Magallanes.
As we pull into the queue at the ferry next to the traffic that took the sealed road - glossy semi-trailers, shiny jeeps and 4WDs – the engine sputters and dies.
We'll have to roll start to get on the ferry and roll start to get off - a little more difficult to do. If we get off the ferry we'll go to Porvenir, the closest town, instead of taking the sealed road down the coast, and get help.
The bosun calls us on, I give the Sierra my best push and run alongside till she starts then swing into my seat as we negotiate the ramp and roll on board.
At the bar in the cabin overlooking the deck here's an Irish cycling team which left Alaska last June and in three days should reach the other end of the Americas. Amongst the whisky and crude Dublin banter - they are, or were, merchant bankers - they agree to help push us off.
But of course they don't, and the bloke waiting behind us helps me to get the Sierra moving up to the ramp because he wants to get off too, and on the roll down the ramp she kicks first time and we're away again.
Two hours later in fading twilight we're cruising Porvenir's half a dozen streets looking for a place to eat and sleep.
The Kawi Hostal on Pedro Silva- a classic Patagonian tin house that's being renovated to provide more income for the family - has a warm room with three beds and its own bathroom, and it's at the top of a hill so we can get the Sierra to roll start in the morning.
The kitchen smells good and has a wide and warm cast iron range [now gas fired as there's little wood left on the island and gas is cheap]. We negotiate our way into a dinner of baked fresh pejerry and steamed potatoes, bread and instant coffee for an extra $5 each. The long slow drive 300km from Puerto Natales and all that pushing the car makes the warm and comfortable beds very enticing and we’re soon asleep.
Our search for a mechanic first thing next morning soon brings up Matus' name, and now the Sierra lies open before him.
He tests the battery and sparkplugs with his bare hands, searching for an ailment. He adjusts connections and cleans wires and Sierra is purring again. We try her up and down the hill and she doesn't stall.
Matus has not fixed every problem but he's eliminated a big and vexing one. It seems to be the limit of his magic, he doesn't want any payment, so we're away and heading due east along a new rocky road that skirts a vast blue bay named on the map as Bahia Inutil - Useless Bay.
We see no traffic and only three small fishing boats on Bahia Inutil for two hours. But the gates of estancias are stitched along this road every 20 or 30 kms and there are houses and sheds in the foothills that gaze out to the ocean.
There’s a small complication at the Argentinean border as the Sierra is registered in Chile. Eventually it’s tagged on a visa and at last we're on the sealed Argentinian road that runs along the Atlantic coast to Rio Grande, an oil and gas town with endless memorials to the war for the Malvinas and a 3 km long lament for the loss of the Belgrano along the Avenue Heroes de Malvinas.
Over two hours we parade Sierra past three mechanics who variously suggest a snapped conrod, broken piston rings, and a cracked engine head. Any one of these is a serious problem. But the bigger problem is that the Sierra is a Chilean citizen and the mechanics diplomatically say they are all too busy to help.
So we drive on into light rain and deepening twilight. As the sun sets we enter the foothills of the final plunge of the Andes towards the Atlantic and pull into Tolhiun, an idiosyncratic settlement at the eastern end of Lago Fagnano, a 90 km long lake that in a few thousand years will be a fjord bisecting Tierra del Feugo.
We can't eat all the pizza served at the cantina so we pack it for the still 110 km run to Ushuaia in the dark.
Climbing the 980 metre Garibaldi Pass and there's an orange glow in the sky ahead. It's Ushuaia, laid out under mercury lamps around the small bay that runs off the Beagle Channel. We’ve made it to below 54 degrees south latitude. Ushuaia claims the title of the world's southernmost city -“the city at the end of the world” – and the last port for cruise ships heading to Antarctica.
Ushaia, at sea level, the day before the snow fall. 2009
But the next day it's clear that car doesn't like it here, refuses to run smoothly and stalls again. In this town we can't even find a mechanic who will look at her, so we leave her to sulk and do a bit sightseeing on foot then go to a pub to test the local whisky.
Right now we're in a hard place surrounded by a lot of rock - literally and figuratively. We can't leave Argentina without taking the Sierra, but she seems incapable of making the 400 km to the border, let alone 800km to Puerto Natales.
I have a bus ticket from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas in four days to catch a plane home, and Ushuaia is an expensive resort town catering for tourists and cruise ship passengers on their way to Antarctica. We couldn't find a bed at a hostal and even the backpackers is pricey on our budget.
So in the warmth of several whiskys on the second night, and without asking the Sierra, we agree we're going to drive her out the next day, giving ourselves about a 50% chance of success.
Overnight there's quite a heavy fall of snow to within a hundred metres of the town (snow falls at sea level but quickly melts as it’s January - technically summer) and the car struggles in the cold as we climb through fog to the Garibaldi Pass. She's coughing black smoke and barely holding 60kph and, in the face of the consequences of failure, we almost turn back.
But in it's daring and beguilingly benign starkness Patagonia challenges you to grasp that there's no adventure without risk, no life without pain, and no success without courage, so we nurse her up that long mountain into clouds heavy with snow.
And down the northern side of the Andean foothills the Sierra runs better. It's warmer, it's downhill, and it's the way home.
We've set ourselves the tough goal of being back at Porvenir by around 5 pm to catch the 7 pm ferry to Punta Arenas, taking the harder, shorter and more isolated rocky road again.
Six hours later we've recrossed the border and are on to our most risky stretch - the 150 km of gravel road alongside Useless Bay. There's no mobile phone reception, and 3 days ago - no traffic. But we've got a tent and dried food and we could walk to an estancia [our only handicap being the 80kg of clothes and camping gear in the back].
We rattle over these ocean swept stones and talk our way across the kms - philosophy, whisky and rum, buddhism and religion, cars, nuclear physics, music, cosmology, travelling, drugs, photography, economics, black holes, politics, family and history. Of everything and nothing and the hours are absorbed by the flow of conversation.
We grow more confident and respectful of the Sierra, and she is telling us we were fools to doubt her.
In Porvenir just after 5 we get a meal of hamburgesas so large I can eat only half of mine. At 6.45 we roll on to the ferry along with about 60 pedestrians, a small truck and a frightened horse.
We’ve read how rough and violent Magellan, Drake, Cook and all found this strait, but for the past three weeks we've only ever seen it flat, calm and benign - barely a wave rattles the rocky beaches. A game of cards, a sleep, and two hours later the Sierra rolls herself off the ferry and along the coast for 150km into Punta Arenas.
Two days later a smiling mechanic with glasses gives her a thorough medical and says she's a bit weak in one piston and a few joints, and a bit knocked about by our trip, but with proper care she has a long life ahead of her.
We decide to try to sell her anyway and we’re in luck with the town's two universities [ del Mar and del Mecanico] starting term next week so students are flooding the streets, cafes and pubs.
Time for me to leave. I've had one of the best adventures of my life with my son, and very reluctantly and with lots of tears fly away from Patagonia.
What a trip! Thank you for sharing!
Really enjoyed this