Pioneering Punta Arenas

After an early start on the 9th December, and an all day long bus journey that trundled through Argentine Tierra del Fuego, we arrived at the Strait of Magellan, boarded the ferry and crossed over to mainland South America one more. Another few hours and we passed through the Argentine and Chilean border checkpoints, all the time passing the signs warning of land mines – planted by Chile after the commencement of the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Pinochet had them placed all along the long Andean border with Argentina for fear Chile was next, and although work has taken place in the North removing them all, down here in the South, they have been left in place, possibly due to the claim Argentina still half-heartedly makes on the region. This has left tensions between the country, particularly over Chile’s provision of logistics to the UK during the Falkland’s Conflict.

On arrival at the bus stop in Punta Arenas (there is no bus station), we hopped out and walked towards the B&B we had  booked online. We need not have bothered, as there were a few touts waiting for the bus advertising cheap hostels in the center of town.

After walking several blocks, we finally arrived an checked into our new place, a family run place called Hostal Ainil. After resting a few days, we headed on out to see the town, and to try and book in on some tours we had our eyes on.

The first place we happened upon, on Plaza Munoz Gamero, was the Club de la Union. Built in 1895, this historic site was the first brick building to be erected in the town. Commissioned and owned by the Braun family, it took us awhile to figure out who the family was and why they were so important. Cattle-raisers, merchants, mine-owners and trade controllers, there were a few select families in the region (as is the case everywhere in Patagonia), who own everything, and get extremely rich.

We enjoyed the neo-classical style of the building, now a Rotary club, but my favorite decorations were the painted wood panels, the adjoining hotel, with its Shackleton bar, and the Christmas tree they had put up. The Shackleton bar was named after the British explorer who traveled to the Antarctic in an attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. His ship, Endurance, was stuck in ice in the Weddell Sea, and soon sank when the ice moved and destroyed the hull. A heroic journey in the lifeboat, James Caird, bought Shackleton and five other men from Elephant Island to South Georgia Islands, 800 miles away in hurricane force storms. Shackleton and two others traversed the dangerous island on foot, where they were met with Norwegian whalers. Shackleton had to wait three months before the weather conditions allowed him and the Chilean government’s tugboat to affect a rescue of the men stranded at Elephant Island. Watercolor paintings in the Shackleton bar depict this adventure, including the return of the men to Punta Arenas on 3rd September 1916.

Our next stop was the Museo Regional de Magallanes, another household that was owned by the Braun-Menendez family. Built between 1903 and 1908 it is now a monument to how the rich family lived in those times. Using Italian marble, Belgian timber, British furniture and French wallpaper, the house was a showcase of wealth and power for the family who had everything.

The games room, with its strange pocket-less billiards table, the imitation brocade wallpaper, and the interesting staff quarters under the house, made this museum a worthwhile diversion. I particularly liked the silverware polishing machine located in the staff kitchen.

Along with the old antiquities was a collection of old wine and art, and a gallery exhibiting some of Punta Arenas’ modern artists. A historical temporary exhibition rounded it all off nicely, where we learned that during the ice age, glacial land bridges connected Tierra del Fuego with the mainland. The Magellan Strait and the Beagle Channel only opened up in the past 8000 years or so.

The sad story of the Tehuelche cacique, or chief of the region, Cacique Mulato, was told in the museum. About how his land shrank and shrank thanks to the colonists in Punta Arenas, until, finally, he travelled to Santiago to plead with the president, who did nothing. Mulato travelled back to his tribe’s reservation, an unknowing carrier of smallpox. The whole tribe died that year.

Once we had finished in the museum, we decided to head down to the municipal market. With its fresh food and clean displays it did not look like any of the usual third world market places we are used to in South America. It was rather small and unvaried, so we decided to eat in one of the small cafes on the first floor – an excellent choice! Cheap, clean and tasty local food is on offer here, and there were queues for tables, so it is quite popular! We managed to elbow our way in, and I had fish (merluza) and chips, and Francesca had a beef milanesa sandwich. Delicious!

On our way back from lunch we noticed a private dinosaur fossil laboratory. It was actually the Chilean Antarctic Institute, and as it was unmanned, we snuck in and got a few photos.

It was still early so we headed to another museum (sometimes we just get in the mood to see lots of museums!), the Naval and Maritime Museum.

The first rooms were dedicated to the Chilean Navy itself, especially Commander John Williams who claimed the Magallanes region for Chile in 1843 by building Fort Bulnes. A British born sailor, Williams changed his name to Juan Guillermos, and joined the Chilean navy in 1824. He rose in the ranks to a prominent position, and Puerto Williams on Isla Navarino, South of Tierra del Fuego is named after him – the Southernmost permanent human habitation on Earth, and a Chilean naval base.

Subsequent rooms had models, diagrams and information on subjects ranging from the first submarine to traverse Cape Horn to the use of Chilean helicopters in the Antarctic (to rescue the British staff at the research station John Briscoe). An explanation of the Braun and Menendez families success was finally given here, too. They had set up companies which monopolized not just the ranching and farming, but also the shipping lanes and hunting – whales and sea lions. The museum had a video to watch, but there are no English subtitles – but I would recommend the museum if you have an hour to spare.

We left and walked through the pretty plaza in the center and saw the Magellan statue they have. When you look out over the Strait, it is easy to imagine Magellan’s ship, all those centuries ago passing by. You can see the other side, all the way to Tierra del Fuego, so Magellan would most certainly have been in sight – what a sight for the indigenous people who had never met anyone else outside of their tribes before!

The next day, on the 12th December, we headed over to the Salesian Museum. This excellent museum covers a lot of the history of the Patagonian region, including exhibits on the natural world, indigenous people, the colonists, and the religious order of the Salesians of Don Bosco. Founded in the 19th Century by Saint Don Bosco, an Italian who looks a little like Walter White from Breaking Bad, but with hair; the order sent priests to establish missions in Patagonia.

The museum bangs on about how the order and the missions that were built were the last bastions of protection for the indigenous as ranchers and indian hunters killed them and persecuted them, but as hardly any survived it is questionable how much good they actually did anyone. One description of the indigenous’ belief that sheep were just a ‘white guanaco’ for hunting is telling about how conflicts between the natives and the ranchers could arise. Also, a picture from France in the late 19th Century shows a group of native Onas being paraded around, in chains in a circus after being hunted and captured. 4 returned alive, but battered, after the others died of disease, and they died at the Salesian mission on Tierra del Fuego.

The San Rafael mission on Dawson Island saw over 500 indigenous people staying there, but the priest who had bought them in ‘to safety’ reported back that their numbers dwindled down to nothing after disease ravaged through the settlement.

If the museum is honest about the fate of the native population, albeit aggrandizing their own role within that story, they neglect to mention the catalog of child sexual abuse leveled against the order since time immemorial. No surprise really, as the very reason for Don Bosco’s creation of the order was to care for the young children of the industrial revolution – it seems the responsibility towards to their charges has been failed time and again by perverts who seek sanctuary when wearing the cloth.

Some happier exhibits included some petrified whale’s ear drums, and stones found in sea lions stomachs. It seems they use them as ballast to submerge when hunting, unlike birds (and dinosaurs) who use them to help digestion. A blue whale fetus, and the mounted body of a now extinct dog from Tierra del Fuego sat next to the chair they had build for the pope when he visited. Apparently many dignitaries come to Punta Arenas, including the Pope and the Queen of England – it, along with Ushuaia, is the gateway to the South Pole.

A large but tedious exhibit extolling the values of oil drilling was on the uppermost floor. The sponsors of the exhibit, YPF (the Argentine petrol & oil giant) seem to be actively promoting a good image in many of the tourist spots we visit, even as they are digging up and destroying unique ecosystems and historic environments all around South America. Scumbags.

Leaving the museum with our collection of illicitly taken photos, we headed North to the towns famous cemetery. Wind blown and freezing cold, we only saw the Menendez family crypt, but not many other famous crypts from the families or priests we had learnt about, so we left and went further out of town to the Museo del Recuerdo, or Museum of Memory. We quickly saw the mistake we had made coming to the museum – it was all outside, in the cold, and was basically a field of old junk. The ticket guy was at least honest and ashamed enough to just wave us through rather than charge us the ten dollars it was supposed to cost. We walked around the junk for 20 minutes, then went shopping for supplies for an upcoming trek we were to do – things cost less in Punta Arenas than our next destination Puerta Natales.

A ‘free zone’ is located to the North of the town, but do not get your hopes up. This ridiculously priced shopping mall is a total tourist trap for people going on treks, particularly to Torres del Paine National Park. The prices are absurd, and the quality is non-existent. We went to the local mega store that the locals buy from instead. Having bought a few jackets (crap quality), some blankets (cheap), and some gloves, we were pretty much ready to move on.

One more stop in Punta Arenas was the Nao Victoria Museum. This museum is a bus ride out of town, near the water’s edge, and consisted of some full scale exact replicas of the famous ships that had past this way! Shackleton’s lifeboat that bought him to South Georgia Islands ‘James Caird’, Magellan’s ship the ‘Nao Victoria’, which was the first European ship here in 1520, and the schooner Ancud, which John Williams used to claim the land as Chile’s. We arrived and saw all of the ships from outside the museum, and the owner walked over and tried to hassle us inside for 5 minutes! We could see that the Beagle, Darwin’s ship, was still under construction, and due to the price of the museum, we decided to come back another time! The owner / guy who worked there told is the ships were seaworthy but only the James Caird had been taken out. You can walk around the ships, and we plan to come back and look at the museum on our way to Antarctica on a future ship when the Beagle is finished.

Our penultimate day saw us take in a tour to National Park Pali Aike. We used Turismo Laguna Azul as tour agents ($30,000 Chilean pesos each, $US120), and we were picked up, the usual half hour late, in the morning of the 13th December. There have been human settlements in the park since the first wave of man arrived in South America 10,000 years ago. They hunted wild horses, milodons and lived alongside sabre tooth tigers. This was before volcanic activity completely changed the site to a lava and rubble strewn field, known as Pali Aike, or Desolate Place by the later natives. These natives arrived 8000 years ago, and are the ancestors of the Aonikenk (Tehuelche) people who lived here when Europeans arrived.

A number of trails exist in the park, our guide bought us in on a long hike along the Southern edge of the park, off of the trails. We followed the fence that delineates the edge of the park and the next door sheep farmers, and made our way to the first volcano crater, called Pozos del Diablo (Devil’s Wells), or Pali Aike.

Having last blown thousands of years ago, the volcanoes here are considered extinct. Our guide was not up to much, because his English was terrible, but we had learnt enough about the volcano field to understand what we saw. There were three major eruptions here, one was between 1 and 3 million years ago, the second was about 170,000 years ago forming the Pali Aike crater, and the last was 10,000 years ago, forming the younger Morado del Diablo crater (Devil’s Dwelling).

The volcanoes were formed into a maar, which is a broad crater caused by an explosion when groundwater came into contact with hot magma. The explosion was huge, scattering bombs (red hot lava rocks), and sending flowing lava across the steppe. The resulting basaltic rock formations look like nuclear bombs have been deployed here. Twisted rocks – evidence of lava flows long-cooled – were all over the place.

We had skirted around the lava field when walking to the first volcano, and so now we joined the official trail as it wound its way through the lava field towards the younger but more striking volcano crater of Morado de Diablo.

Walking through the lava fields and seeing the lava tubes was amazing. The tubes were formed when lava hardened on top of still flowing lava. The lava inside the hardened crust emptied out leaving tubes of rock that are like tunnels. Much further away we found where the more liquid lava had eventually stopped and hardened, forming pāhoehoe flows.

The shapes and colors of the rocks here were really weird. Lava had melted the whole landscape and turned it into a charred and burnt cinderblock with huge boulders blasted out of the Earth. Reds, yellows and greens were all vividly coloring the blackened Earth with mosses and lichens feasting on the volcanic minerals, even thousands of years later.

Huge fissures in the ground, and a very strong wind, made progress pretty slow. There were now thorny Patagonian bushes growing in the shade of the basaltic rocks too – bushes like Calafate, with its edible berries and sharp thorns.

The final path led from the Morado del Diablo crater, which was studded with several more smaller cones inside its huge crater, back through the lava fields to the minivan. We reunited with the driver at the start of the trail where he had parked after dropping us off at the start of our hike. We then drove over to another section of the park, where we visited an ancient lava flow cave which was inhabited by the native indians ancestors (this has been proven by DNA testing).

The Pali Aike cave is one of the oldest inhabited caves in South America, occupied since mankind first came here – the first of America’s real pioneers. It was excavated by Junius Bird in 1936, who removed several layers of sediments and discovered Mylodon bones and Hippidion saldiasi (an extinct American horse) bones. It is believed that the Mylodons used the cave to give birth, and the humans used it as shelter. The cave is located in a pretty safe place (except for the volcanic eruptions!), a good shelter from wind and rain. It was formed from lava flows when the crater it is in blew it’s stack.

 

After visiting the cave we headed down to Laguna Ana, set just on the Chilean side of the border. Much of the volcanic field and other craters actually lie on Argentine soil. We immediately saw a group of flamingoes walking on the edge of the lake, and most of the tour group rushed off to take pictures. I got some pictures but stayed behind looking for my elusive armadillos. I was surprised when about two meters in front of me a grey fox that had been hiding suddenly upped and ran off. For the next fifteen minutes I watched as the fox and a pair of caracara birds of prey had a little battle between each other. I found what the fox had been after – a dead sheep – there are many here, possibly killed by puma.

Eventually the little fox ran away, pursued by the caracara, even s the fox had tried to grab one of them. I felt a little guilty as I thought I might have scared the fox and so got him in trouble with the caracara, but Francesca and I saw him later lying down beside a bush sheltering from the persistent bitter wind. Good.

On our way out, Francesca spotted two separate Patagonian hog-nosed skunk, and I finally saw my armadillo, although he was in the road so he might end up in the little showcase at the entrance in the guardhouse on display if he is not more careful!

We made it back via a short stop at some of the area’s oldest estancias and a shipwreck. This wreck was one of 40 major wrecks between 1896 and 1921 in the Strait of Magellan as ships undertook to avoid the dangerous Cape Horn, but were unaware of the strong currents and unmarked reefs in the water.

Our tour and our time in Punta Arenas was over, but we plan on returning to see the Nao Victoria Museum when the Beagle replica is finished, before we go on a tour of Antarctica – a little while off in the future yet. We put our stuff together, and the next day (14th December) we got a taxi to bring us to the closest bus stop (agents sell tickets at their offices which can be found on the local maps – ask at tourist information), and left the town for our next destination, Puerta Natales.