You know what’s pointy and intimidating? A bunch of upside-down thumbtacks. Also glaciers. I hadn’t realized they still existed (glaciers); like dodo birds and cassette tapes I thought they were gone, victims of a changing world. Yet there I was, standing on a metal catwalk just a few feet away from Perito Moreno, a 92-square-mile glacier in southern Patagonia.
El Calafate is a cozy ski town, a hub of adventure tourism in the region. But when we had arrived very late the previous night, I could see only what the jet’s powerful lights picked up: an empty and arid plane covered in tufted grass and dusted in snow. It felt like landing on the moon, like the people within the plane’s lighted cabin were the only ones left out there. I looked over at my brother in the seat next to me. What had we gotten ourselves into this time?
We hadn’t had a chance to see the town or much of the scenery on the way to the glacier that first morning — an 8am wake up in August on the southern tip of South America means you’re up before the sun. Perito Moreno was regal and aloof. But the scenery driving back to El Calafate was also striking. An immense grassland interrupted by mountains. Kind of like Colorado, actually. But emptier. And vast. Talk about that big-sky, open-road feeling.
With its kitschy souvenir shops and packs of stray dogs, El Calafate would serve as our homebase for a few days as we explored the area, and then it was time to head south. We were going to Ushuaia, the southernmost city IN THE WORLD. Flying low over the last of the Andes was like zipping through the peaks of a lemon meringue.
Ushuaia is located on the biggest island of Tierra del Fuego, the archipelago at the very end of South America that looks, on a map, like an x-ray of a tail bone. This was no cake-walk of a place. This is where the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn, those infamous shipkillers, lie.
It’s the subantarctic region, only a hop, skip, and a very cold jump from the white continent herself.
Ushuaia was charming. Steep white mountains staggered over a crystal blue harbor, tugboats and cargo ships sitting at the docks. I couldn’t help but imagine that the breeze on my face had recently ruffled a few penguin feathers. We were only about 650 miles from the edge of Antarctica.
It turns out that my midwestern self is dazzled by the poles. Picturing unsurvivable waves crashing into Cape Horn makes the Earth feel wild and celestial, like the giant alien it is.
Ushuaia August sunrises are late and lingering, painting the world in creamy pinks and yellows and purples for an hour or more. On what was to be our last morning in Patagonia, we took a boat into the Beagle Channel. Even as the colors faded, the sky was still a gauzy blue. The sea echoed the sky, so it felt like we weren’t on the water and under the clouds but splitting through some other thing altogether. We saw cormorants — which I called penguins just to annoy my brother — whose feet kicked at the water like the landing gear of a plane. We saw a colony of sea lions lounging fat and confident, so thick on their island that it looked like they grew there.
We saw a lighthouse on an island all its own. This would be our high-water mark, the farthest south we would go. When it was time to turn around, a thick fog rolled in. The sun, visible only as a spot of lighter fog, was low on the horizon even though it was 1pm; it hadn’t ever fully risen.
Alone above deck, I was just starting to think that we were lost forever, letting my mind wander to stories of shipwrecks and cannibalism, when two huge ships began to emerge from the haze. They were cargo ships, moored in the harbor. We had seen them on our way out, and now they signaled our return. The whole city, I realized, was stretched out maybe 500 feet in front of me.
Later that afternoon, we were packed and ready to go when we learned that our flight had been cancelled due to a cloud hanging low over the city. Although I was ready to leave the subantarctic winter, part of me was thrilled at this particular travel hiccup: another reminder of nature’s raw power.
And then the next day, it really was time to go. Out of the winter, through spring-like weather in Buenos Aires, and then finally back to the American summer. By the time we left Patagonia, my apprehension about the place, images of an empty and blowing tundra, had turned into a fond appreciation for its beauty and a deep respect for its rough edges. And maybe, if I’m lucky, Ushuaia won’t be the farthest south I’ll ever go, after all.
