Caleta Olivia - Puerto San Julian - Rio Gallegos
Different Country, Different Landscape, Different Ocean
Sunday December 16, 2007
Wow, I don't know what I was expecting, but Argentina really is different than Chile. It's almost like being in a whole new country - sort of like going from the USA to Canada. Maybe the differences are even more pronounced. These are two countries separated by more than just a common language and mountain range; the accents are different, they call things by different words, there is a whole new food vocabulary (which means it's back to square one and looking like deer in the headlights when we're spoken to by restaurant servers...).
My quick, after-a-mere-4-days impression comparing Patagonian Argentina to Chile on the whole is that Argentineans are less serious, more laid back, and a little more friendly to strangers and foreigners. There was rock music blasting in the supermarket I visited yesterday, and a little more anarchy and havoc in the aisles than in even the busiest markets in Chile. The overall experience tends to make me feel more relaxed and calm about being here, but there is one overwhelming negative to traveling in Argentina - cigarettes! Argentineans smoke a lot and they smoke everywhere. It's a startling and disappointing change. Without having to breathe and smell the smoke so much, I think we'd be more than just a little infatuated with the place.
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We have an appointment and reservation to be in Ushuaia, Argentina (located at the southern end of Tierra del Fuego) on December 20, so we've spent a large part of the last 4 days driving. Only today, Sunday the 16th, we're taking a layover day in the coastal (Atlantic Ocean!) city of Rio Gallegos in order to take a break from the car and give the kids time for one good long day of schoolwork. Then we'll drive for 5 hours or so per day the next two days in order to reach Ushuaia.
The path of our travels proceeds like this - on Wednesday the 12th we crossed "la frontera" at Chile Chico, drove east on a luxuriously paved, flat, and straight road for about an hour before spending our first night in Argentina at a non-descript little cow-town called Perito Moreno.
Thursday the 13th we drove across the rest (and bulk) of the continent to reach a port town on the Atlantic ocean called Caleta Olivia. The primary industry for Caleta Olivia is refining and shipping oil - the product of the many pumps that we had passed during the day. Other than an occasional South American armadillo crossing the road, the oil rigs were about the only thing we saw along the road other than dirt and scrub brush. We were not driving through the fertile grasslands of the northern Argentinean pampas, but the barren, dry Patagonian steppe.
Friday we drove southward along the coast following route 3 to Puerto San Julian. About halfway between the two cities, we turned inland and drove 50 kilometers west on a dirt road to reach the provincial reserve "Bosque Petrificado José Ormachea" (or Petrified Forest named after some guy named José). We took lots of pictures (and there are more than a few to look at below).
Puerto San Julian is a small coastal settlement of about 6000 residents that, in addition to being the only location with travel facilities for more than 4 hours in any direction, can make some impressive historical claims. Although some very interesting and important things happened here long ago (further explanation is included with pictures below), the modern incarnation of the city doesn't deserve much more attention than a night's sleep, a couple of meals, and a fresh tank of fuel.
Yesterday (Saturday), we drove another 4-5 hours from Puerto San Julian to Rio Gallegos, where we are now. Rio Gallegos is a "real" city, with population of about 80,000, and unbeknownst to us prior to our arrival, this just happens to be a real happening weekend around here. There are car races, motocross races, and a big bicycle race all happening this weekend in or near the city. City streets are closed for a street fair for several blocks surrounding the main plaza (just a few convenient blocks from our hotel), and the local tourist board is offering free guided walking tours of several downtown museums - a service we'll try to take advantage of later this afternoon provided the drizzly rain doesn't get worse. It's too bad it's been raining today - it really put a damper on the street fair. I walked around it a little bit yesterday and there was a lot going on - and I'd planned on returning with the whole family this afternoon with a camera in hand. I took a quick stroll over to the plaza after lunch at our hotel only to discover that the rain had really dampened the festivities.
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This map shows Perito Moreno, Caleta Olivia, and our eventual route southward along the Atlantic coast.
Click HERE for mapquest map of Perito Moreno City.
Click HERE for mapquest map of Caleta Olivia.
Click HERE for mapquest map of Puerto San Julian.
Click HERE for mapquest map of Rio Gallegos.
Pictures from our drive from Perito Moreno to Caleta Olivia...
A trashasaurous monument along the road near a small town/oil pumping outpost.
Where there is oil, often there used to be dinosaurs there as well. This is certainly the case for southern Argentina. We'll eventually be visiting some paleontological museums and research/discovery sights later in our travels through this part of Argentina.
Our first glimpse at the "other" ocean. It is so much more calm and pacific looking than the Pacific!
Caleta Olivia,
and the most prominent structure in town - the giant statue of a muscular, shirtless, oil-worker.
The petrified forest side-trip was fascinating and well worth the diversion. After driving for more than half an hour through the flat, dirty, nothingness, a 40-meter-high mesa gradually appeared in the distance. The mesa is punctuated by an irregular pattern of erosion which creates a variety of fascinating and otherworldly effects...
and the centerpiece of the park is a large gentle hill, littered with the petrified trunks of hundreds of enormous old Araucaria trees. There was a dense forest here 75 million years ago (give or take a few months). After a hurricane knocked down the trees, volcanoes from the Andes buried them in ash, according to at least one eye-witness. Ensuing conditions spanning several eons, epochs, and eras of time were just right for the remains of the trees to become petrified.
As we walked up the hill, the tiny little things in the distance gradually grew in size,
until their monstrous size became clearly apparent.
A closer look at the almost-gemlike appearance of the petrified wood.
Looking out from the hilltop.
Hey, this is the same picture (except not taken at sunset...) that's on the cover of our 2007 Firestone South American road atlas.
And there is indeed, an assortment of life forms that inhabit the desert.
Grey foxes,
guanacos,
and choiques (yet another South American ostrich-like flightless bird species...).
And at the end of the day, we arrive at the town of Puerto San Julian.
Now what could a town that looks like that possibly have to boast about? Well, Magellan wintered here in 1520, and they have a life-size replica of the smallest ship in his fleet, the Nao Victoria, set up down at the waterfront. This was the only ship out of five original to return safely to Europe - arriving back home with a crew of 18 remaining out of 200 men which formed the initial expedition party. Puerto San Julian was the location of the first ever Catholic mass performed on Argentinean soil. The first European death in Argentina occurred here (and so on and so forth...). Sir Frances Drake stopped here. In 1780, 78 Spaniards sent by the King founded a short-lived and ill-fated settlement on a nearby hill (archeologists have recently started trying to unearth it), and one of the officer's of Darwin's ship The Beagle died when they were at port here during their famous voyage. So a lot happened here once upon a time, even if much isn't happening any more.
The replica "Victoria."
Men in the rigging.
Commander Magellan greats visitors below deck,
while the crew keeps busy working on the ship,
and a guard watches a native Patagonian prisoner.
I have no pictures of Rio Gallegos yet - the reader can picture a drizzly Sunday (almost no traffic on the street) with a soggy street fair in progress. Just a few minutes ago, a roar of sirens and motorcycles proceeded and trailed a bicycle race that plowed down the street in front of our hotel. In about half an hour we're going to walk a couple of blocks to the corner from which the multi-museum walking tour is supposed to depart. We'll take cameras and hopefully the rain will slack off enough to allow for pictures (and/or the museums will allow us to take them inside).
After more than 5 months on the road traveling together - perhaps a good "during" picture for a "before-during-after" sequence. For every nice, smiling, family group picture, there are always a couple of others that look like this.
-Rolf