South: Patagonia to Punta Arenas

Day 11:

I wake up to a godforsaken landscape.  A few minutes later, I am disoriented.  There is a huge body of water on my left.  The Atlantic?  It must be.

Suddenly, there is a shower.  The rain comes at us horizontally.  Our bus is hydroplaning.  The sun tries to break through.

All I know is, I'm in Santa Cruz, the home province of President Fernandez and her late husband, President Kirchner.

I stand up to use the bathroom.  Either I've gained two inches of calf muscle overnight, or my right leg is really swollen.

A VW Fox two-door with shiny black paint and fishing rods on the roof (and loud mufflers) just overtook our bus.  It has an Audi emblem on its trunk deck lid.  I wonder how much the Panama Canal diminished Argentina as a world economic power.

I am exhausted and filthy.  Once the fog and clouds lift, the landscape is much more beautiful and less depressing.  The bus nearly mows down a flock of camelids.

Cinematically, my journey has approached an all-time low.  I am watching Kirk Cameron (of 1980s TV sitcom Growing Pains fame) in a preachy, evangelical-ly movie called Fireproof.  I'll watch anything, as long as it's entertaining.  But the acting here was...well,:

The movie ends with Romans 5:8.
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

I see birds out there the size of turkeys, but they look like ostriches.  The bus is yawing and listing badly from the wind.  I also see little white, pink, and red flamingo-like birds.  There are signs and graffiti in the small towns saying good-bye to Nestor Kirchner.

We arrive at the frontier with Chile.  In the border control office, I see a picture of La Presidenta with a sash across her chest.  Why do Latin American leaders all have these sashes?

I sneak a peek at our buses dashboard.

It's windy as hell.  I don't know how plants take root here.

Once we cross into Chilean Tierra del Fuego, I see the Straits of Magellan.

We arrive at Punta Arenas.  It seems every Ford Aerostar and first generation Nissan Pathfinder in the world have retired here.  I even see a Miata.  Though it's technically summer now, many cars still have their snow tires on.

After an elegant dinner of hake with king crab sauce (topped with potato chips!), I walk around town.  It's cold and windy.  I walk by a large abandoned concrete building.  On the outside wall of the building is graffiti that reads-- People were tortured here.  There are elegant old stone edifices that were built just before the Panama Canal was completed-- and thus making the port of Punta Arenas irrelevant.  The old mansions belonged to 19th century wool barons.  I saw a lot of sheep on the way here.

I check into my hotel room, which has three beds.  I peel off my socks, which I have not taken off since the Atacama Desert.  It makes a sound like duct tape.  Zoooooeeeep.

Tomorrow is my final bus ride-- a half day journey back across into Argentina to Ushuaia to rendezvous with my wife.