8 IN AND AROUND USHUAIA

Ushuaia,
Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

After 3 days here, the feeling of unreality has not worn off yet.   We made
it !   Actually it`s easy to get here.   The great majority of travelers
arrive by jet.   A relative few come by cruise ship, a minuscule number by
car (like us, after a long journey over long and finally bad roads), or by sailboat
(most enroute to a circumnavigation of Earth).

Names of several place names in this vicinity get lumped together as
synonyms for remoteness, like Timbuktu.    From the north, the Strait(s)
of Magellan separates the mainland Patagonia province from the island
province of Tierra del Fuego, the south side of which is defined by the
Beagle Channel.   On the north side of that channel is Ushuaia, on the
other side more of Chile, and beyond that small islands culminating in Cape Horn.

Much of the aura of this place, to me, comes from its storied visitors.
First was Magellan, whose 1520-22 expedition was perhaps the most daring
and important ever.   His discovery and passage through the 250 mile
tortuous constricted passage that bears his name seems nearly
impossible.   Because tacking across the open sea south of Cape Horn is
supremely easier, almost no commercial vessels used his Strait again until
steam was supplanting sail in the last decades before the opening of the
Panama Canal.   The return to Portugal of one surviving ship and a few
surviving men, which did not include Magellan, proved that the world
was continuous, with no dropoffs.   The next famous traveler to this area
that I remember was Darwin, who traversed the area in the ship Beagle,
via the Channel now bearing its name, enroute to the theory of evolution.
...Around 1900 Joshua Slocum, the quintessential circumnavigator,
connected the oceans in his salvaged sloop Spray .... During those waning
years of the Age of Commercial Sail my great-uncle Captain Myron Bailey,
whom I met once in 1932, rounded Cape Horn about 30 times.   Some of
his letters to his employers, the Sewalls of Bath are in the Maine Maritime
Museum in Bath..... Next in my memory
is our favorite painter, the socialist adventurer-painter-author Rockwell
Kent, some of whose work is in the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art.   He lived in,
painted, and wrote artfully about Greenland, Monhegan, Newfoundland
and Tierra del Fuego, places where we've visited some of his haunts...
Then pilot-yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester, the first non-stop-solo circumnavigator.
Etc.

Studying a globe here reminded me that land-wise the world is
top-heavy.   South of here are only a few small barren islands, and the
Great White Continent.   At the equivalent north latitude are Edmonton
and Oslo.   North of the Arctic Circle live more than a million people.
South of the entirely wet Antarctic Circle live maybe a
thousand human off and on, and more permanently, lots of penguins.

Ushuaia`s economy has been capricious.   It plummeted in 1914 when the
oceans were joined at Panama.   Until 1947 it hosted Argentina`s Alcatraz,
or Devil`s Island.    Since then it has become the main supply port for
Antarctica.  Accessibility by jet has continued to strain the hotel capacity,
and the more affluent tourists continue to Antarctica.   Russian icebreakers
and other ships, even some commercial sailboats, shuttle to Antarctica
during the summer, which is winter in the USA.... Backpackers and
help-wanted signs abound.    There are no beggars or shoe-shine boys.
Some prices (except things heavily taxed in Buenos Aires but not here)
are nearly double those of northern Argentina.   Local taxes
provide much better facilities than in northern Argentina, we are told.

Now back to the end of the previous post, #7:  Mendoza to Ushuaia.

February 15.   Our sleep was short because the previous day was
Valentine`s Day, Saturday, with weddings at our hotel in Comodoro
Rivadavia, where the restaurant opened at 8.30 PM and we ate near midnight.
We drove to the wind power farm above the city, where European-made
windmills, like animated Easter Island monoliths, thrashed their 155 foot
diameter arms with pulsating "whooshes".   These were mingled with the fading
icons of energy, petroleum pumps.   Continuing southward, the trees
disappeared, leaving only bald brown
grass rolling to the horizon.    More guanacos and rheas, and ever fewer gas
stations.    We stopped for the night at the port of San Julian, whose history
belies its population of only 6500.   Magellan spent 5 months there in
1520, then came Sir Francis Drake, Darwin, and Antoine Ste. Exupery, the
legendary pilot who wrote Wind Sand and Stars, and The Little Prince.
By coincidence, as we entered our hotel room and turned on the TV, a
story on the History Channel in Spanish told about the Lindbergh airplane
shipping box, now a museum in Canaan, Maine.

Near here we passed the estancia (ranch) of Douglas Thompkins, the USA
backpacker turned billionaire, the founder of North Face.   A decade
earlier he bought several thousand square miles of southern Chilean
scenery for $55 million, lived there in a "shack" with his little
Cessna outside for occasional transport to civilization.    He groomed
that vast property, Parque Pumalin, for a gift to Chile.    Conspiracy
theories arose (CIA, Jewish homeland, etc.) so, disgusted, he gave the
park to Chile and moved to Argentina, where he could buy similar realms
cheaper.   His example inspired other tycoons to buy and protect
Patagonia while it is still cheap.    One was the Italian
clothing billionaire Benetton, who has put thousands of sheep on his
land, to help revive the moribund wool industry.

February 16.   Gasoline in Patagonia is 40% cheaper than in northern
Argentina, about $1.30 per gallon, taxed low by the government to
encourage settlement.... On the 220 miles of paved Route 3 to Rio
Gallegos we met another vehicle only about every 15 minutes.
Accommodations became scarcer, and we had reserved the last
available room in town.

Definition of "ripio", if you've skipped over previous segments: narrow road
of gravel and rocks, with two wheel ruts.   Between the ruts is a ridge OK
for trucks, but so high for our Yaris that when we don't drive on the side
of the ruts, the  ridge rubs the bottom of the car, so that even at 20 mph the
loud crashing seems to indicate imminent loss of oil and death of car.

Highlights this day:
* 40 miles of some paved, some bad ripio to
the border with Chile.   That country is shaped like a 2900 mile spine,
usually under 100 miles wide between the Andes and the Pacific, with
the Strait(s) of Magellan as its coccyx.   There Chile has its only 8 miles
of Atlantic shoreline.
* Customs and immigration twice: out of Argentina, into Chile.
* 40 miles of ripio to the Straits of Magellan ferry, which doesn't run for
about 3 hours of low tide.   We reached the ferry in time to avoid that
hiatus.   Bus passengers had to walk across, to lighten the bus enough to
negotiate the angle between the sloped beach and the boat ramp.
* 100 miles of ripio, swerving carefully around oncoming trucks to avoid
a cracked windshield.   Ripio roads lack shoulders.
* Out of Chile and into Argentina again.   Fortunately all this processing
was efficient and courteous.   A sign declared that it should be so, and
how to report if it were not.
* 10 miles of PAVEMENT to our fortunately reserved room in Rio Grande.

February 18.   190 miles, half ripio, half asphalt, the last of our 2500 mile
arc from Santiago to Ushuaia.   As our route curved westward and
approached the Andes the ground rose and rolled, and low conifer forests
appeared.   We traversed a spectacular mountain pass via cliffside
construction.   The last 25 miles to Ushuaia were on new asphalt, which
Argentina is extending northward.   We transferred our one-night-stand
reservation to a hotel where we could stay for several nights.  We investigated the possibility of heavily discounted passage to Antarctica on a Russian icebreaker, about which we had read.

Ushuaia is spread out on the curved steep rim of its harbor, with a
semicircle of snowy peaks and glaciers above it.   We drove up to a
chairlift, parked, and were carried up towards a glacier.   There we enjoyed hot
chocolate and a magnificent view.   The little city gets its water from
glaciers above it, like Boulder, Colorado.

February 20. We took a 9 hour catamaran excursion down the Beagle
Channel, passing a few yards from separate colonies of sea lions,
penguins, and cormorants, and stopping for an hour at an estancia
(ranch) founded and still run by Englishmen.   Marge caught her foot
on a metal stair on the boat, but after the fall followed our guide and
group on rough trails.    When we returned to our hotel in Ushuaia the
pain, swelling and coloration of her left shin mandated a visit to the
local hospital emergency room.   She was wheelchaired down long
faded corridors, and treated by solicitous and apparently competent
nurses and a doctor.   Xrays determined the bone
was not broken.    Total charge: 4 pesos, or $1.35.   An injection, pills, ice

and rest have greatly improved her condition.   The hospital sign at right says, "Be nice to those who visit us.  The tourist is a friend who will return".    Indeed that's the way we were treated, we will remember it, and we want to return.

Supper was our worst slowest pizza ever.   When I asked the hotel clerk for an extra pillow to prop up Marge`s foot, an Indian-from-India doctor, a tourist, volunteered to give a second opinion.   Marge was quite surprised when he walked in, but pleased at having her condition discussed in our language.   What a nice man !   The picture shows Marge's damaged legs, the left one worse.
PS: It's still so marked in 2015.

February 21.   Marge stayed put.    I tended, shopped, and used the
Internet.   The government tourist agency told me that there were cabins
left on the 3 Russian ships leaving for Antarctica that evening, and the
price had been reduced to $1,500.   Considering that demand exceeds
supply, it was not surprising that that turned out to be false.   Minimum
passage is $2,400, and the norm $4,500, which was too much for us.

February 22.     I continued composing this opus and Marge updated her diary.    She
went out with me to eat and shop, a good sign that she was recovering.

Tomorrow we will head north, for hundreds of miles of ripio and gorgeous
mountain-glacier-lake scenery, enroute to Santiago.

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9 USHUAIA TO EL CALAFATE

                                                                     El Calafate, Argentina

February 23.    Ushuaia to Rio Grande, Argentina.   190 miles, mostly ripio
(gravel, dirt etc. road) I rate ripio by maximum tolerable speeds: 2
mph to 50.   This was 30 to 50.    Again we saw the "massive
environmental destruction" caused by the 1947 importation of beavers
for the fur industry on the island of Tierra del Fuego.   They have no
enemies except man down there, but fortunately have not escaped to
the mainland.   Many areas of the island and Patagonia produce oil and
gas, so service stations dispense both gasoline and gaseous gas.

February 24.   Rio Grande to Punta Arenas, Chile.    Until just after we
recrossed the Straits of Magellan northbound we were retracing our route
to Ushuaia.    I was given a private tour of the ferry's modern engine room.

February 25.   We stayed in town.   Marge's leg was recovering too slowly,
but was helped by elevated bed rest, and buying sort of an elastic
stocking.   We saw an elegant mansion, with furnishings imported from
Europe by still respected owners who got rich by paying hunters one
English pound per Indian corpse, to make room for sheep.   We ate in
the "best" restaurant, where in addition to the usual cow and sheep
meat, beaver and guanaco were offered.   We met 2 women from
Portsmouth, NH.   They looked like wrestlers.

February 26.     Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales.    Our last all-pavement day
for quite a distance to come.   It was dark and raining, and we had been
unable to reserve a room ahead at any price, so we knew Natales would
be interesting.    Twenty miles before that port I capriciously investigated a
side road signed "Llanuras (Plains) de Diana".    I turned from that to a
drive marked only by crushed stone and careful grooming.   What a gem
we had stumbled on!   We parked amid lawns and gardens where hybrid
lupines had gone to seed in the approaching autumn, but roses still
bloomed.   We entered a lodge designed only 3 years ago by a Santiago
architect who must have been Scandinavian.   We were shown room # 3
(keep it a secret), where heavy drapes opened to disclose a window wall,
framing low conifers, in the center of which a yard-square waterfall
entered an intersecting stream.   The plumbing was better than in the
USA, and the whole place exuded unobtrusive elegance and quiet charm.
At that place and time, the room-and-breakfast price of $60 was a
bargain without the above adjectives, apparently because the lodge is
one of a group of cooperative retreats for Santiago executives.   We
grabbed it. At supper the patrician elderly waiter smiled and bowed slightly
when we entered.   Seldom has "this sure beats working" been more appropriate.    There were only 2 other couples as guests.    Puerto Natales information offices had never heard of it.    The hostelry had satellite TV, but accepted no credit cards.
PS February 2010: We regret that a huge hotel has been built to replace this exquisite little inn.

In town we shopped, used the Internet, and lost my diary.   We met the two women from New Hampshire again.

February 27.     Puerto Natales to Torres del Paine National Park, a World
Heritage Site.   We drove 100 miles, mostly on ripio, for the first time on
roads not shown on our GPS.   At the park entrance, where a 4.5 mile
side road to our Hotel Torres began, we met the NH women once more..
unfortunately.   The volume of them and their massive backpacks in our
crowded little car was bad enough, but the extra 450 pounds changed
what had become an interesting tour to an Adventure, defined by
Chesterton as "an inconvenience, rightly considered".   That was our
worst ripio before or since.   Even at 2 mph in the worst spots, the
undercarriage crashed and banged.    I thought of the nearest mechanic
being 100 ripio miles distant, and later checked for leaking oil or
gasoline...   Our hotel was an inescapable $197 per night, but Chile
partially offsets the entrance penalty, $100 for Americans and less for
others, by exempting foreigners paying in dollars from the 19% food
and room tax.    The $24.30 buffet supper was the most sumptuous
we have ever enjoyed, however.

February 28.   When the generator stopped for the night Marge and I went
outside. The clouds had gone, leaving a field of stars more brilliant than
we had seen in decades.   The dome and zenith were split by the edge of
the galaxy, the Milky Way, a belt of diffuse brilliance.

We drove 48 miles of sinuous ripio, by spectacular Torres (Towers),
glaciers, lakes, which threatened to distract the driver, to Lago (Lake)
Grey.   We'd been misinformed by the tourist bureau about
reservations and timing, but were lucky that we had 8 minutes to spare
to buy 2 of the last 3 spaces on the boat and join the guided group.
We walked 200 rough yards (not easy for Marge on her wounded legs),
boarded Zodiac inflatables, and were taken to a bigger boat with glass
panoramic windows.   What we saw was spectacular and well described in
our guidebooks.   The boat motored along the face of the
glacier, and nuzzled up to a grounded iceberg about 50 feet high and
150 feet wide.    Its colors ranged from a cobalt blue of the oldest most
compressed ice, to pastel blue, fading to the brilliant white of filigrees
and Rorschach shapes.   We were served Pisco Sours with glacier ice
in real glasses.

February 29  <-- b="">  A rare day !  Torres del Paine, Chile, to El Calafate, Argentina.
Heavy rain all day, which was unusual in the semi-desert we traversed.   The
hotel access road included an ancient suspension bridge, where we
stopped and measured less than a 6 inch clearance on each side.  Beside it,
grey waters of the flooding stream lapped.   Any higher and we would
have been trapped.  An hour of ripio later, at the
tiny border town where we were told cheaper Argentine gas was
available 27 miles later, we cautiously had the gas tank filled from the side
of what looked like an outhouse.

The border crossing took 40
minutes from Chile because of a busload of Italian tourists, and just 5
minutes into Argentina, where the only building on many miles of
treeless pampa housed a few bored officials.   Here we began the
infamous ripio Route 40.   That rough furrowed washboard required
20 mph for 20 miles, then we were delighted by the appearance of an
unmapped new paved road, apparently coming from the direction of
Puerto Natales.   In 10 miles that led to the reported gas station, which
seemed to have been abandoned for the day.   Had we not gassed up, it
would have been 280 miles between refills.   Rain was making ripio
difficult with mud and puddles, so we ignored the advice of 3
sodden Swiss cyclists at the station, and took the alternative fork which
promised pavement, though 60 miles longer.   However, the map didn't
show the miles of ripio construction we encountered later.

We stopped to offer aid to the driver of a car that had just careened off
the road, but he seemed uninjured, calm, and grateful that he didn't have
to drive more in those difficult conditions.   By USA standards his car was
totalled, but maybe was worth restoring here, considering that mechanics
get about 50 cents an hour.   At that point we
had driven about 1000 miles of ripio, with 500 of it to go.    Besides the
loose gravel and the embedded fangs, their worst feature is corrugations.
Measurement and simple calculation show they administer about 10
hammer blows per second to the car and us.   If we and the car can survive
until we get to pavement, we should be healthier, with no remaining
kidney stones or cylinder carbon.   About 20 years ago Scientific
American, in an article on the harmonic distribution of particles under
stress, explained the dimensions of ocean waves and the corrugations on
poorly maintained dirt roads.    I must read that again sometime.

March 1.   We took a tour, bus then boat, to Los Glaciares National Park.   Some
books describe this as the most spectacular natural sight in South
America.   More on that later.

Marge's leg is improving, slowly.

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10 EL CALAFATE TO JOURNEY'S END

Pucon, Chile

March 2, 2003:   We were in El Calafate, an oasis of small town urbanity
in the midst of near wilderness.   We drove 50 miles to the side, half on
muddy ripio, to Perito Moreno Glacier.   Its 200 feet high 2 mile front
is immersed in the west end of Lake Argentino.    One corner of that
front is perpendicular to a valley through which a lake drains.   Until
1988 Perito Moreno was one of the few advancing glaciers in the world,
so every 4 years it would block the valley, the impounded lake
drainage would build up, water would erode the crevasses, and about a
year later the whole thing would collapse in a four hour titanic drainage
of millions of tons of water and icebergs.   The timing was
unpredictable, so only a lucky few would see it.   Guidebooks say
global warming ended that, but we were thrilled to discover that the
glacier recently had advanced to block the valley again.     The water had
risen 30 feet behind the blockage so far.   Since the rest of the glacier
was contorting as it advanced about a foot a day, it sounded like
amplified Rice Krispies, and irregular chunks spalled off into Lake
Argentina every few minutes, all observable from a boardwalk about
100 feet from the ice.

The collapse occurred a week later, after we left, much sooner than expected.

From Chapter 6 of Time Out, Patagonia: ¨Route 40 enjoys semi-mythic
status in Argentina... It passes through many places which are wild,
beautiful and damned... The lonely 390 mile stretch running from
Calafate to (the village of) Perito Merino is a lifeline for a few hundred
otherwise self-reliant farmers.   The government persistently fails to
deliver on promises to pave the road.   Instead they routinely send road
crews to groom the gravel surface, leaving it in a state of disrepair
("ripio"), earning Ruta 40 a reputation as a tire-thrashing obstacle
course... Bring a spare tire and an extra tank of gas... and your own
provisions¨.
More, updated to 2015:  click here.

March 4:   We had no choice but to drive the 390 miles north (the
first 20 were paved) in one day, or find an estancia (ranch) enroute that
would accept travellers, or sleep in the car.   We were not Columbuses,
but for us this was a trip into the somewhat unknown.   What we had
learned from books, the Internet, other travelers, and locals was
inconsistent.   However, unlike our drive through Central America, the
only danger we faced was one of considerable inconvenience.   After 85 miles
of good ripio in 2 hours through treeless rolling pampas we replenished
our gasoline at the outpost of Tres Lagos.   The next gas station was 220
ripio miles ahead.    Until this point the bridges all had been nearly new and
two lanes wide, a sign that Argentina really intends to have the 390 miles
paved by 2009.   Marge, the navigator, recorded that for 80 minutes we
saw no other human or car, nor horse, sheep, cow, house, only rheas and
guanacos.   As Yogi Berra might have said, it looked like the hand of man
had never set foot there (except for the ripio).   Occasionally the ripio
deteriorated to 15 mph quality, with gravel windrows between ruts so
high that the car could not straddle them.   This required me to drive with
the left or right wheels, or all 4, atop the windrows, constantly twitching
the steering wheel to stay balanced on top and not snag a front wheel.
Hard enough for 100 yards, but 30 miles?    The frequent trauma of
rocks hitting the underside at, say, 25 mph made me realize that
chewing gum or epoxy might be more useful than tires if an oil or gas
reservoir were breached.   A gale blew steadily, explaining why all outside
doors in Patagonian buildings opened inwards.
Car doors don´t, so sometimes they get broken off.

We averaged 30 mph.  Ten miles before reaching a guest
estancia 16 miles south of Perito Merino village we came upon 3 bloodied
young Japanese tossing gear from their newly inverted van into a ditch.
We offered help, but a southbound pickup truck could help more than we.
So five miles later we flagged down a van, to ask if an estancia could
radio for police help.   Yes.   Then another van stopped, a relative traffic jam.
The 2 young men in it pointed out that our left rear tire was nearly flat.   They
helped extricate the ¨toy¨ spare from under all our luggage, and mount it
in the dwindling daylight.   They were joyful, they said, because they
were prospectors and had just discovered gold in this mineral-rich area.
We limped 5 more ¨road¨ miles, then 2 miles on a narrow estancia access
drive, barely missing many hares and owls.

Supper had just been set for four at Estancia Telken, and there were 2
seats left for us.   The 4: Coco, estancia co-owner, 72, a tall shy man who
spoke with decreasing fluency Spanish, English, Dutch.   Petty, his wife,
estancia owner, 72, small bright, garrulous, hyperactive, who spoke
Spanish and English.   She has New Zealand and Argentine passports.
The only other guests, Susan and Ernest, a Swiss couple.   We all spoke
English, and enjoyed the Welsh food and pisco sours and wine.   Coco
and Petty said they wintered in Buenos Aires, but could never leave
Argentina again, because of successive setbacks.   The long slump in the
wool industry, because of synthetics.   The 1991 eruption of an upwind
Chilean volcano, the ash of which killed 13 thousand of their 20 thousand
sheep, and all their lambs.   The January 2002 devaluation of the peso,
making foreign travel and imported goods 3 times as expensive.
Proliferating "protected" mountain lions, which are killing their sheep.

The next morning Coco kindly offered to fix our flat tire.   That was one
of his many skills, because "at the estancia we have to fix
everything ourselves¨.   Supervised by me and their semi-human border
collie and many chickens, he immersed the tire in a pond to locate the
leak, and found it was a failure of a previous patch.

So the tire had been defective when we started.  We drove to town on the repaired tire, and
confidently headed north on 20 mph (semi-bad) ripio, until the tire blew
again.   The rim was bent, and the hubcap gone.    Once more into the
breach went the overworked toy tire.   We crawled the 14 miles back to
town, and found the hubcap on the way.   The only tire shop for hundreds
of miles had 2 of our size, and they were able to straighten the bent rim.
It was too late to head north.    We 6 enjoyed supper at the estancia again.
For 2011 update on Telken:   click here

March 6:   We reluctantly left our new friends, and uneventfully drove 65
miles of 20 mph ripio and 255 miles of 65 mph pavement to Esquel,
where we lodged in the superb modern inexpensive Cumbres Blanca hotel.

March 7:   We sidetracked to Trevelin, a pretty Welsh village founded by
pioneers who had migrated from their foothold at Trelew near the
Atlantic.   On Petty´s advice we drove about 50 miles of ripio through a
beautiful winding valley in the Andes, passing the place where Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had lived between the USA and death.
Then it was 100 spectacular paved miles to Bariloche, the renowned
center of the Argentine Lake District, which we think has been spoiled by
success.   No zoning laws, 150 thousand inhabitants, tawdry in places.
We stayed in a hotel with a bright lobby and faded $30 rooms, and found a mediocre restaurant.

March 8:  We truncated our planned 3 days there, and drove on via the
locally famous Seven Lakes Road, 60 miles of pavement and 40 of narrow
ripio, through gorgeous scenery: the Andes, tall pine-type trees, lakes, tumbling
streams.  We sidetracked to query a national park ranger about some trees,
and discovered a huge sequoia planted with a seed from California in 1936.

We stayed this and the next 2 nights in San Martin de los Andes, which we
liked the best of all the towns we have visited in South America.    It has only
30 thousand people, and zoning laws which mandate that no building is
over 4 stories high, and all of wood and stone.    Art - paintings and
sculptured lenga hardwood - and flowers are everywhere.   The only
industry is tourism, but the town seems unspoiled by it.   We speculated
on returning for a month sometime.   Our $63 (US equivalent) room in
the town´s best (4 star) hotel is priced at $95 until the end of summer:
February 29.    Today, March 9, is like September 9 in Maine.   We were
told that a small ranch is one under 400 square miles, and Ted Turner has 3 big ranches nearby.

March 10:    In 1972 we met Marty, the son of the lighthouse keeper at
Cape Spear, Newfoundland.   Even at 14 it was evident he was challenged.
He proudly showed us his collection of license plates, and
asked that we send him one.   We did.   Most every October thereafter he
sent us a 2-page scrawl of his triumphs and troubles.   Collecting plates
for Marty led to several memorable encounters, like those with
bureaucrats, foreign junkyards, and the event this day.... Investigating
the town on the Internet, I found at InterPatagonia.com that a local
architect had a superb collection of license plates, which might be seen
on application.   We made an appointment, and visited with the affable
architect Daniel Rubinger, an architect for 2 hours.     His wife served us tea.
Their affluence was evident from their beautiful home, and his annual trips
abroad to meetings of license plate collectors.  The next one will be in Providence
RI.    He gave us a special 1976 Argentine plate, and took our photo while
we held a 1915 Maine plate.   For a while it was on his interesting
website, PatentesArgentinas(dot)com.ar , now replaced by click here .
Here's his photo, with another Maine plate (6-601)) above my head:
 

He buys many of his plates, the earliest 1904, through eBay.   When we asked about the
creator of beautifully carved lintels in our hotel, he led us 2 blocks to the home of a
renowned wood sculptor, who was working on an exquisitely detailed rendition of birdss
commissioned by the president of Pizza Hut.

March 11:   Our last ripio, our last border crossing before the USA, past the
foot of snow clad Volcano Lanin.   The border pass elevation was only
4000´, per our little GPS, and was in a forest of araucaria trees, also
known as monkey trees, sort of conifers from Mars.   The descent into
Chile resembled Norway.   Outside Pucon we lodged at Hotel Antumalal,
about whose 1950 Bahaus architecture and 12 acres of beautiful grounds
sloping to the lake our guidebooks raved.

March 12:  We left the hotel, which we thought unduly expensive (to
support its grounds), pretentious (Queen Elizabeth had slept there),
inconvenient (way out of town), and curiously insecure (no locks on
doors to any of the mere 16 rooms).   We moved in town to Hotel
Munich (from which city my father´s parents came).   It cost $54 with
breakfast, and was friendly, convenient.   That evening we paused at the
office and ¨makeshift gallery¨ as Frommer´s guidebook
condescendingly puts it.   The owner, who looks like Freud, was there,
and we soon learned he is a baritone opera singer.    We were enchanted
to listen with him to excerpts of CDs of his Schubert, Rigoletto, and
Magic Flute performances in Santiago and Berlin, with him occasionally
bursting into an accompaniment of his recorded voice.   We bought two
of his CDs, and he will mail us a CD of his Magic Flute when it is
transcribed from tape ("a gift¨).

I hired a young man and woman to clean our car in and out.   They did an
excellent job.   Then I spent 2 more hours painting the traumatized hubcap,
reinstalling the hubcaps which had all been defensively removed after we
nearly lost one, touching up stone dings, etc.   I did this because I like
to return things better than I received them, and to make more likely that
the rental company will pay for the tire (PS: they refused) and not charge for
undercarriage rockblasting (PS: they didn't notice it).

Marge´s shin is shrinking but still swollen 3 weeks after her fall aboard
the Ushuaia boat.   She has an appointment with our doctor for soon after
we return to Maine.   She is plucky, and I am lucky.

This is our last segment of this trip log.   Ahead are 480 miles of luxurious
paved road through the verdant central valley to Santiago, where we will
turn in the Toyota Yaris.   Our Maine friends Sira and Brian will guide us
to some site sights around the city.   We have a reservation for March 15-22
at a fine Santiago hotel, where we´ll spend a lot of time catching up on
doing nothing.   We'll return to Maine via Delta March 22-23.