Feb 27-28: En Route to the Andes

We departed Cabo San Pablo for a leisurely 3-day journey to the high peaks of the Andes at Glaciers National Park, with two one-night stopovers along the way.

Our first night was spent wild camping overlooking the Strait of Magellan near Punta Delgada ferry crossing (see B on map above). Not a terribly inviting spot given the total exposure to the weather, but the view over the Strait was quite nice. The most interesting aspect of this site was driving through a gap in the mine field lining the Chilean side of the Strait. Yes, I said “mine field”. These mine fields are a legacy of the Pinochet era during the 1970s when he was rather paranoid about invasions from neighboring countries. Sadly, many of these mine fields have still not been cleared of mines, so one has to be careful about straying too far off the road. Here’s a couple of pics:

Our second day involved crossing the Strait on the ferry and meeting up with the Wicked Campers mechanic to replace the house battery and cooler, neither of which have been working since leaving Punta Arenas (argh!), before heading out to Faro Cabo Virgenes at the northern tip of the entrance to the Strait (see map above) to visit a Magellanic penguin colony. The colony is supposedly the third largest breeding colony in Patagonia. We enjoyed some close up and personal encounters – but not so close as to disturb them – before the rain forced us off the beach and to the coziness of a cafe on the lighthouse bluff overlooking the penguin beech and our beachside campsite. Here’s a few pics:

Here’s a short video of the penguin colony, which I mainly included here for Skylar and Talia who both love penguins, but also for anyone else that really loves to watch pengins waddle around and mostly just stand in place pondering each other and, presumably, the meaning of their life (not terribly exciting to watch). There’s also a minute of footage out the window as we drove across the Patagonian steppe to the Andes:

Penguin video (5 minutes)

We left Cape Virgenes and the penguin colony and made the long 8 hour drive across the Patagonian steppe, which is quite monotonous, to the Andes. To keep us entertained and alert along the way, we watched out for two of our favorite creatures (below) and, of course, for the ever present guanacos on the side of the road:

Next stop, Glaciers National Park outside of El Chalten. See you there! Here’s a taste of what’s to come, albeit from a distance: