Taking the long way home to El Calafate, Argentina, and our flight to Brazil through Puerto Natales, Chile.
On our way to Puerto Natales, Chile, we drove by turquoise lakes, rolling hills with shrubs of every color and snow-capped mountain peaks on the horizon. We passed on the tourist trap of Milodon Cave but used their bathroom. The road swerved around the huge rock formation Silla del Diablo, the Devil’s Chair, jutting beside the road. An erratic boulder if I ever saw one, it fit the description of a large rock out of place in the landscape, having been carried away from the mountains by a glacier and deposited as the glacier melts. I tried to stop for a picture, but some road construction got in the way.
We motored through Puerto Natales searching for peanut butter for Maggie (a nonexistent commodity in Argentina) and filled up on gas (a rare commodity on the roads in Southern Patagonia). Puerto Natales serves as a gateway town for visitors to Torres del Paine, but also has some charm of its own. Beside the bay we watched artists cutting through stone to create sculptures to display around town.
We steered toward the border crossing at Dorotea, Chile, returning to Argentina through Rio Turbio customs without incident. Heading back toward La Esperanza we drove through an industrial section with buildings, massive parking lots full of cars and nondescript windowless buildings. Then a metal sculpture of a man in a business suit bursting through a pile of rocks greeted us at a fork in the road. I was too tired to stop to take a picture.
Maggie slept while we retraced our path through the Patagonia steppe. A fox darted across the highway in front of us. Black birds circled overhead, but I’m sure they were vultures, not condors.
I tried to fuel up in La Esperanza but the place was hopping with cars and trucks and we had plenty of gas to reach El Calafate. Instead, we picked up two hitchhikers. One was a 2011 Samohi grad named Danny. The French guy Danny was traveling with had asked if El Calafate had a stream or lake where he could wash his clothes. He was traveling indefinitely and filled our Volkswagen with a powerful stench that forced me to breath through my mouth. My favorite line from him in a heavily accented English was, “You can work when you’re old.” We dropped them off in crowded downtown El Calafate, still wall-to-wall with tourists.
We had a low-key evening for our last night at Hospedaje Lautaro before flying to Brazil the next day. I was sad to leave Patagonia.