A Chilean Adventure

Since we have to take the car all the way back to Puerto Varas, we’re planning on making it a quick trip north…meaning we’re taking all paved roads and putting in a lot of hours behind the wheel each day. Our goal is to get back to Valdivia by Saturday (Feb. 24) so we can attend their big celebration that they have every year to commemorate the independence of Valdivia.

But first, we have one very important stop on our Patagonian adventure: Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire). Tierra del Fuego is a sizeable island on the tip of South America. Half belongs to Chile and the other half belongs to Argentina. I don’t know how many people live on Tierra del Fuego, but the largest city has a population of 50,000 and I would estimate that there’s about 10,000 more when you combine all of the smaller towns.

There are ferries that leave from Punta Arenas and cross the strait in 2.5 hours to a small town on the other side (Porvenir). We opted for the shorter pass, which is about 1.5 hours northeast of Punta Arenas at Punta Delgada (Skinny Point).

When we got there, one ferry had just docked and a worker told us it was heading out again in 15 minutes. Since there really isn’t anything on either side of the strait at that point, most people just use the ferry to get vehicles, semis, and buses across and then head to destinations further south on the island. We just wanted to go across, eat lunch, and then come back. The captain allowed us to ride for free since they usually didn’t have passengers without vehicles.

After a quick 20 minute ferry ride we landed in Tierra del Fuego! We actually saw torinos from the deck of the ferry, which are a dolphin-like animal that has black and white markings that look similar to a killer whale. The local animals we’ve seen on our trip have been one of the highlights for me.

The local sites were much; just a road that led south and a couple of army buildings. We found our picnic spot and made some sandwiches. We had a full hour since that’s when the ferries run, so I did some reading and we both found some souvenir rocks to take back with us. Then we boarded the next ferry and were off again on our trek back north.

The guidebook described a national park near a volcano where you can hike around some lava beds. It sounded pretty cool, but as we went through town after town without finding a gas station, we had to decide to bypass the excursion because it would’ve been about 30 kilometers out of the way. I thought we had learned our lesson to always top off the gas tank, but who would think that there would be a stretch of major highway for 200 kilometers (120 miles) without a gas station? Can you imagine driving that far without seeing one single gas station? Crazy! Again, the map even showed some decent sized towns on the way, but they ended up not having much of anything. This time we weren’t worried about making it to a gas station, but we still didn’t want risk the extra distance.

So, after sadly watching the road to the lava beds pass by, we made it to the border crossing and entered Argentina once again. Now that we’re on a mission to get back to Valdivia quickly, we drove until about 8:30 p.m. and made it to a town called Comandante Luis Piedrabuena. What a long name! It’s usually shortened to just Piedrabuena.

We walked up and down the main street a couple times because it’s a very quaint little town. There are a lot of statues and there are some near flower-boxes on the sidewalks. My favorite statue was of Santa Claus with guanacos (similar to llamas) pulling his sleigh. We ended up in a local restaurant/bar and ate a Spanish tortilla (like and omelette, but with a lot of potatoes) and an Argentine milanesa (a piece of breaded chicken, pork or beef served on a sandwich with deli ham and cheese). Now we’re over-stuffed and ready for another night in the car! We have another long day of driving ahead of us!