Day 301: Tierra del Fuego – Day 1
In a bizarre twist of events, Lindsay woke up with a pinched nerve in her leg the *one night* we slept in a real bed instead of camping in the car. As a result, both of us were now gimps, hobbling along slowly whenever we had to walk anywhere. Good thing Patagonia is full of scenic car rides, because anything involving walking is out of the question for us! We decided to take it super easy so that we could recover in time for our dive trip.
After breakfast, we drove into town and stopped at Europcar’s Punta Arenas branch to go over our flat tire situation. We were surprised and incredibly pleased when the rental agency simply gave us a replacement car and told us they would take care of the flat tire. Even better, they were only going to charge us 50% for the replacement tire (we didn’t get tire coverage on our insurance, so we were expecting to foot the whole bill)! Igor handed Lindsay the keys to the old car so she could move all our stuff from one vehicle to the other, while he reviewed the damage report and safety equipment of the new Subaru. We were on our way in a brand-new car in under an hour – thanks, Europcar!
Lindsay is overjoyed by the breakfast spread: hot coffee and muesli!
Returning the dirty gray Subaru with a flat tire to the Punta Arenas rental office and exchanging it for a brand new, sparklingly clean white Subaru. Take two!
Since we no longer had a permit to cross into Argentina, our only option was to the southernmost section of Chile. We’ve already visited Torres del Paine National Park on a separate vacation 3 years ago, so we opted to explore unchartered territory and drive to the end of the road in the big island of Tierra del Fuego. The eastern half of the island belongs to Argentina (which we visited when we stopped in Ushuaia last month on the cruise), but the western half is in Chile and goes through some very remote country. Since we would have to cover a good 600KM after the last gas station, Luis from the Casa Escondida B&B lent us a second gas canister so we could carry 20L of spare fuel. After that, we drove off into the wilderness, heading for the end of the road (according to Google Maps) at Lake Cami on the edge of Karukinka Park. Supposedly, the Chilean Army is working on a new road which would lead through the forest all the way to the Beagle Channel – we decided to see how far we could go!
Our final scenic highway of our Patagonian road trip, La Ruta del Fin del Mundo, starting with a ferry ride off the continent to the island of Tierra del Fuego
We stop for gas at the (supposedly) southern-most gas station in Chile at Cerro Sombrero – Igor tries to proactively reduce the risk of another flat tire by letting out some air (thereby increasing the surface area of the tire)
Since it’s on the way, we stop at the King Penguin Park
There are only two viewing hides where you can watch the penguins, at a distance of 10M
There are about 50 King Penguins on the beach and in the grasses – some are molting, and some a sitting on eggs. The park has several ongoing population studies, and we can see that many of the birds have tags on their wings, and one even has a radio glued to its back
As we drive further south, we run into a pair of gauchos herding their sheep down the road
“The Draga Aurífera: It is actually a vestige of the origin of the settlement of the island. It was brought over during the gold rush. This machine performed the mechanical shovel work for the removal of dirt in the work of gold extraction. It came from England in 1904 and ran until 1910.”
Road trip to the End of the World!
“Vicuña Ranch: Located in the land of the Southern 54⁰ Parallel, founded in 1915, being awarded its first great grant in 1910 to Ramón Moisés de la Fuente, without any intention of colonization.”
Wildflowers decorate the quiet remains of Estancia Vicuña
We reached Karukinka Natural park by late afternoon. Unlike most of the other parks we have visited, this one was not a national park developed by the government, but rather a “greenspace” purchased and created by a corporation: Goldman Sachs, the investment bank. We’re not entirely sure what the motivation was for the creation of the park (Pure altruism? Unlikely. Good PR and off-setting CO² emissions? Perhaps.), but we came to the conclusion it’s not a very well-planned out park. There were barely any miradors, and no hikes that we could see (although, to be fair, we skipped the information center as it was already getting late and we didn’t want to admit our intention to freedom camp to the park staff) – the whole park seemed to just be a gravel road through the forest (where there were a lot of cut-down trees – not sure if it was for logging or debris from initially clearing the way for the road).
Karukinka Natural Park – a private park donated to the Wildlife Conservation Society by Goldman Sachs
View of the valley from one of the few miradors
Tierra del Fuego has a beaver problem, thanks to European settlers who thought it would be nice to introduce a non-native specie so they could harvest them for fur hats. As a result, many of the rivers in the area are damed up with mud and sticks
Despite all this, there were surprisingly a lot of people in the park! It was already quite late by the time we were searching for a camp site, but we kept passing cars driving in the opposite direction (odd, considering this is technically a dead-end road – what attraction are all these tourists coming from so late in the day?) and it seemed that every shoulder on the side of the road already had someone parked in it! We spotted a sign for an estancia around 9PM that advertised that it had camping available, so we opened their 3 gates and drove all the way down to the farm house. Perhaps the owner was simply annoyed that we were driving up so late in the night, but when we asked if we could camp on their property we were told they were “full.” Not for nuthin’, but there were plenty of spots on their land where we could have flattybouched. But after taking a look around, we decided we didn’t want to stay there anyways – it was kinda crowded and the outhouse looked pretty gross – at least in the wilderness we can just pee in the open with fresh air!
We drove all the way to the end of the road (according to Google Maps) and saw that a new road indeed veered off to the left. Luckily, we found a well-hidden turn-off about a minute down the new road, where someone had clearly camped before (there was an old campfire ring on one side of the site). With the last bit of light we had, Lindsay whipped up a quick dinner and we started to get our sleeping bags ready for the night. As we were getting into bed, Lindsay made a horrible discovery: an extra set of car keys in her jacket pocket. WE ACCIDENTALLY DROVE OFF WITH THE KEYS TO THE OLD RENTAL CAR. The poor staff at the Punta Arenas Europcar were stuck with a dirty car with a flat tire parked pretty badly outside their office for at least two days! We felt so guilty, but there was nothing we could do about it at this point.
All the good flattybouch sites were taken! We finally found a hidden campsite at the very end of the road, just in time for sunset at 10PM