Tuesday Topics: Patagonia, Reopening Chile, Vaccines, Masks & Linguistics, and Falklands Flights

When I arrived in Santiago de Chile in late February of 2020, to begin updating Moon Handbooks Patagonia for the upcoming sixth edition, what we now recognize as the COVID pandemic had barely begun and few of us appreciate what was a transformative event it would be. A couple weeks later, after I had crossed into northern Argentine Patagonia, its significance had become apparent and I managed to return to Chile before the border shut down and then, after various delays, to home in California.

When I landed in Santiago during the pandemic's earliest days, there were only the most basic temperature checks for airport arrivals.

After that lengthy delay, I’m once again planning—tentatively—to return to Chile in November. While I did travel to Buenos Aires and surroundings in March and April, I didn’t even consider a detour into Chile because its government had been slow to acknowledge foreign-administered vaccinations—an approval that’s necessary to obtain a pase de movilidad (mobility pass) permitting access to museums, restaurants, and other sites of interest to non-resident visitors.

Chile's acceptable vaccines list, according to Minsal (Health Ministry)

At that time, it was taking weeks to obtain the obligatory homologación, requiring an extended quarantine that made tourist travel inconvenient at best. Under pressure from the tourism sector, though, it has now instituted a process that should take no more than 48 hours through the Health Ministry’s vaccination website. Unfortunately, this does not (yet?) appear in English or any other foreign language but, since the policy in question is barely a week old, perhaps that’s just a short-term glitch? For those of us competent in Spanish that’s not an issue, but for the upcoming season it would seem essential.

 

What Is a Mask? A Linguistic Digression

A Chilean mascarilla

Ever since the pandemic started, we’ve been wearing masks and, when out in public, I still wear one (Alameda County, where I live, has only just rescinded its indoor mask mandate). I was in Chile when the pandemic started but before the mandate but, after I returned home quickly, the mascarilla soon became universal there and is still obligatory indoors and in outdoor spaces where it’s not possible to maintain one meter of distance between individuals. Mascarilla, by the way, is a diminutive of máscara, but I think the latter implies something that covers the entire face. In English, of course, we have just one term that covers both, though there qualifiers—“surgical mask,” for instance.

Instructions for your barbijo.

In Argentina, where I recently spent a month-plus, there are no mascarillas—rather, there are barbijos and tapabocas, two words that seem etymologically or otherwise curious. Barbijo derives from barba (beard), which feels odd since both men and women wear them, so perhaps it should be “barbijx” in interest of inclusive language?

This tapabocas covers more than just the mouth.

Alternatively, Argentines use tapabocas, which literally means “mouth covering”—oddly inappropriate, one would think, when masks are supposed to cover both the mouth and nose. Nevertheless, during my time there, Argentines were pretty conscientious about wearing their masks properly—both indoors and outdoors.

 

SCL to PUQ to MPN

Mount Pleasant International Airport (MPN) in the Falklands

Meanwhile, flights from the South American continent to the Falkland Islands will resume this coming Saturday, July 2nd. Since the Islands—insular Patagonia, if you will—form an important entry in the book, I’m very keen to return. Also, having lived there for more than a year in 1986-7 and revisited half a dozen times, I have many friends and acquaintances whom I am keen to revisit.

The Offices of International Tours and Travel (LAN has since been rebranded as LATAM)

According to an email I received from Sally Ellis, of Stanley’s International Tours and Travel, “The LATAM airlink with Chile will resume on 02 July with its normal route of Santiago - Punta Arenas - Falklands roundtrip, and a roundtrip possible from [the Argentine provincial capital of] Rio Gallegos if you travel to the Falklands on the second Saturday of each month and return on the third Saturday of each month.” It’s worth noting here that anyone flying from Punta Arenas to the Falklands and disembarking in Río Gallegos on return could run afoul of Argentine immigration—since Argentina consider the Falklands to be theirs, they may not give you an entry stamp at the airport and, when you try to leave at another border post, officials there might say you entered the country illegally.

 

Before the pandemic hit, there was an alternative route via Brazil and the central Argentine city of Córdoba but, according to Sally, “The Brazil route has no resumption date yet but will not be before the summer - maybe November?” I’ve never taken this route, but I wouldn’t rule it out at some point—especially since it would give me a chance to revisit one of Argentina’s most historic provincial capitals and its nearby Sierras.

Fruit for Calafate? And Veg, Too...

Nearly three decades ago, when I first visited El Calafate, the gateway to the Perito Moreno Glacier was a compact village of just a few thousand people with a modest selection of hotels, restaurants and other services. The nearest airport was in Río Gallegos, at least three hours overland.

El Calafate's core is compact and even sheltered, but the town is spreading onto the steppes and along the lakeshore.

The glacier’s presence, though, incentivized a tourist boom that, coupled with a new state-of-the-art airport, has resulted in a sprawling town with many new hotels, restaurants and other services—not to mention housing for an increasing number of permanent residents (one of whom is my cousin, Elisa Rodríguez, who’s a tour guide in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and elsewhere in Patagonia). The town center is still compact, but the old hilltop airport runway is home to a new bus terminal and is gradually filling with new houses, as is the Lago Argentino lakeshore west of downtown.

The wild Río Santa Cruz, whose source is Lago Argentino, is under threat from  two large hydroelectric projects.

That sort of growth—the population now exceeds 20,000—requires a larger food supply, both seasonally and throughout the year, and supermarkets like La Anónima (linked to the historic Braun-Menéndez wool empire) have picked up the slack. It helps that roads have improved dramatically, and that flights from Buenos Aires are frequent but, in an area where environmental issues are paramount—global warming directly affects the glaciers and two large dam projects on the free-flowing Río Santa Cruz are highly controversial—sustainable food might be included among them.

Grilled lamb, on a stake, is a stereotypical Patagonian entree.

In southern Patagonia, the stereotypical diet is meat and more meat—traditionally it’s lamb, grilled on a stake over hot coals. Historically speaking, that’s a by-product of the huge sheep ranches that have occupied almost every acre of land since the “wool rush” of the 19th century. To be sure, are some cattle, but getting fresh fruit and vegetables has always been an issue here. With low temperatures and short growing seasons, root crops like potatoes were viable, along with soft fruits like raspberries and gooseberries, but many items, such as grapes and even fruit trees, were restricted to limited production in conservatories.

The approach to Chacra Las Moras

A row of poplars protects the cherry orchard from fierce Patagonian winds.

That said, on my recent visit to Calafate, I saw the largest fruit and vegetable production I’d ever seen in the region, at Chacra Las Moras, a literal garden spot where my cousin shops for much of her produce. There’s an orchard of cherry trees, sheltered by poplars, similar to what I’ve seen in the more northerly “banana belt” climate of Los Antiguos (Argentina) and its cross-border sibling of Chile Chico.

Currants do well outdoors here.

Strawberry tunnels forever?

There are also currants, raspberries and blackberries outdoors, but most of the cultivation takes place within the largest poly-tunnels I’ve ever seen, where strawberries, lettuce and tomatoes thrive. The warm temperatures inside seemed positively subtropical, but these are vulnerable structures that Patagonian gales can shred in minutes—as has apparently happened. Still, it was refreshing to see this intensive horticulture test the limits to find a niche in a town that needs what it can offer.

Jams and liqueurs on display

More local products at the checkout display

Chacra Las Moras also sells products from other nearby farms, such as calafate jam and liqueurs, and serves afternoon tea. Even for those who don’t purchase anything, it’s open for self-guided tours of what can be done under such challenging conditions.

Cannabis can survive outdoors here, but not - to my knowledge, at least - at Chacra Las Moras.

They do not, however, grow cannabis, which my nephew—soon to leave for Australia—was cultivating on the window sill of his Calafate residence.

Can Argentina (Make) Change? Are Thinner Wallets Better?

This week, many Argentines will find their wallets a big lighter – and that may be a good thing. It’s because a new 500-peso banknote (pictured above), with a value of roughly US$33 has just gone into circulation, and it solves a whole bunch of problems – at least temporarily.

That’s largely thanks to mismanagement by Argentina’s previous government, which refused to issue any banknote larger than 100 pesos (less than US$7) even as the peso plunged in value against the US dollar and other foreign currencies. It was part of their effort to deny an inflation that reached upwards of 40 per cent per annum (though it never got to the level of the 1970s and 1980s when, if Argentine governments spoke hopefully of 50 percent inflation, they meant per month).

From my own perspective, traveling extensively every year in Argentina and Chile – crossing the border with some frequency – it’s meant a wallet uncomfortably thick with Argentine currency. It was also bad for banks, though - ATM machines, obviously, do not have an infinite storage capacity and, if demand was high, they could empty quickly.

Not only that, the armored cars that refilled those ATMs had limited capacity as well, and restocking the machines required more frequent visits. This was especially troublesome in popular tourist destinations like El Chaltén, which received infrequent service from banks in the provincial capital of Río Gallegos (ironically enough, the political home base of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband/predecessor, the late Néstor Kirchner).

However necessary the larger bills may be, they’re no miracle cure for Argentina’s economic malaise – larger bills might, in fact, fuel the fear of inflation that’s always latent in Argentina. I still remember, more than 30 years ago, the fact of million-peso banknotes that became barely worth the paper they were printed on; more pragmatically, I wonder whether, in the none-too-distant future, today’s shiny new banknotes might fill my wallet as uncomfortably as their lower-value predecessors.

For the time being, though, I welcome the new bills as a contribution to easing economic problems that still need longer-term solutions, but there could be glitches. It’s quite possible that, as one sardonic Argentine journalist tweeted, “I come from the future. The taxi driver has no change for a 500-peso note.”