Lands of Fire and Ice

In California, this summer’s been a hot one and, perhaps, the worst wildfire season in our history. Here in Oakland, our worst was the 1991 firestorm—which came close enough to our Rockridge residence that my wife and daughter stayed with friends—but this year’s events have occurred mostly in rural wildlands and we’ve only seen occasional ashfall from them.

Until last Friday, I'd never seen Argentine plates in California.

Coincidentally, though, I received a reminder of another “land of fire” when, walking the dog last Friday, I turned the corner to see a Citroën Xsara Picasso with Argentine plates—the first such plates I’ve ever seen in California—that was decorated with a map of the Americas and the legend “Todo por América, Ushuaia – Alaska.” When I stopped to speak with them, the owners were a bit surprised to hear someone speaking (more or less) Argentine Spanish, but I invited Eduardo Ybarra and Emilia Florencio (and their Australian shepherd Ona) around the corner to meet my (Argentine) wife.

Emilia sips yerba mate, with Eduardo in the driver's seat and Ona in the back.

Eduardo and Emilia, though, had car problems—the starter had given out on their 2012 vehicle and the Citroën itself is almost unknown in this country except, perhaps, for a few collectors. Parking outside, they had to leave the car running (and locked) because they could only start it on an incline. After a brief visit and a thermos of mate, drunk while Ona cavorted with my daughter’s boxer mix in the garden (my elderly and arthritic malamute could only observe), I accompanied them to our local mechanic, who told us they couldn’t work on the exotic French vehicle (Citroën have not been sold in the US since 1974).

In 1991-2, our Peugeot 404 was a frequent guest of Patagonian mechanics.

Fortunately, using the mobile app iOverlander, they located a Guatemalan mechanic who managed to repair the starter, but their situation suggests a greater problem worth the attention of anyone who takes a Pan-American road trip. I myself have driven extensively in southernmost South America, first with a rattletrap Peugeot 404 that belonged to my late father-in-law and somehow survived the ruggedest stretches of Patagonia’s legendary Ruta 40—with help from talented street mechanics—in the days before that highway was even partly paved. In some cases, the surface was not gravel, but rather stones the size of my first.

I have even shipped cars from California—in one case an aging Datsun pickup and, in another, a more versatile Toyota Xtra Cab. In Chile, I now own an SUV, a 2007 Suzuki Grand Nomade with relatively low mileage, and I’ve occasionally encountered other gringos who’ve traveled the length of the Americas, though not necessarily from Alaska.

The type of vehicle makes a difference precisely because of parts availability and mechanical assistance. If, for example, you drive a Prius to South America, finding replacement parts would be nearly impossible, as these hybrid vehicles are only now starting to appear in Argentina and Chile. In my opinion, our new Argentine friends were fortunate to find a capable mechanic willing to tackle their problem—I expect he had to improvise—but if something gives out on the remote Alaska Highway, will they be so fortunate again?

If you're northbound from California, keep an eye out for Eduardo and Emilia.

I’ve never driven to or even visited Alaska, though I suspect that anybody along the route will lend the help they can in case of breakdown, but I still feel the Citroën is something of a ticking time bomb. Alaska also has a short summer, and I would hope they get started soon, as a long drive remains. You can follow their progress at Todo por América.

Patagonia Blue(s)? An Exchange-Rate Update

For various reasons – a brief illness and a work assignment that kept me anchored to the computer for about ten days – I’ve spent less time on the Argentine side of Patagonia than I had hoped or anticipated. That said, it’s still given me some insight into the continuing complications of the exchange rates here, both for foreign visitors and for Argentines and their businesses.

Two weeks ago, I crossed the border from Chile’s Torres del Paine to the Argentine tourist town of El Calafate, where I usually stay in my cousin’s house. She was out of town, though, and my other usual contacts (her ex-husband and my nephew) had no available space, so I had to spend money on a hotel. I found a simple but pleasant place for 490 pesos (about US$55 at the official exchange rate).

I had a supply of Argentine pesos that I had purchased at the “blue” rate of roughly 13 to the dollar in December in Buenos Aires, but thought I might need more, so I asked the owner what rate she paid for US dollars. I knew it would be lower here, where the tourist economy puts quite a bit of foreign currency in private hands – my cousin and nephew are guides who often get tips in dollars – but accepted the offer of 11.50 pesos per dollar, which made the effective room rate about US$43. I also got some change in return, augmenting my peso supply.

That wasn’t as good as the Buenos Aires rate and, at dinner with my nephew and my cousin’s ex that night, I learned that Calafate’s only foreign exchange house had closed. That leaves the banks and ATMs, which pay only the official rate, or negotiations with hotels or other businesses, such as tour agencies. En route to El Chaltén, I made a brief stop at the historic roadhouse of La Leona (pictured above), where the rate was 11 pesos (as pictured below). Friends at El Chaltén, who operate a hybrid hostel/B&B, told me they were reluctant to involve themselves in money-changing because of the recent fluctuations in the market (the dollar reached as high as 15 pesos in the not-too-distant past).

As I reported in the previous post, I had to make an unexpected detour to the town of Gobernador Gregores as I drove north on Ruta 40, and there the YPF gas station (pictured below) was offering 10 pesos – not much of a premium on the official rate. I had plenty of pesos to fill the tank, though, so I didn’t have to change money there.

Shortly thereafter, I returned to Chile and, a couple days ago, I crossed the border from Futaleufú to Esquel, where a friend told me the market there had pretty much dried up because of a government crackdown. I proceeded north, with a brief stop for empanadas and ice cream at El Bolsón, before arriving at Villa La Angostura, my last stop before returning to Chile. My pesos were running a little low.

Unfortunately, I arrived too late to visit Cambio Andina (pictured at top), an exchange house that was paying the blue rate last year. I went to find accommodations and learned that, unfortunately, this is the weekend of a big moto-cross event (something I loathe) and rooms would be hard to find. The first place that had a room (which I knew from an earlier visit) would accept dollars at nine pesos, barely above the official rate.

Another place’s prices had skyrocketed – even in dollar terms – since I stayed there last year, but its owner would change dollars at 12 pesos. I decided to try one other place, where an apologetic receptionist told me that Andina would still change at the blue rate for tourists, but only the official rate for locals, so she preferred not to do so. I ended up returning to the previous option, but paying a bit more than I had hoped.

What’s the moral of this story? Argentina continues to be unpredictable, and is likely to be so at least until a new government takes office at year’s end.

MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE ANDES

There’s also news in Chile’s foreign exchange market, where the dollar stood at roughly 620 pesos when I arrived at the end of January, then rose upwards of 640 before recently returning to the 620 level. This contrasts, however, with the rate of 540 pesos a year ago, so that Chile has actually gotten a bit cheaper (unlike in Argentina, inflation remains low). Also, in Chile, there’s no parallel market, so you can withdraw from ATMs without an exchange rate penalty (preferably BancoEstado, with very low user charges).

Ash Across the Andes: Chile's Volcán Puyehue Erupts

In 1979, when I first visited Chile, one of my most memorable excursions was an overnight trek to the slopes of Volcán Puyehue, a stratovolcano that, as part of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex, produced a massive 1960 eruption shortly after the historic Valdivia earthquake (at 9.5 on the Richter scale, the most powerful ever recorded). Continuing for two months, that eruption (depicted in the NOAA photograph above) left a landscape that, despite a marine west coast climate comparable to Seattle or Portland, was no less barren than the Atacama Desert.

At a time when Chile received few foreign visitors, I saw nobody else even along the trail's wooded lower slopes, slept in a comfortable national park shelter, and soaked in rustic thermal baths, all the while photographing sights such as the geometric fumaroles and massive lava flows left by the eruption nearly two decades earlier. Since I did it, the Puyehue trek has acquired a certain popularity for its scenic grandeur and its easy accessibility on the international highway from Osorno to the Argentine lakes district resorts of Villa La Angostura and San Carlos de Bariloche.

At the moment, though, this route is closed, and not just because of early winter snowstorms. On Saturday, the Córdon Caulle erupted with pumice and ashfalls that forced the evacuation of some 3,500 people, and closed the highway between Chile and Argentina (some footage on Chilean TV showed policemen hefting stones of lightweight pumice now scattered along the road over the Andes). Guests at the historic Hotel Termas de Puyehue, a classic hot springs resort within Parque Nacional Puyehue, were among the evacuees.

According to MercoPress, the ashfall has also left Bariloche beneath a film of gray; city residents were advised to stockpile water and wear surgical masks if they needed to go out, to avoid breathing the ash. Parts of Argentina’s Ruta 40 were 30 centimeters (about 12 inches) deep in ash, making driving inadvisable. It also obliged Argentine authorities to suspend flights and close airports at Bariloche, San Martín de los Andes, Neuquén, Esquel and even the Atlantic coast city of Trelew.

Originally, the column of steam and ash reached an altitude of ten kilometers (roughly 30,000 feet) but, as of Sunday, it had subsided. Presuming it continues to subside, the economic disruption should be minimal but, if it continues, it could have a high cost. After the Libertadores pass between Santiago and Mendoza, the Cardenal Samoré pass is the second-busiest border crossing between the two countries, both for commercial and tourist traffic.

Many Chileans spend the weekend across the border but, more importantly for Bariloche, Villa La Angostura, San Martín de los Andes and Esquel, ski season is about to begin. If flights from Buenos Aires and Brazil can’t land anywhere in northern Argentine Patagonia, it won’t matter how much snow falls at Cerro Catedral, Cerro Bayo, Chapelco and La Hoya.

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Chile to Chile: a Motoring Marathon

On Sunday morning, around 9 a.m., I began a long solo drive that began in Punta Arenas (Chile) and took me to and across the Argentine border at Monte Aymond, proceeded north on coastal RN 3 to Comodoro Rivadavia, and then cut across northwest to the northern Patagonian lakes district. Finally, around 9 p.m. last night, I crossed the Andes from Villa la Angostura via the Paso Cardenal Samoré to spend the night at the nondescript lakeside town of Entre Lagos - a distance of roughly 2,070 km (about 1,280 miles) - in some 60 hours.

Because I was unable to snag a berth on the ferry from Puerto Natales back to Puerto Montt, I had no alternative but to return via Argentina. That may not sound like a great distance to anyone accustomed to driving four-lane freeways in the United States, but two-lane roads in the Southern Cone can be a different matter entirely.

I chose the route in question primarily because it consisted of paved roads, except for the odd bit of construction. That’s a little misleading as to driving conditions, though - RN 3 is pretty good, but segments of Chubut province’s RP 20 are badly grooved and potholed, as are some more northerly sections of RN 40 (I have written about RN 40’s southernmost parts many times).

For almost the entire trip, powerful headwinds and sidewinds that I would estimate at 50 knots with even higher gusts, didn’t much slow my progress. They did, however, eat into my gas mileage and, at the same time, they made it a challenge to stay on the road. With even stronger gusts every time an 18-wheeler passed in the opposite direction, it was all I could do to stay on the pavement, and I can only imagine how motorcyclists and bicyclists might feel simply trying to stay upright.

All that said, this was not the most irksome part of the trip - rather, it was the Argentine police. They’re my longstanding pet peeve, not because of overzealous enforcement (for what it’s worth, I have never seen an Argentine patrol car stop anybody for speeding; for that matter, I’ve rarely ever seen a patrol car on the highway, as opposed to parked alongside the road). It’s not even because they’re notorious for soliciting bribes for minor equipment violations, such as burnt-out brake lights, at roadside checkpoints (that’s not happened to me for a long time). Rather, it’s the time-wasting stops as 20-year-old rookies armed with a clipboards detain dozens of vehicles to write down number plates, check driver’s licenses, and ask each driver where he or she is coming from, and where they are heading.

Apart from the fact that it’s not their business whether I or any other non-felon might be Bariloche-bound, the police have no way of knowing whether or not our answers are truthful. Outside Río Gallegos, I told them I was driving to Alaska; at Sarmiento, I merely said “north” and, when asked if that meant the province of Formosa, I said it meant Canada. In reality, multiplied by the tens of thousands of times it must happen every day throughout the country, this is a pointless waste of resources; cumulatively, the lost time - not to mention the fossil fuels wasted by idling vehicles - is a burden on the Argentine economy.

That said, it’s been worse. In 1979, when I hitchhiked through an Argentine Patagonia then under a vicious military dictatorship, the police outside Puerto San Julián stopped a driver who had graciously given me and another young man a lift north from Río Gallegos. On learning that the other passenger was Israeli, the police took us all to the local station (pictured above) where, for more than an hour, they interrogated him with me as the default interpreter.

Aside from the fact that my Spanish language skills then were inferior to my current fluency, it was not easy to translate the combative Israeli’s “Tell these [expletives deleted] to go [expletive deleted] themselves.” At least, it was difficult to do so in any remotely delicate form, at a time when people often "disappeared" in such circumstances. That sort of flagrant anti-Semitism is thankfully rare in today’s Argentina, but I can never pass Puerto San Julián’s police station without being reminded of that time.

Navimag's Rocky Voyage; Chilean ATMs

At least half a dozen times, I’ve taken the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt south to Puerto Natales, and every time I’ve experienced the same sense of eager anticipation about departing “civilization” for the wilds of Patagonia - despite the fact that I first visited the region in 1980, and have traveled there almost annually since 1990. Despite my familiarity with it, Patagonia never ceases to thrill me.

Yesterday, I was scheduled to take the ferry from Puerto Natales north to Puerto Montt - reversing my usual pattern. From my hotel overlooking Seno Última Esperanza (“Last Hope Sound”), I could see the snow-topped summits of nearby mountains and, on a clear day, parts of Torres del Paine, while waiting for Navimag’s ferry Evangelistas to arrive. Unfortunately, an email informed me that the vessel would limp in late to Natales, and would require repairs that would postpone the next sailing for two weeks.

On arising this morning, I went to the Natales pier (pictured above), where passengers were disembarking after spending the night on board; as the ship arrived around midnight, it would have been senseless to send them to hotels and hostels at that hour. There are numerous rumors about what happened, but the only apparent facts are that the vessel struck an islet and, as a consequence, had damage to the bow and one disabled engine. Two Swedish passengers told me they felt the hit, but that the crew handled everything professionally and there was no panic aboard.

At the moment, divers are inspecting the damage, but it appears that the ship will sail back to Puerto Montt, with freight but without passengers, and that the repairs will be undertaken there. Puerto Natales lacks a shipyard to deal with anything but minor repairs, though Punta Arenas (the home port for Navimag’s sister company Cruceros Australis) would conceivably be able to handle bigger jobs.

In any event I, and more than a few other travelers, were sorely disappointed. In my case, I had no desire to return to Chile through Argentina on RN 40, which I had driven so recently, but I managed to turn lemons into lemonade by arranging a week on the new Cruceros vessel Stella Australis, from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia and back, for this coming Saturday. I will then return to Puerto Natales for the ferry's scheduled sailing on the 15th.

A Chilean ATM Glitch
I’ve written several times about Argentine ATM problems recently, but maybe it’s not just Argentina. Sunday afternoon, when I was ran short of cash and headed to BancoEstado in Puerto Natales, I tried to withdraw 200,000 pesos (about US$400) from the ATM, but without success. Wondering whether I had run up against an unprecedented withdrawal limit, I reduced the amount to 150,000 pesos, then to 100,000 pesos, then to 50,000 pesos - with no more success. Then, in desperation, I took one last chance at 40,000 pesos - at which point the machine coughed up 40 crisp new 1,000-peso notes (worth about US$2 each).

I can only conclude that, by Sunday afternoon, the bigger bills in the machine had run out and it was programmed to limit withdrawals - fortunately, plenty enough for pay for my lunch and a bit more. By Monday afternoon, service was back to normal and, though I anticipate no further problems, visitors to relatively small towns such as Natales might make preemptory withdrawals on Friday or Saturday if there’s any chance the money might run out over the weekend.

Adios, Telken

Over the past twenty years, I have driven Argentine Patagonia’s legendary Ruta 40 (“La Cuarenta”) about a dozen times, but until this week, I’ve always done so from south to north. Last week, though, I entered the country at Los Antiguos and drove south from the town of Perito Moreno to El Calafate, where I am presently staying with my cousin Elisa Rodríguez (a guide at Parque Nacional Los Glaciares) and her husband Sebastián Bruni (also a guide here and beyond the region).

La Cuarenta has changed dramatically over those two decades - when I first drove the route in 1991, with my wife María Laura and our friend Bruce Caplan, we took four days to cover the roughly 600 km (or perhaps I should say the rough 600 km, as it was all rocks and gravel) from El Calafate. We made detours to destinations such as Parque Nacional Perito Moreno and, in the course of the trip, we saw a grand total of three other vehicles.

Almost half the route is paved now, and work is proceeding quickly, and not so quickly, almost everywhere else. In the interim, there are washboard detours and one segment near Estancia La Angostura that will continue to provide a taste of the original as La Cuarenta is rerouted east to pass through Gobernador Gregores, which has gasoline and other services, including hotels and restaurants. In fact, despite the increased traffic - I saw hundreds of buses, cars and motorcycles, and a few bicycles en route - there seem to be fewer services on the original route than in past years.

Over the many years I’ve traveled throughout the region, one of the highlights has always been an overnight at Estancia Telken, a poplar-sheltered sheep ranch roughly midway between Perito Moreno and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cueva de las Manos. My hosts there have always been Coco and Petty Nauta, descendents of Dutch and New Zealand immigrants respectively, who also welcomed tourists to the ranch - in fact, they even welcomed backpackers and cyclists, for whom they set aside a grassy campground with an enclosed kitchen and hot showers.

It was the guests in the main house and adjacent cabañas, though, who got the real family treatment - evening meals were a communal celebration that recalled the days when it would never have occurred to Patagonian ranchers to ask any visitor for payment. Rather, you felt that they simply enjoyed having guests and you felt like their invitee.

Unfortunately, as they aged, Coco and Petty finally acknowledged they couldn’t continue the strenuous task of running a ranch, and sold the property two years ago to a family from Comodoro Rivadavia. Still active, the Nautas retain a smaller property just outside Perito Moreno, but they are no longer innkeepers.

After two seasons as absentee proprietors, Telken’s purchasers finally decided it should be a simple sheep ranch rather than a roadside inn - one of few along this newly paved segment of La Cuarenta. There are other estancias alongside the highway, but none of them can match Telken’s hospitality, and the sign still standing along the highway is a reminder of what’s been lost.

New Flights to Easter Island; Argentina's Latest Cash Crisis

Today’s entry covers new air services to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and Argentina’s latest monetary crisis.

Perú to Rapa Nui
More than half a century ago, Thor Heyerdahl surmised that the first inhabitants of Easter Island had arrived from present-day Peru, and set off to prove that on his raft Kon-Tiki. He deserves credit for asking big questions, but subsequent archaeological evidence proved that the stubborn Heyerdahl was wrong - in fact, Rapa Nui’s earliest inhabitants crossed the Western Pacific from Polynesia.

Contemporary travel from Peru to Easter Island is literally taking off, though, as LAN has instituted twice-weekly flights from Lima to Hanga Roa's Aeropuerto Mataveri (pictured above) - no longer will Rapanuiphiles have to fly three hours farther south to Santiago to catch another five-hour flight to Chile’s iconic volcanic speck in the mid-Pacific. On the face of it, this is a brilliant commercial move - archaeology fanatics fresh from Machu Picchu and other Peruvian sites will have an easy means of seeing the enigmatic stone statues of Rano Raraku and other sites without visiting mainland Chile. The hope, though, is that this will become part of a tourism triangle from Peru to Easter Island to Santiago (which has many more flights to and from the remote island) and elsewhere in Chile.

It also provides a possible way to avoid Chile’s unfortunate “reciprocity fee,” which is collected only at Santiago’s Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Moreno Benítez (SCL). Lima to Hanga Roa passengers should not have to pay the fee there, and the segment from Hanga Roa to SCL is a domestic flight (though it usually arrives at the international terminal).

Argentina’s Money Problems
No, it’s not the country’s foreign debt. Astonishingly, for a country that spent much of the 1980s printing money enough to fuel an inflation that often reached 50 percent per month, there is such a shortage of banknotes that the government has had to turn to Brazil to print three billion pesos’ worth of 100-peso notes. In the meantime, in many parts of the country, there is simply no cash in the ATMs - according to an overland traveler with whom I spoke in Villa O’Higgins last night, many arrivals in El Chaltén (whose ATM appears in the photo below) have no cash whatsoever, and their plastic does them little good as credit cards are still a little uncommon there.

For my part, I will be entering Argentina in a couple days and, as an emergency measure, I changed some US dollars into Argentine pesos thanks to Jorge Salgado, the Spanish owner of the new El Mosco B&B, hostel and campground in Villa O’Higgins. I will be crossing from Chile Chico to Los Antiguos and Perito Moreno, then heading south to El Chaltén, and don’t want to be caught without cash - especially when there are no credit card gasoline options along southbound Ruta 40. For the moment, at least, all Argentina-bound travelers should carry some US cash.

Backroads of Salta (Part 2)

While Ruta Nacional 68 from Salta to Cafayate is paved, the second day’s stretch north to Molinos and Cachi is not such easy driving - beyond the village of San Carlos, about 20 km (12 miles) from Cafayate, Ruta Nacional 40 becomes a narrow, dusty and often washboarded road where, however, every curve is a new photo opportunity.

RN 40 is, in fact, legendary as Argentina’s counterpart to Route 66 in the western United States. Though there’s no single song that sums it up in less than three minutes, Argentina’s Dylanesque folk-rock musician León Gieco once undertook a musicological road trip, De Ushuaia a La Quiaca, that covered the entire route from the Bolivian border to Tierra del Fuego in a three-album series (even though, technically, RN 40 ends at the tip of the continent near Río Gallegos). Oscar-winning musician Gustavo Santaolalla produced the first two albums of the series.

One problem along this route, whose folded sedimentary badlands are only slightly less colorful than those of the Quebrada de Cafayate, is that there is no public transportation between the town of Angastaco, 70 km beyond Cafayate, and the cozy village of Molinos, another 32 km north (the distances on the fading highway sign above are no longer accurate). In a rental car or on a mountain bike, it’s easily doable but, between Angastaco and Molinos, the road is so narrow and winding that coming face to face with an oncoming vehicle is a serious matter - sound the horn at every curve.

Dating from the 17th century, Molinos features a landmark colonial church with a twin bell tower and one of the best accommodations along the route, the recently upgraded Hacienda de Molinos, whose pepper-shaded patio (pictured above) is also an outdoor dining room (even in mid-winter, afternoons can be warm and sunny here). Molinos is also the last place to fill up on gasoline until the town of Cachi and, for cyclists, it also has a comfortable campground.

The area’s top attraction, though, is Estancia Colomé, 18 km southwest via a winding gravel road, where Swiss wine magnate Donald Hess has turned a 19th-century bodega and vineyard into a state-of-the-art winery, complete with a modern gallery dedicated to the unconventional light-and-space works of California artist James Turrell. Open for guided tours only - otherwise you might never find your way out - the museum makes a fine complement to the vineyard and winery tour; for those who can afford it, Colomé also has a luxurious nine-suite hotel (pictured below) with a restaurant that’s open to the public (the winery, for its part, offers a light menu throughout the day).

If both Molinos and Colomé are beyond your budget, the town of Cachi is only 27 km farther north so that, in principle, it’s possible to spend the night there. Cachi (pictured below) enjoys an impressive setting at the base of the 6,380 meter Nevado de Cachi, a snow-covered summit that rises more than 4,000 meters above the town. It features a shady plaza with an 18th-century church and, opposite the church, a fine archaeological museum (though the explanatory text is in Spanish only). It also offers a diversity of accommodations for all budgets (my personal favorite is the cozy 15-room Hostal El Cortijo) and a modest but improving restaurant scene (where the house wines usually come from Colomé).

Beyond Cachi, RN 40 is paved for 12 km to the Payogasta junction, where it continues north toward San Antonio de los Cobres through wild high country that’s inadvisable without 4WD. Rather than that longer route, take the southeasterly Ruta Provincial 33, which climbs to the 3,348-meter Cuesta del Obispo, in Parque Nacional Los Cardones, so named for the saguaro-like candelabra cacti that dot the dry highlands here.

RP 33 is paved to the Cuesta, beyond which it’s a zigzag descent down the scenic Quebrada de Escoipe - scenic in winter, at least, when it rarely rains. In summer, which is the rainy season here, it’s often obscured by cloud and requires caution. Gradually, the province is paving the road to the RN 68 junction, the point of return to Salta - and the end of one of Argentina’s most engaging road trips. There’s plenty more, though, to bring visitors back to the Andean northwest at any season.

The Southern Cone Road Trip: Filling the Tank in Argentina and Chile

Last week, I drove from Mendoza (Argentina) to Santiago (Chile), which has given me an excuse to post a comparative analysis of driving costs in the two countries - something I promised to do a couple months ago, as I was driving through Chilean Patagonia (pictured here, in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine). Today I’m going to analyze the micro-economics of car travel in those countries, specifically the cost of fuel, but bear in mind that this is a moving target, even as there are some constants.

Fuel costs, of course, vary according to world petroleum markets. Chile, which imports nearly all of its oil, has been highly vulnerable to these fluctuations; the government reviews fuel prices on a weekly basis, in accordance with the price of crude. In general, both diesel and bencina (gasoline) are cheaper in Santiago; prices increase with distance from the capital, with some exceptions. The country’s highest pump prices are in the remote Patagonian town of Cochrane, along the Carretera Austral, because it’s nowhere close to a refinery; fuel is cheaper in the more distant city of Punta Arenas, partly because the country’s small petroleum reserves are nearby.

Until recently, Argentina was self-sufficient in petroleum, and it still provides the vast majority of its own. Some of this comes from Neuquén and Mendoza provinces, but most of it derives from the southern Patagonian provinces of Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. For this reason, and because of their vast distances, the federal government has decreed that nafta (gasoline) prices in southernmost Patagonia are tax-free - more than a third cheaper than in the rest of the country. Diesel prices, though, are about the same throughout the country.

What does this mean in practice? A year ago, before petroleum prices collapsed from roughly US$150 per barrel to about US$50 today, Chilean pump prices - close to US$5 per US gallon - were roughly double those in Argentina (the Chilean peso was much stronger then than it is today as well). Today, though, the situation has almost reversed itself. As the photograph indicates, the price of super (premium) gasoline at the Argentine border town of Uspallata (Mendoza province) is 3.383 pesos (91 US cents) per liter, or roughly US$3.47 per US gallon. Diesel costs 2.621 pesos (71 US cents) per liter, or US$2.69 per US gallon.

On the other side of the border, at the town of Río Blanco (pictured here), last week’s pump price for premium was 485 Chilean pesos (84 US cents) per liter or US$3.18 per gallon, slightly cheaper than in Argentina. Meanwhile, the price for diesel (which last year was higher than that for gasoline) is now 353 Chilean pesos (61 US cents) per liter or US$2.32 per US gallon, now even cheaper than in Argentina.

Many Argentines and rather fewer Chileans use diesel-powered vehicles for everyday transportation, partly because of lower diesel prices. In southern Argentine Patagonia, however, there is no advantage in doing so - south of the Río Negro province towns of Sierra Grande (on coastal Ruta 3) and El Bolsón (on the Andean Ruta 40), premium gasoline goes for about 2.169 pesos (57 US cents) per liter, about US$2.17 per US gallon.

Argentina, as so often, is going against the grain with its energy prices - even as they are falling elsewhere on the continent and around the world, they are rising in Argentina. Of course, there is a good case that to be made that prices were unrealistically low in the recent past, and that this caused shortages that made car travel unpredictable last year. Over the last month and a half in Argentine Patagonia, this was not an issue for me.

Another happy side effect of this has been the end of differential energy pricing, at least along the Chilean border, as Argentina’s federal government had decreed special pumps, with higher prices, for cars with foreign license plates. This, in effect, turned 18-year-old pump jockeys into de facto customs officials, but there were ways around this, as I wrote in a post in late 2007. Whether the measure has been rescinded along the Brazilian and Uruguayan borders, I do not know yet.

Breaking the Bank in El Calafate

In 1990, when I first visited the Patagonian town of El Calafate, tourists were still a relative novelty. Seven years earlier, Argentina had emerged from the Southern Cone’s nastiest 1970s military dictatorship, but the gateway to the Moreno Glacier was still barely a blip on the international travel map. In the process of writing my initial guidebook to Argentina, for a publisher best left unnamed, I castigated the town as “an oversized encampment of rapacious merchants fixated on making a year's income in a few short months by maintaining high prices rather than increasing sales.”

One reason for that comment was the difficulty, and disadvantages, of changing money here. At that time, Argentina’s currency was the austral and, after years of hyper-inflation, the exchange rate had reached 10,000 to the US dollar. The only place to change money officially was the Banco de la Provincia de Santa Cruz and, after it closed on Friday afternoon, local shops were the only option. There you were lucky to get 9,000 or even 8,500 per dollar, with local merchants reaping a tidy profit at the bank on Monday morning.

The very concept of globalization has taken a hit over the past few months, but one undeniable advantage has been the proliferation of the ATM, which has liberated visitors from the need to visit banks or exchange houses during opening hours, and to go through the laborious process of changing travelers’ checks (a few people still do so). Today, El Calafate has four banks and half a dozen ATMs, and that’s helped make it a more welcoming place (so has the new airport, and a critical mass of quality accommodations and restaurants). Immigrants from elsewhere in Argentina have given it a youthful vitality.

But changing money is still a problem, if not in the way it once was. In fact, it’s an Argentine problem: following a high-profile “express kidnapping” in which the victim - opposition politician Margarita Stolbizer - was forced to attempt to withdraw money from her account at various ATMs in Buenos Aires province, authorities have placed a withdrawal limit of 300 pesos (about US$85) at cash machines throughout the country. In a town like El Calafate, where there is no crime problem whatsoever and it’s easy to spend that much daily, this has meant long lines at ATMs and, on weekends, they often run out of cash until Monday morning.

According to Hostel del Glaciar owner Danny Feldman, who’s vice-president of El Calafate’s Chamber of Commerce and would like to see the policy changed, customers can withdraw money up to three times per day, even consecutively. Still, that slows down the process and keeps the lines long - especially as foreign visitors make multiple efforts before finally realizing they can’t take more than 300 pesos per transaction (it also means multiple ATM fees at many overseas banks). At my suggestion, the Chamber has requested that banks post notices at their ATMs, in various languages, to minimize the confusion.

Unless the policy is reversed or modified, though, it will be a major nuisance for Patagonia travelers in particular. Towns are few and far apart and, northbound along the legendary Ruta 40, it’s more than 600 km to the next ATM, in the town of Perito Moreno. Motorists, in particular, need to insure they have sufficient cash to pay for fuel and repairs.

N.B. After I castigated Calafate’s merchants for their greedy 1990s behavior, I received a handwritten note from the late Mariano Besio, then the Santa Cruz provincial tourism representative in Buenos Aires, suggesting that “We’re trying to do better.” In fact, they have done much better in El Calafate since then, but a situation beyond their control is an obstacle to tourism development here and elsewhere in the country.

Running from Extinction?

According to the online Santiago Times, quoting from the dailies El Mercurio and La Tercera, there remain only 24 surviving individuals of the flightless ostrich-like lesser rhea or ñandú in Torres del Paine National Park. Conaf, Chile's national park service, attributes an apparent decline to predation (from pumas and foxes), poaching (which seems improbable within the park), and road kill (unsurprising, as improved roads to, from, and in the park now permit higher speeds).

While I can't quarrel with statistics that must be the result of a local census, they did surprise me to some degree. I visit the park almost every year, and I often see at least that many birds en route from Puerto Natales and additional individuals within. It's anecdotal, but when I drove Argentina's Ruta 40 from El Calafate to Bajo Caracoles in December, I think I saw more rheas than ever before, even as they're apparently declining within Paine.

I'm only speculating, but a reduced rhea population within Paine could have to do with conservation measures there--outside the park, sheep ranchers often shoot foxes (which eat rhea eggs) and pumas (which can attack adult rheas), both of which are protected within. The number of foxes within the park is greater than I've ever seen and their boldness is remarkable, but again this is an anecdotal observation.

Another biogeographical issue related to the rhea has also aroused my interest. The guanaco, a relative of the domestic llama, is common in the Patagonian steppe, where it often shares habitat with the rhea, but the rhea appears to be absent from similar habitats on the island of Tierra del Fuego (where the guanaco is common). I would speculate that the guanaco was present in Patagonia well before the rhea, and that when continental drift created the Strait of Magellan, it survived on both sides of the Strait. The rhea, then, would have evolved or immigrated after the Strait came into existence, and could not cross the water.

According to the IUCN (see the link for the lesser rhea above), there is an introduced population on the northern part of Tierra del Fuego, but I've never seen it despite many trips through the area. If anyone knows anything more about this, I'd be most interested to hear.

Waiting for Godot's Gasoline Tanker

Saturday's plans were to drive from El Chaltén, Argentina (more on this destination in another post), to the Chilean town of Cochrane via the remote Paso Roballos border post, the southernmost land border in the Chilean region of Aisén. I left El Chaltén around 9 a.m. and, as much of Ruta 40 (Argentina's loneliest road) is much improved and part of it is paved, I covered the roughly 500 km to Bajo Caracoles in seven hours even with stops for photo ops.

Bajo Caracoles, a desolate desert spot known for its namesake hotel (a handsome stone-block construction dating from the 1940s), has the only gas station in nearly 500 km between Tres Lagos and the town of Perito Moreno. Often, though, it runs out of gasoline (though not diesel)--the last time I wanted to use the Paso Roballos crossing, I had to continue 120 km north to Perito Moreno, another 70 km west to Los Antiguos, and then south to Roballos via the spectacular Monte Zeballos road that parallels the Chilean border. In fact, I'm glad that I was able to take the scenic Zeballos route that time, but I had no desire to do it again.

Bajo Caracoles, though, had run out of gasoline again, and several cars had been waiting since the day before (both the hotel and the nearby hostel were overflowing). I had enough gas (in a 20-liter container that I keep as an emergency supply) to get me to Perito Moreno, but not to Cochrane, so I decided to wait an hour to see if the station's owner was correct that the supply tanker would arrive from Comodoro Rivadavia. When I had just about given up, the tanker pulled up about five minutes before 5 p.m. and, even though it took another hour and a half to discharge the gasoline and get us all filled up, I finally got on the westbound road to Paso Roballos by 6:30 p.m.

Fortunately the border was open until 9 p.m. and, since I was probably the only person to cross all day here, things went quickly with both the Argentine Gendarmería (border guards) and the Chilean Carabineros. After driving the 100 km or so to the border, I emptied nearly all my surplus gas (from the can) into the tank but there remained a few liters; the Chilean official was at first insistent that I could not take Argentine fuel across the border (this is technically illegal, but his Argentine counterpart was not even interested). Finally, though, he graciously relented and I carried my last few liters of cheap Argentine gas into Chile. I arrived at Cochrane around 10:30 p.m., having done much of a spectacular route in fading daylight as we approach the longest day of the year.

For motorists on RN 40, Bajo Caracoles will continue to be a problem spot, even as the road south from Perito Moreno gets paved. When supplies are short, they will sell northbound drivers only enough to get to Perito Moreno, though they'll fill the tank for southbound vehicles headed for Tres Lagos. If they're utterly without gas, though, all bets are off.

A related matter: a Swiss couple who arrived at Bajo Caracoles shortly after I did had taken a 70-km detour to Gobernador Gregores in search of gasoline and found none there, thus wasting time and gasoline. Fortunately, they stayed at Estancia La Oriental, in Parque Nacional Perito Moreno (no relation to the town of Perito Moreno which is much farther north, nor to the Perito Moreno glacier which is much farther south) and the estancia sells gas to its guests in need.