YA LEUM.54 — From Buenos Aires to Patagonia by car…

In the last post we enjoyed a beautiful time in Buenos Aires…the city that reminded us Europe…

Patagonia is one of the most beautiful areas in the world. It has glaciers, mountains, glaciers on mountains, pink lakes, penguins, Andean condors, flamingos, and dolphins.

This place on Earth is all about nature. Here, humans are lost points on the map.

Nature’s immensity is hypnotizing. Here, we understand that, after all, we are no more than a grain of sand in this immense universe.

Traveling to Patagonia was like walking alone through the desert.

After leaving our first travelers in Bahia Blanca, a relatively green area, we started our path towards the south. Slowly, we entered a quite arid, plane, and open road area.

We traveled to another village to pick up another traveler who was going to visit a friend in a different city. The plan was to get to his destination by night… however, that was not how things happened.

Alfonso, an Argentinian who was free to talk, holding his mate, ready to smile, yet a bit shy. Meet Alfonso.

At the end of the first day, he asked if he could continue traveling with us! The answer was an obviously yes!

On our first night, we looked for a place to set our tent but ended up parking the car next to a snack bar. We slept in the car and Alfonso spent the night in his tent.

On the next day, we had an unexpected stop in Monte Léon National Park. A park that was barely known but the map showed it as something that was worth visiting. We changed our way and found an empty marine park that had plenty of sea birds, imperial eagles, cormorants, and Austral seagulls. Yet, what impressed us the most was seeing the sea lions and the Magellan penguins.

When I saw the immensity of penguins, near the sea, moving in a group and looking at the sun or diving in the water, I thought: “I have arrived in Patagonia!”.

That moment was special! The park was empty and that person to whom we had offered a lift had now become our travel companion.

It was nearly 5 p.m. and the park guards came to get us. After 5 p.m., the park closes, since it is time for pumas to start hunting. Thus, there was a mix of curiosity and fear with the possibility of coming across a puma.

A group of three people, with many cameras, microphones, and other equipment crossed us but going on the opposite direction.

It was the National Geographic team, which was precisely going to a shelter to try to capture the pumas. They told us they were visiting the park every day during the previous two weeks, but they had not succeeded in recording pumas yet… How exciting!

We were going through the National Route 3, which starts in Buenos Aires and ends in the well-known Tierra Del Fuego, the southernmost province of Argentina, which is in the extreme of the continent.

We continued our trip together and we were now more like travel companions than anything else.

At some point, we stopped in another park to have a barbecue. A true Argentinian always travels with a small grill and no other people can match the Argentinians when it comes to barbecues, roasting meat, and get embers.

We continued our trip through the Argentinian desert, where we saw a guanacos, a llama-like animal. Only rarely did we find a service station or did we come across other travelers. The roads were long, silent, and were nearly completely straight.

Slowly, we arrived at the south.

The south of Argentina, the south of Patagonia, the south of the hemisphere. Nearly at the end of the world.

And I felt something I had never felt before.

Around about 8 p.m., the sun was shining like it was 2 p.m.

At dusk, close to 11 p.m., the sunset set far way in the horizon, which reached out through many kilometers.

The sky looked like a blue carpet that unrolled itself in parallel with the desert.

No mountains, no villages, no people, I saw an infinite sky.

I saw a sky with small clouds that matched the extension of the Earth as if they were holding hands together.

That was my first feeling of immensity in Latin America.

My eyes were shining. I felt incredibly happy for witnessing nature’s harmony. Also myself, I was a lost point on the map.

Finally, three days later, we got together to Rio Gallegos.

Our travel companion finally decided to stop there and to go to Terra Del Fuego to visit his friend. We decided to spend a few days in Rio Gallegos because the car started to show some signs that it needed to rest. And we decided to bring it to a mechanic.