WHEN WE ARRIVED in the big frontier city of Rio Gallegos today, we found out there is no camping in the town or anywhere near, so we were forced – forced, I tell you – to stay at a nice hotel downtown. What a luxury: modern plumbing, warmth, a regular bed. And also, as it would have been ever so crass to sit outside the hotel in the camper and eat as the evening shoppers walked by, we had no choice but to have dinner at an elegant restaurant, at 7 PM, which is normal to us but Argentineans don’t eat until much later, so we had the fancy restaurant to ourselves.
Earlier today we woke to a clear but cold morning in Chile’s Pali-Aike National Park, and hiked to one of the nearby volcano cones before leaving. There are only five things in this park, but each is in abundance: high treeless Patagonian steppe, dormant ancient volcanoes, piles of lava, guanacos, and wind.
Bobbie is a little frustrated with constantly losing fresh produce to the food police, and she developed a plan to avoid having our groceries confiscated for when we crossed the border from Chile into Argentina today: she was going to confess to having a few apples and then give them up as a decoy. However, her plan was thwarted when the border guards failed to do any inspection whatsoever and we sailed into Argentina with all food in place. What has become of our world when the police are not consistent? Is all sanity lost?
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