The Last Entry

Ours was a road trip in its most basic form, a drive across Patagonia to see what was there. A great road trip requires equally great awakenings; and for me I learned to stop resisting reality … to stop enduring the ripio just for the bragging rights but instead to love the connectedness with the earth; to turn off of the pavement whenever possible, slow down, and forget the goal of the day. Bobbie found an inner calmness in seeing the people of Patagonia happily thriving without material wealth.

Along the road to these lessons we saw penguins close enough to touch, carefree gauchos trodding by on horses, and the Southern Cross in a night sky untainted by man’s light. There were landscapes so flat we could see the curvature of the earth, jagged mountains so high they created their own weather, and estancias so remote they might as well have been invisible.

We heard huge blocks of ice falling from glaciers, a guanaco’s warning call of an approaching puma, Spanish spoken to us very patiently, flamingos squawking when we got too close, and a sudden shower of rocks pound our camper as a truck sped by us on the ripio.

We smelled the Pacific but not much of the Atlantic – even at the water’s edge – because of the strong westerly wind. We always smelled sour milk in the camper, but you already know about that.

We tasted amazing home-cooked Asado, experienced both autumn and winter in our spring, discovered that we always needed to take TP to the baño but also that even the most modest hotel room has a bidet, bought food in mercados both super and pequeños, tried the national herbal drink Maté, wondered innocently just exactly where all those trucks loaded with sheep and cattle were going, felt the warmth of strangers, and made new friends.

We learned not to expect much if we hit a pueblo between noon and 2 PM, that police checkpoints are no big deal, that Argentineans can build extremely straight roads, that Magellan had to put down a nasty rebellion in a cold bleak harbor near the straits he famously found, that you can just pull off the road and stop for the night most anywhere in Patagonia, and that we can live in a small camper and still love each other a month later and every day in between.

Would we go back to Patagonia? Absolutely. Will we go back? I don’t know, perhaps. We are now starting another journey about what exactly is next for us, and we have no idea how long or where that will go … but that will be a journal for another day.