The Vagabond Adventure Daily Journal

Where Are We Now?

Good to see you! Hope you’re enjoying the journey!

This journal provides you snapshots of our journey as we work our way around the world, never traveling by jet. It’s a chance to get a close-up view of the planet as we explore it the way people did 120 years ago.

Day 540 - Departure for Lisbon
At Sea, South America, Uruguay Chip Walter At Sea, South America, Uruguay Chip Walter

Day 540 - Departure for Lisbon

We waited by the dock in a tiny store 100 yards from the our transatlantic ship, and checked in with Annie, child #4 before heading out to sea. We had spoken to all of the other children to remind them that we would be off the grid for 21 days, though Cyndy did provide each with a ship-to-shore phone number so they could call in an emergency.

At 1 PM a security guard at the docks informed us that we could head to the ship. We expected inspections, routines for getting bags tagged, various cross country paperwork, before we boarded, but there were no lines on this voyage.

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Day 538 - Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Uruguay
South America, Uruguay Chip Walter South America, Uruguay Chip Walter

Day 538 - Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Uruguay

We burst out of the canyon of tall apartment buildings in Recoleta onto a broad boulevard, Ubering to the Colonia Express ferry. It will take four hours to get to Montevideo - one hour to cross the bay to Colonia and three more by bus. We swing along a spectacular causeway within the city. On either side you can see the evidence of great wealth when Argentina’s GDP was the 7th greatest in the world – architecture of every kind on a lordly scale: Italianate, ornamental French Colonial, Spanish style balustrades, renaissance sculpture atop miles of buildings 12 to 15 stories high in Rose and White with rich façades of marble and stone.

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Day 537 - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Argentina, South America Chip Walter Argentina, South America Chip Walter

Day 537 - Buenos Aires, Argentina

The next morning we walk out of our hotel onto Lavalle Street in search of a place to clean our clothes. We roll around the corner and walk into Esmeralda Street where we pass one young man, then another, quite filthy, too thin, curled on cardboard sleeping soundly. Farther along in front of a bakery we pass a woman squatting and urinating. Later, after we find the laundry, another woman from the bakery is furiously but not angrily scrubbing the offending sidewalk with soap and hot water.

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Day 536 - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Argentina, South America Chip Walter Argentina, South America Chip Walter

Day 536 - Buenos Aires, Argentina

It’s after 8 PM by the time we arrive in Buenos Aires – another 10 hour bus ride that brought us from Bahia Blanca and the lovely Hotel Victoria. We book Uber and the Uber climbs into the thick traffic. This is a big city (16 million people) and it looks and acts like it: eight lane highways, cars and trucks and buses everywhere and not a few angry drivers. One jams his car into the one in front, frustrated because he’s not happy with how things are moving along. He simply bangs into it. Our Uber driver moves on. Finally we break through and make it to our hotel exhausted, and hungry.

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Day 536 - Bahia Blanca, Argentina
Argentina, Patagonia, South America Chip Walter Argentina, Patagonia, South America Chip Walter

Day 536 - Bahia Blanca, Argentina

Our Andes Mar bus pulls into the Bahía Blanca bus terminal at 12:07 AM, two minutes late. We stumble into the darkness, grab our bags and find Uber. It takes through the dark and quiet streets to the Hotel Victoria. This turns out to be a less than perfect choice. The street is dark, the entrance tiny and tired. The moment we walk in I have the uneasy feeling that we had arrived at the Argentine version of the Bates Motel in Psycho. Dilapidated cushions on the couches are mashed and worn across two couches and a decrepit chair; the red paint makes the lobby dark and cheerless above the wooden floors which are worn as the oriental throw rugs that lay upon them. I whisper to Cyn, “What have I gotten you into?“ Because it was me who booked this hotel when in Mi Refugio. We walk to the big, mahogany reservations desk to arrange for our room.

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Day 533 - Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina
Argentina, South America, Patagonia Chip Walter Argentina, South America, Patagonia Chip Walter

Day 533 - Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina

We awaken in Mi Refugio to bright sunlight and light winds on day 533 of our trek. We brew some coffee and began to work on the final days of our bus Odyssey. Our first bus ride gobbled up 300 miles of our journey but we have 1700 more to go.

After arriving in Ushuaia, we spent a full day researching, plotting and organizing our way to Rio Gallegos, Comodoro Rivadivia and Puerto Madryn. But now there is Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires and Montevideo before we board our transatlantic ship to Lisbon.

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Day 531 - Rio Gallegos, Argentina
South America, Patagonia, Argentina Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Argentina Chip Walter

Day 531 - Rio Gallegos, Argentina

Our bus swings into Rio Gallegos on the wide but utterly empty four-way highway and then we arrive at the bus station. Hector walks right up to me, his great mane of dark, long hair waving in the wind. He’s promised to take us back to our digs for the night. It was the only accommodations we could find in all the town. Hector owns the house where we will be staying. He calls it “Mi Refugio”-My Hideaway. He hand built the house and designed it with a gaucho touch. tiny house is warm and cozy as we listen to the wind whistle and the dogs howl and finally slip into a deep asleep.

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Day 512 - Ushuaia, Argentina
South America, Patagonia, Argentina Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Argentina Chip Walter

Day 512 - Ushuaia, Argentina

There is a debate about which South American city is the world’s southernmost. For years Ushuaia has been the undisputed champion because it is home to 70,000 souls, a true city. But Chile and Argentina are competitive nations and have been for 150 years. So recently Chile officially designated Port Williams as a city just south of Ushuaia and just across Argentina's border in an attempt to unseat Ushuaia. Problem is it’s not much more than a naval outpost on the skirt of the Beagle Channel; a mere 2000 people walk its few streets. Nevertheless, Chileans, wherever possible, let you know that change is afoot.

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Day 511 - Tierra del Fuego, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter

Day 511 - Tierra del Fuego, Chile

The Ventus churns its way to the bottom of South America through semi-rough seas. As the sun emerges over the horizon, the channel’s waters look like they’ve caught fire. I think of Homer’s descriptions of sunrise in the ODYSSEY - “the rosy-fingered dawn” and “the wine-dark sea,” except that rather than sailing the Aegean Sea we are at the edge of the Drake Passage and I am looking at a place where all of the land we call South America disappears. Excepting Antarctica there is no land on earth farther south.

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Day 510 - Tierra del Fuego, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter

Day 510 - Tierra del Fuego, Chile

Cloudy, misty, the ship is rocking, temperature unknown. We awaken to mist and beyond the waves a single light house on a rockbound shore all white with a single red stripe around its belly. Mountains everywhere, one after another each marching higher white and thick with ice. We are looking at the great ice fields of lower Patagonia.

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Day 509 - Tierra del Fuego, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter

Day 509 - Tierra del Fuego, Chile

We assemble on the Zodiac deck and jump in making certain to clean our shoes in an antibacterial solution that protects us from contaminating the fragile islands we’ll be visiting. We are headed to Ainsworth Bay. The land is wild, some trees stripped bare of foliage or permanently bent by the wind. The mountains remind me of views Cyn and I had seen on Navimag and in Puerto Montt: sharp and green up to their caps of snow. But here, we are surrounded by water, the islands are nothing more than peaks that have managed not to be submerged. The summits and valleys and sea, the clouds in the sky — all of it makes one stunning panorama in the brilliant sunlight. All seems peaceful in the land where there is no God or law, but I am told this can change at any moment.

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Day 508 - Punta Arenas, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile, At Sea Chip Walter

Day 508 - Punta Arenas, Chile

The ship provided several daily excursions deep into places so close to Charles Darwin’s heart when he sailed the Beagle and began to work out his insights into evolution. We boarded quickly, settled into our berth and at 8 PM sharp the Ventus pulled out of Punta Arenas harbor. We were, after all of these months, no longer connected to the landmass known as South America. The next morning we would be standing on the enormous island of Tierra del Fuego – the Land of Fire. I watched as we departed. The sky was caped beneath a thin blue curtain, but at the horizon it was clear and delivered a fine sunset, the color of peach. The sea was calm. Dinner was served.

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Day 506 - Torres del Paine, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter

Day 506 - Torres del Paine, Chile

Televisions are rare in Patagonia. You may find one in a bar or restaurante, but almost never in hosterias. It had probably been six weeks since we watched a TV. In my view this was a blessing. But at Lago Grey we checked the news anyhow, most of it bad, as news always is. That is why it is called news after all. Conflict — read drama — gets our attention and attention means ratings. At Lago Grey my old alma mater CNN informed us of a mass shooting, this one at Michigan State (when would this madness end?) while a massive storm was battering New England. The Kansas City Chiefs had beaten the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl (since beginning our odyssey we had missed two World Series, two Super Bowls, and one World Cup); and a Chinese balloon had been shot out of the sky creating concerns that either China or aliens might be preparing to attack. If the aliens were coming, Cyn and I guessed a Chinese invasion was moot.

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Day 505 - Torres del Paine, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter

Day 505 - Torres del Paine, Chile

The base of the Paine Mountains live cheek by jowl with Grey Glacier, and the great spiked mountains brood above the lake and the glacier that spills from their left like a beckoning blue hand. This close to the mountains you find yourself stopping again and again to look at the spectacle, the mountain’s razor sharp peaks thrusting into the sky as if straining to perforate it.

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Day 504 - Torres del Paine, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter

Day 504 - Torres del Paine, Chile

The great Blue Towers of Patagonia generate massive clouds which the wind pulls slowly away in resolute and ragged sheets. The mist and clouds are so big that it can feel as though the mountains and not the clouds are moving across the sky. The peaks and glaciers, lakes and rivers create so much weather it turns them into a massive shell game, often leaving them cloud enshrouded, like Kilimanjaro or Mount Fuji or the Matterhorn. But this morning the weather is perfect.

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Day 503 - Torres del Paine, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter

Day 503 - Torres del Paine, Chile

We awoke to gaze at the great towers outside our Hosteria Lago window. I found it difficult to tear my eyes away from their dramatic crags and so simply goggled. The evening before, we had returned from our horseback ride to settle into our new digs. Avis had taken our broken Symbol away and replaced it with an identical Symbol that had even more mileage on it than the previous version. We could only hope it would take more battering. We checked the connections, which were tight, and we were provided a pair of pliers just in case the roads rattled the battery loose again.

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Day 502 - Torres del Paine, Chile
South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter South America, Patagonia, Chile Chip Walter

Day 502 - Torres del Paine, Chile

The road south to Torres del Paine looks smooth and broad as the German Autobahn … at first. It was like this when we passed the Mylodon Cave we had visited with Luciano, and the cliffs we hiked above Lake Sophia, and continues as you ride fluidly toward encroaching mountains to the left and in front of you. The views are so stunning they can make you wreck the car.

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Day 502 - Cerro Castillo, Chile
South America, Chile, Patagonia Chip Walter South America, Chile, Patagonia Chip Walter

Day 502 - Cerro Castillo, Chile

We ate our breakfast of cornflakes, fruit, deli-sliced ham and provolone cheese and prepared to take our rattle-trap Renault Symbol along the southern route to Torres del Paine Nacional Parque. I had wandered Cerró Castillo the evening before, but Cyn had not yet visited the village and was curious. So before leaving, we braved the chill winds to view the tiny church, utterly empty streets and white corrugated homes with their red tin roofs. The village exists mainly as a border crossing to Argentina that will take drivers to the high mountains and Glaciar Perito Moreno near Calafate, Argentina. Chile's leaders apparently see great things for Cerró Castillo because, though it is small, two new highways merge here and two other large roundabouts have been created with a beautiful sculpture of a horse prominently displayed where the roads meet.

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