Three Men and a Giant Man-Eating Rhubarb

Chaitén – Villa Santa Lucia, Chile

So far, each day in Patagonia the scenery is nicer than the day before. And I’ll get more into all that later. It’s Patagonia. How can you avoid nice scenery? 

But I want to talk about something else for a minute. It’s a theme we’ve alluded to before – but it seems more pronounced here. Because it’s supposed to be so wild. 

Where are all the animals? 

For sure there are some birds. But other than domesticated animals, so far the sum total of animals we’ve seen: one green lizard that Diana saw yesterday, and one dead rabbit. 

It’s not like we’re discounting the smaller animals. The squirrels and mice and things. They just don’t exist down here. 

Nada. No deer. No beavers. No raccoons. No bears. No coyotes. No nothing.

How can this be? 

Maybe South America somehow didn’t produce animals at all? Maybe the animals that the continent did produce couldn’t adapt to humans being around? 

But there aren’t even many people in Patagonia in the first place. 

Our friend from the ferry the other day – Jose Miguel – the underwater magician-to-be, told us that Patagonia animals were just shy. We don’t really buy it. Not only have we not seen animals. We haven’t seen or heard evidence of animals. No roadkill. No squirrels chattering in the woods. No eating the food that we leave out at campsites. 

This has basically been the pattern in the entire west-of-the-Andes part of South America that we have traversed – but it feels the most wrong here in Patagonia. 

After all, Patagonia is one of those words that is supposed to be synonymous with wild and untamed. Like Alaska. Or the Yukon, or something. 

It just seems wrong that there are no non-domesticated animals here. 

I guess my suspicion is that most of them have been crowded out by some type of human interference. Even in Patagonia there are barbed wire fences delineating people’s property basically everywhere. And my sense is that our reverence for wild-ness in the U.S. is really a byproduct of our wealth. We can afford the luxury of caring about wild animals for their own sake – not just for the meat they may provide. While Chile seems pretty wealthy by Latin American standards, maybe it hasn’t yet become wealthy enough to care about animals for the animals sake. Or maybe that happened only recently. Doesn’t matter. The end result is that Patagonia – like the rest of South America that we’ve seen – seems to be a wild-animal-free zone. 

Sad.

Alright, on a more positive note . . . We met three different people out bike touring yesterday. Always fun to exchange information and stories.

Dave. 

From Colorado, Dave apparently took a big trip – somewhat like ours – some eighteen years ago. He said something about meeting friends somewhere on that trip – the end result being that he skipped Patagonia at that time. So now he’s on kind of a do-over. He flew down here a month ago or so and has been tooling around ever since – making his way north to Santiago. 

No picture of Dave. I think the first person on the whole trip who didn’t want to take a picture with us. He said something about “facial recognition being too good.” Maybe he’s a wanted man . . .

Rodrigo. 

From Punto Arenas – in the far south of Chile. A city we may end up going through much later. Rodrigo’s been biking for a while now. He told us that he skipped the ride from Punto Arenas to Puerto Natales because the area is not that interesting – all flat, no trees – and there is a consistent wind that makes it almost impossible to bike. We would be going the opposite direction – so maybe the wind would be better – but we’ll have to think about that . . .

The fun thing about Rodrigo is that he plays music as he rides. He had some good tunes going as we chatted by the side of the road. 

Alejandro. 

He’s from Puerto Montt – the Duluth of the South – that we passed through the other day. Alejandro is a notary – which I don’t really understand. As far as I know, in the U.S. you can be a notary – someone who can witness document signings and such – but it’s just kind of a side gig for lawyers or bankers or mortgage processors – not a profession. Notary must mean something more here in Latin America. Anyone have any insight on this? 

In any event, Alejandro seemed like a great guy. Very talkative. The only problem was that he knows no English – and our Spanish is really not good enough for a more extensive conversation. Regardless, it was good to meet Alejandro – sometimes you can just tell you are talking to a good person. 

The riding. Super fun. But also difficult. We either had wind (in the morning), or sneaky hills that really seem to add up, or, at the end of the day – a big pass to climb. 

Also, the overnight cold and the cold air currents that we seem to go in and out of all day can themselves be kind of draining. I guess your body needs to work a little harder to stay warm. End result – I am pretty exhausted at the end of the day. Diana – she seems fine . . .

Okay, the scenery. Amazing. Transcendent. Fantastic. We’ll run out of adjectives here soon . . .

I think we saw snow-capped peaks the entire day. More and more of them the farther south we go. And the snow seems lower and lower. I would guess we’re seeing snow at 2,500’ now. This being the Patagonia mid- to late-September now, this is probably the time of year with the least amount of snow around – so it is pretty telling of the climate here that there is snow so low on the mountains . . .

Also lots of “monkey puzzle” trees – which are apparently the Chilean national tree. They look kind of like they belong in Africa in the Serengeti or something. Very cool.

And then Diana and I have become very fixated on what we call the Giant Man-Eating Rhubarb. Huge leaves that look like if you came too close they would reach out and grab you. Giant pod things that make the plant look like it came from a different planet. And our resident sceintist – Dr. Liu – noticed these strange “female” parts as well – kind of giant blobs of yellow jelly-like stuff. Crazy the things that evolution brings to the world. 

Maybe the Giant Man-Eating Rhubarb ate all the animals. Now there’s an explanation that I can understand . . .

So that’s the news from Patagonia – where the trees are beautiful, the mountains are spectacular, and the animals don’t seem to exist . . .