Helen looked at me. Apparently our adventures were not over yet. At the first Argentine police station—where we went through Argentine customs for the fifth time—we asked about the bridge. It wouldn’t be repaired for a month. How about the road on the other side? It was good to Río Grande, and from there to Lake Fagnano, seventy miles this side of Ushuaia. But beyond the lake it was bad, with a twelve-mile gap of horse trail still remaining over the Andes. We were encouraged. A twelve-mile gap was better than a twenty-five-mile one.
We weren’t too concerned about getting across the bridgeless river—until we saw it. It wasn’t a river. It was a swampy lowland, flooded by the rains. Built on a fill, the road was interrupted by a crumbled concrete bridge. To one side was a flooded ditch about a half mile long. It looked just deep enough to float La Tortuga. The driver of a marooned truck on the other side looked on enviously as we slid down the embankment.
With wheels churning and propeller spinning we moved forward slowly to within fifty yards of where we could again climb to the road. Progress stopped. The water was too shallow to float us and too deep for the wheels to get traction on the soft bottom. I was picking out a fence post to winch to when our friend made it much easier. Tossing us a cable, he put his truck in reverse and, like a fish on a line, he hauled us out.
At Río Grande, halfway across Tierra del Fuego, we heard more encouraging news. The road crew had widened all but eight miles of the horse trail.
Excitedly we hurried south. Shortly out of Río Grande the country changed. The rolling plains became sharper, the valleys deeper, low shrubs became higher, and a few rocks showed through yellow-brown tundra. The shrubs became small trees; valleys became arroyos. And then as we crested the top of a hill we saw the white cordillera running east and west, the Andes, majestic right to the end. On the other side of the range lay Ushuaia.
Around the edge of Lake Fagnano, a sixty-mile finger of water on the north slope of the mountains, the jeep jolted over log corduroy fills and slipped through mudholes that gradually became worse. Through a heavy rain we started climbing. The trees were larger, some more than a hundred feet high and three feet in diameter, an unspoiled wilderness except where the bulldozed road left ruin in its wake. Incongruously among dense forests of spruce flitted green parrot-like birds.
It was almost dusk when we reached the last road camp on the north side of the range. From a log house strolled several men. Puffing on their pipes, in silence they walked around the jeep. When I asked about the road, they answered with indifference:
“This is as far as you can go.”
Through the trees we could still see road ahead, and until it stopped we were going on. As we drove off, they were calling after us:
“You’ll never get up that first subida.”
About a mile farther we came to that first grade. Spiraling like a snail shell, it looked almost straight up. We left the jeep at the base of the incline and hiked ahead to see if we had any chance of getting up. The rain was still falling; our rubber boots slipped on the hard but ice-slick clay surface. The road wound two miles up to the crest, but the first quarter mile was the steepest. It would be a hard climb, and risky, but if I stayed close to the bank I thought we could make it.
Putting La Tortuga in the lowest gear and four-wheel drive, while Helen and Dinah stayed outside, I slowly engaged the clutch. Keeping the wheels just on the verge of spinning for maximum traction, I gently worked the throttle, and the jeep moved forward. With darkness approaching rapidly I impatiently fed more gas to the engine. The wheels spun, the jeep momentarily stood still, slid backward, and I lost all the ground I had gained. With Helen ready to push a rock under the wheels I tried again. Tensely I kept a light foot on the throttle, and La Tortuga inched painfully up the subida. Past the steepest place, I congratulated myself on my skillful driving and looked around for Helen. A breathless figure staggered from behind the jeep. She had been pushing all the way.
At the crest we made camp in the dark while a howling wind from the Antarctic brought with it clouds of snow that soon coated the bow of the jeep. To keep the motor from freezing I left it running most of the night.
By morning the weather had cleared somewhat, but the sky was still gray and overcast. While Helen straightened the inside of the jeep, I walked ahead to where the road crew was working. The foreman told me that the eight-mile gap had now been reduced to three. I really got excited when he said that just two days before the road commission jeep had broken through.
“But,” he added, “that was before the all-day rain and last night’s snow.”
For more than an hour I studied the trail, weighing the possibility of getting through. Barely six feet wide in places, the trail sloped to the valley below, and was a maze of chunks of blasted rock. Just twenty-five miles beyond this three-mile barrier was Ushuaia. I asked permission to try.
To my surprise, the foreman was enthusiastic. “Permission?” he said. “Why, if you’re willing to take the chance, we’ll even help you. It would be a thrill for us to see the first tourists reach Ushuaia by car.”
I returned to Helen with the news, and we began the roughest overland travel of the trip.
After the first half mile it took all of the twelve-man road crew to keep us going. They put down logs, filled in holes, and pushed while we winched through foot-deep mud. Through the rocky part the wheels clawed over the slippery stone, the jeep pointed its bow straight up and came crashing down on a huge boulder, balanced there with wheels spinning until the men shoved her off. I crawled out to look at the damage—a broken spring, shattered rear window, and a giant dent in the hull.
With the trail tipping toward a hundred-foot canyon, we made the winch line secure to a tree and crept up the short grade. La Tortuga fish tailed, the wheels slipped sideways, and I heard the men yell, “Pare, pare” But I couldn’t stop! I felt the right rear wheel drop over the edge. From outside Helen screamed, and inside Dinah jumped wildly over me through the window. The winch line snapped taut, and all twelve men pulled sideward, braced the wheels with logs, until, with the winch, we crept back on the trail.
For the next two hours it went like that, sometimes with mud over the wheels, sometimes the wheels hanging over a trembling log bridge, sometimes dragging bottom over sharp rocks. And then the men surrounded the jeep. Grinning with satisfaction, they said, “Que le vaya bien. You’re past the last bad spot.”
Dazed, we drove those last twenty-five miles. We could scarcely believe that the uncertainty was over—until we saw the deep blue of the Beagle Channel, freckled with white-caps, the protected harbor with its several small ships and, at the foot of the white-topped Andes, the red tin roofs of Ushuaia. To the south lay only a few scattered islands and the Antarctic.
TRAIL’S END
I’M NOT sure what I expected to find in Ushuaia, but I knew one thing—for us the streets would seem paved with gold. I didn’t expect to find the hearts of the people that way too. And although I was almost sure that a celebration would be in progress for one reason or another I had no idea that we would be the guests of honor. Ushuaia was feting Don Bosco, patron saint of sports.
Things started happening the same afternoon, January 23, 1956, that we first drove through the graveled streets of the world’s southernmost town. A station wagon pulled alongside La Tortuga, and a white-gloved cavalierish Argentine Naval officer leaned out the window. In excellent English he asked where we had come from and invited us to join him the following evening for dinner. Captain Lopez de Bertodano was commandant of the naval base which was Ushuaia’s raison d’être.
The same day we paid a visit to the road commission headquarters to thank the chief for the help his men had given us in getting through. We were invited to stay at the camp rather than go to the one hotel in town, El Gran Parque, alias Los Très Mentiras, The Three Lies, since it was neither grand, nor parklike, nor could it qualify as a hotel.
A dubious distinction of Ushuaia was that its penal colony had been
recently reactivated to accommodate the bigwigs of Perón’s deceased government. One gentleman was of sufficient notoriety to warrant a visit from an American newspaperman, who, in passing through Río Gallegos, had heard that two crazy Americans had drowned while crossing the Strait of Magellan. He was quite disappointed that we hadn’t because, he said, “It would have made a much better story.”
The next evening at dinner with the commandant we were totally unprepared for what followed. “We would like you to be the guests of the Argentine Navy on a cruise to Buenos Aires. I expect the ship to dock within the week.”
We were literally speechless—but managed an eager nod!
In jest Captain Lopez de Bertodano addressed me as Captain. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been aboard almost everything that floats, but never an amphibious jeep.”
“Well, sir,” I answered enthusiastically, “as captain of the M.S. La Tortuga, I invite you to come aboard for a cruise around the harbor—after I’ve checked her for holes.”
“Fine,” he smiled. “Shall we meet your ship, Les Eclaireurs, when she comes into port?”
At the end of the week the A.R.A. Les Eclaireurs was sighted and we called for the commandant. With a duet of La Tortuga’s horn and the ship’s whistle we steamed out to meet her. There was a stiff wind, and the commandant asked if we were sure La Tortuga could weather the sea. I assured him that what we had been through made Ushuaia Harbor look like a millpond. With all due respect to La Tortuga, he smilingly intimated that he would prefer to stick to his regular command.
The following day, Sunday, the day of Don Bosco, we gave a public demonstration of La Tortuga’s aquatic ability, making eleven turns around the harbor with most of the children in town aboard. We were slightly embarrassed, however, when, by the time we had taken the last group for a ride the tide was out and we were stuck. But with half the townspeople good-naturedly pulling under the direction of a jolly priest it was no trouble getting out.
One of the most heart-warming things of all was the way the men from the road commission came to the dock to see us off, each one giving us a vigorous embrace.
That night, as we lay in our cabin with the ship pitching and rolling beneath us, we felt a quieting strangeness. We had reached our goal. There was no more wondering what the jungles and the mountains and the sea would hold for us. La Tortuga was securely lashed on deck of the first ship she had ever been on. For the first time we could feel the power of the sea without fear, and yet, in the dark, while we listened to its roar, our experiences in reaching Ushuaia were still vivid, especially the pounding surf of the Pacific, the storms and reefs of the Caribbean, and the compelling current of the Strait of Magellan. But by morning we were well adjusted to being at sea as passengers rather than crew, and for the first time we were heading north.
Les Eclaireurs was not as we had expected either. She carried forty passengers. Since Perón had been a general and not an admiral, the Navy had suffered when it came to appropriations, with the result that, in order to make both ends meet, it had been forced to become a merchant fleet—at least part of it. A new ship, Les Eclaireurs had first-class accommodations, and the passenger list included a host of Argentine lovelies on vacation from their jobs in Buenos Aires. With the ship’s officers and a score of midshipmen on a training cruise Helen and I looked forward to learning something we had never had time to learn while traveling—to dance the mambo, tango, rumba, samba, and maybe even the cha-cha-cha. But what was the craze? Dixieland!
Buenos Aires, second in the hemisphere only to New York in size and sophistication, was a busy metropolis. Stores even stayed open during siesta. Modern, progressive, clean, yet it had an Old World beauty in its statues and parks and mansard roofs. We were in a mood to celebrate, and all three of us walked into the first-class City Hotel. When we registered, the clerk informed us that Dinah would be there “with pension.” That was a new one! An American-plan hotel for dogs! Luxuriating in endless hot water, with piles of clean towels, soft music, and even softer beds, our one regret was that their American plan extended only to dogs. At eight that night Dinah’s waiter appeared. With black pants, white jacket, crisp napkin draped over one arm, he entered balancing a silver tray stacked high with whole broiled steaks—more than I had ever seen outside of a butcher shop.
The 985 paved miles across Argentina from Buenos Aires to the Chilean border took more than a week. We crawled at a turtle’s pace trying to save La Tortuga’s failing strength for that last climb, that last challenge to erase the miles by flatcar over the pass to Chile. And it was well we did travel slowly. Between Mendoza and the border the second gear sheared a tooth. In low gear we kept going, climbing, climbing, climbing to Las Cuevas at the frontier. Seven miles and twenty-seven hundred feet higher stood the statue of the Christ of the Andes. We moved up so slowly that Dinah walked beside us. An hour passed, two hours, the transmission held, and four hours later we reached the Christ, literally on a gear and a prayer.
In the shadow of the outstretched arms we felt an exultation tempered by a humble gratitude. There, at the foot of the Christo Redentor, we said thanks to the people all along the way without whose friendship we could not have realized our dream.
Behind us was a year and a half of travel, more than twenty thousand miles, backed by nine years of striving. We had come to look on La Tortuga as our home, a rolling, floating home that had taken us where no other car or boat had ever gone.
And Dinah? Well, she was her usual blasé self, unaware of her dubious accomplishment in contributing to the confusion of archaeological knowledge. Perhaps someday, high in the Andes, scientists will discover a corroded metal tag. They will treat it with chemicals, polish it, and read: “My name is Dinah. I live in Anchorage, Alaska.”
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
Thank you so much for reading our book, we hope you really enjoyed it.
As you probably know, many people look at the reviews before they decide to purchase a book.
If you liked the book, could you please take a minute to leave a review with your feedback?
60 seconds is all I’m asking for, and it would mean the world to us.
Thank you so much,
Muriwai Books
20,000 Miles South Page 24