How to Walk a Puma

by Peter Allison

  ‘Exactly!’ was Freddy’s delighted reply. ‘Most of Argentina is desert—dry, horrible desert, barely worth farming. Only in the east and right at the south do you have mountains and snow. The south, Patagonia, that’s what a lot of people think Argentina is like. There it is cold, with high mountains, condors soaring, day-long sun … but that is only in Patagonia.’

  By this stage the scars on my knee had faded enough that it looked like I’d been attacked by nothing more savage than acne, and I was keen to have a new adventure. Freddy’s description made me determined to visit Patagonia, a region of southern Argentina and Chile.

  In travellers’ circles and in some literature, Patagonia is famous for its stark landscapes, bleak winds, peaks capped with year-round snow, and the largest sheet of ice outside the polar regions. Few animals survive there, but I thought I might be able to find pumas (something I now had mixed feelings about), penguins, seals and orcas. (Orca is the new name for killer whales, though I doubt the recent name change has altered their temperament.)

  Patagonia also seemed to have a reputation as being one of the destinations of choice for those looking to have their soul shaken, or to find out if they have one. In the early 1800s Charles Darwin visited the island of Tierra del Fuego and reported seeing no structures, just the fires after which the island was named. He said the people were barely human; the most primitive he had ever seen. While I thought his comments about the people were needlessly unkind (and ignored how advanced they must have had to be to survive in such a place), I hoped that in Patagonia I would feel the wildness for which it is famous.

  •

  As soon as Laurie returned to Australia, I headed south to the Chilean town of Puerto Montt to take a flight to the furthermost reaches of Patagonia. I’d settled on Ushuaia on the island of Tierra del Fuego as my first destination. Proudly proclaimed by its residents as the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia’s position in the south of Patagonia also made it a likely place to see condors close up.

  My entrance into Ushuaia—flying in through a cleft in jagged, white-capped mountains—made me feel uncharacteristically optimistic. Nowhere I’d been in Africa looked remotely like this, and as an Australian I am easily impressed by mountains (the tallest peak in Australia requires a comparative stroll to reach its summit). The mountains around Ushuaia looked not just untrammelled, but untrammellable. Which is clearly not a real word, but was a very real feeling.

  Walking through Ushuaia’s airport, I saw a tourist shop with a sign declaring it to be ‘The store at the end of the world at the airport at the end of the world’, something I thought a wee bit tacky. Then again, I long ago learnt the old adage ‘Never judge a place by its airport’.

  By the time I got to San Martin, the main drag of Ushuaia, I was wondering if Charles Darwin would have been even harsher on the place if he’d visited today, since at least the locals he’d been so unkind about hadn’t tried to sell him anything. Hawkers squawked outside every bar and restaurant, trying to entice passers-by with dinner deals and happy-hour specials. I soon discovered that Ushuaia saw a lot of cruise passengers who stayed in town for only a few hours before heading on to Antarctica. The cruise-goers appeared in town soon after gangways were lowered, rolling down the street like a human tsunami dressed in yellow and red windproof parkas and tassled hats. There was a whiff of desperation in some of the stores, which flogged Argentinian soccer jerseys, mate (the local tea) and its associated tea-making paraphernalia, addictive local red wine, and miniature dolls dressed in the costumes of cultures either long gone or waning.

  Two nights into my stay in Ushuaia, I was sitting in the common area of a backpackers’ hostel—the sort of accommodation I would use throughout my South American journey, even though I would often be the oldest person there—talking to a young German called Friederike. I’d been expressing my dissatisfaction with Ushuaia when Friederike said, ‘Maybe you’ve travelled too much. Perhaps you are too hard to impress now. I worry the same will happen to me.’

  ‘Maybe she’s right,’ I thought, and wondered if I’d been as wise as her at twenty-one (I suspect not). Maybe I was just too old for this near-hobo existence, I reflected yet again. But I had not been very successful in any field except guiding, and even that I had given up.

  Despite such misgivings, I did have someone to look up who— thankfully—had no interest in hawking me a boat cruise, rental bicycle, or ‘end of the world’ snow dome. Freddy’s wife had a zoologist niece called Marcella who was in Ushuaia studying the breeding habits of Chilean swallows. Marcella took me on some of the many daytrips I made from Ushuaia in search of the overwhelming sense of isolation and wildness that the guidebooks described. She didn’t seem to mind me squelching along behind her as she checked the nests of Chilean swallows, which always seemed to be in a bog. Marcella was there to collect breeding data. This was as far south as any species of swallow went, so for them at least this really was the end of the world.

  Walking in the bogs one day, I asked Marcella what the main source of employment for Ushuaians was. I’d learnt Ushuaia had a population of roughly twenty thousand people, not all of whom could possibly be in the trinket business, even if it felt that way.

  ‘Construction,’ Marcella replied, expertly plucking a newly hatched Chilean swallow from its nesting box. Unlike the adult plumage of muted grey underneath and dark blue above, this hatchling was pink and naked. Marcella blew on it to keep it warm, before dropping it into a small plastic bag, weighing it, marking a claw with nail polish, and returning it to its feathered sanctuary before repeating the process with one of its nestmates.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, a little perplexed. ‘Constructing what?’

  ‘Hotels mainly.’ We tramped through the bog to the next nest box she was monitoring. Mud splashed high up her rubber boots, and straight over the low tops of mine and into my socks, a reminder that I was maybe not quite prepared for this place. ‘And shops for the tourists,’ she added after she was done with the next batch of chicks.

  ‘But the tourists come on boats and usually stay on board. What do they need hotels for?’ I asked, making a futile attempt to shake mud from my boot and spattering my other leg in the process.

  There was a pause as Marcella inspected another nest. ‘Southern house wren,’ she said, and I thought she was being cryptic until I realised she was waiting for me to jot that down on a sheet next to the corresponding nest-box number.

  ‘The hotels are for the tourists the council hopes will come,’ Marcella carried on. ‘They need jobs for all the people now that the television factory has shut down.’

  It seemed incomprehensibly odd to me that there had ever been a television-making industry in this far-flung place, an entire continent away from regular shipping routes since the Panama Canal had been built (which had happened well before television, I was pretty sure) and in a country not otherwise known for its electronics. But there it was, the television factory had supported Ushuaia from the 1960s to the late 1990s. I found myself imagining the industry as a cover for the sort of villain who appears in James Bond films; perhaps one of the nearby mountains had concealed their underground lairs at the end of the world. Then again, those villains liked their comforts. This place was just too cold.

  Incredibly, despite the bitter winds sending a chill through me whenever I ventured outside, this was summer. And not just summer, but high summer. Yet snow still topped the mountains and no sensible person would contemplate going outside without many layers of clothes. Even though the temperature was often generous enough to rise above freezing, the ceaseless wind negated that gift, terrorising those who hadn’t fattened up on the beef and king crab on sale in the local restaurants (one of which, not surprisingly, proclaimed itself to be ‘The restaurant at the end of the world!’).

  •

  Although Ushuaia has a pleasant local national park and a much-touted glacier (even if it turned out to be little bigger than an ice cube), and in spite of the fact that I’d got
to see several species of bird new to me, and watched a single and illegal boat flare (illegal because of the wind— any fireworks could set the town alight) usher in a new year and decade, it just wasn’t life-changing in the way I’d hoped my first stop in Patagonia would be. Unfortunately, just as I came to this realisation I found out there were no available seats on buses out of the place for over a week, so the only way I could depart was by plane once again.

  The flight out of Ushuaia was as beautiful and exciting as the one in, mountains clutching at the plane’s wingtips as it climbed, climbed, climbed above the snow, before dipping almost immediately.

  I was on my way to the small town of El Calafate, still in Patagonia but further north, and not as obsessed with its location as Ushuaia is. There, I hoped, I would find the wildness, find everything that made Patagonia famous. Luckily I had no idea of the disaster I was setting myself up for.

  The Empanada Disaster

  Riding the bus from the airport into El Calafate, I felt a tingle of excitement as I took in the scenery, which was bare but not in that manufactured, blasted way humans so often create. Instead its barrenness was that of a landscape no machine could modify. After the streets of Ushuaia, with all those trinkets that were as authentic and tacky as a porn star’s moans, this felt special. It felt wild.

  My attention drawn by a sudden movement on the plain I recognised a guanaco, a wild relative of the llama. Beaming as I do whenever I see an animal for the first time (and often on subsequent viewings too), I turned to my fellow passengers to see if anyone else shared my delight, but saw nothing but bland disinterest on their faces. When the next animal I spotted turned out to be a rhea, a large flightless bird that was also new to me, I kept my face pressed to the glass and enjoyed the sight by myself, not losing my grin even when we hit a bump in the road and my head bounced away from and then violently back into the window.

  The landscape changed several times on our way into town, each change thrillingly different from the previous scene—the plain yielding to clefted red rocks, then to rounded hills, then to views of distant forested mountains. This was the place, I was sure. This was the place I would find the real wild Patagonia.

  The central part of El Calafate turned out to be touristy, with buildings made of timber so rough-hewn it must have been aimed at creating a sort of rustic charm, but triple varnished so it gleamed like no wood should. The price of food was so high it was also clearly aimed at tourists. Still, you only had to venture down a side street to find the places where the locals ate, identifiable as such because they were crowded and because no one inside them was wearing branded outdoor gear.

  The best food in most places is rarely found in tourist joints because restaurateurs in those places don’t have to worry about tourists coming back, only about getting them in the door. But if you cater to locals, your food needs to be good. And cheap. If the customers of a café or restaurant all went quiet when I entered, like the moment in a Western before a gunfight erupts, I knew I must be in the right place. Even if baleful glares and unresponsive service staff showed I wasn’t particularly welcome, the food was bound to be worth it.

  Using this theory, I found an empanada restaurant which literally sold only empanadas, a sort of pie stuffed with fish, meat or vegetables. No pizzas, no burgers, no appeal-to-the-tourists llama steaks, just empanadas. If you wanted a soft drink, you had to cross the road to the general store. I ordered six of the little pasties, and ate them for lunch as I made my way to a lagoon I’d seen on a map of the region, cutting through back streets instead of taking the regular paved route. It was a mistake, but an enlightening one.

  Dust puffed from my heels, swirling up and away on the violent wind which also caught the omnipresent plastic bags and pinned them to bushes and trees. Empty bottles swept by, glass ones tinkling, plastic ones drumming, while turkey vultures overhead simultaneously battled the gale and tried to determine what in the scene below them was dead and what was garbage. The amount of litter was staggering, and made the neat streets I had just come from seem like deliberate fakery by the town fathers, like an apparently pristine apple that is rotten from the skin back.

  Naturally, garbage had no respect for the fence that marked the perimeter of the small reserve where the lagoon was located, so scattered in the water among the ducks, coots, flamingos and geese were pink, blue and green shopping bags. Though I was excited to see birds in the lagoon I had never seen before, I worried for them, feeding amid such a lethal buffet.

  As I walked around to the far side of the lagoon I felt my stomach flop, then flip, then twist, then gurgle and splutter. I clutched it in sudden pain, all the while trying to focus on whether it really was a Chiloe wigeon I was looking at.

  As my hands started to shake I told myself that it would pass, sure that as with so many other lurgies I’d had in both Africa and South America this would be a small thing, and that the best course of action was to ignore it and carry on. So carry on I did, wandering around the reserve watching birds, saying hello to some horses that lived there, patting the stray dogs who followed me everywhere as if I were some sort of canine messiah (which would have been quite flattering if I’d had no sense of smell and couldn’t detect their malodour). Finally, I headed back to the hostel along litter-laden streets, battling against the wind. Sinister gurgles were emanating from my mid-section by the time I reached the hostel, but I hoped they might diminish if I lay down for a while.

  They did not, staying with me through a dinner that I could only pick at. I forced myself to eat something because I figured I’d need my strength for the next day, when I planned on hiking on the Perito Moreno glacier; indeed, I was already in possession of a pricey ticket to do just that.

  I was staying in a share room, and had been allocated a top bunk over a sizable Italian woman with the most extraordinarily frizzy grey hair—it looked like a pompom that had been thrown into the wash with a Goth’s clothing. I felt sorry for her having to put up with me tossing, turning and tossing some more, trying to find some relief for my painful stomach. For the first time in years I felt genuinely lonely and homesick, but not for any place that I could name.

  As the night wore on, the pain worsened, until it felt as if I was being jabbed by spears. Out of consideration for the other occupants of the room I went into the hallway, checking the time as I went. It was two am and I had to be up in mere hours for the hike. Finally abandoning my pointless stoicism I approached the front desk where—against time-honoured international tradition—the night watchman was actually awake.

  ‘Hello,’ he said with a genuinely warm smile.

  ‘Hello,’ I replied, trying to return his smile but grimacing as I experienced another spasm. ‘I think I need a doctor,’ I managed through gritted teeth.

  ‘Oh no, what’s wrong?’ he said, frowning sympathetically.

  ‘I …’ was all I could manage before—for the first time in my life—I collapsed to the floor in pain.

  I was vaguely aware of the night watchman helping me up from where I lay gasping on the ground, putting me in a chair, and calling a cab to take me to the local hospital.

  ‘I finish in three hours,’ he said, after introducing himself as Julio. ‘If you aren’t back by then I’ll come and find you.’

  At his kindness I didn’t feel lonely anymore; I wanted to express my gratitude but fell to the ground again as I was being poured into the taxi, banging my easily injured knee against the sill. I lay face down against the cracked vinyl for the short trip to the hospital; once there I half limped, half staggered towards the emergency room, where a nurse seemed startled to see me.

  Glancing in a mirror above the reception desk I saw an unfamiliar face. It was pale, drawn, and looked fifty-five, not thirty-five. Even more dire, it was topped by a mullet haircut. Accidentally growing a mullet has been a sad but regular occurrence in my life ever since the hair on top of my head stopped growing as fast as the hair at the back. At least I was in the right country for such
a travesty this time, as Argentinian men often have coifs not even an eighties rock band would have contemplated.

  A doctor soon came to examine me and with no common language we used a mixture of pantomime and, on my part, the imbecile’s way of speaking Spanish, which is to talk in English with an ‘o’ tacked onto the end of words. This combination sometimes works, and many symptoms were covered in this manner before the doctor asked if I was suffering from diarrhoea, which, though far more sensibly spelled in Spanish (diarrea), is pronounced the same way as in English.

  ‘No,’ I replied in all honesty.

  My answer was met with a cocked eyebrow suggesting disbelief. ‘Seguro?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure?’ A strange question, I thought. How could you not know?

  I answered that I was sure, and he asked me again, and this time I understood his concern. ‘I’m not embarrassed!’ I said, or at least tried to say, before recalling that embarazada means something entirely different to ‘embarrassed’ and that I’d just wailed at the doctor that I wasn’t pregnant, something his medical training had presumably made evident to him.

  With this hurdle cleared (by now I was embarrassed) and having explained that any bulge in my stomach was made of empanadas, not a baby, we covered other symptoms. My limp was from banging my knee (that took some pantomime; and I decided against indicating that the scarring was caused by a puma), and I had no pain elsewhere apart from my stomach. I couldn’t believe that an empanada (or several) had managed to do what Roy could not, and put me in hospital.

  The doctor left the room with a frown and my homesickness suddenly returned. My funds were low, cheap food was all I could afford, yet my gut was mad as hell about my eating whatever low-priced fare was placed in front of me. Perhaps Patagonia was trying to kill me for failing to appreciate its charms. Was Friederike right— was I asking too much of this place, wanting something exclusive that in reality I couldn’t afford? Or had I been wrong when I experienced my Jane Goodall epiphany, and perhaps I was too old and pathetic for my body to withstand the assaults it had shrugged off in my twenties?