There have been several landmarks on this journey I wanted to take note of on our drive to Ushuaia and the end of the PanAmerican Highway was one. We got there and we felt a mixture of emotions but most of all there was in our minds a hint of unreality. Had we really arrived? Indeed we had.
Last Saturday on a sunny, at last, 58 degree afternoon, with a cold west wind whipping up whitecaps on the water we arrived at Milestone Zero.
“Hito Cero” is the beginning, or for us the end, of the PanAmerican, the road that starts or ends in Alaska. That point we will have to drive to later, but we were there at the undisputed end of the road in obscure little Quellón.
And yet this point isn’t really the end of anything geographical, it is but an emotional landmark for us. We’ve been “driving the PanAmerican” for so long we now are orphaned from the great Highway, the “longest motorable road in the world” as the Guinness book of records calls it. But we’re hardly at the end of the continent.
There’s lots more South America to come. Plus we have to drive back up, partly that we might catch monuments we’ve missed on the way down, as we go back to Colombia passing through Brazil and I hope a little of Bolivia. I wanted desperately to get to Lake Titicaca but Layne’s leg surgery prevented that as we left Peru two days before our visitor permits expired. There are other places we would like to see, Machu Picchu perhaps, I’d like to explore Lima a bit and Cajamarca the city where Pizarro first defeated the Incas.
And I suppose that finding oneself here the human mind goes back to the past and leaps forward to an unknowable future instead of sitting still in the present. I remember my excitement at seeing the Andes for the first time, a tumble of mountains falling directly into the Caribbean Sea at Santa Marta, and further south in Colombia we first saw the classic women in bowler hats at the market in the mountain town of Sylvia, and later we stepped in the Eauator in of course Ecuador and the PanAmerican threaded its way through it all.
Still, we had to park for the night and there was a campground nearby with electricity which we thought we might need to plug in to as we were relying on solar energy until our second alternator was repaired.
We drove away from the monument through crowds of locals strolling the beach and ignoring what we had come to see.
It put me in mind of locals in Key West who avoid the Southernmost Point to bypass the traffic jams of hordes of people eager to be photographed there.
The campground was open but none was there to greet us so we drove in. We are used to this state of affairs in
offseason Chilean campgrounds. We knew someone would be by to collect our twenty bucks.
Unfortunately we discovered the inextricably outlets no longer work so we were essentially paying for nothing but we were loathe to disturb ourselves and move. “Might as well help the local economy” Layne the book keeper said.
We’ve modified our electrical system on advice from our mechanic in Puerto Montt and we seem to be seeing some benefits. We turned the fridge off at night and a series of sunny days saw our solar panels pouring energy into our 500 amp battery bank. We were doing okay without the alternator.
We have taken to getting up later in the morning and getting slow starts. It’s light until 9:30 at night and we haven’t even reached the longest day yet.
The tidal range here is 23 feet so we got to watch the mud flats disappear as we got tea and coffee from water heated by solar energy.
Quellón:
The campground owner Alvaro was enthusiastic about our travels and our van and showed us places to visit on the island.
Sunday morning was quiet in Quellón and the day was ours.
PS I’ve seen Layne off to Key West where our alternator parts are waiting with friend so Rusty and I are in the cabin doing nothing of great note do I figured I would write about Chiloé as I wait for her to return. Our ferry date remains December 2nd for the four day ride to Puerto Natales.
