PATAGONIAN STEPPES

The sun shines through space-shipped shaped lenticular clouds upon an vast and immense, barren and desolate landscape consisting of dull-brown short grasses.  The seventeen hour bus ride from Esquel to El Chalten (the trekking capital of the Argentina) shoots down a flat valley with table-top mesas stacking upon each other upon the horizon.  Mirages appear affecting the waking mind fabricating it to feel as if one is hallucinating as the table-tops of the mesas slide by each other in the sweltering sun like tectonics plates in motion.  The road stretches for hours in a fine-sandy gravel then changes to asphault out in the middle of nowhere for hours then changes back to gravel and vice-versa.  This bus sucked donkey blank as there was no room, crowded with bus-seats crammed back to back with barely enough room to sit, no shocks, and no free meals, but still cost a great deal.  Unfortunately, it was the only option. 

Dust and sand tail behind the speeding bus as Nandus (or Rheas) scatter from the clouds of dust.  Nandus are a flightless bird that is similar but smaller than the African ostrich.  They roam the dry steppes of Eastern Patagonia which is where I am traveling through, in the Santa Cruz province.  They occassionally venture into the Andean foothills.  They run quickly avoiding its enemies by constantly changing direction as it flees like a rabbit or a hare.  Small and sparse pockets of scrub brush dot the yellowish-brown landscape in hunters green.  Three Nandus and a Mara or Patagonian Hare scatter from behind brush from the uncomming rumbling bus. 

Guanacos with their brownish-white bodies herd together in small groups either all males like a bachelor group or females with young like a nursury.  Alpacas or Llamas are the domesticated version of them.  One of their few enemies is the sleek-bodied and agile puma who prowls throughout Patagonia and infact lives from the tip of Tierra del Fuego all the way north to the Yukon.  Pumas have been relentlessly persecuted because of livestock owned by the ranchers.  White sun-bleached Guanaco skeletons lie strewn about the steppes, probably killed by pumas or automobiles then scavenged by Lord God Bird, the Andean Condor with its ten foot wingspan.

The darkness swallowed the light by midnight but as we drove south we chased the sun and I do not know if the colors of the sunset ever left the sky entirely like Alaska in the summertime.  I never think of the southern hemishpere as being so similar to the north but it becomes obvious and apparent when traveling here.

The southern cross is like the Big Dipper is to the north with a star pointing to the south pole like Polaris points to the north.  Orion`s belt is one of the few constellations I recognize outside of Cassiopeia.

For those of you who have not heard I lost my cell phone with all my contacts and my email of bepolley@care2.com has been affected by spam so I lost all my email addresses.  My new email is bepolley@gmail.com and please send me your email address.  Thanks for all the support and happy new years from the southern hemisphere.