Standing in line with a dozen other people on a narrow gravel shoreline, I looked out at the chilly expanse of Ullswater beyond the instructor as she completed our briefing.
‘As you can see, the wind is strong and the lake’s quite rough today,’ Liz said. ‘Whatever you do, please don’t go out of the shelter of this bay.’
For me, it was a rare summer at home in England. Having committed to a sailing and climbing trip to Tierra del Fuego for the following southern summer on a friend’s ocean going yacht, it seemed wise to use some of the intervening time to get some practical sailing experience. My wife Jane and I had enrolled on a course at Howtown Outdoor Centre on the eastern side of Ullswater — one of the Lake District’s largest and most beautiful stretches of water. By spending every Tuesday evening over a six-week period out on the lake we hoped to pick up the basic principles of sailing Toppers — small one-man fibreglass dinghies fitted with a rudder and single sail.
On our first lesson the previous week it had been completely calm and impossible to put classroom theory into practice down on the water. We all simply drifted listlessly on the lake, paddling our boats back in with our hands at the end of the session. But today, as I waded into the water pushing the small dinghy in front of me, I felt nervous. Despite it being evening, the wind was showing no sign of abating and there were good-sized waves not far from the shoreline. The water beyond the small bay we had been instructed to sail around looked rougher still.
I climbed aboard and tried to make myself comfortable, but the wind quickly filled the sail and the boat rapidly accelerated. In no time I was struggling to hold on to the cord fixed to the end of the boom with one hand while trying to control the tiller with the other. I was soon skipping over waves as the yacht slewed across the water in an arc, feeling like it was about to capsize. Then the wind suddenly dropped, leaving the sail flapping noisily. My forward movement halted as abruptly as it had started. I sat and puzzled as to what had happened, trying to work out the direction of the wind and how I should set up the boat. It was not easy, there were so many different things to deal with. By moving the rudder I managed to get wind back into the sail, which produced another spurt of forward movement. However, it soon died like the first. This was baffling.
I looked around to see how the others were coping. One or two seemed to be doing quite well but most were also making faltering progress. The instructors moved between the dinghies in a small launch offering advice and encouragement. I persevered, cautiously trying to not go fully with the wind. Eventually I made some reasonable passages in a straight line, only to lose momentum when I tried to take a different tack.
I began to feel frustrated and reasoned that it would be best to simply throw caution to the wind — literally. I turned and let the sail fill completely, then held the dinghy on that course. I skimmed along, bouncing over the bigger waves, leaning out to maintain stability. This was more like it, I told myself as I rapidly headed out of the sheltered bay and into deeper water. The waves got larger, the wind gusting ever stronger. All of a sudden the cord attached to the end of the boom was plucked from my hand and the boat turned over, flinging me into the water. I surfaced almost immediately, gasping from the shock of the coldness. The lifejacket was doing its job well, keeping me at the surface with my head out of the water, so I floated for a while and took stock. The boat was upturned nearby and I was a long way out into the lake.
Having got my breath back, I swam a few strokes and regained the dinghy. We had been instructed how to right a capsized boat, however that had been in shallow water during the becalmed first lesson. I tried grabbing the keel and using my bodyweight to roll the boat upright; it would not move and after a couple of attempts I slumped back into the water. Then I dived down and tried pushing the mast up from below. The wind was stronger now and waves were breaking over the hull. It was obvious that I simply did not have the strength or technique necessary to get the dinghy back upright in such conditions. Embarrassingly, all I could do was wait to be rescued.
As it turned out I was not the only one having difficulties. Back in the bay others had overturned and the instructors were shuttling dinghies and clients back to the pier with two launches. My wetsuit had warmed and I felt quite comfortable. I relaxed, hanging limply from the side of the boat and waited my turn. Eventually, the launches made their way out to me.
‘Having trouble are we?’ Liz asked, as the rescue flotilla arrived.
‘Couldn’t get the damn boat back upright,’ I explained rather feebly.
‘So we can see.’
I passed her the line from the bow of my dinghy and climbed up the steps on the back of Liz’s launch as ordered. The rest of the group stood waiting on the pier while my rescue was completed and boat retrieved. Some were shivering with cold by the time we returned. They did not look impressed with my excursion. We got the dinghies ashore and stripped them down. Then I walked silently back to the centre, feeling guilty for the trouble I had caused.
The lessons over the following weeks were less eventful and highly enjoyable. Good weather accompanied by breezes out on the lake allowed everyone to progress without too much difficulty, or me capsizing. The final session promised something special — a chance to use our new skills in a race down the lake to a designated buoy and back to the pier at the outdoor centre. Everybody tried to take the best lines and tack at the right moment to optimise speed and distance covered. Racing was fun, it made you think about the classroom theory and how to apply it practically. All too quickly we were all back at the pier. I was sad that the course had come to an end — it had been a very pleasant way to spend a summer’s evening each week — but now I could look forward to transferring my newly acquired skill to a much larger yacht later in the year.
Back in the centre everyone changed out of wetsuits and made their way into one of the classrooms for a final de-briefing. After congratulating the group for their performance out on the lake, Liz began asking people what their aspirations for sailing were. A retired couple planned to buy a yacht to sail on Ullswater; a teenage boy said how much he had enjoyed the experience and wanted to come on a more advanced course the following summer.
‘And what about you Simon?’
‘In six months time I’m going to fly to Ushuaia in Argentina, get on an ocean going yacht and sail along the Beagle Channel to the head of a remote fjord. Then I’m going to go ashore and climb an unclimbed mountain.’ It felt like a slightly ridiculous boast under the circumstances, but it was true.
‘Well, that’s very ambitious,’ Liz said dryly, before adding ‘Good luck with it all.’
For more than three hours the plane had hugged Argentina’s east coast on the long journey south. I was travelling to Tierra del Fuego in the company of Jane and two friends: my climbing partner Andy Parkin and Elaine Bull whose sister Celia would be skippering the all-important yacht for our ambitious expedition. Gazing down on the desolate coastline, I recalled how nine years earlier on a trip to Cerro Torre I had travelled down this huge country by coach. The journey had taken the best part of two tiring, monotonous days. Flying was definitely worth the small extra cost and I wondered about my previous state of mind.
Eventually, the coastline gave way to open sea and I assumed that we must have left the mainland and were making the short crossing over the eastern end of the Magellan Straits to Tierra del Fuego. Land soon reappeared below and I felt that familiar surge of excitement; a sense of mounting anticipation that had swept over me at moments like this ever since my first trips to Asia years earlier. Cloud briefly obscured the view, then as the plane began to descend I started to see glimpses of mountains and glaciers, lakes and rivers. Now we were over sea again, but with land nearby on either side. This was wild country, unlike anything I had seen before. What really caught my attention was the dense, dark forest. All the low-lying land was blanketed in the stuff. The mainland of Tierra del Fuego in Argentina lay on the right and Isla Navarino in Chile to the left, directly below stretched the Beagle Channel. With the plane on its final approach, Ushuaia suddenly appeared. Its setting could hardly be more dramatic, the city crowded around a small harbour with buildings extending up surrounding hillsides towards mountains above. I caught a glimpse of a yacht making its way into the bay. It all flashed by and out of sight as we landed at the airport built on a spit of land projecting into the channel. All the tourist literature refers to this place as Fin del Mundo — the end of the world. It certainly felt like it.
We took a short taxi ride into town, found a room in a backpackers’ hostel, then eagerly made our way down to the harbour. It was a fair walk round to the yacht club, which lies at the far end of a causeway splitting the western end of the bay. It’s an exposed spot and we walked heads bowed as the wind accelerated across the bay, blowing plumes of dust from the un-metalled road. As we approached the yacht club we could see a boat heading for the pier.
‘It’s Celia!’ Elaine exclaimed.
With perfect timing we reached the end of the pier just as Ada II arrived. Celia Bull was a picture of concentration at the helm, as she inched the vessel up to the mooring. Lines were thrown to us, accompanied by swift instructions as to where to tie them. Once the boat was secure Celia jumped on to the pier and ran up to Elaine, the sisters embracing and shrieking with joy. Then it was Jane’s turn, Andy’s and finally mine. Celia was buzzing.
‘We’ve just come from Yendegaia,’ she said excitedly. ‘It’s such a cool place. You’re going to love it.’
I had seen little of Celia over the previous couple of years, during which she had taken up sailing and bought Ada II. Our friendship had been cemented 10 years earlier, when as part of a loosely knit group of climbers we had spent a magical week on the Scottish island of Eigg. For sometime after we had lived near to each other in Sheffield and mixed in similar outdoor circles that formed part of the steel city’s cultural life. A lively personality made her fun to be with and yet like many involved in adventure sports she could become focused and single-minded in pursuit of favoured projects. Celia had lost both her parents while still quite young, but they had left her well-provided for and she had used her inheritance to pursue her passions. That sense of purpose had enabled her to learn to sail and bring the boat down the Atlantic from Brittany to the Falkland Islands. When I heard she planned to bring the yacht into the vast archipelago of islands known to sailors as ‘the channels’ that runs down the coast of southern Chile all the way to Cape Horn we soon found ourselves talking about possible climbing opportunities. Her enthusiasm had been infectious.
We were shown around the boat and introduced to Francoise and Marianne — friends of Celia’s from France who had just spent their vacation on board. I had few preconceptions of what the yacht would be like, yet was pleasantly surprised by both the size and luxury of the living areas. There was a communal area in the centre with a kitchen, dining table and seating; Celia’s cabin and bathroom was in the stern while towards the bow a pair of cabins with twin bunk beds led through to a shared bathroom. A further space in the bow served as the storeroom. I could see it was not going to be a struggle living in this place for the duration of our trip.
That evening we all ate in a pizzeria on the harbour, before the lengthy flights from Europe caught up with us and we left early to crash out at the hostel. When we returned to the boat next morning Celia had her captain’s head on. There was much to do and she wasted no time in delegating jobs. Andy and I needed to shop for food and supplies for the mountain and as we left the boat Jane and Elaine were already stripping out bedding that needed to be fumigated and washed following an infestation of fleas picked up at Yendegaia. We too planned to make landfall at this remote estancia.
Throughout the day we ferried shopping back to the boat, only to be sent on increasingly obscure errands. By late afternoon I found myself taking a taxi to an industrial estate at the far side of town to get a gas cylinder refilled. There, under an open-sided shed, I watched in horror as a man plugged a hose into the cylinder and to the accompaniment of a deafening hiss proceeded to vent what smelt like far more gas into the air than into the cylinder. The meagre bill explained his lack of concern for the wasted gas, but the casual disregard for safety was more baffling.
‘I’ve got another job for you,’ Celia said when I arrived back at the yacht. ‘Do you mind taking a little dip?
‘I suppose not,’ I replied dumbly.
‘Jolly good. I’ll find a wetsuit for you for the morning.’
The yacht owners and their crews were a sociable bunch and though Celia had only been in the channels for a few weeks she had already got to know a good many people. As a woman skippering her own boat in this place she was something of a novelty and our preparations were regularly interrupted by visitors of various nationalities. Although I knew little about sailing I sensed a great deal of salty experience. The fact that these people had safely navigated their vessels to Ushuaia indicated a certain level of competence. Some had spent many seasons in southern waters and took charter groups to the Antarctic. As Ada was French built and had been bought in Brittany, where Celia had spent time learning to sail the new boat, French crews were particularly friendly.
That evening we accepted a drinks invitation on Darwin Sound, one of the larger yachts in the harbour. The crew sailed her around the globe on charters and periodically met up with the owner, a Parisian art dealer, who would take holidays on board. Laughter flowed along with the wine and beer. I was warming to this scene. It had similarities with the climbing world in terms of enthusiasm and the characters it attracted. The glaring difference was one of money — to be a player in this game required access to significant amounts of cash. The party spilled over into dinner in town and later moved on to a bar where we danced to a salsa band until the early hours.
I was still hungover when Celia presented me with a wetsuit the following morning.
‘The outlet from the toilet needs unblocking,’ she said with a smile.
After I had squeezed into the suit, Celia handed me a piece of wire, along with instructions of where to find the outlet. I waddled my way along the pier and on to a lower jetty in front of the boat, as the girls all screamed with laughter. When I took the plunge they laughed even more. The water was bitterly cold. I swam quickly down the side of the boat, took a breath and dropped below the water line. The girls laughed louder as I dived again and located the small hole in the hull. Several more dives were required to clear the blockage; I found it near-impossible to keep myself below the water for any productive length of time. As I wiggled the wire into the outlet effluent and strands of toilet paper diffused into the water around me. Once the outlet seemed clear I swam back to the jetty and hauled myself from the water. My head, feet and hands stung with the cold, but at least the job was done and I had provided some entertainment in the process.
Later, Francoise and Marianne said their goodbyes and left for France. The following morning we were able to vacate the hostel and move on to the boat. Now it was a waiting game. We were ready to leave, but Celia had discovered a problem with the engine. A mechanic had been called, but when he would turn up was uncertain.
In the busy run-up to our departure from home I had been put in touch with an Edinburgh-based company who were starting up an adventure website. Internet start-ups were in their infancy and people were still trying to figure out how to make money out of the dot-com business; Alicia and Keith Anderson who ran the company thought that a regularly updated news page about our expedition would help bring viewers to their fledgling site. On a bright sunny winter’s day Jane and I met the couple in Edinburgh. We sat on top of Arthur’s Seat learning how to upload text and pictures onto the page via a satellite phone connection. It turned out to be a long, slow and complicated process. We left the meeting with some very expensive electrical equipment including a laptop, phone, digital camera and a solar panel for re-charging, all of which I had been carrying and guarding with more than a touch of paranoia since we arrived in Argentina. The thought of using the set-up had been filling me with dread but with time on our hands now was the moment to file our first report.
For several hours Jane and I sat on the grass outside the yacht club trying to make the equipment work. For some reason we could not connect with the server and eventually we took a taxi into town to send emails to Alicia and Keith asking for help and advice. When we returned the mechanic had arrived and was busy fixing Ada’s engine.
Early the following morning Jane and I were back at the clubhouse hoping to fix the computer problem. The moment seemed surreal and also had a touch of sadness about it. Some intangible part of what constitutes ‘adventure’ was being eroded. Here we were, stood by a payphone in a yacht club in Argentina in the most southerly city in the world, waiting for a call to come from a server in California, so that we could post entries on a website that would be looked at by people in Britain. I could hardly believe it when the call actually came. Jane patiently dealt with it. It took four hours and numerous further calls before a modest entry was finally uploaded on to the website. For those hours the world felt like it had shrunk; although our physical location had not altered, we no longer seemed quite so remote.
People from other yachts found the whole fuss intriguing and stopped to talk. A group of Latvian university lecturers, who had built a catamaran and were living their lifelong dream of sailing around the world, proudly showed us photographs of their journey — from the flotilla of boats that had seen them off in Riga to being de-masted off the coast of Brazil. They had very little money and were waiting for more to arrive from friends and family before they could continue. When the mast had been lost a Brazilian joiner had fashioned them a replacement from a tree trunk for $100. A Norwegian family who had bought a yacht in Auckland were doing some serious re-stocking before sailing non-stop to the Lofoten Islands at the other end of the Atlantic. In this place it seemed the abnormal was normal.
Our preparations almost complete, Celia took Ada across the harbour and filled the fuel tanks with diesel. It had been an interesting, but increasingly frustrating few days. On the fifth morning since our arrival in Ushuaia the officials from the Prefectura came on board and we went through the formalities for leaving Argentina. I felt relieved as they stamped our passports and a surge of nervous excitement as we cast off from the pier.
The day was fine with a steady breeze blowing puffs of cloud along the Beagle Channel from the west. Once we were out of the harbour Celia stopped the engine, shouted instructions and we helped unfurl the Genoa, which gave a powerful crack as it filled with wind and Ada began to move forwards under sail. Giant petrels and albatrosses skimmed low over the wave tops as the city slipped astern to be replaced by a rocky shoreline backed by dark forest and mountains. To the west I could see the outline of the Cordillera Darwin, the range we had travelled all this way to explore. Now I felt our adventure was finally underway.
It was late when we rounded the lighthouse at the end of a gravel spit guarding the inlet and town of Puerto Williams. The radio crackled to life as the authorities called the boat and Celia spoke to them in broken Spanish. We glided into the small port under engine passing a number of sinister looking, black Chilean Navy gunboats before mooring at the Mecalvi Yacht Club, an old ammunition ship that had been scuttled at the narrowing of the inlet to create an improvised pier. A group of jagged peaks — Los Dientes de Navarino — filled the skyline beyond. The Mecalvi’s dilapidated appearance gave little indication that there were toilets, showers and a bar hidden within what remained of the superstructure. It was surprisingly cosy inside and the evening passed pleasantly with a new group of hardy sailors to chat with.
Williams was the last opportunity to obtain fresh food such as bread and so more shopping ensued the following morning. I soon excused myself and slipped off up the river inlet and into the forest. I had begun to teach myself fly-fishing in the previous months and was eager to try it out here. After a short while I found a clearing with enough space to fish. It was a beautiful spot and I eagerly assembled the rod, fitted the reel and pulled through the line. Then I chose a small brown fly and tied it on. As the first cast hit the water a mouth broke surface and took the fly. Within a short space of time I had caught a handful of fish and felt very pleased with myself. On my home river I had spent many fruitless hours watching fish rising around the fly without actually taking it. The Fuegian trout were much more obliging.
We had hoped to leave the next day, but the wind was blowing hard from the west, hurrying squally showers along the channel. Celia said that we would be wasting our time trying to go against such a strong headwind. Jane and I went fishing and passed a few hours working our way up the valley, catching sufficient to provide a small trout starter for dinner.
The next morning dawned clear and still. We motored back out into the channel and initially made good progress. Then cloud began to build in the west as the wind started to blow. Forward movement slowed and we augmented the motor with some mainsail, tacking back and forth across the channel. It was nice to be sailing, but it seemed to require a disproportionate amount of work. Whenever I returned from below deck I was disappointed by how little distance we had travelled. The wind increased as the day wore on, until our progress stalled completely and Celia sought refuge in a bay called Puerto Navarino. It was a little demoralising that the entire day’s sailing had only brought us back to a point on the opposite side of the channel from Ushuaia.
We dropped anchor in the bay and waved to the Chilean sailors that monitored shipping from a white wooden hut on the grassy shore. A dirt road connected the place with Puerto Williams but it still looked like a lonely posting.
‘The anchor is slipping,’ Celia announced not long after we had stopped. ‘We’ll have to move.’ We repositioned Ada several times until the anchor finally seemed to hold, but Celia was still anxious. ‘We are going to have to take watches,’ she said. At two in the morning Jane shook me awake and I got up to do my stint, periodically checking the GPS and going up on deck to look for signs of movement. The sky was clear now and filled with stars, but the wind was still blowing hard, whistling through the mast cables and slapping water against the hull as the yacht swung on her anchor chain. Time passed quickly as I sat in a trance-like state listening to the sounds of the boat and the sea.
I liked living on Ada. It had a similar rhythm and feel to an expedition base camp. The wheel of daily life turned around mealtimes and regular tea breaks, with chores and sailing seemingly fitted around them. However, it was altogether more luxurious than a tented camp. Here we had a proper kitchen, toilets, bunk beds and a nice central galley to gather, relax and eat in. Even when the weather was wild up on deck you could escape to this sanctuary below. Weight and volume were not the usual issue, either in terms of personal belongings, or food and drink. Yachts, I had discovered, have storage space everywhere, under tables and beds, in cabins on the walls, down in the hull, in the bow and stern.
The wind was howling furiously in the morning and although the water was relatively calm inside the bay, substantial waves and white horses were surging out in the channel. It was obvious we were going nowhere.
Jane and I went ashore intending to update the website and for the first time managed to connect easily to the server. The satellite phone cost a hefty US$7.50 a minute to use and pictures took a long time to upload. Mindful of this fact we posted a simple entry telling how we had taken shelter from the storm. As it turned out, it would be our last update to the expedition site. And unbeknown to us our postings were initiating a disturbing chain of events back home.
The daughter of one of our neighbours, Bethany, was feeding our cat while we were away. She was also following our progress on the website. She casually told her grandfather who ran a pub in the next village about us being caught in the storm. The story had then been passed on to a climber, Deano, who was one of the pub regulars. He mentioned the news to one of his friends, Mark Charlton, who is a locally based mountain guide. Mark immediately called Elaine Bull’s husband and fellow guide Andy Cave. As the days passed with no further web postings Andy became increasingly concerned, fearing that the boat had sunk and began a fruitless search as to our whereabouts. The anxiety was only allayed when Elaine telephoned home from Puerto Williams at the end of her trip.
On the sixth day since leaving Ushuaia we woke to silence. The storm had finally blown itself out. We left immediately and motored across the Beagle Channel and into the Bahia Yendegaia. The water was flat calm and conditions bore no resemblance to the previous days. Andy and I sat up on deck in the sunshine, taking turns with the binoculars to view what lay ahead. Beyond the head of the fjord and above the forest the ice of the Stoppani Glacier was clearly visible with tantalising glimpses of the mountains behind. The landscape was on a grander scale now and somewhere in the cloud forming to the north and west were the peaks we had come to climb.
I had first met Andy in the mid-1980s on my annual visits to Chamonix in the French Alps. For a while he had been one of those rare individuals in the climbing world who had managed to excel in many different disciplines — rock-climbing, ice-climbing, big walling and alpinism. His achievements, both climbing with partners and alone, were formidable and growing. He was a rising star. From his home city of Sheffield, climbing had taken him around the world and he had settled in Chamonix where he could live among the mountains and hone his talents as an alpinist. Then disaster struck. While working as a guide he was lowering a client from the Riffelhorn — a small training peak above Zermatt in Switzerland — when the anchor to which he was secured ripped free. Andy fell 50 metres to the ground. Miraculously he survived the accident and the multiple injuries it caused, but years of operations and rehabilitation lay ahead. For someone so gifted and driven it was hard to adapt to the brutal change of circumstances and he suffered from depression. However, a re-kindled childhood love of drawing and painting helped him through the dark times and eventually to make a living as an artist. Despite lasting disability he also returned to the mountains.
In 1988, Andy and I participated in an expedition organised by Doug Scott to Makalu in Nepal. It was not a particularly successful trip in climbing terms but it marked Andy’s return to big mountains after his accident and the cementing of our friendship. When we next went away together, in the Gangotri region of India in 1990, he was climbing well again and reached the top of Shivling (6543m). After that our climbing paths diverged, but we kept in touch and occasionally met at the annual mountain film festival in Kendal where Andy exhibited his artwork. He had expressed an interest in coming to the Cordillera Darwin when Celia visited Chamonix and later she invited him along. For me it was strange to have a climbing partner chosen by someone else, but it was Celia’s yacht and understandably she only wanted to share it with people she knew and was comfortable with. I knew we could get along, but how we would climb together was still to be tested.
As we turned the last headland in the fjord, the Estancia Yendegaia came into view. A cluster of brightly painted huts sat on a grassy terrace above a small bay. Beyond was woodland, backed by steep slopes leading up into the mountains. It was an idyllic place — but not today.
‘Look a cruise liner,’ exclaimed Andy, sounding slightly disappointed.
‘That will be the Terra Australis,’ said Celia. ‘It comes here every week.’
I was flabbergasted. We had come to one of the most remote and rarely visited mountain ranges outside of the polar regions to be confronted with a boat full of people. The shoreline was teeming with them and some were being led around on horseback. I could not help but think of how busy the world is becoming, even in the most unlikely of places.
An old sun-bleached wooden pier ran out into the bay with the skeleton of a ship’s hull lying in the mud beside it. We anchored a little way back from the pier and Andy and I rowed over in the dinghy to tie a line to one of its rotten legs. Then we returned to the yacht to wait for the fuss to subside. We wanted to meet the estancia’s resident gaucho Jose Alvarao, but for the moment he was busy.
The crew of the Australis were preparing to launch a dinghy. I thought they were going to pickup clients from the shore and was surprised when it headed in our direction.
‘Celia. We’ve got visitors,’ I shouted. Three men arrived and judging from the uniform one was the liner’s captain. He stood up as they approached the stern.
‘Can we come aboard?’ he asked politely.
‘Sure,’ I replied.
‘We have come to meet your captain. We have been hearing a lot about her.’ Now I understood the purpose of the visit. They were intrigued by our infamous female skipper. As we drank tea in the galley Celia was subjected to a barrage of questions. The captain went on to explain how they were doing circuits in the channels from Punta Arenas to Puerto Williams, Ushuaia and then back again. As cruise liners went it was relatively small and could only hold about 80 guests, but it still looked massive to me in this isolated place.
‘I wonder if we would be able to get a lift back to Williams with them?’ Jane confided with me, as the trio were preparing to return to Australis. Jane and Elaine needed to leave two weeks earlier than the rest of us and if we all returned on Ada it would take up valuable time that we hoped to use exploring the channels.
‘I guess it’s worth asking,’ I said, expecting the answer to be ‘no’. Jane made a polite request to the captain.
‘We will see what we can do,’ came his helpful reply. ‘I will have to get permission from Punta Arenas. I can give you an answer when we come back in a week’s time.’
As the Terra Australis sailed away, we went ashore. Dogs walked the tideline and others were asleep on the verandas of the huts. A flock of upland geese were grazing behind the estancia as pairs of ibis circled overhead. As they came into land their haunting calls mingled with the sounds of the wind. Yendegaia once again felt like the wilderness I expected it to be.
We found Jose in the dilapidated shearing shed. He beamed a mischievous smile as we approached. A short, powerfully built man with black hair and a dark, weather-worn face, Jose was in his everyday outfit of cowboy boots complete with spurs, black pantaloons, an old woollen jumper and a black beret. Around his waist was a cloth sash with a large knife in a leather sheath tucked inside it behind his back. Jose looked every bit the gaucho he is. He embraced Celia and she handed him her gift — a carton of Marlboro cigarettes. I warmed to him immediately.
Jose invited us into the hut that serves as his home and made tea, heating the water on an imposing wood burning stove that he continually fed with large logs. There were few personal belongings in the hut and just a basic array of cooking utensils. Yendegaia was no longer a working estancia. It had been bought by a group of environmentalists a few years earlier with plans to let the land revert to its natural state. The sheep and cattle had been cleared from the enclosed sections of the property and taken away by boat. Unfortunately, over the years cattle had escaped and multiplied into thriving feral herds living in the more peripheral valleys that radiated from the core of the property. There were also many wild horses. Jose’s job was to eradicate these herds. He hunted, using his dogs to drive animals towards him so that he could shoot them. For this he was paid a small retainer, but mostly he lived off the land, almost outside the monetary economy. To boost his income he sold meat through the winter to crab fishermen and in the summer took visitors riding. His was a simple and hard life, lived in unforgiving country. Jose said he would be happy to help us get to the mountains. He was busy the next day riding with a group from the Darwin Sound, but we could leave the day after.
Andy and I used the spare day to bring gear ashore and pack. Later, Jane and I took a walk up the valley and spent a happy few hours fly-fishing. The fact that we caught nothing did not matter. Just being in that place was reward enough.
Back at the estancia an American couple had arrived overland, having traversed the wild country to the north from a roadhead near Lago Fagnano. It had been a demanding trek with several serious river crossings. We invited them to the yacht and over dinner Brendan and Nina told us of their incredible journey. While travelling in northern Chile they had impulsively decided to walk the entire length of the country following the Andean watershed. The two-year trek had been gruelling and logistically complicated; there had been many setbacks, but now it was nearly over and they were in a celebratory mood. They planned to complete their journey by walking to the southern point of Isla Navarino from Puerto Williams. They had little idea of what they would do after that.
At noon the next day we finished helping Jose load our kit bags on to the horses and all headed off up the valley. I had not ridden a horse since I was 12 years old and then I had simply been led along at walking pace. It was going to be an interesting place in which to re-acquaint myself with equestrianism. However my own troubles were nothing compared to those of Andy who struggled from the start. The lack of mobility in his left leg — a legacy of his pelvis being smashed in the Swiss climbing accident — meant that he had to be helped on to the horse. The damaged leg would not bend to fit in the stirrup and simply stuck out at an angle. It was obvious that simply sitting on the horse was painful for him.
The girls had no such problems. Elaine owned a horse and rode regularly at home, Celia had spent time riding here before we arrived, and Jane had ridden horses as a teenager. She had also been taking lessons before we left for South America in the hope of getting an opportunity to ride while we were away. Unlike Andy and I, they all knew what they were doing. Jose and the girls set off at a canter. We did not even attempt to keep up. Luckily, the horses knew the way and there was a well-worn trail running from the estancia into the broad, flat valley beyond. Andy groaned regularly and was continually shifting his weight on the saddle, attempting to get comfortable. Occasionally the others would wait at gates and allow us to catch up, only to race ahead again. We forded three rivers in quick succession before the valley widened further into a vast plain partially covered in trees. The whole property was in a state of decay with tumbled down bridges and broken fences. Nature was re-asserting itself over what had been cleared land.
The others made the most of the open terrain and spurred their horses into a gallop. Unfortunately ours followed. I pulled hard on the reins, but the animal just went faster. Andy was bouncing up and down on his saddle, barely in control and screaming with pain. Luckily after a few hundred metres everyone came to a halt.
‘Sod that,’ Andy growled as he rolled off the saddle and dropped to the ground. ‘I’m going to walk for a while.’
Distances were smaller than they appeared and we made good progress up the valley even with Andy on foot. After following the course of the main river, we crossed a tributary and then turned towards a side valley that entered the plain. The land was boggy and Jose weaved a path following the driest route. Occasionally the horse’s hooves broke through the surface and sank deep into the mud below. Sometimes they would panic and kick wildly trying to free their fetlocks.
When we reached the river flowing from the side valley I was surprised by its size. It was a good twenty metres across and although sluggish it was deep. We followed its edge briefly, until Jose turned his horse, dropped down the riverbank and into the water. Within a few strides the horse was swimming. I felt nervous, but little effort was required as the horses simply followed each other. After a few ‘strokes’ they regained their footing and climbed the opposite bank. We paused briefly in front of dense forest and immediately clouds of mosquitoes appeared and began biting. The horses were agitated and swished their tails trying to keep them away. Jose headed for the forest. Inside all was calm and free from the infernal insects. Dead trees and branches littered the ground and it took time for the horses to thread their way around and over the obstacles.
‘You would not even think of bringing a horse through this sort place at home,’ Elaine said.
After we had cleared the dense section of forest we returned to the river. Here at least it was shallower and faster flowing. We crossed easily from one side to the other, following the line of least resistance up the valley until Jose was adamant that the horses could go no further. I felt we were still a long way from the mountains, but this would have to be the site of our base camp. We dismounted in a small clearing and helped Jose unload our kit bags from the packhorses. Andy was visibly relieved and walked around, occasionally stopping to stretch his stiffened legs.
We sat and chatted for a while, but there was little to keep the others at our campsite and the day was passing. It was soon time for them to leave.
I kissed Celia and Elaine and shook Jose’s hand, thanking him for his help. It felt strange to be saying goodbye to Jane under such circumstances — mostly our goodbyes were done in airports. Because of the length of time we had taken leaving Ushuaia and reaching Yendegaia Jane and Elaine did not have much holiday remaining. Jane said they would come up to look for us the day before they hoped to leave. It was just 11 days later. We held each other not knowing whether we were parting for a few days or a month.
‘Be careful,’ Jane said as we kissed for the last time.
‘Of course I will,’ I replied with more certainty than I felt.
Jane climbed on to her horse and the girls shouted a final ‘Good luck!’ as they rode from the camp.
The sounds of horses’ hooves and chatter receded beneath the constant roar of the river and wind blowing through the trees. Even though we were only a few hours’ walk from the estancia and the yacht I felt incredibly isolated. We were surrounded by hundreds of square kilometres of mountain wilderness. It was a sobering thought. If we were lucky, somewhere up this valley lay the mountain we had travelled so far to climb.