penguin

One day we follow the windy edge of ultramarine waters of Estrecho de Magallanes near Punta Arenas in Chile and come upon a King penguin grooming his black tail feathers on a narrow beach. A large bird of the sea, alone, not reproducing in some huge clamoring colony of other Kings on a windswept sub-Antarctic island? What is he doing here?

Calmly, with cars swooshing by on a nearby road and a chorus of village mongrels over the hill making themselves known to other dogs, he is cleaning and smoothing his feathers to keep them fluffy and his body warm. Perhaps he lost his mate and, unable to breed this year, went on a swimabout? Or maybe he entered the Strait of Magellan because it still harbors enough fish, so depleted elsewhere by overfishing? There is a hidden story about his solo presence here but we are not sure what it means.

John vaults over a sea wall and slowly approaches the bird. The King, hard-wired for not fearing land predators since they do not look like leopard seals or killer whales, is undisturbed and relaxed. He does all the familiar things we observed while watching his kin on South Georgia Island. He scratches his head. Checks both long flippers with his bill. Grooms his chest feathers. Rests on his heels, with black toes gently upturned.

And then he quietly settles among beautiful round rocks of the beach and simply falls asleep. John stretches alongside the bird and admires his fine feathers, black, silver and white. He studies tangerine hues of the bold swoosh marking the small head and the lemony yellow bib on the chest. And it is all unpredictable and lovely.

©Yva Momatiuk

fences

I stand in the middle of a mountain gale and my feet constantly shift to keep my body from falling. The morning light show here in the southern Andes is on, and the rising sun blasts rosy flanks of the Cerro Fitz Roy emerging from layers of fog. Spiky cushions of neneo plants blossom deep crimson but I want to get beyond a distant rock bump where a pale thatch of fur just moved and quickly vanished.

A guanaco, once described by Darwin as "an elegant animal, with long slender neck and fine legs." Its blood carries more oxygen than that of other mammals and allows the graceful Andean cameloid to thrive in this truly high country of South America. But graceful does not mean mild. During the short Austral spring love-struck guanaco bulls chase rival males and sink teeth in their long necks, trying to break the extra thick skin protecting vital blood vessels from such assaults.

I follow the guanaco but run into a fence. And unlike many livestock-holding devices I know, the Patagonian variety is as well made as it is infuriating. Here water faucets may fall off when you try to turn them on, poorly anchored toilet bowls march across rooms, and custom officers along the border between Chile and Argentina use wooden rulers and pencils to divide their plain ledgers into organized columns of handwritten bureaucratese. But when it comes to fences, excellence soars. The posts are solid, the wire strands taut and closely spaced, and the whole obstacle too high to stride over. There are some cases of poor maintenance when a sheep farmer moves to a distant town or dies of a wind-saddened heart, but what I behold this morning is no such exception. This fence has been made to keep me out.

Really? I walk and sniff along its length, a keen animal looking for a way in. And here it is, a small eroded gully where the lowest strand rides just high enough. I swing my camera over, drop down, and slither under the wire, my nose close to the moist soil and emerging dandelions. Still on my belly, I pick and chew a few leaves with their bitter tang of spring: they taste just like the hard dandelion roots, dug out years ago from under the melting snow on South Georgia Island. Dressed with olive oil and garlic, they were the only fresh salad during our long sails on Golden Fleece. The leaves smell of our trips to the sub-Antarctic islands and the frozen continent beyond which sends icy gales and lofty iridescent clouds across Patagonia.

Alert to my presence, the guanaco moves away just enough to have plenty of room to escape: a wise herbivore of the steppe does not waste precious energy on silly gallops. I look at the miraculous stage set painted across the bottomless blue of the Patagonian sky, the granite towers of Cerro Fitz Roy and other slender peaks, less famous but as daunting and soul-arresting in their vertical beauty. There is a glistening patch of snow at their base, and the guanaco stands square against it with its Darwinian fine neck elegantly erected until I click my shutter. As long as wild animals are still  present, the Andes appear real and not just a flash of my imagination.

But the fences are everywhere, even though we seldom see any sheep. This hard, hard country, blindingly light in summer and blotted dark in winter, has been terribly overgrazed and stripped of much of its vegetation cover. Ancient trees were cut and burned, tall grasses snipped off by domestic stock, and the resulting erosion kicks its dusty heels every time the wind blows, which is pretty much all the time.

In the past, Patagonia's arid but productive grasslands used to feed large populations of wild herbivores but intensive sheep ranching introduced in the early 20th century soon altered the face of the steppe. The stock carrying capacity of the land was often greatly exceeded and the sheep, famous for their close and selective grazing, soon turned the grasslands into nearly bare expanses of overtaxed land. And not unlike in some parts of Africa, this relentless man-made desertification created dead zones for both domestic and wild animals. Today much of the extensive ranching ceased but we are still trapped by miles of fences dissecting the steppe and are forever trying to find our way to their other side.

The other side may mean another country. One cloud-studded evening we move from the smooth columns of Fitz Roy in Argentina to the granite spires of Torres del Paine in Chile, which appear carved by a giant ice cream scoop. The next morning comes roaring with wind and exploding with condors. The birds tumble down like broken black umbrellas toward a smelly sheep carcass we never noticed but they, all keen eyes and barely twitching tips of their long flight feathers, do not miss.

Loaded with his heavy tripod and camera, John tries to reach a higher ground but another perfectly executed fence forces him to slide under its strands. As he disappears behind some rocky hills, several large tour buses arrive and disgorge scores of Patagonia-mad travelers who line up side by side along the fence and point their cameras at the flying condors. I do not see anyone without some picture taking device: it is as if you do not photograph, you do not earn your keep on Digital Earth.

I think this must be a part of some grand design. First, you carve and fence the land to keep your livestock in and other people out. Then you build a few roads, followed by campgrounds and hotels, which you advertise. And then you get a predictable and seldom varying scenario. The diesel spewing tour buses with their motors idling, no matter how long their passengers roam around to admire wild landscapes. The expectant rows of onlookers with cameras, cell phones and tablets, standing arm to arm and trying to capture what is often the same picture. You even get condors, who may well be on retainer. After that, there is still room for great improvements: rough gravel roads get paved, food stores in towns begin to stock German wild boar marinates and guanaco jerky, and scores of new cafes sprouting behind corrugated tin walls offer free Wi-Fi services and tasty local beer. And all of this means you can go and see what you are supposed to see, but the fences make damn sure you do not stray.

©Yva Momatiuk