Off The Beaten Path
One place in Patagonia that the tourists generally don’t go is Monte Leon National Park on the eastern edge of Argentina. The Lonely Planet said it was pretty nice, but nobody we talked to – local or tourist – had much to say about it or encouraged us to visit. However, the book did say there were penguins, and that’s like, half the reason we came to Patagonia and this was going to be our best shot at seeing them. Given everyone else’s reaction to our plan to head out there, I wasn’t tremendously optimistic about actually witnessing the penguin, but at least we’d get a chance to see some different countryside, maybe some new animals and definitely the southern Atlantic. (It turned out that I can count one of the days on this little side-trip among the best days of my life– but that’s another story.)
So, we rented a cute little Volkswagen, bought a map and a bunch of groceries and fired out onto the 297km gravel road that forms the majority of the connection between El Calafate and Puerto Santa Cruz. I don’t think I’ve ever been so much in the middle of nowhere as we were when we hit that gravel road. 
There was nothing. New Zealand, Mongolia, Siberia: none of them seem to match this kind of nowhere. No towns on the way, no gas stations, no cell-phone towers, or pavement. The only way we knew where we were was by the rusty signs with the names of estancias stuck into the side of the road. These farms were all marked on our map, I guess because there was nothing else to record.
We saw a total of 10 cars that day but a nearly endless stream of wild animals. 
There were the usual suspects of rabbits and sheep, skunks and hawks, but there were also herds and herds of guanacos (sort of like llamas but less fuzzy) and a large bird whose name I don’t know but who looks and runs like an ostrich. Most fantastic of all, we saw a condor. I think we are exceptionally lucky to have spotted it on the side of the road right next to the huge river valley; it took off and floated on a thermal wind up and over and around our car for about 5 minutes. That bird is astonishingly large and to see it fly like that was amazing; this picture, nor my words, can hardly do it justice. We were agog.
The first night on the east coast, we spent in the tiny navy town of Puerto Santa Cruz. You wouldn’t know it from looking down all the deserted streets, the empty beach or the closed restaurants, but this village was utterly bursting with visitors. I don’t get it. Every hotel and inn we asked was full. Every single one! Where was everybody? Very ‘Twilight Zone’. Finally, we were able to snag a room at Pinky’s Inn, a drab and deserted little place at which we stayed quite comfortably. Could only stay one day though- it was fully booked for the following night. (??)
At any rate, this allowed us to spend one full, sunny day at the stunning national park next door and also forced us to sleep in the car that night. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be: a quiet campground, a great view, a couple bottles of wine with our picnic… who knew I’d ever be so happy to sleep in a Golf?
