This story is a chapter of Kinga Freespirit's book "Led by Destiny - Hitchhiking around the World": LedByDestiny.com

It's the beginning of Kinga and Chopin's third year on the road, hitchhiking around the world. After North, Central and most of South America, they make it as far as you can go...

The end of the world

by Kinga Freespirit, 13 Feb 2005

21 Nov 2000

From Puerto Montt, you can take a ship that maneuvering among cliffs and glaciers, will bring you to the very south of the continent. But we learn that it costs a few hundred dollars, so we opt to take the ferry to the nearby island of Chiloe. We arrive at a little town at its southern end where, once a week, there's a ferry to the mainland. We're lucky that tomorrow is the ferry day. We walk around the town with its traditional wooden houses and fishing boats along the shore. To get some shelter from the blowing wind, we enter a little church along the way. There is a service just starting, and we sit down and listen to the small group of people sing enthusiastically. One of the most devoted singers is an elderly lady. It is this old woman, with her husband, who comes up to us after the service, and simply tells us to follow her back to her home.
In the evening we sit by a hot stove and listen to the story of her life. She was born on another island and had seventeen brothers and sisters. She was only lucky enough to go to school for one year, during which she learned how to read and count. When she was ten, her mother fell ill, so she had to stop school to look after her mother and the rest of her brothers and sisters. Married at twenty, she had fourteen children herself. She and her carpenter husband built this little church and tell us they are content with their lives. We are happy to be here, sharing the evening with these simple, sincere people, as we listen to the old woman recite a poem she learned by heart at school, over sixty-five years ago.

23 Nov 2000

A Japanese couple we met yesterday on the ferry picked us up, and it's now the second day now that we're traveling with them along the Carretera Austral - the Southern Highway. It isn't much of a highway, really, more of an unpaved narrow path. But it's a path with great views, winding through unspoiled landscapes of snow-covered mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls and lakes. Susumu and Masako, our Japanese drivers, are a retired couple who have been driving around the world for about five years now. They say it's cheaper for them to travel the world than to live in Japan. They only know a few words in English and even fewer in Spanish so we communicate with a strange mixture of languages and gestures.
"Tea?" asks Susumu.
"Yes, please," Chopin answers.
"Cup," she says, handing him a cup of green tea, and then:
"Spoon," while handing him... a chopstick.
They have followed a route similar to ours, from Alaska all the way down here, so we have plenty to talk about, and we compare our experiences. They show us a book about a guy who traveled around the world by motorcycle, and another written by a Japanese guy who walked from Alaska to Cape Horn. So there are people even crazier than we are.

25 Nov 2000

The road leads us around a great lake, surrounded by snow-covered mountain ranges and glaciers.
"This road was only built ten years ago," our truck driver says. "It was built by Pinochet. If it wasn't for him, we would be walking through here with animal caravans." He is an ardent fan of Pinochet.
Further south, on the Chilean side, there is only unspoiled nature with more glaciers, islands and volcanoes, the kind of nature that man hasn't managed to conquer and destroy yet, or build a road through. Here in the town of Chile Chico, we have to cross over to Argentina in order to continue down south. Changing countries means changing roads - from the narrow dirt path to a smooth, wide, paved highway; we also change landscapes - from the picturesque mountains and waterfalls, to the flat, immense spaces of desolate steppes.

26 Nov 2000

In Argentina, big trucks take us further and further south, through the never-ending, windswept spaces of Patagonia. The road is so wide and straight that when one of our truck drivers wants to take a rest and have Chopin take over the wheel, he doesn't even stop the truck - they swap places while the truck keeps moving.
It's interesting that quite a few of our drivers have mentioned seeing strange lights and unidentified objects in this part of the world. Maybe even more people than we realize witness these strange things, but the subject never comes up in a conversation... So we start asking our drivers, and it turns out almost everybody has a story to tell. Some take UFOs for a fact, even though they claim not to have believed in them previously. Others take what they saw for hallucinating. Here is what our last driver, Felix, experienced: Once, driving at night across the Patagonian steppes, he saw a blinding light behind him. He thought that it was another truck with powerful lights, so he slowed down, to let it overtake him. The truck didn't pass, but instead the light grew stronger. He pulled over at the side of the road and then the light overtook him - sweeping swiftly over him, then disappearing into the night sky.
Another time, during the day, in a pouring rain in the middle of nowhere, Felix stopped to pick up a hitchhiking man. The guy was all wet, and he dripped water all over the seat. The man mentioned that he was a truck driver himself. After driving a while Felix stopped for a minute to check the tires, and when he climbed back into the cabin the hitchhiker was nowhere to be seen. Not in the cabin, not anywhere around, and the area was flat and deserted all the way to the horizon. The seat that the hitchhiker had occupied was suddenly clean and dry. Later, Felix found out that there had been an accident on this road in which a truck driver died.

28 Nov 2000

The end of the world in the port of Ushuaia.

We take the ferry across the Magellan Straight, and enter the Great Island of Tierra del Fuego. In the evening, when we reach Ushuaia, our driver smiles, and says:
"Here you are; the end of the world."
The world's southernmost town welcomes us with a spectacular sunset that paints the snowy peaks bright pink, and reflects charmingly on the surface of the bay. Only thirty years ago, Ushuaia was a tiny port village, and now it's a fast growing town. The saddest thing is that with the arrival of the white man, all the native tribes who lived here for centuries have disappeared forever.
It's a great feeling to know we have arrived as far south as you can go on the continent. We've heard there are ships leaving from here to Antarctica, so the first place we visit is the port. We find out the ships are luxurious cruisers for rich tourists. It might not be easy to hitch a ride with one of these, but we won't know for sure if we don't try. We talk to a man from a large fishing boat, and he tells us the next cruiser will be here in three days. He invites us to spend the night on his boat, where late into the night he tells us about the sea, the whales, the penguins, and his out of body experiences.

2 Dec 2000

Unfortunately, we won't visit Antarctica during this journey. As we expected, hitching a ride on a cruise ship, where the cheapest ticket costs about seven thousand dollars, isn't easy. To get on board as a crew member is even more difficult, because the crew are all professionals employed by the company, not the captain. Well, we tried.
Here, at the southern tip of the continent, the road crosses many times between Argentina and Chile. Luckily, the border crossings here are trouble-free, only our passports fill with more and more stamps. We cross the Magellan Straight again with a young Israeli couple traveling in a rented car all the way to Punta Arenas. This is Patagonia's largest town, with Magellan's monument standing proudly in the main square.

4 Dec 2000

A trip to the glacier.

Through the windows of the cars that pick us up, we watch the wild ostriches grazing by the side of the road, as well as guanaco, an undomesticated animal related to the llama. What impresses me most are the pink flamingos that wade in the waters of a turquoise lagoon. Today we reach the national park of Torres del Paine, with its spectacular mountain spires, giant glaciers, mighty waterfalls, and lagoons of unbelievable colors hidden in the valleys. Some lagoons are simply little azure ponds, while others are so big that you can't even see their distant shore as it disappears between the mountains.

6 Dec 2000

With the penguins.

We were lucky to see the Chilean park of Torres del Paine, but we're not lucky enough to get a chance to see the Argentinean park of Los Glaciares. The only traffic on the deserted road leading to the park is an occasional tourist minibus. Maybe if we waited for two or three days we could catch one... but we aren't patient enough this time.
Getting out of here isn't easy, either. We wait for the whole day outside the town before someone picks us up. I know it's not without reason though, we've just been waiting for the right ride. This time it's a family going back home to their town of San Julian, on the Atlantic coast. We arrive late at night, they invite us for a meal, and give us a place to stay. It's a very open, outgoing family, with six giant dogs, a few cats and two teenage daughters. Gordo (that's how the father of the family is introduced to us - which means 'fat') prepares pasta with mushroom sauce, while Gala (their fourteen year old daughter with blue hair) sets the table.

9 Dec 2000

Nothing but an empty road and the wind.

Gordo wakes us up in the morning to let us know that at ten o'clock there's a boat leaving for the nearby Penguin Island. It's his friend's boat, and he'll give us a ride. First, he takes us to an island full of cormorants, which we can only see from the boat. On Penguin Island, however, we are allowed to go ashore. It's the first time I have seen penguins in the wild and so close up. They observe us cautiously, but are not afraid. Delighted, I watch them wobble towards the water and sit on their nests looking after their grey chicks.
In the afternoon, we say goodbye to our family, and Gordo takes us to a gas station. The lovely weather we had this morning has been blown away by a wild wind so strong that I can hardly stand. The best thing we can do is wait at the gas station building and talk to the drivers. When we ask one of the men if he could give us a ride, he answers back with a question: "Do you like speed? O.K., let's go."
It is over two thousand kilometers from here to Buenos Aires. Too bad he's not going all the way there.

To see how it all ended (and how it began): LedByDestiny.com

About the author

• Author: Kinga Freespirit
• From: Poland
• Website: Led by Destiny

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