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Florida. I also learned she was brilliant and driven as well as
aff able, generous, and committed to setting others at ease, even
those who, like me, might initially misjudge her. The year after
graduation, when we were sharing an apartment in Boston, we
agreed that one day we would go on a horse trek together in
Patagonia. That was 11 years ago.
“It’s all happening!” Bailey called when I spotted her in the
Miami airport, black helmet dangling from her backpack. She lives
in Nashville, where she runs a microbrewery and shares a
Craftsman house with her chef husband and spotted dog. I live in
Los Angeles with a spotted dog of my own. Over the years, we’d
wistfully reaffi rmed our desire to go to Patagonia together, even as
the entanglements of adult life made such an adventure seem less
and less possible. As we boarded our fl ight to Chile, it felt like we
were renewing our friendship vows.
Twenty hours later, after layovers in Santiago and Puerto Montt,
we touched down in Punta Arenas, a small city near the tip of South
America’s long tail where the Andes, cracked through with fj ords,
dribble into the sea. Founded by the Chilean government in 1848 as a
penal colony, Punta Arenas became an important sheep-ranchingcentre and resupply port for ships
passing through the Strait of Magellan.
The city’s colonial architecture and
stark landscape give it a frontierish vibe,
even though the transient whalers and
sealers of old have been supplanted by
roving bands of adventure-seeking baby
boomers in premium outdoor gear.
That evening, we sat on the balcony
of La Yegua Loca, a gaucho-themed yet
somehow chic boutique hotel, sipping
lagers from the local brewery Cerveza
Austral. The visibility was unusually
good, and from our vantage over the
strait, we could see two diff erent faces
of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.
The largest island, about 20 miles to
the east, was low and shadowy. But
far to the south the snowy peaks of the
Cordillera Darwin, a remote and116 travelandleisureindia.in