horn, cuplike stirrups, and seats of
layered fl eece and leather. It turned
out I did still know how to ride, though
I felt awkward in the legs-forward
position dictated by the saddle. We
meandered over grassy hills among
grazing cattle and calafate shrubs.
(An old chestnut holds that if you eat a
calafate berry in Patagonia you are
destined to return, so we ate a lot, just
to be safe.) Armando pointed out two
faraway mountains, Cerro Balmaceda
to the west and Cerro Paine Grande,
part of the massif, to the north.
Tomorrow, he said, we would ride the
distance between them. They looked
alarmingly far apart. Both were clearly
being rained on.fl amingos wade in the shallows of an alkaline lake the colour of dirty
jade. Mountains with scoop-shaped summits appeared in the
distance. At the sound’s southern end, we came to Puerto Natales.
As the gateway to Torres del Paine, the town has all the necessary
components of an adventure crossroads: gear shops, hostels, a lively
brewpub. A few miles from its centre was our strange but beguiling
hotel, the Singular Patagonia, a collection of waterfront buildings
with corrugated roofs that served as a sheep-processing plant from
1915 until the 1970s. It had fallen into dereliction before fi nding an
unlikely dual destiny as a luxury hotel and, thanks to its local
signifi cance, a historical monument. We would spend our last night
before the trek here, gorging on comfort.
The Singular’s preserved industrial spaces serve as
passageways between the public areas, where antique machinery
is artfully displayed and museum plaques explain how, say, the
ammonia pipes worked or what went on in the tannery (nothing
nice). The architecture is austere and dramatic, dominated by
weathered brick, rough timber, and unpolished concrete. But the
hotel’s windows are its most arresting feature. In the spa, the sauna
and steam room have glass walls overlooking Last Hope Sound, so
you can lie like a sweating slug and watch black-necked swans bob
on the choppy water, their long, dark necks curving up from their
ruffl y white bodies like the legs of upside-down cancan dancers.
If you wish, you can swim under the enormous window that
separates the indoor and outdoor parts of the heated pool, and,
seal-like, poke your head up into the bluster. You can also take in
the view from the cavernous restaurant while sipping a pisco sourat the bar or eating local lamb and king crab in the dining room.
Even in bed, you’re not deprived of the landscape, since all 57 guest
rooms, which occupy what was once the plant’s cold-storage
facility, have fl oor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the sound.
After we were tucked in for the night, I whispered across to
Bailey, “I hope I still know how to ride.”
“Me too,” she replied through the darkness. “I think we will, right?”T
he following afternoon, we swung aboard our stocky
little criollo workhorses for the fi rst time. Descended
from animals brought over by the conquistadors,
criollos are known for their toughness and endurance,
the result of centuries of breeding and natural selection on the
pampas. The British company Swoop, which specialises in
adventure travel to Patagonia and the polar regions, had set us up
with a local outfi tter called Horse Riding Patagonia. It is owned by
Vicky Mattison, an English transplant who came here 12 years ago,
fell in love with a gaucho, and stayed even after the relationship
ended. “All I ever wanted in life was a horse and a dog,” she told me.
These were priorities I could understand.
Our fi rst ride was a leisurely two-hour amble through an estancia
north of Puerto Natales, a shakeout to get Calgary, Bailey, and me
used to the Chilean stock saddles, which have a high pommel but noSet loose, we BREEZED ACROSS THE MEADOWS,
passing in and out of sun-showers while
black-faced ibis took flight around us.
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