Some postal addresses feel like a road to boredom. A sort of dull descent into suburban inevitability. Addresses like ‘Number 42 Plane tree close’. Other addresses fill you with a sense of wonder and expectation! Addresses like ‘337 All The Glaciers’ - not just one. All of them! This was our address in El Calafate. El Calafate is a medium sized town near the end of the inhabited continents as we know them. On the tip of southern Argentina, just over 1000 miles from the Antarctic land mass (and 8000 miles from London), it sits on a vast azure blue lake populated by beautiful contrasting pink flamingos and watched over by the imposing snow capped Andes mountains and the condors who guard them. It sounds like heaven. It is. In part. Huge vistas aside - the dusty unmade roads, inhospitable weather changes, wild horses and stray dogs also make it feel like the desolate Wild West. The sort of town that should be underscored by Ennio Morricone and a whistle whilst Julio Clint Martinez Eastwood squints into the uncertain distance. Our time here was a little functional - facilitating a few days away in El Chaltén. On our return we felt secure in the knowledge that we knew this town and how it worked. What we didn’t know is how the address system (or apparent lack of it) worked. We discovered more after disembarking our bus back from El Chaltén and trying to find an Air BnB.
It was 10 o’clock at night, -2 degrees with a significant windchill of about 20mph. Walking heavily laiden with backpacks and frozen for 15 minutes to the dusty track called Todos Los Glaciares, we began to feel a certain nostalgia for street lighting - non existent here. We discovered that in a town that doesn’t display many house numbers, the ones that are displayed and the solution to finding the house number you want are calculated using the following formula:
‘h’ = the number of the house you are trying to find.
‘p’ = the number of the house you are standing in front of at the time.
‘f’ = the number of flamingoes in the lagoon.
This is a somewhat tiresome and painful way to find an address. At night. In the dark. Freezing cold with the threatening silhouettes of potentially rabid dogs expressing way too much interest in my kneecaps. We successfully came across the numbers 106 nailed to a wooden post outside a house. It is anyone’s guess as to whether those numbers belonged to this house, to any building at all, or in fact to some poor soul trying to record the number of times he had passed this particular point whilst trying to find an Air BnB. We made note of the number and continued our search for 337. A few buildings, streets and dogs later we came across number 662. Clearly something was missing but 662 which was listed as a hotel on Apple Maps (other map applications are available) had lights on and presumably someone home.
Corkie decided to go inside and ask at reception. Except there was no sign of a reception. Instead there were 2 local nurses (of all the professions!) eating their dinner in what was apparently their house which explains the looks of complete surprise when Corkie, unannounced arrived in their living room. We have discovered that the people of South America are in general incredibly kind, warm, helpful and generous. These two bewildered souls were no exception. After explaining that this was (now very obviously) not a hotel, they suggested we turn around and walk back the way we had come where they were sure we would find number 337. We dutifully did as advised with body temperatures now approaching those of a morgue candidate. After being chased from our dusty path by a rabid silhouette onto a partially lit dual carriage way and arriving at a roundabout, it was decided we had had enough of this game. We discussed our next move which at this stage began and ended with finding a warm bar that served a wide selection of hard liquor.
As we got out our calculators to derive which direction we should walk based on the nearest house number, the quantity of flamingos in the lagoon that night and the square root of the degrees my fingers had dropped in the last 5 minutes, an old car slowed and started to pull over towards us. We felt safe because based on our dishevelled, tired and grumpy appearance this was clearly not an attempt at solicitation or financial extortion. We were overjoyed when the window wound down and the smiley faces of 2 true-to-form friendly locals who we later came to know as Nancy and Luiz asked if we were ok. At their invitation we stuffed ourselves and all our pieces of people sized luggage into their tiny but warm car. I’m sure I’ve seen a Marx Brothers sketch that bore a striking resemblance to this situation where at one point Groucho is heard to mutter “is it me or is it getting crowded in here?!”. Nancy and Luiz kindly offered to drive us into town but not before I spotted a wood panelled angular building that was already familiar from the photos we had studied of the Air BnB apartment. Our new friends drove us to the door and wouldn’t leave us until we were safely inside. The apartment it turned out was about 12 meters from where we had originally started on the dusty road outside number 106. As my head hit the soft pillow and the duvet re-warmed my frozen body, I felt I deserved the Nobel prize for Mathematics.
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