Southern Summer, Argentina, Chile and Y Wladfa Gymreig 20th Jan

I'm afraid that the executive suite cama class rather spoilt us for anything else. We had executive cama, but not the 180° only 140° and your legs dangle from the knees. Arrival was at 7.00am, but fortunately we had arranged to go into an empty apartment whilst ours was prepared. The places where gorgeous, have a look.

No 1 of 4 chalets and our home for the next three days. As you
can see the evening sun is strong

The business end of the chalet, upstairs to the two bedrooms and left for the toilet, shower etc.

 Esquel is now a town of 40,000 people with the town spreading northwards up the valley. When you look at the picture below you can see the most recent developments. You can also see a huge column of smoke coming from a serious scrub fire about which, more later.

It was founded by the Welsh immigrants in 1906. They travelled west to settle their "Cwm Hyfryd" or in English, pleasant valley. They also founded nearby Trevelin.

Cwm Hyfryd I think I can even see a few sheep down there. We are at 500ms above sea level. In 1922 in order to improve the infrastructure to facilitate trade, investment in a railway line was started in a town called Ingeniero Jacobacci 400 kms north. Which in turn linked to Viedma and hence to Buenos Aires. The gauge is unique in the world at 75cms. By 1940 it reached Esquel and was known as La Trochita. In 1979 Paul Theroux wrote a book about it that he entitled The Old Patagonian Express. He described it as the southernmost railway in the world. Not quite true but nothing farther south links with any other system. In 1992 it was closed altogether and more recently it has been reopened as a tourist line but now only regularly covering the 20 kms up to Nahuel Pan where there is a Mapuche reservation. This is the journey we are planning to do tomorrow.
A couple of other facts about Esquel. It is twinned with Aberystwyth in Mid Wales and a meteorite landed here in 1951 weighing 755kgs. When the meteorite was cut and polished it was found to contain thousands of yellow peridot crystals and,as everybody knows that is Helen's birthstone.
Back to the scrub fire that I showed you, by sunset, and enhanced by the sunset this is how it looked.

I couldn't choose between these two images, so you have got them both. By the way Moriarty, the Reichenbach Falls are coming up soon, so watch out!