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Following Esteban's death I realized it would be too difficult, and perhaps dangerous, to attempt the traversing the uninhabited area on horseback (from Thetis Bay around the bottom tip of the island) so the main problem was now to find two guides to hike around the tip of the island with me. By mid-January (1970) I became concerned least I might not be able to realize my plan before the autumn weather set in. It was then that Celestino Varela, nicknamed Tino, the son of Doña Enriqueta Varela de Santín, agreed to act as my guide through the uninhabited section. He had never been to the zone but he was familiar with the country life, how to camp and to manage horses, which we had to take to the last sheep farm, Policarpo near the tip of the island. Tino's maternal grandmother was Indian and his mother and all of her children were good friends. I knew I could find no one who was better qualified. My other guide was a younger man, Armando Calderón, of Yámana descent, who lived in Ushuaia and at times, worked with Tino on his ranch. Although Armando had always lived in towns, his enthusiasm for the expedition outweighed his lack of experience. Besides, Tino would guide him as well as myself. I realized that that the team should consist of at least three people, should one have an accident on the way.
On 27 January (1971) we set out on horseback from Luis Garibaldi's sheep farm, in what had been the Selk'nam reserve, near the headwaters of Lake Fagnano. As we were about to leave Don Luis confided in me that he would have accompanied me, had he been younger. He was born Haush territory, in Thetis Bay, where we were headed and he was the only person left who could speak some Haush, the language of his mother. It was still light about ten that night when we arrived at the sheep farm, on the Atlantic coast, called Irigoyen, as the river which traverses the area. The following day, as planned, Tino returned to his farm to finish pending work with his sheep. He was to join Armando and me two weeks later on the Policarpo farm from where the three of us were to begin the trek on foot. The day after he left, we continued on horseback down the coast to the Policarpo farm, thanks to Mr. Oyarsón, the administrator of the Policarpo farm, and one of his workers who were headed there. The four of us arrived in Policarpo two and half days later weaving in and out along the narrow coast fronted by high cliffs. Mr. Oyarsón, knew how to avoid being trapped by a high tide against rock walls of the precipices . Ignorance of the tides and topography would make passage along the coast dangerous, if not fatal. His horses knew how to tread lightly over the long stretches peat-bog; though at times, they would sink into the bogs up to their knees while struggling frantically, foaming at the mouth, to pull themselves out, stumbling with each step as they sank in again, until finally lifting themselves on to drier land they would dash on wildly until they fell over parts of their loosened saddle or pack or became entangled in the vegetation. However they forded the rivers, swimming, at intervals unafraid. The rivers were not very wide nor fast running. Inland we saw small groups of guanacos at a distance, posed and tense, their ears erect, staring at us. We rode pass the fragments of ships washed ashore during the past four centuries, including the huge iron hull of the "Duchess of Albany" wrecked in 189l. Days later I was able to photograph a figurehead we found laying on the beach , near False Cove, which fortunately was later retrieved by employees of the "Museum of the End of the World", in Ushuaia, where she is now safe, on exhibit, but perhaps longing for the wind and the sea.
During the two weeks we spent on the Policarpo farm, thanks again to Mr. Oyarsón and to his workers, I was able to film (with a 16mm. camera I had brought along) a large herd of sea-lions scrabbling from the rocky coast and plunging into high waves. I also filmed the wide sweeps of sandy bays, flocks of sheep in a distance on the sides of the hills against a dense blue of the sky, and the seasonal round-up of about 5,000 sheep. A chosen, experienced sheep led them through the fast running waters of Policarpo river, as the dogs raced back and forth, barking steering the reluctant sheep back into the herd and the men on horseback surveyed the operation, attentive to any sheep who appeared to be drowning. During this period I was able to finish some archaeological surveying and the excavations which had to be completed in order to safeguard the finds, especially the human skeletons. Later (from Río Grande) I sent all this material to the Museum of Natural History of La Plata, Argentina. N.7 On 15 February, Tino arrived but so had the Fall rains. We waited for the weather to clear and on the 18th we set out. Meanwhile our "team" had increased by two: Portenã and her son, Mío, Tino's reliable helpers and favourite dogs, our would-be saviours, if need be. In the event of a real urgency, they would find their way back to Tino's farm, and if they arrived alone, his family would know that "something" had happened to the rest of us. The morning of our departure I handed Tino and Armando, each two box of wooden matches carefully wrapped in pieces of rubberized cloth and secured with tape. Tino looked puzzled and commented: "I already have plenty of matches. Why more?" I explained: "Well, if all three of us fall in a river may all of the matches won't get wet," He replied: "We'll cross plenty of rivers but why should the three of us fall in together?" No one did.
Tino carried our fire-arm, an old twenty-two which Don Luis had lent us. When the men at the Policarpo farm had asked Tino why he hadn't gotten an automatic rifle, he had explained that a one-shot twenty-two was less fragile. Each of them carried a machete and each of us a backpack: theirs weighed fifteen to twenty kilos and mine ten. Besides the matches, each had a piece of rubber from a tire, to help light a fire under the rain, cigarettes, a knife, a blanket and a spare pair of pants. Armando was in charge of the food: one kilo of ground coffee, rice, sugar, saccharine, dehydrated soup, chocolate bars and for the first day, bread and meat and two tins for cooking. Tino carried the canvas to serve as a tent and I was responsible for the medicine and the photographic camera. Along the way we picked berries, gathered mushrooms and shellfish and the second and fourth day, meat from two guanacos that Tino shot. I felt really sorry for those guanacos who approached us out of curiosity, not recognizing that we were their most deadly enemies.
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