We sang in Trevelin when we were there two years ago and Cwm Hyfryd is truly hyfryd! It was still a bit dusty from the ash that fell after the eruption of the volcano in Chile six months earlier, but still quite beautiful. We stayed in Esquel (in the distance here), not far from Trevelin and still at the foot of the Andes.
I was sorry to leave the mountains when we headed east toward Trelew.
After spending long years hacking a living out of the desert in Trelew and Gaiman, a group of Welsh settlers there decided to make the 400 mile trek west across the desert to where they had heard of much more hospitible land. We were making that trip the other direction (albeit in air-conditioned busses) and it took us a full day. The desert was beautiful (in a desert sort of way) and you can see where a ribbon of river ran through it (the tall trees in the distance) but except for the area right on the banks of that shallow river, everything was dry, rocky and very windy!
We stopped to eat our box lunch at a monument set up beside the road commemorating that long trip made by the Welsh settlers. Only weeks before we had arrived a new book about the trek, called
Rocky Trip had been published and this monument was placed at that time.
You can imagine how happy the settlers were to reach the lovely green valley at the foot of the Andes after traveling for weeks (months?) through this desolate land.
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