Ride Tally: 3 Ferries, 9 Buses, 18 Hitches

I´ll try to make this post logical to follow. I should try to find a map to post on here.
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Puerto Montt - The House of the Rising Sun

I took a 14-hour bus ride south to Puerto Montt from Santiago over Thursday night two roughly 1 1/2 weeks ago. That was a nice surprise because I was expecting 20 hours.

I arrived Friday afternoon and easily arrived at my hostel, a cheap recommendation from trusty travel guidebook Lonely Planet. It was nice, clean, etc. I meet a few other people there while I´m relaxing before heading out to see the city. They say they´re from Pto. Montt, but I can´t figure out why they´re staying at my hostel. Finally I ask what they do. The answer, "La cama!" That´s right. The bed. So it was a nice little hostel that about 5 prostitutes called home! They were nice, but as the evening turned into night they disappeared and came back scantly clad and headed out to the corner. Welcome to Pto. Montt! Lonely Planet hadn´t mentioned that aspect of the hostel.



The tide is pretty drastic because Pto. Montt is on a gulf. Resulting in many boats left to dry until the water comes back in.

The city was decent. Poverty was much more evident than in Santiago and I was asked for money much more often. It´s pretty much the jumping off point for all of southern Chile, meaning tons of traffic, both on land and water. It´s also the line between several geographical regions: the southern tip of the Lake Region, the northern tip of La Araucana Region, and the route to Isla Chiloé (which is its own small separate state).



Most of the playgrounds I´ve seen in Chile are pretty bright. The trip south involved lots of rain, as that region generally is inundated with it. But I had some nice views as well, including Volcano Calbuco.

I got up early Saturday to head to Parque Nacional Alerce Andino to the east of Pto. Montt. However, no buses left for several hours, so I walked about 10 minutes down to Angelmo, a tiny town outside of Pto. Montt with little more than a cool fish market and tons of artesans selling very cheap woolen products.

Oysters are "mariscos" in spanish, or at least in Chile. And crabs are "jaivas."

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PN Alerce Andino - My Private Park

I got to the park with little trouble and a lady living just outside the park informed me that the guard wouldn´t be back for another hour or so. I took a nice hike and discovered that it was pretty much a rainforest. Trails were almost completely boardwalks, and trying to explore off of them only brought me to dense, impenetrable undergrowth. Tons of moss, water everywhere. Quite cool. Luckily it had stopped raining at this point.

The guard returned only to inform me that I was 10 km from where I wanted to be for camping and hiking. So I started the 6 mile walk down the road and during one of several hitches another guard stopped to tell me that he was leaving for the night because no one was in the park. He said I could camp anywhere and that he would see me the next day!

I unfortunately caught very few hitches, because the guard was right...there was no one. So it took me a long time to arrive. But when I did I took a hike in my personal national park. I have no doubts that there were people in other sections of the park, but not in the center and largest region where I was. It was pretty damn cool.

These little boardwalks look wonderful, but they are insanely dangerous. Think about it: wooden planks in a rainforest where people seldomly go. They were so slippery. I got off lucky with no falls during my several hikes.

I was excited about my first night of cooking - by the way, this trip is solo. A friend was gonna come but he ended up going to Brazil instead. Unfortunately he was mugged there and speaks less Portuguese than he does Spanish. I´ll admit it. I´m a horrible cook. I always think I´m decent, but the reality is that I am not.

I had some easy stuff, too. Like a packet of just-add-water and you´ll have soup with rice, lentils, beans, noodles and some enjoyable flavoring. Let´s call it a flavor orgy that the minister walked in on. Something so promising all gone wrong! I ate a lot of it, but it was horrible. I´m glad that I had brought along the Good Ol´Rains and Peanuts, or GORP, just in case this happened. GORP saved me several times of the trip.

Me trying to get the flavor orgy to leave my mouth. I got up early Sunday to find myself incredibly sore from the 10+ kms I had hiked the previous day, but I stashed my stuff and took a relatively easy hike. I got an early start because I realized that it was a 10 km hike on the exit as well...but then my angels came along.

I was on my way out of the park, maybe .5 km gone, when a truck that had arrived that morning starts coming out. I met Fer and Celia, my Spanish travel companions for the next several days. They were traveling a little as well and just happened to be heading to several of the same destinations. They didn´t have much trouble convincing me to come along!

First they needed to stop at their hospedaje to pick up things before heading back to Pto. Montt. This meant that I had to accompany them to an awesome lunch at a fogon next to their place. Oysters, potatoes and tons of other stuff that I didn´t know. Allow me to remind you that the flavor orgy from the previous night had failed horribly! So it was a welcomed meal. A fogon is the name for buildings with roughly the lighthouse shape: 6 or 8 sided with many windows. It was a great view of the gulf.

A cute little dog from our lunch spot. And my saviors, Fer and Celia.

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Isla Chiloé

I stayed with Fer and Celia until Isla Chiloé, which was several hours in car and a ferry ride across a strait. From Puerto Montt, the crossroads where everybody goes...to Chiloé, the place where no one goes. Chiloé is known for many mythological tales about the sea, houses on stilts, and a huge amount of unique churches from when Jesuits apparently tried to make it the island with the largest number of churches per capita in the world. There´s a fund for maintaining them.

I separated from Fer and Celia not too long into the island because I didn´t want to be a third wheel and I had plans to make it a little further. Luckily I caught a hitch for the 33 km journey to Ancud right as rain started battering me. Ancud is the main northern city, about 40,000 people. It´s generally a starting place to see some penguin colonies which I unfortunately didn´t have time to do. However, there is a cool old Spanish fort from days gone by which is in decent repair. And I found a wonderful campground with nice owners where I enjoyed an awesome view until the rain returned.

The fort, adn my camping spot. I chose the protection of the plants because the wind off of the water was biting.

I was about 50 feet from a vertical bluff. I think verticality is somewhat implied with the word bluff, but I just want to be super-specific! The rain came back pretty hard later in the night, so I cooked in a little covered refugio - another unfortunate outing. I discovered there´s a difference between the $0.50 and $1.00 pastas. The former is complete shit. I didn´t think pasta could be bad, but I was oh-so-mistaken!

Castro

Monday morning I caught a bus from Ancud to Castro, which is Chiloé´s main city, located midway down the island on the eastern, gulf coast. It´s okay, but a little too much like other Chilean cities. Luckily I found my way to some cool spots.

One Chiloé´s larger churches, right on Castro´s Plaza de Armas - most of them are cool colors. And the infamous houses on stilts. When the tide is in they appear like this, but when the tide goes out, here on the gulf side of the island, huge areas are exposed. You can get trapped if you walk to certain areas while the tide is out, a situation from which Fer and Celia were saved from by a local boater!

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I was only in Castro for several hours, but I met an awesome local. I was walking along when I heard hammering and I went to investigate. This guy was extending an old fishing boat by about 6 feet. I didn´t get his name, a journalistic sin, but he was born, raised and had always lived on Chiloé. He was a few days into the work and said that it would take just over 2 weeks in total to finish. So after shooting a little I ran to catch a bus.

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PN Chiloé - My Private Beach

After the fisherman I took a bus several hours to Cucao, on the west side of the island. It was beautiful! Once I got out of city the landscape opened up to display beautiful rolling hills spotted with lakes and sheep and churches. More sheep than lakes. And probably more lakes than churches, but I´m not sure about that one.

As I climb out of the bus I find Fer and Celia getting out of their car behind the bus. They decided to amend their plans because they thought what I had said about PN Chiloé sounded interesting. We drove around a little while looking for the entrance, quickly found the sea, but needed a little help to find the park. Again we parted ways, me heading to camp in sand dunes and them to horses to ride on the beach. So my second national park on this trip...and again I´m alone. The guard said that there is a lot of tourism in the summer, but I beat it by a few months!

Having fun with the camera. And finding the only other things on the beach a few hundred meters away: 2 fishing nets.

The dunes where I camped were created by a tsunami that hit much of southern Chile in 1960. There were 2 large earthquakes on back-to-back days. The second created the tsunami that wiped on many coastal cities. It was beautiful. Again I camped up in the dunes to protect against the wind.

I hope no one is too offended by my little ass! What can I say...I´m a sucker for skinny-dipping. And why not when you have an entire ocean to yourself. It was cold, not as much as I anticipated, but still enough to only go for several minutes. I didn´t walk the beach in the buff... I put on some boxers! I´m sure this isn´t that strange, but cows on the beach was a first for me!

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I started hiking out of the park to have Celia run out of a cabaña to stop me and invite me in for breakfast. I of course joined them and then went for a hike to a different part of the dunes before we hit the road again for Pto. Montt. The island was beautiful. Upon arriving to Pto. Montt I went to the ferry office to buy a ticket further south while Fer and Celia bought bus tickets to Santiago, from where they were flying up to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Hopefully they´ll call me when they stop in Santiago before heading back to Spain.

The ferry ride was 12 hours overnight from Pto. Montt to Chaitén, bordering the gulf on the mainland´s western coast. I luckily have an uncanny ability to sleep pretty much anywhere: planes, boats, cars, buses, etc.

Here are some sights from the several ferry rides on the trip.

When I asked what the truck was carrying, I thought the driver was just trying to blow off a nosy gringo when he answered, "Nada." He then explained that they´re simply filled with air and styrofoam for flotation devices used by boats, fisherman, and docks. And the captain of another ferry told me that the flags are for the many different situations related to maritime navigation. I didn´t exactly interrupt anything serious - he was reading the newspaper as another crew member drove the boat.

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Parque Pumalin - A private park where I was the only person

Wednesday invovled a lot of rain. I started out for Parque Pumalin almost immediately upon arriving in Chaitén. I hiked about 3 miles, hitched another 5, and arrived at the first guard station. From there the guard took me back to where I started because he said no one would be passing through until later. I was wet and quite frustrated, but he was right. Later a salmon fisherman drove around the town until he found me, lucky for me, and I rode up with him to Caleta Gonzalo, the main area of the park. The distance of about 70 kms took several hours, so I was happy that he found me. (I had asked around town earlier with suggestions from the park rangers. It´s not like the guy just goes out looking for people!)

Esprit clothing company founder Douglas Tompkins started the park as one of many conservation efforts that he and his environmentalist organization have attempted in both Chile and Argentina. There´s a ton of controversy surrounding the park and the fact that a gringo, a north american one at that, owns such massive swaths of land.

It was very similar to PN Alerce Andino, lots of Valdivian rainforest. But it was incredible. I was honestly the only visitor again, but at least some people live in the little town/outpost. The idea for the park is to let locals continue to live in the area with organic farming and self-sufficiency goals. And considering a millionaire is behind it all, it has wonderful funding, much more so than the national park system.

There´s this completely ridiculous landing strip in the middle of nowhere. It´s technically in Caleta Gonzalo, but that still doesn´t make it anywhere other than the middle of nowhere. Also, here in the wild for all practical purposes there is a wonderful café decorated with black and white photography from around the park. I enjoyed a tea, took a hike, and then tried to decide what to do about sleeping - I had my own personal fogon. Considering that there was no one else there, the lady running the café didn´t mind giving me an upgrade from the standard camping site. The problem was that the constant rain meant a small river was flowing through the floor of the place. Luckily there were wide benches around the interior, so I slept on one of those.

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The Carratera Austral

I caught a bus to Chaitén in the morning, but I didn´t have enough money to pay for it. So I went to the bank, where the ATM didn´t accept Visa, which happens to be all I have. And there were no other ATMs in town. It took me quite a while, but I found a hostel run by the park which accepted Visa. So I paid for a few nights there and they gave me the cash. Frustrating but at least I could continue.

The plan was to make it to Futaleufu, which is a Chilean extreme sports capital on the Argentine border. Well, when there aren´t buses you can´t be too picky about where you go. So I caught 4 hitches over the course of the day and ended up about 50 km short of Futa. I had hoped to make it there to check out some river rafting: the Fu is considered one of the best rafting rivers on the continent. However, I got to meet several people and enjoy the views, which were spectacular. This was probably the prettiest part of the trip, but I took very few photos because I just didn´t even think I could come close to capturing it. Here´s one of my hitches, though.

The third driver of the day was insane. I feared for my life, but it was a free ride - so I didn´t say anything. And the final hitch that day was insane because it was 20 kms of balancing of the side of the truck bed because the guy didn´t want me to sit on the plywood in back! Oh well, the views were simpy amazing. Huge mountains on all sides and beautiful lakes and rivers. After the final hitch I hiked several hours, about 10 kms, to arrive in Puerto Ramirez around 9:30. I startled some people by knocking so late and asked if they had a room. Luckily they did because I had no desire to camp that night. Although I thought $10 was pretty steep, it did include a luke-warm shower (the first in quite a while) and a horrible breakfast the next morning.

La Frontera y La Vuelta

With an early start I got to Futa quite easily. The only problem was that the truck kept threatening to die. It only did when we were in town. Several other guys and I pushed it a little ways, the driver popped the clutch, and I sprinted back to the front to enjoy a few more free kilometers toward the border. Another hitch got me to the border, and the international police member did not believe that I was along and on foot. He exited the building just to make sure I wasn´t lying about not havnig a car.

The Argentine side quickly left the deep valley of Chile behind and flattened out into the broad Pampas. The wide green fields, most with cattle, were bordered with sharp, contrastingly gray peaks, many snowcapped. I had time to enjoy it as I hiked about 8 kms. I then grabbed a short hitch of 3 or 4 kms to a small town where the chances of more traffic were greater.

Maybe Argentina is better at soccer than Chile because they have signs warning that it is being played in the streets! From the town I hitched with a Taxi. That´s right. The taxi driver refused to take money for the 30 km ride he gave me because he said he had to return to the small Welsh town of Trevelin anyway. So scratch that off my list of life goals: hitching a free ride with a taxi. During our ride he told me about growing up and living in Trevelin. He also told me how to get to the bus stops and collectivos to reach Bariloche that night.

There´s a saying about Argentina and Chile: Argentina is 1/2 as expensive and the people are twice as nice. I didn´t believe it, but I think I do now. In Chile I always have to initiate conversation, but several people began conversations with me in Argentina. Just asking me where I was from and where I was headed. And the twice as cheap part is definitely true. It´s crazy how inexpensive things are, especially food!

I eventually made it to Bariloche, after enjoying several hours of conversation with a Spanish girl on the bus from Esquel. It was a beautiful ride, and not just because of her, but her looks didn´t hurt anything. However, the ride was horrible: bumpy, hot, sunny, and by this point I needed another shower. Unfortunately she had to get off at another stop and we couldn´t spend the night together...I mean, we couldn´t continue hanging out in the same location! Or the first thing.

Bariloche was fun. Met some Brits. Had some drinks. Stayed out late. Got up early. Caught a bus to Osorno, Chile, Saturday morning. The ride, yet another beautiful one, was windy as all hell and a girl got sick. I chatted with 2 California girls who were traveling. Osorno is normally nothing too special, but we caught it on a cool day. There was a car, bike, moped, etc. show. It was cool, tons of people, lots of action, and a good amount to take in during the few hours before a bus back to Santiago.

I never feel too far from home. I used to try to explain things to people if they had clothing from areas I knew in the states, but it´s kind of fruitless overall. But seeing a little KC flair was nice. And they were doing cool thing like spinning out, revving engines, bumping loud speakers, etc. This guy was trying to ride a wheelie. Trying. I was not special in the crowd whatsoever. I wasn´t out further than anyone else, but I aparently had a target. You´ll notice in the picture that he appears to be leaning a tiny bit! My cat-like reflexes luckily sprang into action in time for me to jump to the ride and push the bike away just as the front wheel was coming down on my leg! Not an experience I was expecting...at all. He then ran into another bike and fell over. It was funny as soon as I made sure I was okay.

A kid checking out some medals that a 16-year-old has won while driving. The car is from ´67, if I remember correctly. He said he races almost every weekend. And that´s someone burning rubber in the background. And this was a moped/motorcycle from the ´50s. It was quite cool.

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So that´s the trip. It was awesome. Tiring as all get out, but great. It was lonely at times, but with meeting people like Fer and Celia along the way it wasn´t a problem. I only caught myself talking to cows on few, select occasions. The scenery was astounding and I´d love to find time to expore more of the Lakes region of Chile. Seeing Volcanoes from a distance just isn´t the same as hiking around them.

I got into Santiago at about 6 am Sunday and made it home in one piece. I made it off pretty well. In Brazil, Scott was mugged. In Chile, Chrissie´s wallet was swiped. In Argentina, a cabbie gave Nicole fake bills. So I did well in comparison.

I came back to give a presentation on the Argentine financial crisis of 1998-2003 or so. It went horribly, but oh well, at least it´s over. On a similar note, the Summit recently held in Argentina was met by staunch protests about the Americas Free Trade Agreement proposals. Other than an elite few, it seems that NAFTA has not been too helpful for either Mexico or Canada in comparison to the States. Partially for this reason, South American countries are very pessimistic that a broader trade agreement such as the proposed one would do more harm than good. But it´s over now and it seems relatively little was accomplished with this Summit, or El Cumbre.

With one month of school left things are swinging into high gear. I have many tests and papers coming up in the next few weeks, but then vacation and more travels. Maybe surfing in the next week or two!