Journal... Part 4

Punta Arenas, March 6

Ostriches!  ...and more flamingos, along with a lot of sheep.            

I'm in Punta Arenas on the straights of Magellan and it's cold and wet; in the 50s with light rain.  I got here yesterday after a great bus ride from Puerto Natales across the Patagonian pampa.  Looks like Montana or Wyoming; mountains on the horizon, low wind-carved juniper-like trees, short steppe grass lands, shallow lakes, trout streams and rivers, occasional estancias (ranches)  with cowboys on horses, cattle and lots of sheep.  And, mixed in with the sheep, ostriches (actually rheas) about 5 or 6 feet tall.  I knew they were here, but didn't expect to see them by the dozens, in small flocks of 8 to 10, individually, groups with chicks, etc.  Surprisingly plentiful.  

Looking across the Straights of Magellan to tierra del Fuego

I also passed three hotels on trout rivers, and plan to go back to one of them tomorrow or the next day to fish and bird watch for a few days or maybe a week, and so will be out of email contact.  I know one charges $90 US per day, but there is one that the guidebook recommends at $15 a day with breakfast. Unfortunately, they don't have a phone so I'll just have to take the bus back and get off, hoping they have a room.  If not, well... they'll have to figure out something to do with me since they are 30 miles from anything else and bus service is pretty limited.  It should be OK, though... the tourist season is on the wane here and I doubt that they will be full.

So.... all continues to be well and I'm really looking forward to a few days of fishing and being outside... if only the weather improves a bit.

Puerto Natales, 3/12

Wow! Trout fishing in Patagonia!  Aside from freezing my ass off and almost getting blown into Argentina, it was a great experience... and I even caught fish!  Six on the first day, including one good one of about 16 inches.  Day two was less successful. I couldn’t hit the water standing on the bank for the wind.... the kind that you have to lean into to walk.  I did find a few sheltered spots up stream, but still didn’t do much... a couple of small ones.  But all that aside, it was really cool to not only fly fish in Patagonia, but to catch fish on my own flies, without a guide.. and while staying in a very pleasant $8.00 a night hotel... with breakfast!  (That should about use up my quota of exclamation points for the week.... but it was pretty great.) 

Hotel Rio Rubén

 While in Punta Arenas, I finally discovered a phone number for the Hotel Rubén (it was on the internet) and took the bus back to it.  The hotel, a large 2 story affair some 40 miles south of Puerto Natales, has 10 rooms above and a dining room/restaurant below, and was built in the 1930s.  My room, complete with 10 foot ceilings (I know because I could stand my fly rod upright) had the iginal wallpaper and furnishings, two single beds and a locker for clothes.  It was heated by a cheerful gas heater with a pilot light that lit up the room. Once I got used to the idea that if it hadn’t burned the place down in the previous 80 years, it probably wouldn’t burn down with me in it, I got to like the stove... a little like having my own fireplace.  Unfortunately, with the windows closed the curtains still blew around bit when the gusts were especially strong, but I was cozy with the stove and 3  blankets.  The bathrooms, down the hall as usual, were large and had good showers.  Below, the restaurant had a counter with stools, and above a menu, a shelf of liquor bottles, and assorted flyers and posters from the last 80 years. In front of the bar were about 8 tables, nicely set with unmatching table cloths, napkin holders, and catsup, mustard and aji bottles.  To the left of the bar was the kitchen door, and to the left of that, a little sitting area with old leather couches along the walls and a huge round wood stove in the middle.  Cozy, comfortable, homey, and looking like a roadhouse you might find somewhere west of Casper, WY.  The food was good and plentiful, mostly hot sandwiches and the like, which could be prepared quickly when the busses came in depositing 20 or more hungry tourists all at once, but there was also a daily almuerzo. I asked about lamb, and thought it was not evidently in the 

original plans, they changed them and served me a huge platter of assorted cuts of braised lamb the second evening.  Really a nice place, with friendly folks.  The manager drove me upstream the first morning to show me where to access some quieter parts of the river, and when I turned up with a cold on day two, they fed me lemon tea.

Hotel Rio Rubén’s dining room

I’ll spare you additional details of the fishing, but although he weather was raw (high 40’s with wind and occasional sprinkles) I really enjoyed it.  Hope to come back to stay a week sometime when the weather is a bit better.

Rio Rubéns

Anyway, with a chest cold coming on, a third day of fishing seemed like a mistake, so I caught a bus back into Puerto Natales, and the next day (yesterday) took a day-long tour of the Torres del Piane park.  Describing it seems a bit pointless, if not impossible, but it is truly incredible.  On a par (or more impressive than) Yosemite or Yellowstone, but with guanacos and rheas instead of bears and bison.  Great trip, covering around 250 miles in a 12 hour day with lots of stops to walk and lunch at the glacier Grey.

  

Torres del Piane

Later today I’m heading into Argentina for more glacier watching.

Bariloche, March 18

Ugg.   La gripa!  The cold that I started at Rio Rubéns last week has matured into a regular spring cold, complete with my usual 99º temperature. I feel like shit on a stick, but have spent a couple of pleasant days resting and recuperating (or at least waiting it out) in a nice hotel here in the Aspen of Argentina.  Bariloche, about a hundred miles or so SE of Villarrica in Chile, is a ski center and now, a trekking, climbing, rafting, fishing center for international tourism; not so much the backpacker sort, although they are here too, but for the middle and leisure class and retirees.  It is on a hillside overlooking a large lake with jagged Andes peaks behind it.  Much more up-scale than anywhere I’ve been previously on this trip, with lots of ski shops, designer clothing boutiques, gift shops, huge candy stores, parriadas (grilled meat restaurants), and so on.  All very up scale and …… cheap!  Argentina’s peso has fallen from one the US dollar in 2002 to 3 to the dollar today, while inflation has not kept up with the change.  Thus my hotel, with a smallish, very clean, modern room with bath, breakfast and cable TV is 50 pesos Argentinas ($A), or $17.50 US.  Dinner the other night in a black-tie-waiter parriada--grilled lamb, salad and a half bottle of wine--was under $10 US with a generous tip.  Jug wine is $.60 a liter, and good quality varietals are $2.50 and up.  The “up” ranges to around $10 and $12 US a bottle, and though there are certainly more expensive wines available, that’s about the range in grocery stores.  I stocked up on essentials at the local gourmet grocery before ensconcing myself in the hotel for the last two days, and spent $6.00 for good French bread, cheese, olives, Spanish style chorizo and a bottle of wine. (Drugs, however, are close to US prices, since generics seem unavailable and even aspirin come individually wrapped in plastic at $3 US for 50.)

Unfortunately, there’s not too much more I can tell you about Bariloche, since I’ve spent the last two days in my room watching the Argentine food network and BBC World.  Argentine foodies cook (and entertain their audience) more or less like the US foodies, but include recipes with innards--tripe, tongue--which would never show up on the American channel.  But, at least those are interesting, and since the weather has been cold (50’s) and grey, a few days rest hasn’t been all that bad.

I left Puerto Natales, from where I last emailed you, the next day via bus to El Califate, Argentina. The border crossing, in the middle of nowhere, was painless, involving only a 10 minute stop to have our passports stamped out of Chile, and another a few miles on, to have them stamped into Argentina.

El Califate is a smallish town on Lago Argentina, the largest Argentine lake. It seems to have only one reason for existence:  tourism to the nearby glacier, Perito Moreno, and of course, feeding, provisioning and souvenir-ing the tourists.  Although the town was small and the paved streets were limited, the tourist shops were very upscale. In Chilean resort towns, about one shop in 5 was “world-class,” like you’d expect to find in the US or Europe, and while the others were not exactly scruffy, they were slightly rough around the edges. In El Califate, 90% were world-class (as is the case here in the tourist center of Bariloche).  So, after a day of hanging around in El Califate, and eating at a pretty good tenedor libre buffet with the usual parrillada of beef and sausage ($5.30 + 1.60 for a half bottle of wine), I arranged a tour to the glacier. 

Glacier Perito Moreno

Pretty impressive!  But you’ll have to see the photos, glacial description is not my forte.  I did enjoy the people however.  My seat mate was a Spanish girl from Barcelona the same age as Celina…. a geriatric nurse (perhaps that was why she was so friendly to me) who had never traveled outside of Spain before.  She had Argentine friends in Spain, and they suggested that she come, so she did.  In spite of relatively little travel experience, she had no difficulty traveling alone for a couple on months. There were also three Japanese guys in their early 20’s whose English was better than their Spanish, for whom I did a little translating, and the usual assortment of Germans and Swiss.  Interesting people and a nice day, thought my cold made the trek along the lake to the glacier a bit wheezy. At that point, with no cold cure in sight and the prospect of  more cold weather and two 12 hour bus trips (at around $60 US each) to get me to Bariloche via the unpaved Argentine Andean highway, I decided to fly.  The Tuesday afternoon flight was uneventful, and though it was too overcast to see much, it got me to Bariloche in about 2 hours, which brings us about up to date.

I feel some better today… getting out of bed probably helps… and tomorrow I’ll be taking a van to San Junín de los Andes, via the seven lakes loop. Should be lots to see and should not be too demanding for my present puny state.  San Junín is renowned for its trout fishing, and depending on how I am feeling …and the weather, I may  fish for a few days.

Anyway,  Argentina is definitely going to be on the travel agenda again in the next few years, at least while the peso stays down (or unless the dollar continues to sink and we can’t afford to go anywhere).  I’m enjoying the country (if not the cold) and all is well.

On the bus to Mendoza

Mendoza, Argentina
3/23/05

Sunshine at last!  And Mendoza is a great place.  The urban area has about 900,000 people with Mendoza in the center.  The down town area includes a main square with four smaller squares at the corners a block or so away, and with a 4 block pedestrian mall filled with sidewalk cafes entering the square from the east.  The downtown is full of upscale shops and restaurants, not particularly tourist oriented, tough tourism is important, but directed at what is obviously a prosperous middle class.  Jewelry stores, electronics, shoes, sporting goods, clothing, cafes, internet, etc.  The only incongruous thing about it is that the prices are low.... if you are converting from dollars at A$ 3 to US$1.  Really sort of odd.  Whenever I’ve been somewhere with low prices in the past, they have been associated with low standard of living and lots of poverty.  While there is surely poverty here (not that I’ve seen any) the overall standard of living is high and people seem prosperous.  In the PM, the cafes are filled with well dressed folks of all ages having ice cream, espresso or drinking beer.  Waiters are polite and well dressed.... and thank you when you leave a .50 A$ (US $.17) tip when paying your A$ 4.50 bill for a liter of beer. Today I ate almuerzo in another tenedor libre parrillada, a huge place with a large crowd, black tie waiters (but not really fancy).  At a regular restaurant,  the main course is only the meat or pasta, and you order side dishes (which tend to be large enough for two) separately, so I’ve been eating mostly steaks or pasta and salad.  The buffet gave me a chance to have a little more variety, (bean salads, lentil salads, Serrano style ham, Brussels sprouts (!), etc. and grilled chicken - no beef for me today!)  at $3.60 for the meal and another $1.50 for a half bottle of wine.

Mendoza street cafes 

Anyway, it is a very pleasant place.  The streets are all lined with what look like sycamore trees, thought bushier and not as tall, and there’s a sidewalk cafe in most every block.  The streets and plazas are full of people, mostly middle class looking (almost no beggars, thought street acrobats and jugglers are common at intersections).  Everything is quite clean, with not only street leaners but merchants sweeping the sidewalks free of leaves several times a day.  The climate is editerranean, and days have been  bright and sunny, with clear smog-free skies and temps in the 70s.  Today I walked to the main park, of several sq miles, and between down town and there the streets were lined with nice, well kept upper-middle class homes.  The lake in the park is the home of the regatta club.... a very large club building with Olympic sized pool and several dining areas, and there were rowing sculls practicing in the lake.  All pretty remarkable.  I’d come back here.

Tomorrow I go on a winery tour.... recall that Mendoza is the center of the Argentine wine industry... to visit two wineries and to have a winy 5 course meal at one of them.  The most renowned Argentine wine is Malbec, a fairly heavy red, but they produce pretty good wines from all the standard varieties, including pretty good sauvignon blanc.  As noted before, I’m pretty well red-wine-and-beefed out for the moment, but I’ll still probably have a glass of malbec and some cheese and olives before bed.... but no real dinner.  Although I’ve probably stopped loosing weight, I’ve grown accustomed to eating less and one main meal a day is plenty.

Almueszo on the wine tour

Friday I go back to Santiago and will try to see the Concha y Torro winery there on Monday before leaving the city.  Then, Tuesday, it’s off to the airport and home.  Overall, a very good trip and I’ve learned a lot about what makes for good travel.  So..... this should be the last travelogue.  I’ll see you soon.

Last day in Santiago outside the Concha y Torro winery

Journal... Part 3

Ancud, Chiloe Island, 2/25

Today marks a month since I left the States.  Seems like a long time, but so far it has been great. Hope the next month goes as smoothly.

Last Monday I returned to the Navimag ferry office in Puerto Montt to see if I could improve my reservations… I had nothing but a smile telling me that I actually had reservations for the 8th of March and Navimag does not have a great reputation for efficiency in their paper work.  As it turned out, they could find no record of my reservation, but found an A cabin for me for Feb. 28, and gave me the senior discount when I paid for it.  So, with ticket in hand, I took the bus to Ancud, the northern most city of Chiloe. Part of the bus trip was a 30 minute ferry ride over the straights connecting Chiloe with the mainland.  The straights seemed to be alive with sea lions; probably saw a dozen or more groups of 2 and 3 during the crossing, and ……PENGUINS!  Two of them, porpoising along 50 yards from the ferry.  I’ve seen more since, but seeing live penguins for the first time was great.  We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Ancud shoreline in front of the hostal

 Ancud is a small fishing port, 20,000 people but looks smaller, facing west inside a large protected bay.  My hostal, Hostal Mundo Nuevo is run by a Swiss-German guy in his 30s, with the help of a couple of girls in their 20’s, one American and one English.  They are both here at the moment, though the English girl is finishing up her 6 month stay and the American girl is just starting.  Guests are a combination of  Chileans, Germans, English, etc., plus two more American girls in their 20s who are working in Ancud, one in a restaurant and another running some kind of a tour business.  They started out teaching English in Santiago, and when they finished, came here… and evidently are happy as clams.

And speaking of clams, Chiloe is the shellfish capital of the known world. Unfortunately the cholera outbreak makes raw shellfish a no-no, but the cooked ones are OK and I’ve had lots.  The regional dish is curanto, a clam-bake kind of thing in which a large pit oven is filled with clams, mussels or a couple of kinds, sausages, mutton or other meats, potatoes and potato breads; covered with huge leaves; and left for an hour or so.  In restaurants it is more or less the same, but simmered over a burner instead.  Mine, served heaping of a large dinner plate included a bout a dozen each of mussels and clams, 3 or 4 very large mussels of a different variety, a hot dog like sausage (but better.. though not great),  a meaty smoked pork rib, a large chunk of chicken breast, a potato,  and two different steamed potato breads, one evidently a mixture of mashed potatoes and flour, the other, which was grey, made of dried potatoes.  The dried potato one was better, with a cornbread-like consistency.  The other was about what you’d expect of a steamed unleavened mix of flour and potatoes…. wet and leaden.  All served with a cup of the broth for dipping.  The shellfish were good as were the meats, and the steamed potato breads were… ah, interesting.  Overall, a stout peasant dish and, thought locally famous, perhaps an indication of why Chilote restaurants have not yet hit Chicago.
.

 Ancud harbor

The restaurant, El Cangrejo, on an upper floor overlooking the street, has walls completely covered with business cards of visitors going back into the 60s…. near my table were cards from a New York Times reporter, an assortment of Northern European businessmen (Finland, Norway, Germany, etc.), some US college professors and the owner of the Rio Grande Motel in Gila Bend, Arizona.

In addition to eating shellfish (mussels with green sauce of parsley, chives, onion, lemon and oil) and empanadas de locos (really good…. empanadas are turnovers, and locos are abalone-like univalves) I had one really bad local dish which rivals the Springfield horseshoe as a gastronomic disaster: a huge mound of greasy French fries topped by grilled chorizo, bits of meat, chunks of hot dog, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes and warmed pickle mix of cauliflower, carrots and pickles… all topped with mayo.  Yummm.  I ate about 1/5.

.
Where was I?  Ah, …in addition to eating shellfish and seeing Ancud, I took a day trip to Castro and toured the penguin colony.  The trip to Castro started out as a penguin tour, but when I got to the hotel running the tour I found that it had been cancelled because of heavy seas over on the pacific side of the island, so the other two people from the hostal, a Chilean mother and daughter--the mother a MD and the daughter an architecture student, and I took the bus to Castro.  They were on vacation from Santiago and were interesting company from whom to learn a bit more about middle class life in Chile.  The mother works as a pathologist in a children’s hospital, has traveled to the US (New York and Memphis) for conventions.  The daughter is in the next to last year of a 6 year architecture program and wants to design socially responsible housing for low income people.  They both had studied English, and we spoke English for a while, then drifted back into Spanish over lunch.

The Chilean mother and daughter 

[Alejandra and Javiera. I am now married to Alejandra. JS 2009]

.

Interior of wooden church in Castro

Castro is also a fishing port with a bit of tourism thrown in, actually smaller than Ancud though the historic capital of Chiloe.  It is best know for it’s wooden cathedral and palafitos, waterside houses and businesses built on stilts over the bay.  It’s also known for the 1960 tsunami, said to be the worst in recorded history, which devastated the island.  Interesting and worth a visit, but the day in Castro was enough.  I had originally planned to move there after a few days in Ancud, but decided not to bother.

The real sights of Chiloe are rural, not urban.  The interior east side of the island, facing an inland sea, has lots of small fishing villages (each with its own wooden church, together comprising a world heritage historic site).  The countryside is a mix of open pastures and woodlands, small wooden houses with steep roofs and red and blue trim, fenced pig and cow lots, house sized wood piles, dairy cattle, potato plots, and narrow gravel roads.  Looks like the countryside in James Harriott’s (All Creatures Great and Small) England, and in fact, Europeans comment on how much it looks like Scotland, Ireland or Galicia, the NW Spanish province from which many of the settlers came.

Technologically, it has a very 19th century feel, with ox teams and horse carts on the roads (and cars and Toyota pick ups, of course), wood stoves for heating and cooking, hand milking, chickens and ducks and piglets around the houses, and so on.  By each lane leading to a house is a platform with two or 3 large milk cans on it, either waiting to be picked by the twice daily milk truck, or to be taken back to the barn for the next milking.

The inhabited part of west side looks much the same, but is hillier… the island’s high points are all on the western edge, but instead of facing the calm inland sea they face the open pacific.  High cliffs, rock headlands, small villages sheltered by islands, long curving sandy beaches… and incredible scene.  And virtually empty, even where there are roads and occasional
villages.  

Here, on the NE corner of the island, are the penguin colonies I visited.  The penguin tour, one of many available in Ancud, is operated out of a small hotel by an Argentinean brother and sister in their 20’s.  In good weather, and if there are passengers, they offer two daily van tours a around the northern point of the island to a fishing hamlet called Puñhuil…. "windy place” in the Mapuche of Chiloe…. On the way to the penguins they stop at the high points to view the view, and briefly at a mud flat to see the flamingos (! – a definite twofer for the incipient birder).  Puñhuil is a group of a half dozen fishermen’s houses in a cove sheltered by 4 small islands, which house the penguin colonies.  We were taken out to the islands by local fishermen in sturdy open wooden boats of about 20 feet. The penguins, both Humboldt and Magellan penguins nest here, are about 2 ½ feet tall and look like…  well, penguins.  Black and white, the two species with slightly different markings on their bills and faces.  They nest in areas of the islands where they can excavate burrows 5 or 6 feet deep.  They spend about ¾ of their time out fishing.  At home, they mostly stand around, socially, in groups of 3 or 4.  In addition to penguins, there were sea lions and sea otters, the latter, very unafraid of people and interested in the boats, approached when the fishermen called (probably some feeding goes on).  The fishermen were friendly and knowledgeable about the birds (another 6 or 8 new species I had not seen before, the names of which I will be happy to recount if asked) and animals, interested in the tourists and where they came from; altogether pleasant.  In fact, I continue to be struck by how friendly the people are.

Puñhuil and the Penguin Islands

After the boat trip I asked our guides about staying to return with the afternoon group, and since that worked out fine, I spent the day in the hamlet and on the surrounding beaches.  The weather was pleasant, skies partially sunny with some clouds later in the day, the scenery was great and I had a fine lunch of empanads de locos and a couple of beers at the house of a fisher-family that
serves a bit of food.  The second tour returned on time, and it was back to the hostal.  Great  day!

Puerto Natales, March 4, 2005

Following the 4 day ferry trip, I have arrived at Puerto Natales:  not the end of the earth, but you can go there from here by bus... which is what I plan to do in a few days.  Puerto Natales spreads across the windswept pampas at the edge of the Fiordo de Ultima Espearanza.... that’s right, Last Hope Fjord,  and 9 km from the Argentine border.  It’s a small town, perhaps 10,000 or so inhabitants, of low  buildings and sheet metal clad houses dedicated to fishing, sheep and tourists.  When the ferry comes in, the town fills with backpackers, stocking up on supplies and renting equipment for Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, a couple of hours north by road.  The park is famous mostly for the sheer rock towers, but the total area covered is huge.  The trekkers, for whom this is one of the world-class destinations, a bit like Nepal, take a 10 day or so hike around the perimeter.  One can also do day hikes, 2 or three day trips, etc.   Unfortunately, it’s raining today and the forecast is for more of the same, so I don’t know whether I’ll get top the park or not. Not too much point if you can’t see the mountains.  

The Puerto Eden

Luckily, the weather for the trip down by boat was good, three bright sunny days and one misty one with a little rain.  The ferry, the Puerto Eden, is pretty substantial if not especially pretty.  There are two decks for trucks and cars, with passenger cabins above.  My cabin, which I shared with a German guy and a Swedish couple, had two bunk beds, one on each side, with a narrow passage between them and a porthole on the wall.  At the foot of one bed were a sink and the doorway, and on the other side were four small lockers.  Each cabin has its own bath, but the baths are clustered together down the hall.  Everything was surface clean (though a bit grimy in the cracks) and very pleasant over all.  Meals, included in the passage, were in the salon/dining room (below the cabins) at long communal tables.  We carried our trays through a serving line, then found seats.  The food was fairly insipid... lots of carbs, no garlic... but not too bad.  The two almuerzos were lasagna and pastel de cholco (very good) and the three dinners were merluza (a bland white fish), spaghetti, and salmon.. Breakfast  included eggs...(!)  the first breakfast eggs I’ve had in Chile that I didn’t  cook myself. I ended up eating all my meals with a group of five Chilean friends on vacation, two men and three women (thought didn’t figure out who the couples were for a day or so).  We always shared a couple of bottles of wine with meals. In front of the cabins and salon was the pilot house, which was open to us most of the time, and on each side was a partially roofed section of deck...good place to shelter from the wind or sun.   The roof of both the pilot house and the cabins was open with benches, and most passengers spend their time on deck.  

On the Puerto Eden

For the most part, the trip was in channels from 80 to several hundred yards wide, among islands, so there was almost always something to see, if only the islands themselves, sea birds and the occasional seal.  We saw only one whale, and a few dolphins and penguins.  The islands in the north were forested, but as we moved south the vegetation became shorter and shrubbier, until the last few hours when it was pretty barren and even the low peaks were snow clad.  We passed one glacier, several miles away, and a few small icebergs.  Overall it was a great trip, with good weather and interesting people.

Passing through the narrowest channel

In addition to the Chilean group, who turned out to be exceptionally pleasant,  cultivated, world travelers and had visited Thailand, Indonesia, Europe, South Africa, the US and so on, there was the usual assortment of  international backpackers..... Germans, Spanish, Swedes, English, Australians, Canadians,  and a few Americans.  Met a young Canadian guy about Andy’s age, from a little town north of Vancouver in BC.  Wearing mostly camo, thin goatee, tall and lanky with a major Canadian accent and a vocabulary that, at first, seemed pretty limited, he turned out to be a landscaper, interested and knowledgeable about plants and animals, and though not a stunning conversationalist, aye?, a nice kid.  I also met a young couple from Barcelona (wow! I really understand Spanish Spanish, after dealing with Chilean for 5 weeks!), a Canadian guy with a Mexican wife, and the first real jerk of the trip.  He is also Canadian, in his 40’s, evidently combining business with pleasure (?) by traveling in Chile and Argentina.... and hating everything about it. He’d “had it up to here” with South America, had been paying over $100 a night for hotels that weren’t up to his standards, the towns were dirty; accommodations were third rate; food was, well... not Canadian.  I spent a few minutes in his company and then tried to avoid him, but one of my Chilean friends, Juan, ended up sitting at table with him for breakfast.  Juan, and all his group, speak English (though we had been speaking Spanish) so he struck up a conversation, which I couldn’t help overhearing.  Juan got the same earful.....  third world, third rate, too expensive, dumpy ship, needed to have his own cabin and bath, room mate snored, food was bad, not like Hawaii or “real” cruse ships, etc.  He was so overwhelmingly negative you had to feel sorry for him. Where I have been having a wonderful time, staying in pleasant clean rooms, eating and drinking well, and meeting interesting people; all on $40 a day, he was managing to have a thoroughly unpleasant time (and sharing unpleasantries with all around him) while spending 3 or 4 times that.  Pity.  




Chilean friends on the ferry

When we got into Puerto Natales yesterday it was clear, but today is rainy, cool and overcast.... appropriate for Patagonia in early fall.   The kids started school yesterday, all dressed in school sweaters, white shirts and ties, with dark slacks for boys or plaid skirts for girls; and the tourist outfitters are looking at the end of the season.  The restaurant where I had a great meal last night, was only about half full during the dinner hour (9:00 to 10:00 PM), whereas, according to the waiter, they had been full every night for the last two months.  The major dishes of the area involve seafood, especially local king crab, and lamb.  I had the best meal of the trip, a gratané of scallops and king crab, with a lettuce, tomato and avocado salad and a half bottle of wine. The sauce for the gratané contained cream and  brandy and was slightly sweet from the shell fish; such a good meal that I finished up with a real coffee and a glass of pisco añejo.  Prices are a bit higher here than further north, since everything not produced locally comes in by ship or overland through Argentina, but still pretty inexpensive by international standards, and the meal was about $22.  About  twice what I usually spend, but worth it.

The hostal I’m in, Casa Cecilia, is one of the highpoints of the backpacker’s trail, known far and wide and recommended by all the guide books.  It’s a red roofed, sheet metal clad house with an open interior courtyard covered by a skylight.  Two stories of rooms open onto the courtyard and there are several baths for those like me without private bath.  My room is small, but bright and pleasant with a window opening onto the courtyard, a single bed, carpet and chair.  The bath, across the courtyard a few steps, is small but bright and clean with a tub/shower rather than the usual stall.  Breakfast,  with conversation in German for a change, was homemade whole wheat bread, butter, cheese, yogurt, cereal, milk, juice and cheese.  The staff are pleasant, owner is Swiss German, and the “receptionist” – a traveler staying for a while for free room and board and (maybe) some spending money, is a charming German girl who speaks excellent Spanish and English.... her Spanish better than mine, ….and probably her English as well.

Today I’m getting my laundry done and my boots repaired.... tongue is coming off,  and I plan to engage in a major lamb dinner.  There is evidently a restaurant that offers a daily tenedor libre (all-you-can-eat, literally “free fork”) asado de cordero (lamb BBQ).  There are also several other Argentine style parriadas, specializing in meats cooked over wood fires,  so I’ll definitely find something interesting today.  If the weather doesn’t  clear, I’ll probably head on to Punta Arrenas tomorrow, and then on to Tierra del Fuego.  From there, I’ll probably head north, Antarctica being the only other option.

Journal.... Part 4

Journal... Part 2

Villarrica/Parque Nacional Huerquehue

Wed, Feb 16

Last Thursday morning I went to  Huerquehue National park, up in the Andes about an hour above Pucón.  The entrance is at 780 m. on a large lake-filled glacial valley with about a km. of valley floor between the lake and the valley head, where a steep trail climbs up to 1340 m. and circles three high lakes.  I got there by bus around 10:00 and, since the sign said that the walk to the lakes and back would take about 5.5 hours or so, and the bus back to Pucon didn’t leave until 6:00, I wandered around some and made reservations at a family hostal for the next night before starting the climb.  Mistake.  The trail to the top was pretty rough, climbing a little over 2000 feet in about 4 miles, leveling out (more or less) for the circuit around the lakes, then climbing another 1000 feet or so to return to the top of the crest where the trail continued back down.  Took me about 9 hours to do the full 17 km., and I was pretty exhausted when I got back down.  Needless to say, the bus had left, but there was room at the hostal...actually a family home.. so I stayed the night.  After downing 2 liters of water, I revived somewhat, and had a nice meal of trout and salad with a bottle of wine, and made it a day.

Up at the 3 lakes in Huerquehue

In spite of the hard climb... or more correctly my poor condition (didn’t seem to take 9 hours for the other folks), the high lakes were beautiful, with good sized trout rising violently to dragon fly nymphs in the shallows, reflections of the high crags in the water, great forests including the remarkable “monkey-puzzle tree,” and generally the beauty of high mountains.  Worth the climb, but I didn’t do it again.





Next day I returned to Villarrica, got my stuff, and went back.  The family I was staying with had come to the valley in 1945, or at least the grandparents of Don Fudor Castillo, the current patriarch, had.  They settled there, claimed the land under the Chilean version of the Homestead Act, and settled down; running cattle and sheep in the high mountain pastures in summer and bringing them down in fall, planting potatoes and a garden, and so on.  In ’67 the head of the valley and lakes, everything except the sq. km or so that they had homesteaded, became the national park, and sometime later a road came in.

By the mid 80’s Chilean tourists started coming, and the family gradually opened a camping area, built a little camping store, the present house, and a small 4 table restaurant.  The house, build on piers overlooking the valley and lake, is all native wood, with 3 small bedrooms, a kitchen, small living room, and large porch.  My room, which I shared first with a young Chilean music student and then with a 20-something English tour guide, was small, but high ceilinged and pleasant, with the usual two twin beds, an open closet, two hooks for hanging clothes and a bedside table.  The kitchen, relatively large in comparison to the rest of the house, included a cabinet and sink, and in the center of the room, a large handsome wood burning range.  There Doris, niece of Don Fundor, was chief cook and house keeper, and there she made home-made bread and “kuken” daily in the wood fired oven.  The oldest son,  Fundor, 21, married with a son, also named Fundor, ran the restaurant, while the second son, Beto, 14, ran the tiendita.  Fundor Jr. Had cooked my trout the first night, and had shared a little of my bottle of wine, and we hit it off well.  He had been to college/technical school where he had completed an accounting degree, and was also half way through a course in eco-toursimo.  The first night he pointed out a large animal, beaver like, swimming across the lake, and when I didn’t know what it was he ran to get his Xeroxed copy of Mammals of Chile and we had a little natural history lesson, talked fishing, and so on.  Nice Kid.

The house where I stayed in Huerquehue

Sat., the first full day I was there after returning from Villarrica, I had breakfast outside on the deck, overlooking the lake, with warm fresh home made bread, thick local cheese.... white, soft in the middle, a little like Munster but with holes like Swiss....  coffee, butter and jam.  And since it was cloudy and over cast with steam coming off the water, I went down to fly cast off the dock.  Great fishing, clear water, no fish.  At almuerso, Fundor Jr. offered me the usual choices:  churrasco, trout, fired potatoes, completos  (hot dogs with everything) or.... if I wanted it... some of the family meal: Casuela de vacuna.  I had been smelling the rich garlic aroma coming out of the cook-pot all morning, so the choice was simple, and I arranged to eat whatever the family was eating for almuerso for as long as I stayed.  The casuela was bony beef chunks boiled with garlic, and finished with a bit of pasta and boiling potatoes, with chopped chives and cilantro sprinkled on top. It was served in a soup bowl with a plate on the side from which to eat the meat and potato, while you ate the rest of the soup with a soup spoon, accompanied by fresh bread, lettuce and tomatoes with salt and lemon juice (and my pepper!).  The next day’s meal followed the same pattern, except with chicken, and a little onion instead of garlic, and with a piece of corn on the cob along side the potato.  Day three was the same basic preparation, meat and potatoes in a clear broth, but this time the meat was lamb surtido...mixed parts, some bony pieces of the head, spine, tongue and liver, cooked with a little white wine and onions.  Everything, in short, that wouldn’t be part of that night’s asado barbecue)... to which I was invited.

 Making bread by the wood stove

By about 5:00, after my afternoon nap, the fire for the asado was well underway.  They use a half barrel on legs for the fire box, and on each end is a vertical iron bar with three cross-pieces.     |

The lamb had been cut into large pieces.. the two rib halves, two legs, etc, and salted, and was skewered on 6 foot long sword like skewers. While the fire was still flaming pretty strongly, the meat-laden skewers were laid across the crosses above the fire.  The asadero, in this case Don Fundor, stood at one end more or less constantly turning the meat, moving it from upper to lower arms of the crosses.  The melted lamb fat continuously bathed the outside and ran off into the fire in rivulets, and the meat began to acquire a light brown crust.  The entire cooking took only 30 to 45 minutes, during which we drank beer and a half bottle of pisco I contributed, and then the skewers were taken off and held vertically while each of the men cut his own chunk from the roasted meat.  As the honored (if somewhat unanticipated) guest, I cut the first chunk, a nice piece of shoulder, which went on to a plate with the ubiquitous boiled potatoes, sliced tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. ...and wine. 

Don Funor preparing the asado

The men tended to stand around the upright skewers, drinking and eating with their hands, cutting off choice pieces for themselves and each other, while the women and children (and guest) sat at a picnic table.  I had suggested that I might help with the wine, and contributed couple of bottles, and naturally, lots more wine appeared., and the wine drinking continued late into the night.  As you can imagine, I drank my share, but kept a bit soberer than the rest (...well drunker than some, but less than others) as the conversation drifted from one’s preferred beer and whisky, to discussions of Mapuche herbal medicine, to international politics and “just who were these Shiites, and Sunni and Kurds in Iraq       

Los Asaderos

Great evening.  Nice people. In fact, I’m struck by how courteous, gentle and affectionate the Chileans are.  Perhaps the first things one notices are the abundant and enthusiastic public displays that seem to take place on park benches, bus doorways and street corners.   But more than that, people seem continuously affectionate.  Men pat their children and caress their wives at the dinner table, couples hold hands, and of course, the kiss on the cheek is obligatory when geeting or parting, even with new gringo acquaintances.  One afternoon in the park I was sitting on the terrace when the two brothers, Fundor and Beto came running up the steep path and stairs from the restaurant to the house, burst intro the kitchen and embraced their sister in a boisterous three-way hug.  Tuned out to be her birthday and they had just remembered and raced to see who could hug her first.  

But apart from the obvious affection, people are just kind and courteous.  They say “ graicas” to the driver when leaving a bus, and he replies “que le vaya bien.”  People stop for pedestrians at intersections, young men give up bus seats for old people and women with babies, and the language is innocent of  the many forms of “chingar” and other vulgarity... something pretty improbable to one with Mexican experience.

Swimming off the dock

So... the days at Huerquehue became a pleasant routine:  a walk or row around the lake in the AM. Back for almuerso at 1:30 or 2:00, a nap, a swim, a bit of wine on the deck, cena around dark, and bed around 10:00.  The fishing was beautiful, although unproductive.  One AM Fundor and his sister Alejandra took me out in the row boat so I could fly fish, and thought I had no hits, we all had a very pleasant time.  Another afternoon, one of the young men vacationing with his girl friend took me out with him.  He works as a fly fishing guide at one of the fly-fishing resorts where clients pay $4,200 (US) a week for their stays.  He is a genuine fly fishing aficionado, ties his own flies, and had fished since he was a boy.   Although it is the hottest part of summer (February = August) when the fish go deep to avoid the warm surface water, and the likelihood of catching trout was slim, he had noticed a few rising in the very late evening, and invited me to accompany him.  We caught nothing, but had an interesting talk about fishing and guiding.  He speaks limited English (but knows all the fishing vocabulary), and was interesting in knowing  more about his clients; a bit more than he had felt comfortable asking.  And naturally, I was interested in his experiences a guide, so we had a very interesting conversation.  When we got back, I invited him for a bottle of wine, and we ended up sitting around in the restaurant with him and his chica, Fundor Jr., Beto, Michael, my English room mate, and another 5 or 6 Chilean students on vacation.

Funor Jr. and Alita, who took me fishing

Michael is a 24-26 year old from the south of England who works as a tour guide for an English company.  His clients, English people who want to travel in Chile but aren’t up to the language, travel with him by public transportation and stay in hostels in the $15-$20 a night range, but he takes care of all the arrangements, pays the bills, translates, and so on.  The English tour company is his official employer, so there is no problem with working in foreign countries, and he moves with the seasons, traveling in the Andean countries and Mexico with the “high seasons.”   Good company, and a mine of travel experience.  We're going to be back in Santiago at about the same time in March, and plan to get together again for dinner.

So..... another good week, and one especially rich in new acquaintances; the ones I’ve written about and others: the Chilean agronomist who lives and works in Israel perfecting hard tomatoes, the ex-policewoman and now plastic surgeon’s technician with dietary advice for maintaining one’s youthful appearance, the two English lesbians of a certain age, and the usual run of young Europeans and Chileans that turn up everywhere with backpacks and tales of their travels in simultaneous combinations of English/ Spanish/ German/French in which everyone manages to communicate.

Tomorrow I’m off to Puerto Montt to reserve passage of a boat to points south, Punta Arenas and Puerto Natal, and to see the island of Chiloe.

Puerto Montt  2/19

The five hour bus ride to Puerto Montt from Villarrica was uneventful, in that the bus didn’t leave me anywhere and the flat tire we stopped to fix seemed to have been a false alarm.  The countryside continues to look like Washington or Oregon, with a mix of forest and cultivated areas... mostly apples and wheat.  About 20 minutes before arriving in Puerto Montt, the bus passed through Puerto Varas, a strikingly beautiful tourist town.  It’s situated on a huge fresh water lake with a classic volcano rising in the background to the NE.  To the East are snow covered Andean crags and the town is the expected Chilean-Bavarian summer resort.

Puerto Montt waterfront

Puerto Montt, on the other hand, is a bit grubby.  It’s the northern terminus of the carretera Austral, the gravel road that runs a good way down toward Tierra del Fuego, and also for the ferries that run down to Puerto Natal.  It’s also a fishing port and general supply point for everything south...the last city of any size with road connection to the rest of the world.  The rest of Chile is supplied by ship or via Argentina over the Andes.  My hostal is between the fishing port and the town center in a slightly seedy neighborhood of hostales, restaurants, and bars.  Further north is the actual port, situated in a relatively narrow river mouth, and crowded with ferries, fishing boats and water taxis.  Along the coastal road is a 100 yard stretch of artisan and souvenir shops, selling mostly sweaters... the dominant local handicraft.  Buying a sweater here or on Chiloe Island was part of the plan, and after a search I found pretty much what I wanted.  They are hand knit of natural wool and are quite nice, though since they don’t come in numbered sizes, finding the style and colors I wanted in my size was something of an ordeal.  I ended up with a moderately heavy grey, black and beige one with a 2 button neck and collar.  Definitely an outside sweater, to be worn under my wind shell as I go further south.

Fish Market at Puerto Montt

Which (going south) is the plan. The ferry run, which leaves on Mondays and arrives on Thursdays is booked for the next two trips, but I have reservations for March 8 and they are going to email me if anything comes up for Feb 28.  The accommodations range from 2 person AAA cabins at over $1000 US, per person, down to the below decks and windowless dormitorio at around $325.  I’m trying for something in the middle, a four bunk AA or A cabin with bath and a porthole. Meals are included... cafeteria style but evidently not bad, and the bar prices are said to be “moderate.”  There are supposed to be inside and outside public areas on deck, where I assume I’ll spend most of the days watching the islands go by.  From everything I’ve heard and from the map, it should be a lot like the interior passage to Alaska but with penguins instead of killer whales.


Dried and smoked shellfish at the market

Between now and then I’m going back to Puerto Varas for a day, and then on to Chiloe island, which in many ways was the destination for this trip.  At some time in my childhood I read a National Geo article on Chiloe, and thought I’d like to go.  Settled by Galicians and relatively isolated form the rest of Chile, it has a reputation as a place of mythical creatures and rural fishing communities.  And now, of course, of tourism.  Still, it’s likely to be pretty low impact tourism, with lots of sea front hostales and sea food restaurants. Unfortunately, Chile is experiencing an epidemic of shellfish-borne cholera, and raw sea food is a no-no, but there’s still plenty of good fish and cooked stuff.  Yesterday I had “locos” for almuerso.  They are an abalone-like shellfish that provides a chunk of scallop or abalone like muscle meat about the size of a small filet mignon... say 3 ounces.  My serving was three of these, topped by mayo, along with lettuce, tomato and potato salad.... and white wine.  One of the more expensive menu items at 4,000 pesos ($7), and with wine about $10.... about the level of  a good burger and a couple of beers.  I ate in a puesto, a 3 or 4 table restaurant in the middle of the fish market, recommended by my hostal.  Lots of hustle and bustle and soliciting of customers as they walk by, but it’s pretty clear that you’re getting fresh seafood.  Today I ate at another such place, a bit up scale from the first in that it is not directly in the fish market, but above it.  Looks like the inside of a particularly nice log cabin, five tables, and a small cooking area, all overlooking the harbor.  They have, of all things, a webcam, and you can see it at www.chilotitomarino.cl along with the rest of Puerto Montt, the menu, and recipes.  Pretty upscale for a 5-table fish-market restaurant!  Today I had congrio a la plancha, a local fish a bit like monk fish, grilled with salad and wine.  Very nice.  

The restaurant at Puerto Montt, with the Navimag ship in the background.

So..... that’s about it for this evening.  Puerto Montt has little to recommend it except sea food, but I don’t plan to spend much time here.  Another couple of nights and then off to Chiloe.



Link to Part 3