Hello! I am back in Chile in Puerto Montt and have just left the Intrepid overland group I was traveling with. I am missing a couple days in Pucón with the group, but figured I wouldn´t have enough time to travel back south to Bariloche, Argentina- a place that I really want to see. I am sad to see the group go- the people I was travelng with couldn´t have been better and I made quite a few friends as well! Since 2/17, we have been traveling north through Argentinian and Chilean Patagonia via the famous Ruta 40 and Carretera Austral highways (highway is a bit of a stretch- they are sometimes no better than the Forest Service road to South Climb on Mt. Adams!). We´ve covered a lot of ground, driving several hours each day, but seeing some spectacular scenery.
On 2/17, we left El Chaltén behind, driving out of town via Ruta 40 during an amazing sunrise (why couldn´t it happen one day earlier when I was up there backpacking?) with some really amazing colors on Fitz Roy, visible above its foothills just outside of town. I could have stayed another week in El Chaltén, but then of course, this trip could have be a year long and I still wouldn´t see everything! Most of the drive was through flat flat high desert plains, almost identical in appearance to the Eastern Oregon high desert. Bunch grass, calafate shrubs (that look just like sagebrush from a distance) and basalt rimrock were common sights throughout the day. The road was atrocious, as we expected it would be. They have been slowly working on paving sections of it for about 50 years so there were a few short sections that were paved, but most was very rough gravel or dirt. We did get a chance for a break from the driving about mid-day to check out a rarely visited, extremely remote UNESCO World Heritage site called Las Cuevas de los Manos (the cave of hands). It was incredible. It is situated in a remote river canyon that looked exactly like the canyons of the Crooked, Deschutes and Owyhee rivers of Eastern Oregon with huge cliffs and more Oregonian looking plants (and it had some AMAZING climbing potential). The caves themselves are believed to have been inhabited by a nomadic family group up to 9000 years ago! The people used mineral pigments combined with river water and saliva to create a paint which was then spit over their hands creating negative hand prints surrounded by red, black, white, and yellow paint. This is almost identical to the methods used by the aboriginies of Australia. The result was walls sheltered from wind, rain and sun absolutely covered with hundreds and hundreds of hand prints. Sometimes the artist would accidently get their forearm in the print and in one case there was a hand with six fingers! There small hands and big hands and arthritic hands and even prints of rheas (ostrich relative) they had hunted and killed. There were also painted hunting scenes, zigzagging lines, and a few figures. Some of the prints were faded, but a lot of them looked as though they had been made that very morning! It was really nice to have the opportunity to visit such a special place- it´s not even mentioned in my Lonely Planet guide book, meaning that foreign tourists very rarely, if ever, get to visit it.
On 2/18, we drove into Chile to the Carretera Austral. Apparently Chilean border crossings are pretty strict, and at the last one we had done, all our bags were scanned (that´s right we had to unload and then reload 24 bags to get into Chile). The crossing we went over to get to the Carretera was for commercial vehicles only, but the military customs officials grudingly agreed to let us cross anyway. While some of us were waiting for the rest of the group to finish getting their passports stamped, I sat on a table outside the customs office with a Dutch lady from our group. After about 5 minutes, the table broke and cracked completely in half under our weight! We are 2 of the 3 smallest people on the trip and we broke a table!!!! I was so embarrassed! We tried to put it back together, but it was a completely lost cause. Terrible!!!! When the customs officials came out though, they seemed to be laughing so I thought it must be ok. But then, they started searching our bags REALLY thoroughly (like making us unpack EVERYTHING out of our bags). Someone had told me that on buses, sometimes no bags were checked so of course I assumed that they were doing this cuase they were mad at me for breaking the table. When they got to me, they looked through my toiletries bag, found my unlabeled vitamins (I don´t pack over-the-counter medication and supplements in their original containers to save space and I´ve NEVER had a problem) and proceeded to act like they were confiscating my stuff. I burst into tears at this point (not surprising to most people who know me well) thinking of all the essential things in that bag that I had to have and that they were being mean to me cause of the table. The result was some very embarrassed border guards and a somewhat rude and impatient trip leader. The border guards awkwardly tried to help me pack everything back into my bag and stood around not sure what to do! In the end they did not confiscate anything from anyone and I was informed that this was standard procedure at Chilean border crossings. Good to know since I have one coming up on MY BIRTHDAY during a 25 hour bus ride to Santiago from Bariloche. Everyone in the group felt really sorry for me, which made me really embarrassed, but everything ended well and we were on our way without any other incidents (except one girl had the awkward situation of explaining what tampons are for- like I had to going from Turkey to Greece via train). For the last four days, anytime anyone in our group has seen something broken, they have asked if I sat on it :) One of the Brits said to me that if someone told him an American sat on a table and broke it, he wouldn´t be that surprised, but the fact that is was the littlest American he had ever met is pretty ironic and hilarious! The rest of the day was fabulous- big mountains, big, wild rivers and big glacier-fed lakes surrounded by lush forest and eventually pines! We camped outside of Coyhaique, a town nested in the foothills of the Andes and the spitting image of the Hood River Valley, with more and bigger mountains than just Mt. Hood. There were orchards and lots of farms and the pines! I was so happy to see the pines! Our campsite was right next to a little lake surrounded by young pine forest and dryish meadows (it actually looked just like Cascade Science School where I used to work on the westside of Bend). Considering that the border guards had made me cry just a few hours before, it was a great end to the day!
On 2/19, we continued through dryish pine forest past big, clear, rocky rivers and forested hills rising to snowy, rocky peaks. At one point we crossed a bridge that Gus was almost too heavy for, so we all had to get out so he could make over! This day was also Sam´s (a Brit in our group) birthday so we decorated the bus with tons of balloons and gave her a card and played a bunch of songs that mentioned birthdays. I think it was a good birthday! After awhile, the pine forest gave way too lush, thick semi-tropical forest packed full of native bamboo, wild fuschia, giant ferns, and huge devil´s club looking plants (but with leaves 3 times the size of those at home!). The strangest thing is that this lush forest, clinging to steep ridges and canyon slopes grew up to enormous blue hanging glaciers and high rugged peaks. It seemed so out of place. This is where the road also degraded to about Forest Serive road quality, although it is a major highway through Patagonia! We arrived at our camp near Parque NAcional Quealat, earlier than the previous day and got to swim in the brackish Canal Puyahuapi and sit on the beach in the HOT HOT sun- that´s right, it finally feels like summer since we´ve traveled north. It was a beautiful, relaxing evening capped with a delicious vegetable curry and some wild mussels cooked in white wine and garlic. A group member found the mussels along a nearby boatramp and then cooked them up as a surprise for us. Oh my god they were so delicious!
On 2/20 we drove from our campsite to another just outside the city of Chaitén. This day was pretty uneventful, although we saw more glaciers and more lush forest, along with a few big lakes already starting to resemble Swizterland, although the Lakes District was still north of us. We camped for free in a nice little grassy park beside a cold stony creek. Oh I guess we did break part of a bridge driving into camp- Gus bumped the hand rail and it popped off! Oops. Our trip leader had to do some impromptu construction work that evening! I was happy to see that I wasn´t the only person who broke things on the trip!
Today (2/21) we drove through the town (or what remains of it) of Chaitén to catch the ferry to Puerto Montt. In May 2008, Volcán Chaitén errupted, flooding the river flowing through its namesake town. Fortunately, all 8000 residents were evacuated before the river wiped the city out. Apparently plans are underway to build a new city, 10km north of the old one, but progress is slow and most of the former residents are still displaced, being too fearful to return to their ruined homes. I couldn´t figure out why my Lonely Planet didn´t have any information about Chaitén, but a 1997 edition did. Well, that´s my answer. The city has no services, no electricity and no residents! The ferry ride was pretty uneventful- this was our first day of uncooperative weather so we couldn´t see much. After getting off the ferry, we got some drinks at a bar by the water before I left the group and I found some yummy (and cheap!) local cheese and bread for my bus-ride snacks tomorrow. Smoked salmon and trout are also specialties here, but since I am just one, I can´t eat a whole fish in one day before it spoils so I had to forgo purchasing any of that :( Tonight I am staying in a cute little guesthouse run by an elderly couple in Puerto Montt and I catch a bus to Bariloche, a Lakes District hotspot, in the morning.
Alright- my next entry will be about the Lakes District of Argentina where I will do a 3D/2N trek, some day hikes and visit El Bolsón, the beer-making capital of Patagonia. I hear there is finally some snow at home- enjoy it for me!
