So I'm sick in Puerto Natales. Boo. But I digress...
We left Ushuaia on Monday morning at 5am. Had to be up at 3:45 to get ready, eat breakfast and walk to the bus station. We stood around in the cold wondering which of the fancy buses parked in the bus station would be ours. Then a crappy old bus pulled in and of course, that was ours. There's really no such thing as luxory for a backpacker. :) Anyway, we all piled onto the bus and took off. About 2 hours in we stopped and just sat somewhere for about a half hour, with no explanation. Another hour later, we stopped in Rio Gallegos to line up and get our passports stamped out of Argentina...even though we were still in Argentina. Then we switched buses and took off again. Then we got to the actual border crossing where we got off, lined up to get our passports stamped into Chile, then back to the bus to collect our bags, then waited around for someone to turn on the x-ray machine for our bags, eventually he came, we put our bags through (I'm pretty sure I could have had a gun in my bag and nothing would have happened), got back on the bus and took off. Got off for the half hour ferry ride, back on and eventually ended up in Punta Arenas. This took all of 12 hours and two movies, one called "Tell No Lies", one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen, about American soldiers in Iraq who repeatedly raped a 15 year old girl, then burned her to death and murdered her family. Strange choice for a bus ride indeed. I was in a really depressed state after that. I could go on about how messed up that whole situation was but I'll save that. Anyway, we were told by the travel agent who booked our tickets that we had a reservation for the next bus from Punta Arena to Puerto Natales. When we showed up at the ticket office the woman looked at our ticket and then looked at her co-worker and said "Que hacemos?" which is never good. Apparently we had no reservation and the bus was full and it was the last bus of the day. So we reserved seats on the 7:30am bus the next morning and wandered out to find a place to crash since we didn't have anything booked since we didn't plan to be there in the first place. Luckily we found a place right around the corner, which wasn't really a hostel even though it was called a hostel. It was more expensive than we had hoped, but we figured since it was one night and it was close to the bus station and it was a double room so we'd actually sleep for a night, it seemed worth it. You have to splurge and treat yourself once in a while or you'll just get too burnt out. So we walked out to find a bank and get some food. After 3 attempts I finally found an ATM that would give me money. Then we thought we were going to a pizza place (because they are everywhere!) for grub and ended up pleasantly surprised. The owner spoke some English and he chatted with us and custom made a vegetarian sanwhich for me, with their home-made bread. The sandwhiches came out and they were literally the size of my face...maybe bigger. Mine had lettuce, tomato, avacado and mushrooms. So freaking good. I wish I had brought my camera so I could have captured myself eating the ginormously amazing sandwhich. Then we went back to our room, took showers in our super nice bathroom, and then zoned out in front of our cable TV to Freinds. It was glorious. The next morning we were served an actual breakfast with real juice, coffee, bread, jam, butter, ham & cheese (everyone is obsessed with ham & cheese here!), cereal, yogurt, milk and cookies. It's hard to be vegan in South America. Really hard. So then we got on our bus and made it to Puerto Natales, where we are now. The hostel we are at is great. The people here are so warm and friendly. It's like a family. So if I have to be sick, 2 weeks into the trip, in the place with the most amazing hiking in Patagonia, at least it's at a place where the people are super nice. They have two cats here, Bonnie & Clyde (amazing!), and a recently adopted street dog, Frankie. The cats are so cute and sweet, always curled up in the living room. Frankie isn't allowed inside but sometimes he stands by the door and nudges it open and then slowely inches his way in until someone takes him out again. I would totally let him sit with me if he could come in. So cute. Anyway, since I'm sick, I can't do much hiking so yesterday we went on a bus tour of the park, the famous Torres del Paine, so we could at least see the park. We stopped at a cave, Cueva del Milodon, and saw gaunacos, sheep, cows and condors, before entering the park. We got some good photos, a lot of the tour was just stop-people get off to take photos-people get back on-we wait for the German lady who is obsessed with her camera to finish taking photos-we go. We did get to walk out to a waterfall and and to the viewpoint (mirador) of Glacier Gray, which we couldn't see because of all the fog. It was raining really hard and so windy that I almost got blown off my feet a few times during those walks. We got completely soaked through our clothes both times as a result. Then we got back on the bus to have cold air blown at us the entire two hours back to town. I was so cold my whole body was shaking. I could barely open my locker when I got back because my arms and hands wouldn't stay still. We took hot showers, hung our soaked clothes to dry and got into the only dry clothes we had left. It was American Thanksgiving yesterday and since the owner is from Oregon, they made a feast. It was so nice to get warm and get fed real food for once. They gave me a veggie plate that had mashed potatoes, squash, stuffing and fruit salad, served with warm apple cider with cinnamon sticks. So good! Then we had about 8 different desserts, including pumpkin pie. Amazing! I love this place. So now I'm still trying to fight the chill and get some rest for tomorrow. We are doing an overnight hike in the park to see the towers. So all is not lost. I hope to come back someday, better prepared and healthy, to tackle the entire "W" trek. Time to rest!
