Chile - On my Way to Santiago (Punta Arenas, Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas, Valdivia, Pucon)

To all those who stuck it out reading my last blog, thanks. The computers here are too slow to upload my pictures. I will keep trying. Feel free to post your comments. You don´t have to be a www.blogger.com member or anything like that. So here´s the update...

Took a bus to Punta Arenas where I met up with some Brazilians that I met in my hostel. Good guys. Going to Sydney for 6 months to learn English. Gave me some good ideas for future importing of Brazilian goods. I would love to go to Brazil next. In due time of course. Managed to get on the standby flight to Puerto Montt (so I didn´t have to spend another night in the south) in Punta Arenas. The airport was quite nice. Very modern. Note that the reason I took the plane to Puerto Montt was so I could bypass traveling through Argentina again. Why would I go back through Argentina again to get to middle Chile, if I was already in southern Chile you ask? Because there is no road that goes from Puerto Natales (south Chile) to Puerto Montt (middle Chile). None. So you can either do the 40 hour trek through Argentina again (a big u turn through the Patagonia) or fly. I flew. $120/ 2 hours on Sky Airlines. The other airline here is LanChile. I felt crampt. They really jam you in like sardines.

Arrived in Puerto Montt, which is a city of about 150,000 or so. Industrial, blue collar and run down. Reminded me of jelly bean square in Dartmouth/ Peggy´s cove with all the wild variety of colors the houses had. I was bored of taking the plane so I decided I needed some excitement. Jumped on the next collectivo (mini-bus) to Puerto Varas. I heard about this place before. You could do some adventure trekking and see some amazing views of Volcano Osorno. 75 cents and 20km later I arrive in this cute little fishing town. German and dutch influenced (like many places here in Chile). I´m thinking, sweet, I´m gonna be hanging with some locals. Then the tourists started showing up. Across and down the street. In stores on every corner. Schiesse. I was in another f*ckin tourist place. It was 7pm, so I decided to check into HelenHauss. Ha ha Helen. You is funny. Not. Six foot four Dutch lady who also spoke German. She shows me the single for 8000 pesos ($16). It was about half the size of a room on a train car. Maybe smaller. I laughed. No thanks. I took the dorm for 4000 pesos. Met a Canadian girl from Vancouver, Naudia. Was traveling´through South America for three months. Yeah, ok. If you call sleeping in $40/ night hotels and watching tv all day traveling, then I guess she was traveling. I am trying to avoid Canadians on this trip. I like Canadians, but I want to meet people from other countries not hang with my kind. Plus, most of the Canadians I have met are douchebags from Vancouver or Quebec and don´t speak a lick of Spanish which I find kind of strange. Even the Americans that travel here speak SOME Spanish. Note that I do not think all people from Vancouver or Quebec are douchebags, just the ones that flew directly here on DouchebagAir.

So Naudia and I go out for dinner with another German girl. The German orders salad. Naudia says let's order some Parilla (bbq). Sure, why not. I let her order without looking at the menu figuring we´ll spend about $20 max. $40 later, I´m thinkin´f*ck, this girl has already broken my budget for the next few days. Oh well. Lesson learned. Always order for yourself. I still need to budget for Asia and Europe which is going to hit me hard. Naudia suggested we order some wine and watch tv. I suggested, good-bye. Next morning I managed to get hold of the Canadian Embassy in Santiago, and made them call and transfer me to TD CanadaTrust Visa. I ordered a new credit card to be sent to the Embassy this coming Friday. My card expired at the end of April which made me feel like less of a dumb-ass for losing it.

Took a bus to Valdivia that day (still in Middle Chile) and checked into some old man´s house named Roberto. His daughter and her bad breath recruited me at the bus station. I guess I was the one wearing the sucker hat. Actually, the place wasn´t that bad. 5000 pesos ($10), more than I would like to have spent but decent. I had the house to myself and then a Swiss couple showed up. They showed me how to play this game called Carcasonne which I guess is popular in Europe these days. These guys made the game out of a beer box and some beach stones for playing pieces. They had also made a chess board out of beach driftwood. Riiiight. Number of things I have made out of driftwood while traveling...zero. Anyways, took a nap and hit the town at around midnight. Lonely Planet advertised this place as "one of Chile´s most attractive cities if not the most attractive, with a killer night scene". Um, no. It´s nice but not the most attractive. Found the street where all the bars were. Went into Dance Bar. Listened to Bob Markey and ordered a Pisco Sour ($3.5). Pisco tastes kind of like tequila but is actually a grape brandy extract. Chileans consider it their national drink. Funny, so do the Peruvians. Ordered another one. This time with gingerale ($3.75) - equivalent to about 10 ounces of tequila...no joke. Chileans like to drink. The guy filled it a quarter of the way and gave me a mini ginerale can I guess for flavour. I'm wasted. Go down to the 'dance bar' where I see a bunch of Chileans making weird arm movements to the rhythms of Keeping You Warm by Sean Paul. I sober up. I'm home by 2:30am.

Took a bus to Niebla ($0.75) and then a ferry to Isla Corral ($1.50), which has one of Chile's largest and most intact fortresses, Fuerte Corral. Conquistador Pedro de Valdivia a.k.a. Spanish douchebag founded Valdivia (gee, really?) and also founded Santiago in 1540 when he came into the Mapocho Valley after leaving Peru. Anyways, the Island of Corral with its 5,000 inhabitants was something to see...I felt like I was in another era, with its cobblestone streets and tiny houses perched on the mountainside. Reached the fort. Only person there. Sweet. Saw a bunch of horse poo. Why all the horse poo. Found three stray horses on the fort's grounds. Tried to give them some of my lunch. They run away. A little kid (can't be more than 9) lassoos one of the horses and jumps on it (no saddle) and continues to round up the other two. Cool. Gaucho in the making. Take a nap on the grass as I gaze at the condors flying overhead in circular formation. Wake up to the sound of tourists. Look around. Hundreds of toursits. Chileans. This time I run.

Take a bus to Pucon that night (3.5 hours and $6). Think Banff but less touristy and less bastardized. Arrive at 11:15pm with no place to stay. This is getting to sound familiar. Walk around. All the places are double of what I paid everywhere else in Chile ($20-$22). Look at the crappy Lonely Planet for ideas. Find Hotel Donde Germaine ($14). Clean, tv, big living room, well-kept kitchen, and decent bathrooms. I take it. Ask about the trek to the volcano. $70 and they leave at 7am. I take it. Go to bed. Wake up at 6am to take a shower. No hot water. Sweeeet. Arrive at the agency (also owned by the cool hotel owners, Germaine and Maria Elena) to get fitted with gear at 7am. Oh wait, it's not 7am but 6am. Woops, time change. F*ck. Anyways, get fitted and 5 others (young american couple, 23, two old retirees from England and another retiree from USA) and me go to climb Volcano Villarica (one of Chile's few volcanos that is still active), accompanied by two tour guides (Germaine and Marcos). The volcano is 2800 metres above sea level and 1400 metres from the base of our ascent. Most people reach the top in 5 hours. We take 6. Don´t ask me why. We used ice axes and were fitted with space boots to make the ascent. Pretty smooth overall. One mentally challenging part - 300 metres of 45 degree snow covered plain - just before reaching the summit. The women cried. I waited and ate my raw bacon. Not bad actually, tastes like prosciutto (sp?). The first 5 hours were in sunglasses and t - shirt. The last hour was in hard hat, micro fleece, hats, gloves, and windprotecter. Upon reaching the top, take a huge breath of sulfur chlorite. Start going crazy. My eyes begin to sting because of the chlorine. Put on the gas mask. It's all good after 5 minutes. Take snaps and begin the descent which included sliding on our butts down the snow for the most part (think bobsledding or luge). Good day overall. I'm liking this adventure travel thing. Hit the hotsprings that night ($20), natuarlly heated by the volcanic rock surronding the town. Get home at 1am and have an excellent sleep.

Next day it rained. So I packed up and decided to go to Santiago that night. The rain outside was deafening. Haven´t seen rain like it since Caracas, Venezuela. Gets like this in Chile in the winter time. Although there is another week of summer left, winter is around the corner (i.e., lots of rain). One of our tour guides mentioned that when he was a kid he would have to wear full on rain gear and take a bike to school even though his school was only a kilometer away. He still got soaked. Grabbed lunch at a typical Chilean restaurant. Reminded me of my mother's excellent homecooking. Caught up on some emailing and chatted with the people in my hostal. Mostly oldies but that's neither here nor there. I really admired them. Some had been traveling for 3 years or more. Wow. Left for Santiago on the night bus. I prefer the buses in Argentina. In Chile, I seem to get seated by the most annoying people on the bus. This time it was the yogurt-eating-every-five-minutes, crazy-looking, with-a-handsome-tango-hat wearing German-looking lady. She kept on passing wind. On my other side was the six foot four, 250 pound military freak with a screaming kid. Family plays an important role in Chile and it is quite common for parents to let their kids run around and scream. I don't think I grew up that way. Did I? Anyways, thought I was going to die.

Made it into Santiago 6:15am. Went to the apartment that I am renting from the young American couple that I met in Pucon (while they are in Buenos Aires for the week). In the centre of town. New building with pool and gym. I check out the town in the barrio where I am located. Santiago is very modern. A lot cleaner than Buenos Aires but smaller (5 million versus 13 million). Tons of people walking around. Lots of shops where I am. The cathedral, post office, and municipal buildings are all around. I plan on checking out where my mother went to school (Santiago College) tomorrow, and the house she grew up in. I will also hit a winery or two. We shall see. Anyway, I gotta bounce and stop this monkey punching madness. It's sunny and hot outside. Pictures to come...soon...I promise!