Chile: To the End of the World

Oh my. What''s this? A new blog post? Huzzah! This time, week 3 of my Chilean leg, which saw me go from the rather soggy but beautiful island of Chiloe to the city of Punta Arenas in Chile's far south.

Um... words?

That is literally all my journal has for this day. I wrote a lot. Y'know, what with it being NaNoWriMo and all. I have vague recollections of discussing Bonfire Night with someone. Welp, that was an interesting day, clearly.

You know there's sea lions down there, right?

Fortunately, I was rescued from my NaNoWriMo overload on Sunday by some of the girls at the hostel who invited me to join them for a trip to Muelle de las Almas on Chiloe's west coast. Having lost most of my week to, admittedly very enjoyable, writing, I jumped at the chance.

After a quick stop at the bus company to book my ticket back to Puerto Montt the next day, the five of us piled onto a little local bus to Cucao on the west coast. An hour or so later we arrived in the village, dropped the locals and then continued on down a very bumpy, unsealed road along the coast.

Another quick stop at the "entrance" to the park, where we paid our 1,000 peso entry and then back onto the bus for an ever more bumpy ride to the start of the trail. I reckon it probably took us nearly two hours altogether from Castro and even though I don't generally get travel sick, that bus ride wasn't entirely pleasant.

Once off the bus, everything improved. The sun was shining, the sky was clear and the track was... muddy.

Very muddy. Off we tramped, trying our best to avoid the worst patches. A few slips and slides later, we finally emerged from the shrubbery to this wonderful view.

And then on down to Muelle de las Almas, which is an art installation. Literally "the wharf of souls", it relates to indigenous Chiloe and Mapuche mythology (of which more info HERE), but also acts as a memorial of sorts to the victims of the enormous 1960 Valdivia earthquake - at a magnitude of 9.4-6, the largest ever recorded.

I don't understand enough Spanish to translate the info board, but I appreciated it nonetheless. It sort of reminds me of Cape Reinga, which in Maori mythology is the last place souls go before passing on to the next world.

I would have loved to have sat and admired the view for a while, but the wharf itself was overtaken with people taking their delightful Insta-ready photos and selfies. So I wandered on down the cliff a bit and discovered that on a rock just off shore were a whole load of sea lions. The rest of my group hadn't even noticed them. Even the guy we'd got talking to on the bus hadn't seen them and he was standing right next to me.

Personally, I thought they were pretty easy to spot. They were making plenty of noise...

Anyhoo, once the girls were finished with their selfies and whatnot we headed back up the hill. There's only one bus a day and we didn't really fancy missing it. We did find time for a quick detour over to the cliff overlooking the next bay, which was equally gorgeous...

Until I pointed out that there weren't any sea lions on that side and I realised that the girls hadn't known there were sea lions full stop. Oops. Maybe I should have mentioned it before we left the wharf? My bad.

After clambering back up the muddy hill, we piled back on the bus and settled in for our drive back to Castro. I fell asleep. Clearly the fresh air had done me good.

And then I immediately sat back down at the hostel and wrote another 2,000+ words. Just because.

Time for a taxi

The following morning I lazed around for a couple of hours before lugging my bags back up the enormous hill to Castro town centre in order to get a bus to Puerto Montt. Here is a photo I took of the palafitos - stilt houses - along the estuary. My hostel was one of them.

An uneventful 4 hour bus journey to Puerto Montt ensued. I hopped off the bus in the city and promptly realised that I'd forgotten to take a note of how to get to the hostel. I had an address, but without a map, that was pretty useless. It being nearly 3pm and me not having eaten since breakfast, I popped into a cafe at the terminal, hoping to use the WiFi.

The WiFi failed to work. The burger was nice though. Unwilling to just wander in the vague direction I thought the hostel lay in, I grabbed a taxi instead. Woo. At least the taxi was cheap.

Super friendly owners at the hostel. Improving mood was then ruined by Google Docs sabotaging every attempt I made at writing. I don't think it appreciated the by then nearly 70,000 words I'd written and kept glitching and crashing. Stupid app.

Patagonia Bound

After a delicious breakfast of some sort of sweet, syrupy toast made by my American host, I hopped on yet another bus, this time to Puerto Montt's airport. A few hours later, I was on a flight bound for Punta Arenas in Chile's extreme south and the hub for all things Patagonia.

Among odd things that happened, I saw a dachshund in a crate going round the luggage claim and was then told by the shuttle sales man that my Spanish accent was quite good. I suppose if my actual Spanish is bad, I might as well make up for it with a good accent...

I then spent the evening watching the US election results come in and wallowing in despair with my Dutch roommate.

What have you done?

OK, so this day's journal entry begins with "WTF AMERICA?!" and I think that adequately describes my response on waking up to find Trump as president-elect. Terrifying thought.

I decided to deal with this by taking a long walk in the fresh air and so set off first into Punta Arenas city centre and then along the rather blustery seafront.

I found a whole jetty covered in cormorants, which is probably the closest I'll find to a "case of shags".

Having walked several miles, I looped back around and popped to the supermarket to stock up on groceries, acquiring some delicious fresh bread in the process.

And then it rained on me. I was rather drippy by the time I got back to the hostel and was quite happy to spend the remainder of the wet and windy afternoon writing.

Rain. No rain. Rain. No rain?

On Thursday morning, having consulted Google for things to do in the city, I decided to take the nearly 4 mile walk out to the Museo Nao Victoria. This should have been wonderful - the museum is home to replicas of Magellan's Nao Victoria, Shackleton's James Caird, the Beagle and the Goleta Ancud (which, having visited Ancud the week before, would have been cool to see). I love maritime history and ships are fascinating.

I didn't make it there. I'd walked perhaps 2.5 miles and turned around to take a photo of the city. As I did, I saw this enormous bloody black cloud looming up behind me.

Having been caught in the rain the day before, I didn't really fancy doing it again, especially considering the museum was pretty much all outdoors and I'd have to walk the almost 4 miles back to the hostel when I was done.

So I wussed out and walked back. Guess what? I didn't get rained on at all. Although it did rain that afternoon while I was swearing and arguing with Google Docs over its insistence on sabotaging every single writing session...

I also started looking into the possibility of going to Puerto Williams for a night or two. The town is pretty much as far south as you can go in Chilean Patagonia without getting a boat and I was seriously considering getting the $130 return flight. Seemed like a good way to see Tierra del Fuego, a region I've wanted to visit since it first appeared in the Brian Jacques book Castaways of the Flying Dutchman when I was... 12, maybe?

Decisions, decisions

Adamant I'd actually do something instead of sitting around all day, I spent Friday morning in the Museo Regional Magallanes, which is housed in a rather swanky old mansion near the Plaza de Armas. So swanky, in fact, that the lady at the entrance handed me these beauties to cover my boots.

So stylish. It's also yet another of Chile's free museums. I'm loving this. The main floor is partly a display of the rooms as they would have been in the early 1900s when one of the city's most influentional families - the Menendez-Brauns - lived there and partly an exhibition of Patagonia history. I liked the study most.

Downstairs is, again, partly restored to the service area as it was in the early 1900s and also houses a very small temporary exhibition. I was mostly amused by the British products in the kitchen, of which I failed to get decent photo courtesy of the bad light. There was Colman's mustard, among others.

I then spent the afternoon flitting between reading the first book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series (which has me hooked), writing MORE WORDS and still trying to decide if I should go to Puerto Williams. I was leaving that decision rather late - I had a flight booked to Santiago for Monday afternoon.


So, will I end up in Puerto Williams? Will I stop writing all the words?

And more importantly, aren't there penguins down here?