Puerto Natales

Greetings from Puerto Natales!

This town is just a 3 hour bus ride north from Punta Arenas, yet it feels like a world away. Windswept Punta Arenas was right on the Magellan Strait, with views looking out over the water. Puerto Natales is also a port, but what a difference! This town is accessible to the ocean but only after winding one's nautical way around a profusion of islands, peninsulas, and other land barriers. The wharf is quiet; the water at the moment is placid. There seems to be one rather lonely looking dock. Around the sound are snow capped mountains with the promise of higher, snowier mountains right behind them. The temperature is probably the same as Punta Arenas but it feels a bit warmer because of the relative lack of wind. I'm walking around in a long sleeved shirt and windbreaker rather than in my alpaca sweater from Bolivia, gloves, and wool cap. The locals proudly claim that Pto. Natales is MUCH warmer than Pta. Arenas. That's kind of like saying Quincy is MUCH warmer than Portola, etc. If you're from Florida, say, both are cold.

The road here reminded me of Hwy. 50 going across Nevada ("the loneliest road in America"). It seemed like we were the only thing moving on the road. There was a wildgrass and sagebrush aspect to the landscape, with occasional groves of chilean oaks, which is what I think they're called here in Spanish but which look to me like cypress. Every once in a while there are nandu's, which are rheas, a kind of small ostrich, walking around, pecking away, doing their thing. There are lots of sheep grazing on the wide open plains. There's not much between the two towns. From the bus, I saw a sign advertising "Cafeteria ahead!" It looked like an oasis. There were 2 pick-up trucks parked in front of it and a llama tied to a hitching post. The local that came out of it is called a "huaso", yet another word in Spanish for cowboy (vaquero, llanero, gaucho, etc.), wearing a very cool black beret.

Just like in Nevada or northeastern California, there is the occasional small house to be seen at the end of a long dirt road off the highway. In the states, it would be a single wide mobile home. Here it's a similarly-sized metal building, made of flat tin on the sides and corrugated tin for the roof. One difference is that the roof only slopes in one direction. They usually are brightly painted so you can't tell it's metal siding until you get up close. In the towns, the houses are built the same. The two story houses look like solid squares. You enter, face a hallway and staircase, with rooms branching off to the sides. The kitchen is in the back where the stove, usually natural gas-fed, is on all the time (just like northern Ireland!).

In Punta Arenas, it seemed to me that gringos were relatively few and far between. There were a number of tourists, obviously, but they tended to be from Chile or Argentina. That is not the case here in Puerto Natales. This is the base camp, if you will, for backpackers to head off into the Patagonian Alps. Backpackers, mountain climbers, river rafters, ice climbers, the works. This means that 85% of the tourists here are gringo males between 18 and 30. There are gringos everywhere! As a result, walking down the street one hears German, French, occasionally Hebrew, and what might be Nordic languages. The Americans are definitely outnumbered. The American economic crisis may have dampened Americans' desire to travel, but not Europeans. Walking here reminds me of walking down, say the downtown of south lake tahoe (if there is such a thing). The stores here offer backpacking gear, the latest most expensive European hiking footwear, high-end brand names of American equipment companies, freeze dried food, dried fruit (I've RARELY seen that before in all of Latin America), ice axes, all the outdoor accoutrements. In between those stores are tour guide companies, restaurants with large advertisements in English, internet cafes, and coffee shops offering wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee, which I always find funny).

There are "backpacker's hostels" all over the place, which means some one converted their house into bedrooms with 4 bunkbeds in each, and with several rooms sharing one bathroom. And, last but not least, there are discos and nightclubs that start at about midnight and go until early morning for those backpackers who don't need to sleep. The town is about the size of Quincy. Imagine Quincy with a thousand or so foreigners in it! That's Pto. Natales.

Once a week, the ferry arrives and takes off again for Puerto Montt, a trip of 3 days and 4 nights, heading north toward more urban climes. I'm sure the ferry ride is fascinating in its own right, wending its way in between islands in an inland passage working its way north. However, it sails through literally all of this beautiful region, known as the Carratera Austral. There are ports that it could dock at enroute, but it doesn't. The rates for this cruise start at around $600 for a backpacker's kind of dorm room, and go up to 3 grand. No thanks. I strongly suspect the reason why the ferries don't make stops enroute is that people would get off! This of course would cut into their revenues.

Unfortunately, there is a large part of these dramatic mountains where no road has been cut yet into this beautiful area. Imagine, if you will, that California was accessible to the rest of the country only be going to Canada or Mexico! This leaves the traveler like me in something of a bind. In a personal car, one can slip over the other side of the Andes to Argentina, drive north a bit and then cross back into Chile. The road may or may not be paved, may or may not be maintained, and is probably absolutely minimally travelled, but it's possible. The public buses don't cooperate in that regard. In all fairness, there may be little demand. However, as I've reported on earlier in this blog, South American countries are like islands. They have minimal commercial traffic between themselves; minimal people exchange; minimal roads going from one to the other, etc. This is based on mutual distrust shared by all south american nationalities, and certainly by chilenos and argentinos. Ironically, there are several economic pacts, etc., among these countries (MERCOSUR comes to mind) but they amount to little. Until this inherent distrust is overcome, transportation and communication between neighboring countries will continue to be minimal.

When I asked the Chileno travel agent here if I could take a public bus through Argentina to get north of here, she said rather disdainfully I would have to go to an Argentine bus travel agency to find out that sort of information. At the Argentine agency, they answered "Of course we can take you to Argentina, but back into Chile again? No way!" They made it sound like no one in their right mind would want to do that. When I was at the hostel in Punta Arenas, one evening, the old lady that ran the place (I think she was a drill sergeant in a former life) was talking with me when an Argentine tourist arrived. For some reason we were talking about different nationalities that stayed in her hostel. She said to me loudly "You just have to watch out for those Argentine tourists to make sure they don't steal stuff from you and that you always get your money from them up front." I began squirming in my chair, knowing that the argentine could certainly hear her. The landlady read my mind and said "I don't care if he hears me!" He apparently expected this sentiment and didn't do anything about it. She is one of those persons that comes on super-strong at first, and probably after the second day, was giving the Argentine guy extra pound cake for breakfast.