Day 16 - Locos!

Part of the reason that we'd needed to get money out of the ATM the night before was to pay for our day tour to Isla Damas and Isla Choros. "Hostal Jofre", in addition to providing cheap (but poorly appointed) rooms and hamburger buns for breakfast, arranges tours to some of the attractions near to La Serena.

Lacking the mental capacity when we arrived in town to want to think about planning it ourselves, we'd tried to book the day tour to Isla Damas through Jofre, which we needed some extra cash to pay for. As it turns out, though, the tour was cancelled, because the boat that was to be used was not available the next day. Why?

Locos!

More on Locos in a minute. For now, let me first explain a little bit about how the tours are arranged. Some kind of transportation is required to get you to the small port of Caleta Los Choros, about 120 km north of La Serena. There, local fishermen in Los Choros ferry tourists out from the port, cruise around Isla Choros, and then dock at Isla Damas, where people are allowed ashore.

These two steps are usually arranged by a tour company, but after the Jofre tour fell through, we decided to take it upon ourselves. We drove up to Los Choros, including another 20 km on another dirt road. This was a bit of a risk, not just because we hadn't yet fixed the flat tire, but also because it was a Sunday, and things generally shut down on Sundays. But we'd read reports online before we left that people had been able to go out on tours on Sundays, and we were willing to be patient (of course despite our stated patience, we left the hostel before 7am just to make sure that we'd be first in line).



Loco, you may recall from earlier posts was a delicious shellfish that we had a first taste of in Puerto Natales. It is also a lucrative export, and a sensitive species. Combine these features with the practical Chilean government, and you end up with the following situation (as it was explained to us -- in Spanish that we understood! -- by Fernando, who was helping to secure us a tour boat):

Locos abalone used to be plentiful, but lack of regulation led to overharvesting and low numbers. To combat this, the government imposed strict regulations that limit commercial Locos gathering to 12 days per year. Japanese restaurant importers, who 'don't value money' (according to Fernando), pay a relative fortune for the Locos, so the 12 days of Loco harvesting each year are very, very important to the local fishermen.

As you may have guessed by now, it was during this 12 day stretch that we were in Chile. And during this time, a boat's time is much more well spent ferrying locos and divers gathering locos than tourists. So we were without a boat to take us out to the islands.

So, also, were two other tour groups. Hiring a boat can be quite expensive, so we befriended the tour leaders of the other two groups, hoping we could get on the boat with them, should they succeed in getting a boat.

After about 2 hours of waiting, one of the tour groups gave up. They were en route to somewhere farther in the north. But the other group, led by a very friendly guide named Victor, was hoping to wait out the morning and midday locos hauls and catch a boat in the afternoon.



Actually, I should be more specific. The whole second group that was not willing to wait. There was one couple that had been with the group that began to get testy and eventually demanded to be returned to La Serena. Clearly they did not make the effort to enjoy the opportunity to see the local economy at work and to get to know the livings of other peoples lives. They just wanted to see some damn penguins, and they'd paid good money for it, so they deserved to.




Care to guess their nationality? Yep. Rude American tourists. Some stereotypes are true.

Anyway, we were enjoying ourselves. Keenly following the fishermen's progress, but enjoying the clearing skies and the company of the other tour group. Around 1:30, we were told that there would be one last boat that might be able to help us, and it would be getting back around 3:00. Filling the vacancies in their group after the departure of the Rude Americans, we joined Victor's group for lunch.

At lunch, we enjoyed some local fish which I've forgotten the name of (but that Victor joked was dolphin), and conversation with people from Israel, France, Colombia, Germany, and Chile. It was awesome.

At 3:00 we returned to the pier, and were given good news. We had a boat!

The day so far:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555609873tqcpCX

Day 15 - roadtrip...

The end of the last post may have been a bit of an oversimplification. The truth is that even after we made it out of Ovalle, we weren't too sure where we were headed. It was after 10 kilometers and some rising tension between the navigator and driver before a road sign confirmed that we were indeed headed in the right direction. What we didn't realize was how long we would be headed in that direction...



We anticipated about 80 kilometers of smooth driving up the valley to the town of Hurtado, a tough drive up over the mountains for 44 kilometers, and drop down into the gorgeous and green Valley de Elqui. We were getting a bit ahead of ourselves, beacause 80 kilometers takes an awfully long time when you're averaging less than 35 km/hour.

I hope that this does not come across as any kind of griping. Because at the time, we certainly weren't complaing about the drive. It really was quite beautiful. We were seeing the Chilean countryside in a way suitable for portrayal in the richly colored and glossy pages of National Geographic. Small towns, or rather very small villages were 10-20 houses of bright and contrasting colors were perched on the hillsides. On the narrow road, we slowly wound past adobe walls, thatched roofs, large stands of flowering cactus.



After about 2 hours of this unrelenting beauty, we decided to stretch our legs and have a quick drink. We were beginning to think we were getting too much of a good thing. So we were mistakenly relieved when we arrived at the turnoff toward Vicuña.

Within 20 seconds of turning onto this road, I was thinking it was a bad idea. I'd had a fair amount of experience driving on dirt/gravel roads in Washington, and I've dodged a fair number of potholes driving in San Francisco. But this was hellacious combination of all the bad features of any road I'd driven. For any given stretch, the road was composed of loose gravel, embedded rocks, hard-packed clay, windy turns, steep inclines, or some evil combination thereof.

It's difficult to say if it helped that the views were absolutely stunning. It made the harrowing driving seem worth the effort, but it made staring at the road that much less appealing, and harder to do.



A few minutes later, we were discussing how it was possible that we were in the most desolate place we'd ever been. The only signs of life were scrub brush and cactus. We'd seen one car in the last hour, which we'd just passed.

As Murphy would have it, right about that time the steering started pulling to the left. A quick stop (doesn't take long to decelerate from our speed of 10 km/h to 0) and a peek out the door confirmed it. We had a flat tire. We were 15 km from the start of the road, and 29 from the end of the road.

Perhaps Peugeot has little faith in tire durability, or maybe there are consumer-friendly rental car requirements in Chile, but either way, we were incredibly lucky that our car was equipped with a full-sized spare tire. Thus, we were, ahem, spared from becoming vulture meat, assuming we could successfully change the tire.

With surprisingly little difficulty (see the pictures for an abbreviated 'How to Change a Tire on a Desert Mountain Road'), we got the tire changed, and we were on our way. Our very, very, very cautious way.



I'm quite happy to report that, aside from some very grimy palms (Julie -- wisely -- did not want to waste our remaining water on cleaing wheel grime off my hands), the rest of the drive provided no further physical discomfort.

Herds of goats and then more pisco grapevines welcomed us down the valley into Vicuña, just as the sun was falling behind the mountains. We scrapped our plans to stop at one of the mountaintop observatories and made our way to La Serena.



Fortunately, "Hostel Jofre" (the sign on the front door includes the quotes) had not given our very small room to anyone else, and we were able to check in. Payment was another issue, though, as we were repeatedly denied cash from the nearby ATMs. Nearing the end of our emotional ropes, we tried one last ATM after returning to the hostel to ask for help. Those bound for La Serena take note: the ScotiaBank ATM is often the only cajero automatico that will serve foreign customers.

We wolfed down some long overdue food, giant and delicious sandwiches from Café Colonial, hiked back to our room at the hostel, and collapsed for a night of sleep.

The whole drive (buckle up!):
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555612368DKSdKq?start=12

Day 15 - Roadtrip!

Up to this point on the trip, there had been a relatively packed schedule. Certainly not consistent activities from day to day, but consistently busy, whether catching buses, hiking, whatever. So there was a fair amount of mental adjustment (as well as the obvious repacking for warmer weather) when we got ready to head out for our northern roadtrip. Aside from having places to stay booked for the first two nights, there was nothing solid. And that kind of freedom is a different kind of vacation altogether.

Before we actually got out the door on that vacation, though, Paul and Curtis returned to Pablo's apartment. They'd just come in on a bus, back from the mid-south, Puerto Montt and Chiloe. Aside from a few weather problems, it sounded like they'd had a great time. It was good to hear that they'd had such a good time, as we prepared to hit the road again.

I ate a bowl of Cookie Crisp with Loncho Leche (Chilean refrigerate-after-opening milk that comes in a cardboard carton) for breakfast, fueling up for the drive.

The plan in general was to drive north on Ruta 5, the Panamerican highway, and to spend the night in La Serena. Easy enough, because of our alternate route in the car the night before, we knew where we needed to get to leave town.

No troubles, we were on the highway by 9:30.

On the four-lane divided highway, we were making good progress. And for those of us used to driving all distances in miles, driving distances measured in kilometers is a snap. They pass by so much faster! Why would you want to drive 60 mph when you could be driving 100 km/h? This alone justifies a switch to the metric system if you ask me.

The tolls on the highway were pretty hefty. For about 3 hours of northerly driving, I think we paid close to 7,000 pesos (~$14US). Not cheap, but this did include an amazing tunnel through a hill that brought us out to near to the coast.

Good for driving, but bad for views, it was a fairly overcast day.

After consultation of the Lonely Planet guidebook, we came up with a plan. Los Vilos, being one of the larger towns between Santiago and La Serena, and almost exactly halfway between the two, was chosen as a lunch stop. We saw about 50 restaurants in Los Vilos, roughly one for every person we saw in the town. Apparently over the summer it is a fairly busy working-class Chilean resort town, but at noon on an overcast spring Friday, there was an almost eery lack of people.

Nonetheless, we parked the car and went looking for an agreeable restaurant. I'm a little wary of eating at empty (or nearly) restaurants under any circumstances, let alone when they are empty seafood restaurants. A crowd of people can legitimitize an otherwise slightly dingy restaurant.

We ended up choosing one that at least had a very similar name as one remarked upon in the guidebook (Restaurant de los Pescadoras in the Caleta San Pedro). It overlooked the harbor where the fisherman tied off, or pulled in their colorfully painted wooden fishing boats (one was for sale if anyone's looking for a career change).
We ordered the waitress-recommended Lenguado a la plancha, a grilled whitefish that was quite salty in a good way, and a ceviche that was quite lemony in maybe not as good of a way. Also, buoyed by our experience with Locos (abalones) in the south, we ordered a Locos y Queso Empanada. It, too, was quite delicious, but suffered a bit of the too-much-fried-flavor that you can get in a cheap Indian samosa.

All in all it was fantastic, though, overlooking the boats that had earlier in the day been catching the fish we were eating. After lunch we took a stroll through the actual fish market and talked to one of the fishmongers for a bit, checking out a few beautiful Barracuda and other fish whose names now escape me.

Los Vilos pictures


Perhaps emboldened by our full bellies, shortly after lunch, we decided to take the scenic route. Now, really, the whole drive had been pretty scenic, but Lonely Planet suggested a loop which would bring us up one scenic pisco valley (from Ovalle toward Hurtado), and then over a backroad to Vicuña, the main city in the Valle de Elqui, a valley known for its scenic vineyards (which supply grapes to make the brandy-like pisco).

It's always much more interesting to avoid major highways. Within 5 minutes of pulling off the Panamerican Highway, we were winding down a dirt sideroad toward a church, which had been advertised with an abnormally large sign. La iglesia de Barraza was where we were headed. Pulling into the town was like pulling onto the set of Desperado, or Zorro, or any other movie that features a half-abandoned, all-old pueblo in the desert.



Mustering enough courage to get out of the car, we strolled around a little and took a look inside the one shop (a giftshop near the church) that seemed open. We were quite surprised to end up conversing for a short while with a young bus driver, who led tours senior citizens from La Serena on tours of the small town Barraza. As described by the bus driver, Barraza was 'a special place', with the church first constructed around 1650 (give or take?). The whole place certainly did seem like a step back in time.

Another 40 km or so brought us into Ovalle, a surprisingly large (~200,000 people), and not-too-surprisingly disorganized agricultural city.



We didn't really do anything there except for get disoriented and lost.

After getting back on track thanks to the instructions of a kind woman, we were at least headed toward Hurtado, driving up a beautiful valley, with modest country homes.



More on the way...

Day 14 - Strait to Santiago

One of the big accomplishments of the conversation the previous evening had been to arrange transportation to the airport. José Miguel, being connected in the Punta Arenas tourism world, scheduled a cab for us at noon the next day.

Knowing that that airport transportation was under control, we slept in a bit the next morning. We got up, showered, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, with CNN International playing on the TV in the background -- just one example of the numerous little steps our hosts had taken to make us feel comfortable and welcome.

So we strolled east one block, and then down the Avenida Cristobal Colón toward the fabled treacherous waters of the Strait of Magellan. Anyone with a passing interest in history could tell you that the water and land near Punta Arenas is notorious. Quick direct translations of a few nearby sites will give you the same idea: Land of the fire (Tierra del Fuego), Port Famine (Puerto Hambre), Sound of Last Hope (Seno Ultima Esperanza). But on the late spring day that we were there, the sun was shining, and the water was like glass.

So we walked right up, reached our hands off the end of the continent, and dipped them into the Strait. (To give credit where due, we got the idea from Becky). We also paused to enjoy the weathered playground at the end of the boulevard, and a number of the monuments honoring various people who had passed through, facing weather far worse than we saw.


http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555604843UMWWgo

Other than that, it was a relatively uneventful day of travel. The cab to the airport showed up at noon exactly. I mean 12:00 to the second. For all the talk about Chileans having a different interpretation of punctuality...

With the sunny and clear skies, we had spectacular views from the plane. Similar glaciers that looked mammothly static from the ground took on new, dynamic characteristics when viewed from above, where the debris that they had been grinding off mountainsides was striped along their axis of motion.

Pictures from the plane (http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555615797BboAMv)

At Santiago, we picked up the rental car. Budget Rent-A-Car operates in a very similar manner in Chile as it does here. Which was good, because even with a couple weeks of exercise, our Spanish skills could not keep pace with the agent that was helping us.

Our trusty steed for the next few days was to be a 5 speed Peugeot 206. While the French supermini was cute, we couldn't even fit half of our baggage in the trunk. It's no wonder roadtrips are less common in Europe...

Only a few wrong turns later -- always listen to your navigator -- and we were back at Pablo's apartment.

We met up with Morgan to share one last bottle of Chilean wine before she flew back, and then called it a night.

Day 13 -Penguins are real! (updated)

Departing again from Erratic Rock II on a 7:00 bus meant another early start. Luckily, the TV alarm clock worked well again, and we were able to catch our bus after another nice breakfast (prepared and delivered the night before by Marcela, the owner of the hostel).

We were also lucky, that our laundry was, uh, done. Having brought nothing more to the south than what we were going to take on the trails in Torres del Paine, we were in desparate need of fresh laundry before heading back to Punta Arenas. As luck would have it, we found out that Isabel, a friend of Marcela's would do our laundry overnight for us. Although we'd planned on finding a laundromat and doing it ourselves, it was really hard to argue with the convenience of the deal, even if the price was a bit high. Maybe we should have argued a bit.

It became clear after agreeing to have her do the laundry that Isabel did not believe in using dryers. Not really a big deal, but our laundry was well short of dry when it was delivered at 6:30 the next morning. Even worse, as we donned our clothes, the stale reek of cigarette smoke became immediately apparent. Still, better damp and smokified than stinking like 3 days of hard hiking (at least I kept telling myself that).

After arriving in Punta Arenas around 11 (Bus Sur on the return trip also), we set out to find a place to stay for the night. We were lucky that Julie´s steel-trap memory led us to the ¨Downtown Hostel¨, about 8 blocks from downtown. We were even luckier that they had a vacancy in the overflow section, given that the town was packed with the binational youth games, essentially an olympics for the youth of Argentina and Chile. The overflow section was actually the son´s room in the owner´s house, now that he´d left for college. It was great, and we got some friendly advice from Sonia, and later from her husband, Jose Miguel on trying to make it to see the nearby penguin colonies.

I say trying to make it, because due to the liveliness of the town with all of the extra visitors around, the boat cruise to the Isla Magdalena was booked ´super full´. So we bought bus tickets for the 4:00 departure to the Seno Otway penguin colony (a significantly smaller, privately owned penguin reserve about an hour north of Punta Arenas), and went to get some lunch.

Bad news...
Our internet store is closing for the evening, so you´ll be left in suspense.

Lunch was relatively simple. A few empanadas from a fairly tourist-friendly place in Punta Arenas (Fabrica was its name). These were again the slightly more healthy and much more delicious baked variety of empanada (horneado), which seemed to be favored in the south over the fried variety (frito) more commonly found in the north.

After lunch we went to conduct the usual important business on the internet, and found a fairly nice looking place to do so. Apparently we were not the only ones who thought it was a nice looking place, as we ran into Morgan sipping a coffee in the back of the cafe. Apparently she had seen us boarding the bus to leave Torres del Paine the day before, also. It was quite a coincidence running into her again, though, and soon Becky and Terri came back from the errands that they had been running also. After a little more discussion (including about the stellar election results!), and they went to get some lunch also, but not before determining that we'd be seeing them again out at Seno Otway.

We'd seen mention of the Sent Otway tours in a couple of guidebooks, and they seemed a much more reasonably-priced adventure than the Isla Magdalena tours. The way to keep them more reasonable, though, was to simply buy a bus ticket. Our Bus Fernandez fare was 5,000 pesos, a bargain next to the Turisma Comapa tour that we nearly bought and would have cost 20,000 pesos, with the only added benefit being a small snack on the ride to the colony.

It was a great thing that we just bought the bus ticket. Although the 'bus' was actually one of those improbably narrow Mitsubishi passenger vans, our driver was incredibly friendly, and stopped many times along the road to point out various wildlife (ranging from rabbits, to more ñandús, to the unusual skunk-like chingue). Upon reaching the colony, we had about one and a half hours to stroll along the boardwalk and watch the penguins.

That's right, I said watch the penguins. Yes, we've all seen penguins in the zoo. But never did I imagine that I'd ever see real penguins, living in the wild. It was surreal, seeing these Magellan's Penguins waddling about their business. In surprisingly organized lines, they bobbed along from the water to their burrows. They were unbelievably cute, and amazing to observe up close and with the binoculars (thanks, mom and dad!) preening their feathers and building their nests within their burrows.

Amongst the penguin crowd on the beach, there was a lone Emporer Penguin (you know, the starring breed of March of the Penguins). Much larger, and sporting arguably more formal plumage, he stood on the beach preening and looking a bit morose. What was he doing there?

Magellan's Penguins, we'd been informed, return to the same place every year to mate with the same partner. Even more remarkable, a penguin will become sterile if its one partner should die. Newly armed with that information about Magellan's Penguins, we extrapolated a bit, and guessed that it was the remaining half of a mating pair of Emporers that called Seno Otway home.

The real story, though, is somewhat more exotic, though maybe no less lonely.

We were told that the lone Emporer, looking large and awkwardly out of place, like the first of the penguin classmates to hit puberty, was not actually from Seno Otway. Rather, it had been found out at sea, stranded, and picked up by a well-meaning fisherman. This fisherman, the story goes, then brought the penguin back to one of the places where he knew that penguins lived, Seno Otway.

Los Pingüinos (Joy's favorite Spanish word!):
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555606793oxhKnG

We'd made plans with Morgan, Becky and Terri for dinner at Bar Sotitos, which had been recommended by our friend Mario on the flight to Punta Arenas. "Not really a bar!" he assured us, but "less refined" than many other options in Punta Arenas. Clearly, his definition of 'less refined' was a bit different than ours (i.e. that restaurant was completely out of our league), though, and we opted for a tasty, cheap Italian option, O Solo Mio (also South of the Plaza de Armas). The gnocchi with chunky king crab cream sauce was different and delicious, and the lasagna was bubbly and hearty. mmmm.

After some fun dessert with the girls, they were off to catch another red eye flight. And we were off to the hostel for some entertaining spanish conversation with our hosts before heading to bed. What a day. Penguins!

Day 12 - Chileno-Torres Del Paine

We got an early start, waking up around 5:30. We were hoping to make it up to the mirador of the Torres shortly after sunrise. We hiked as fast as we could through thick forest, before reaching a boulder field separating us from the lookout. Navigating and climbing up and between the boulders took nearly an hour, and left us tired and sweaty.

Luckly, at the top, we were rewarded with clear weather (apparently somewhat rare -- Morgan and the other girls from UCSF were rewarded with whiteout/blizzard conditions), allowing us to see the spectacular granite towers. I really should say more here about the awesome size and shape of the towers, but I´ll instead again refer you to the pictures:

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/555472721cHatVA

From that point, it was all downhill. We hustled back down to camp, took down the tent, and had some breakfast. It was then a 2 hour march down the valley to reach our endpoint of the W, La Hostería Las Torres.

Well, we thought that was our endpoint, but we ended up having to hike another kilometer to the Refugio Las Torres instead, where we caught a shuttle that took us out to the park entrance.

It was there that we caught our bus back to Puerto Natales, ending an unbelivably beautiful time in Torres Del Paine.

We were lucky enough to get a room again at the Erratic Rock II hostel. We grabbed a delicous post-backpacking dinner of pizza and hamburgers, and then crashed in a wonderfully comfortable bed.