Iain Plank

On the 14th April I found myself in a plane descending to anew continent: South America.
After a year spent in the tropics my body and wardrobe were to be in for a shock – cold weather !!

Santiago
It was a dark, cold and wet Friday evening when I landed in Santiago and the first thing that I did was to retrieve my, until then, practically unworn fleece from the depths of my rucksack. I got some strange looks as I walked around looking for accommodation wearing a pair of shorts and beach shoes !

I really liked Santiago, it had a really good feel to it. It’s is a surprisingly European city with large wide streets, a metro system and modern shops which tend to follow the Asian idea of collectivity: It may take you a while to find a particular kind of shop but once you’ve found one, you’ve found them all !
Talking of shopping, Chileans have a strange love of the receipt. I think that it’s a legal requirement but it means that you get them for absolutely everything: from an hour on the internet to buying a hamburger.
They also have a system in some shops where you have to wait to be served by someone who will collect what you want together and give you a receipt. You then have to join another queue to pay and then, armed with a new “I have paid” receipt, go back to the original person to exchange it for your goods. Why you can’t just pay the first person is beyond me. Another Santiago fad are “alternative” coffee bars with blacked out windows where you are served cortados by girls wearing nothing more than skimpy underwear. I guess that’s what they mean here by “Café con leching”. Harmless enough I guess, just don’t ask for extra milk.

The down side to Santiago is the smog – it is unreal. When people told me that Santiago was at the foot of the Andes and surrounded my mountains I didn’t believe them – they just were not visible. Then we had a few clear days and suddenly the mountains were there, right in front of you. Absolutely stunning. Unfortunately the smog returned and they disappeared again.

No rest for the wicked
My first few days in Santiago were hectic. That first night I intended to get something to eat at the hostel and then to get some sleep after a long flight. At dinner I got talking to some people and that was it, the next few days became a blur of drinking, dancing, 6am’s and lots of fun. One thing I’ve learnt from travelling is that it’s always the most unexpected things that turn out to be the most fun, probably because there are no expectations and so everyone just goes with the flow. The South Americans have a reputation for loving football and so we went to a football match: Universidad Catholica versus Santiago Morning. We got absolutely drenched but enjoyed it thoroughly. At one end of the stadium in the pouring rain were the die-hard fans complete with drums, flags and fireworks. They chanted and sang without a pause for the whole 2 hours !! At the end of the game the referee and linesmen remained in the middle of the pitch and waited to be escorted from the pitch surrounded by 7 policemen, complete with riot shields !!

Mendoza
For the Easter weekend I went to Mendoza in Argentina. Crossing the Andes was beautiful and Mendoza itself was a nice town even if the Argentinean prices were a bit of a shock.

Spanish Lessons
Whilst in Santiago I decided to take some spanish lessons. I aim to be in South America around 4 to 5 months and so it makes sense to do lessons right at the beginning to obtain a basic grasp of the language. I can then use it as I travel around and also afterwards, in the real world (whatever that is ?).

I studied at the Natalis Language Centre in the centre of town and did a basic course for 3 weeks that focused on grammar – so if you want to know how to conjugate spanish verbs in the Imperfect Subjunctive, I’m your man !! I’ve taken lessons in several languages and it never ceases to amaze me as to how the brain works. If I’m in a situation “on the street” when I need my French, for example, then my brain takes an age to remember the words and phrases. Put me in a language class though and the languages that I don’t need are there immediately, even though they tends to confuse things. It’s as if the brain says “Aha, foreign language !!” and proceeds to regurgitate any foreign word or pronunciation that it can find, however irrelevant, as if it’s doing you a favour. Learning spanish helped me to remember more French and Italian than I would have thought possible.
Whilst taking lessons there was also the chance to give “something back” to the school. Marie and Gerry, an Irish couple with whom I studied, and myself spent a few evenings setting up a simple website for the school which you can see if you click on the school’s name above. It’s good to keep the brain ticking over.

Armed with a new found language, of sorts, it was time to start heading south. The winter was fast approaching and it was becoming a race against the ever changing weather.

Chilean Lake District
The Chilean Lake District is an area of beautiful lakes, waterfalls and snowcapped mountains and volcanoes. From Santiago I headed down to the reasonable non-descript town of Temuco at the north of the district and from there to Pucón. Pucón is a pretty town between the shores of Lake Villarrica and the foot of volcán Villaricca with it’s near perfect cone. Here I sat in thermal springs, went horse riding, walking, generally relaxed and enjoyed the company of the great people that I met there. I wanted to climb to the top of the volcano where you can apparently see the molten lava inside but weather conditions wouldn’t allow. Next time maybe.
From Pucón I headed further south to the island of Chiloé.

Chiloé
Isla Grande de Chiloé is a large island to the south east of Puerto Montt. It is a beautiful place of green undulating hills and forests and is rich in traditional folklore and legend. It’s also one of the poorest parts of Chile.
Being in Chiloé was like going to another world. Most of the roads are unpaved. Castro, the capital, with it’s salmon pink and violet painted cathedral is a colourful sprawling mass of dodgy looking housing. Chonchi, a small village on the east coast is like going back in time. You know the old photos you see sometimes of such and such a place back in 1870 etc. Well that’s how Chonchi is now – you almost expect to see things in black and white ! If Chonchi is back in time then the island of Lemuy, just offshore, is a different planet. Jesuit churches abound here and it is a beautiful, peaceful place with a backdrop of the snowcapped mountains and volcanoes of the mainland.
Following Darwin, who was here with HMS Beagle back in the 19th Century, I went from Chonchi to Cucao a small village on the Pacific coast. It was 35km and the owner of the hostel where I was staying said that the buses were few and far between and that I’d have no problem hitching. He was right, every car that passed gave me a lift ! Unfortunately, only 5 cars passed and none of them were going to Cucao. I ended up walking about 20 of the 35km. That said, is was amazing. Talk about the back of beyond. There was only one telephone in the village and one TV channel. Apparently, they only got electricity 7 years ago ! Most of the village went about on horseback and the beach was a strange mix of the mighty Pacific’s pounding waves and of cows standing in the shallow surf munching pieces of seaweed. I loved it.

After Chiloé I spent a couple of days in Puerto Varas, just to the north of Puerto Montt and then headed south.

Heading South
On the 22nd of May I took the Navimag boat, the “Puerto Eden” for the 1200km trip from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. A 4 day trip through the Chilean Fjords. It’s actually a cargo ship that takes fare paying passengers, although in rather more comfort than the cargo ships of Polynesia.
It was absolutely stunning as we travelled through islands and mountains on an unbelievably calm sea and saw seals, seabirds, the odd penguin and, at one point, large blocks of ice which had broken off from some glacier or other. The soundtrack to Titanic wasn’t a popular one on the stereo at that time. For one part of the journey, around the Gulfa Del Penas (Gulf of Pity) the ship has to go from the shelter of the fjords and out into the open sea. People I’d met that had done the trip before had had stories of the whole boat throwing up for 12 hours. Apparently one of the sales clerks, when asked if the trip would be rough, had replied: “Around the Gulfa Del Penas you’ll think that the boat is going to sink but just remember, it does this journey every week”. Very reassuring ! As it happened, the sea on our trip was so calm that we hardly noticed.
The boat was practically empty as far as passengers were concerned, but the people that were there were a great bunch and we had a lot of fun drinking, chatting, playing silly games, recounting strange dream experiences involving potatoes, and learning all about a small worm called Strateodrillis that lives on the gills of a hermit crab. Don’t ask !
We stopped only once, at Puerto Eden. Only accessible by boat, to say that it’s in the middle of nowhere is like asking the Pope if he’s a Catholic.
On a cold, foggy, Thursday morning we entered Seno Ultimo Esperanza (Last Hope Sound) and landed in Puerto Natales a nice, if desolate place, with amazing scenery.

Torres Del Paine
A few years ago, I read a book by Michael Palin called “Full Circle”. It was a travelogue of his journey around the countries of the Pacific Rim and in it he visited The Torres Del Paine National Park. The photos and his description of the place planted a seed in my mind: I was determined to get there one day. Well, the time had come.

In Puerto Natales a group of 5 of us got together to go trekking for 3 to 4 days. The first day, we travelled to the park and across Lake Pehoé where we got a view of the Cuernos Del Paine. It was just amazing, it was the picture in the book but here before me, “In the flesh”. That night we stayed in the Refugio Pehoé and the following damp day walked to the Glacier Gray which was quite great. The Lake running from the glacier (Lago Grey) was full of icebergs of white and of a blue that has to be seen to be believed. Day three was simply a hard slog from the Refugio Pehoé to the Hostería Las Torres on the other side of the park. Being winter these were the only two places in which to stay in the whole park. It was a wet and cloudy day but with no choice we simply put our heads down and walked for 7 hours. A nice surprise awaited us though: a hotel. Apparently the authorities only gave permission to build the hotel if they offered accommodation to trekkers during the winter months when the hostel was closed, at the same price as the hostel:
I.e.. $16 instead of $130. Bargain. We woke up refreshed on day 4 with sunshine and blue skies, ready for our ascent to the Torres themselves. It was hard work to get there, clambering over icy boulders, but well worth it: they were absolutely stunning (see the photos).
That afternoon we headed back to Puerto Natales, exhausted but happy – we’d walked about 70km during our time in the park. A beautiful pink sunset lit up the Torres Del Paine as we headed home…farewell to a very special place.

After a couple of days recovering in Puerto Natales I moved on to the last city in Chile, Punta Arenas.

Punta Arenas
On the western shore of the Strait of Magellan, Punta Arenas in the most southerly city in Chile. It’s original economy was based on sealskins, Guanaco hides and mineral products but that changed when 300 pure-bred sheep were introduced from the Falklands. The wool market boomed and great estancias (ranches) appeared changing the economy of southern Patagonia almost overnight.
Punta Arenas today is a sprawling, bleak, windy, outpost of a city. Nice enough for a couple of days but that’s about it.

The Ends of….
I’d thoroughly enjoyed Chile. It’s a beautiful, safe place and the people are just lovely.
Pinochet only came up a couple of times. Once when I was in the middle of a huge queue in the main post office in Santiago at the time. No problem though.

When you think of traveling then maybe you think of going to the ends of the earth. From Punta Arenas it was time to go to one of those ends, the most southerly city of the American continent and of the world….Ushuaia !!

But that’s for next time…..

Take care.

Iain