Puerto Natales, Chile

Hmmmm, I´m not entirely sure why we spent so much time in Puerto Natales. May be it was because Liz was seeing one of the porters (a sherpa from the park) who lived there, or may be it was the homemade coconut ice-cream, or the Banff Film Festival arriving, or catching up with lots of friends that we had met in the Park. Whatever it was, it was always four minutes to nine in Puerto Natales! It was four minutes to nine when we arrived and four minutes to nine when we left (which after the trek at Torres del Paine, was almost four weeks later)! Oooops, I´m sure I´m supposed to be in Brazil by now!

left, the church with the clock that is only right twice a day. bless!

Puerto Natales is in a really pretty location on the edge of the pampa, surrounded by mountains and beside a very large body of water called Seno Ultima Esperanza (which, funnily enough, means ¨Last Hope Sound¨). Many of the buildings are imaginatively constructed out of corrugated iron, which I really grew to love for their simplicity and relaxed style of living. Liz said she felt like an hobbit in one of them and I would have to agree that they weren´t the roomiest of abodes.

However, if we hadn´t had met the people that we did here I probably wouldn´t have given the place a second glance, other than using it as a base for the trek. And I´m pretty convinced that the place is run by dogs! It´s canine central here. There are just mutts everywhere and you can tell who´s been sleeping with who as the litter of puppies you see every so often look suspicously like the mutley next door or the one on the corner! A friend of mine explained to me that he has two dogs. One that he keeps at home on his property and a street dog who he feeds but it lives on the streets. He explained how great it is when they go on holiday, ¨You just let the dogs out and tell your friends that you´ve gone and they look out for them. All the dogs in the town all know each other so it works out well for both parties.¨ I never saw a dog that was in a bad way either. All had full tummies and looked very content. The only time I felt soft was when I went on a pizza mission; word had got out (and the smell from the boxes I can imagine) and I was followed home (rounding up more on each corner) by a motley or rather mutley looking crew of canines. I kept telling myself ¨don´t look now, just don´t look behind you¨ as I knew if the slightest piece of thin crust left one of these boxes then every mutt would want a piece and I´d be in serious doo if I got back to the campsite empty handed!

After we left Torres del Paine, we thought we´d use Puerto Natales for a couple of days rest, to air out the tent, catch up on washing, er, have a looooong shower etc. but then the first weekend arrived and Kylie turned up (we met Kylie at the Campamento Italiano, an absolute hoot of a bird from Australia), so that deserved a great night out with live music and a few piscos. And then we got invited to a local barbecue which we turned up to at 11pm and which hadn´t even started, so that was another looooong night that wrote off the following day too (but great fun I may add).
As usual, with the South American hospitality shining through we were starting to become locals. Even the lovely chica in the ice cream shop started to scoop my order before I had even got an ´hola´ out. That did actually make me think twice (at one point) that may be it was time to move on.

We did manage to get a day trip down to Punta Arenas though (or just about). We wanted to see if we could get our cameras fixed down there and one of our friends had agreed to give us a lift. Unfortunatley the car broke down an hour into the trip though and we only just made it back to Puerto Natales in one piece (an interesting trip)! When we eventually did make it down there we got some great views across the Magellan Straits towards Tierra del Fuego (The Land of Fire). I would have loved to have made it across there, but I still have my hopes on making it to Antartica before it melts so may be another time or at the end of this trip if I can fit it in! And no, we didn´t get the cameras fixed. I was tempted just to buy the same model again but was horrified to find out that the cost was almost three times the price of what I paid for it in New Zealand and then I was even more horrified to find out that it was a meat truck we got a lift back to Puerto Natales in on the way back! (I know Harry, but beggars can´t be chosers)!

I had a lot of time to myself around Puerto Natales and so found myself quite an happening little spot in a bar called Indigo on the waterfront. It turned out that one of my friends, Gonzalo worked there (which I had no idea of on my first visit) and we spent a couple of afternoons together drinking some seriously good Chilean wine (look for Montes in your supermarket as they export the better stuff) and conversing in Spanglish whilst enjoying the picturesque views of The Last Hope Sound. Brilliant! I also treated myself to some lip-smackin,´ t-shirt staining, great seafood. The Dammer brothers (the Ecuadorian climbers) recommended a couple of restaurants to me and I feasted on salmon and Centolla (King Crab, oh, go the King Crab)!

Me with the Dammer brothers, Micha, Thomas and Mathias (the climbers I met on my birthday that were hoping to summit one of the Torres)

When the Banff Film Festival arrived (for those that don´t know, these are short films made generally by crazy people who like to express their love of the outdoors through their extreme sports which sometimes border on the insane, like BASE jumping for instance) we had a few really great nights out. The first viewings were in the local school hall on a particularly cold (I was tempted to go and grab my sleeping bag at half time) night! It was great to see some documentaries made in Chile and a couple on climbing (which I´m still convinced is my next hobby). On the second night we were a little more prepared for the cold as I took along a litre or so of vino tinto, except this time it wasn´t cold at all and we were surprised by the Dammer brothers who turned up with their cousin, José! (They had come in from the Park to stock up on supplies as summiting was taking a little longer than expected and Micha and Mathias were suffering from frostbite in their toes). What a night! We all ended up in the same bar with lots of other people that we had met along the way (mostly from the Park). People just kept turning up and we still have no idea how it all came about but it was really great to have everyone there for the grand finale night out! And so north we go! Next trek - Cerro Fitz Roy and another Granite Massif in El Chaltén, Argentina!