The bus company told me that I would be picked up from my hostel in El Calafate and 5.30 a.m for my trip to Puerto Natales. When I told this to the girl on the reception at the hostel, she rolled her eyes that said, “that will be after 6.00 a.m.” I made sure that I was up a backed by 5.15 a.m. just in case she was wrong.
Early Start
The girl on reception was almost right. The bus picked me up as 6.30 a.m. It was a mini bus that took us out of the town, where it stopped. We then transferred to a larger bus and headed south. The road is reasonable, but the bus didn’t travel very fast. There did not seem to be any reason why. There was a very spectacular sun rise. The countryside reminded me of the area around Cooma south of Canberra – dry grassland with the old sheep and mountains in the distance. A difference was that there, the mountains are snow-capped year round.
Border Crossing
We left the sealed road and turned west on a rough gravel road. We were travelling so slowly, I began to wonder how much time this journey would take.
It wasn’t too long before we came across some buildings that looked like a farm house and barns. It turned out to the Argentinian border crossing into Chile. I am not sure how many people cross that border at this point, the staff seem to think that they have all day to do the processing. They didn’t to have any computers to record the travellers’ details.
We piled back onto the bus and continued on the gravel road across a paddock for about another half a kilometre to another group of buildings. This was the Chilean border crossing. The Chilean’s seem to take this border business and little more seriously that the Argentinians. They even have a luggage screening machine and a sniffer dog. The dog seemed to more interested in playing with its toy bone that sniffing the luggage. The Chileans also entered the travellers’ details into a computer.
Leaving the border crossing we travelled on a very good road into Puerto Natales.
Wild Hostel
I had booked into the Wild Hostel on the Hostel World internet site. It was one of the few hostels that had a vacancy. The bus stopped at the bus terminal. I asked the driver where the Wild Hostel was. He beckoned me back onto the bus and we headed off. I was dropped off in the main street and told to walk two blocks to the hostel.
I found the hostel locked, with large chain rapped around an iron gate across the entrance. I could see someone inside and waved to attract their attention. Finally a young woman came to gate and asked “what do you want?” I said I had a reservation and wanted to come in. She looked me up and down and let me in.
Once inside she explained that the owners were away for a couple of hours and that the place was locked because they had “had burglars the previous night”. This was an interesting introduction to the town.
As it turned out, the Wild Hotel was great place. The owners are a Finnish bloke and his Chilean wife. He told me that he “had been a senior manager in a Finnish electironics company”. I assumed that was Nokia. He had taken early retirement and bought a yacht and sailed around the world. At some point he met the Chilean woman who is an Architect. They decided that they would start a hospitality business somewhere in Chile. They both liked Patagonia and headed to Puerto Natales.
After working as a driver and receptionist in a major hotel, the opportunity to lease a rundown building in the main street of the town came up. They decided to convert building into a Hostel. The rest, as they say is history.
It took them two months to gut and refurbish the building. Her architectural skills are obvious. The fit out is simple but super well done. Check out the Flickr links.
One of the ‘guests’ in the hostel is the owners’ dog called Echo. He appears to be a bit of Golden Retriever and who knows what else. He was a street dog that “decided he liked the hostel”. A vet estimated that he was 8 months old when they decided to ‘own’ him.
A longer Pause than Expected
I was looking forward to a full day of ‘nothing’ in town after so much recent travel. In the afternoon. I received an email from the ferry company telling me that the ferry I had booked from Natales to Puerto Montt to the north had been delayed 24 hours. Apparently on its way south it had been held up in fiord due to extremely heavy seas. The hostel owners told me that “this was no unusual at the time of year”.
The weather in Natales turned really cold and wet. I ended up spending a lot of time in the hotel. It was very pleasant reading and fiddling around with my photos. Uploading photos to the internet was very problematic as a result of the highly variable Wi-Fi speeds.
Interesting Meal
On the second evening, the owners of the hostel cooked a great meal for the guests – just 6 of us. There were two couples, one English and one American. The women of the couples had known each other for over 20 years when they had worked together in Columbia. They has since return to the USA and England and married their respective husbands. They kept in touch with each other and often meet on holiday. On this holiday, they had walked the Q and W walks through Torres del Paine National Park.
American couple were particularly interesting. They spend 7 months of the year working at the American Antarctic base. He was keen to point out that “there are 27 countries (including France, Australia, Norway, Argentina and the UK) that have some presence in the Antarctic. The USA’s presence is however, bigger than the rest combined”.
They told me that in the other 5 months of the years they travel the world. One thing that do is to volunteer on ‘organic farms’. Apparently you work of the farms for ‘food and board’.
I may give this a go somewhere. This the web site: http://wwoofinternational.org/
Meat Processing Plant
I had thought about taking a day trip out of Natales, to do some horse riding, however the weather was too cold and wet.
On my last day, took a taxis to the Singular Hotel. This was a very interesting place. The building was originally a meat process plant that was built in early 1900’s by Scottish settlers who moved to Patagonia to establish the sheep and cattle industries. The plant is notable for being the first refrigeration plant in South America. It was the capacity to freeze the meat that made it possible to export it to north to the UK and Europe. This made the owner and fortune.
The plant was closed in 1970. In 1998 the owners decided to covert the buildings into a luxury hotel. Cleverly they decided to retain some of the original machinery, steam engines and compressors etc. that were used in the plant.
It is very well done.
Boarding the Ferry
Even though the ferry was not due to leave until 6.00 a.m. in the morning the process was to board the night before. This involved checking in at the bus terminal at 9 p.m. and being taken to the ferry by bus.
I was surprised at the number of people at the check in. As it turned out, the ferry was full.
Flickr link
billrider2013 