Ferry to Puerto Montt

I boarded ferry (SS Eden) at around 9.30 p.m. on Easter Friday. I found myself sharing a cabin with an Australian bloke from Perth and an English bloke from Liverpool. After quick introductions we got off to sleep, expecting to set sail early in the morning.

Another Delay

Breakfast was at 8.30 a.m. We were still tied to the dock. At about 11 we were told that our departure had been delayed until 3.00 p.m. The reason was bad weather and the need to wait for high tide to get through a narrow channel in to the first fjord on our route.

Chicken or Turkey?

We were served lunch. As I was in the queue I asked that bloke next to me what he thought the meat on offer was. He confidently answered that it was chicken. The Chilean cook serving the meal abruptly said in a disdainful tone that it was “turkey”.   Back at the table, the general consensus among the people eating the meal was that it was impossible to tell whether it was turkey or chicken. One of the girls told us that she was vegetarian. That seemed to be a good idea when it came to this meal.

Through a Very Narrow Channel

At about 3.00 p.m. we final left the dock and headed south. We hadn’t travelled too far when the ferry stopped. Apparently we were waiting for the tide to rise. Around 5.00 pm we started again. Shortly after that an announcement was made that we were approaching the “narrow channel”.

As it turned out there were two narrow channels. The first was between two low lying islands. Most of the passengers went out on the deck to watch. It was very cold. There was no doubt that the gap between the two islands was narrow. The next channel appeared to be between the mainland and an island. This was more spectacular in that the cliffs into the water were higher. Check out the Flickr link for the photos and a video.

Reading and Interesting Chats

I found being on the ferry was great opportunity to read. I have been using an eReader since 2013. My first one was a Sony. I selected it because I did not want to support Amazon. At first I used Angus and Robertson to buy ebooks. It wasn’t too long before Angus and Robertson ebook service was taken over by Kobo. This caused any amount of hassle as Kobo didn’t register that I had an A&R account. I persisted for a while, but then Sony announced that they were not going to make eReaders anymore. Soon after that, they announced that they were going to cease supporting the software on the existing eReaders.

Given my experience with Kobo I wasn’t going to buy one of their devices. They and Amazon are the only players left in the market. Reluctantly I bought an Amazon Kindle late last year. I have a few books loaded on the device. Before leaving Natales I loaded William Boyd’s James Bond book Solo and The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson. These plus the books I hadn’t finished on the device gave me plenty to read on the trip north.

The dinning arrangements on the ferry were conducive to forcing the passengers to socialise and chat. Also virtually all of the passengers were ‘world travellers’ who tend to chat in any event.

I end up spent a lot of time with a particular group. It is included two sisters from Brighton in SE England, a couple of scientists from Bristol, and my cabin mate from WA and an American girl from Santa Cruz in California. They were all very well-travelled and clever.

One of the Brighton sisters is a physiotherapist.   She had some very amusing tales to tell about her experiences working on a very luxurious charter yacht in the Mediterranean. The clients included Russian Oligarchs associated with Vladimir Putin.

Small Village

In the morning of the second date we awoke to a clear and increasingly sunny day. At one stage were passed through and number of small icebergs. We also saw penguins and baby sea lions swimming in the sea.

Around 1 o’clock, we arrived off the small village. It has population of only 90 people and relies of the ferry for supplies and transport. Thirty passengers on the ferry disembarked on to small boats that took them and supplies into the town. I am certain that I could like in such an isolated place.

There is a guide on board the ferry that is a fountain of knowledge on the area. He gives a briefing on the thing you see each day. He told us that the villagers make a living fishing and cultivating mussels that are sold in Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales.

Ship Wreck

Not long after the small village we passed a ship wreck. I am surprised that there aren’t more of these in this area.

Short after that we passed a statute of Maria who is the patron saint of Mariners and “looks over them and keeps them safe”. Maybe she is not perfect, but is doing a reasonable job.

Cards no for Me

The group with whom I found myself having most conversations with turned out to be big card players. For whatever reason, I find playing cards a very boring activity. After dinner I headed to the lounge area of the ferry and continued to read my books.

Another Smooth Night

The ferry headed north into the night. Whether because we still in a channel of because the weather was calm, I am not sure, but we had another smooth night. This made sleeping easy.

Quiet Day

The next was relatively uneventful apart for the sighting of some dolphins and a couple of whales.

Another Smooth Night

We had been really luck with weather. The departure had been delayed by bad weather when the ferry had been heading south to Puerto Natales. The return journey proved to be very smooth.

Leaving the Ferry and on to Puerto Varas

The ferry docked early in the morning. We had breakfast on board and disembarked around 8.30 a.m.

The guide on board had advised that Puerto Montt is not the greatest place to be. Most people to either know that already, or took this advice and decide to travel onwards.

I joined a small group that were heading to Puerto Varas which is located on a lake and 40 klms from Puerto Montt. We found a very hostel not far from the centre of the town.

Staying a Couple of Days

I found Puerto Varas to be quite a nice place and decided to stay couple of days.

Flickr Link

https://flic.kr/s/aHska1YKip

Garmin Link

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/739918997

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

https://flic.kr/s/aHsk6jU3Rh