Back into Chile again...

So after El Chalten, we had quite a bit of driving to do. Its amazing how much of nothingness there is in Argentina. The flat land thats very dry with a few bushes here and there goes on for hours and hours worth of driving. It surprised me how little wildlife there was there too, we hardly ever saw any sheep, guanacos (south american llama\deer type things) or horses. We bush camped in the middle of nowhere that night which was fine, I had to cook a chile for 22 people, it tasted ok, not all that chile-ish but not disgusting so that was ok!

The next day, we packed up early to head off to the ´cave of hands´. This is some wall paintings done about 7000 years ago by the local people so its pretty impressive that the paint is still on the walls of the rocks. They chewed the paint in their mouths, mixed it with water and spat it onto the rock where they placed their hands, creating a negative outline. There were also some pictures of the guanacos and we were told they dipicted how they were hunted, I couldnt really see it but it was interesting none the less. The children who were too young to blow paint over their hands did hand prints with the paint. There was also an odd 6 fingered one!

The rest of the day was driving. We were supposed to catch a ferry that evening to get us to our accommodation for the evening, but the truck broke down and needed repairs doing on it for 3 hours so we were sat by the roadside. It didnt feel that long actually, it was really nice sitting there in the sun having our lunch and drinking tea.

By the time the truck was fixed, we had missed our ferry crossing so we had to go round the lake another way, as well as crossing the border. This again took about 2 hours and with the diversion, we were running quite late, not getting to our accommodation in Villa Cerro Castille until around 11.30pm. It was very tiring. But the accomodation we stayed in was lovely. It was in a tiny little town and everyone was so welcoming and friendly. Our little bed and breakfast was run by a lovely couple that really looked after you and insisted on taking our pictures when we were having breakfast the next morning, and then we had to write a message on their living room wall. The whole of the living room was covered in messages from other people that had stayed there, it was really nice.

In the morning at Villa Cerro Castille, we went to another local cave of hands. The local one wasnt a patch on the one we saw the previous day, but it was a nice walk there nonetheless.

In the afternoon, the truck needed more repairs on it (needed a whole new set of tyres) so we had another supposed 3 hour stop in a town while those were done, but this time we were allowed to go off and explore the town at our leisure. The town didnt have all that much going for it, apart from a nice pub that did good cake so we didnt mind all that much! Anyway, the truck took another 3 hours on top of the estimated 3 hours to be fixed, so we didnt leave the town until after 9pm. We didnt know where we were going to stay that night, but we had been pre-warned that time to get some food and that it might be a late night. We finally started looking for a place to stay around 12.30am and after about a half an hour of driving around, found an empty shed where all 20 of us had to bunk down in for the night. There wasnt a spare inch to be had on the floor! But we were grateful for it as it was chucking it down with rain and we couldnt be bothered to put tents up. I thought it was all quite fun and added to the experience!

But the next day, we had to get to get up early to make up for lost time over the past 2 days. We were entering the Fijord country so it was really pretty. Unfortunately, the could was down for some of it so we couldnt get the full effect of it, but it was still really cool to drive through. The ´main road´ linking southern chile to middle chile is along this dirt windy road through the fijord country, but there werent many cars on the road so that was ok! that evening we stayed in a place called Amarillo and the camp site had natural hot springs so we all got into the swimming pool and relaxed which was really nice.

we had to get up early the next day to catch the ferry from Chaiten to Puerto Montt. This was a 9 hour journey. Chaiten is quite a sad little town, there was an eruption at local volcano last year and the government wants to close the town down so it has closed all the schools and cut off the water supply (they say its a dangerous place to live, but apparantly, they have also found gold there so that may be the real reason...). But the ferry runs from there to Puerto Montt and that is used by lots of cars and lorry drivers. The die hard people are still living there and the fire service comes round each week to bring them water for the week and they have gas in canisters they can buy, but the town is dying really, its a shame. The eruption last year wrecked the town by the mud flows rather than the lava itself, you can see a few houses that have been washed away and half buried in the mud. The rest of the town is like a ghost town, the only place where there is any activity is at the ferry port.

So we got on the ferry there and crossed to Puerto Montt, the weather was perfect, the water was flat as a millpond and the sky was lovely and clear. We were all absolutely shattered so most of us had a little sleep at the start, then I went up on the deck to enjoy the sunshine and scenery with my book.

The next day we arrived in Pucon and Ill write more about that another time.