Patagonia – you all have heard of this place, or perhaps of the outer clothing manufacturer. I am at the bottom of the world, folks! Here in the mysterious Patagonia. I think Patagonia is a beautiful word; it just rolls off the tongue. What does it mean? The land of the people with the big feet. OMG, how awful is that. Actually, Magellan gave the name Patagones to the mainland Indians. In fact, their feet were small, but they wrapped them up in rough guanaco skin and probably left large footprints in the sand. A beautiful name with an ugly derivation. Oh well, the indigenous tribes lived here, and then came the whalers, the settlers, the missionaries, and today this is still a sparsely populated area with few cities and small communities. The vistas are expansive, the area enormous. The landscape is rugged and mostly unspoiled by humans. There are silent forests and deep valleys filled with cascading waterfalls.
We entered the Aysen region, which claims breathtakingly steep peaks, glaciers, rushing rivers and grassy steppes. It rains a lot here (2,000mm – somebody do the math and let me know) and gets very cold and windy in the winter. The closer to the sea, the more it rains. As you move up toward the mountains, the rain decreases and turns to snow. Don’t like the weather? Just wait a few hours and it will change from hot to cold, sun to rain.
Today was a three shower day. I didn’t have any Patagonia clothing to wear. I am wearing a man’s yellow polo shirt (ship issued) with a name tag that says “tour escort.” Women do not look good wearing a man’s shirt. I brought some nice cool clothes to wear and had to wear this monstrosity. At least I had yellow earrings to match.
The ship anchored at Puerto Chacabuco (we called it Port Chewbacca) and we got to do the tender thing. It was pretty warm and sunny and was delighted to see a modern looking coach for our trip. Hah, modern means nothing. NO AIR-CONDITIONING!!!! They don’t need it, so they said. They really meant that buses with air-conditioning are just too damn expensive and besides it never really gets THAT hot so you can suffer a little bit and enjoy the scenery. Why am I making a big deal over this? PEOPLE. They complain if it’s too hot, they complain if it’s too cold, it’s too windy, it’s too stuffy. We were roasting. The bus had teeny tiny windows that opened a crack and had roof vents. The bus vent system was so loud we could not hear the guide who was using a microphone over the noise. So they turned off the fresh air vent and then some old cranky guy shut the roof vent near where I was sitting. Not gonna happen on my watch. After much cajoling, I made him and his wife move to a seat with “no draft” on their precious little heads. We put the fresh air vent on again because no one could understand the guide anyway because (1) her accent and (2) the microphone went buns up. At least my bus had some ventilation; Michael’s bus had no window vents.
Our guide was a very nice lady. Since the microphone was dead, there was little she could do to continue her narrative so she sat in the back of the bus telling me about life in the Patagonia. It is a very remote and isolated place. Everything has to be imported first by ship and then trucked over the mountains to the city. Average monthly wages is $350; average monthly rent is $400, $50 for electricity, $100 for TV and internet. It took her six years to save up money to buy a 1993 beat up car. Wages are very low. When she is not doing guide work, she teaches Spanish to foreign exchange students who come for wilderness training.
So the trip to nowhere begins on the Carretera Austral, the Southern Highway. Driving some 50 miles into the interior on a winding and narrow road, we had enough time to view the great and vast vistas. The smell of pine permeated the air; you could smell FRESH and UNSPOILED. We were in the wilderness! There were colorful wildflowers all along the roadside: purple, yellow, white, red and blue. We even drove through a mountain tunnel carved out of the rock.
We finally arrived at our destination: Coyhaique, the capital of the Aysen region. We got a whopping 20 minutes to stroll through the town and main plaza. I am still on my quest for vicuna or alpaca yarn. And doncha know it, I finally find a yarn shop located just off the plaza – and it was CLOSED!!!!!!! Michael was very happy about that. We spend a whole lot of time getting to town and didn’t get much time to explore. That was a mistake because our last stop was a waste of time.
Before heading back to the Sojourn, we stopped at a restaurant called the Rodeo for refreshments. Want to know where the name comes from? The restaurant is right next to the rodeo grounds, rodeo being the biggest sport in Chile. We had empanadas, salmon and wine. It was tasty food, but it was HOT inside. No ventilation or windows that open. They have so much fresh air I don’t understand why they don’t use it.
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