First off I must apologise for the delay in getting this latest dispatch out to you. It´s been rather hectic these last weeks and I haven´t really had time to sit down and type it all up. "Damnit Dan, why do I bother to read your crap if you´re just going to pull this kind of stunt?" I hear you cry. Fear not however I have some nice, juicy anecdotes to impart to you so sit down and eat your greens.
Where did I leave you? Ah yes, sitting in Puerto Natales, watching the Paraguaian election (Boy that was ace television), waiting four days until our ship departed for Puerto Montt. The idea being we thought it would be kinda neat to board, what can only be described as a cargo ship, and sail half way up Chile. It takes four nights and you supposedly see fjords, whales and crap. Great, I hear you cry. Yes and I shall come to it shortly. The upshot of not doing our ´W´ trek was we had to stay in Puerto Natales for four days. Now, if you like freezing cold weather, hurricane force winds with absolutely nothing to do during the day, Natales is your town and I suggest you get on a plane and come down here immediately.
For us however, we were stuck in our hostel watching endless episodes of ´House´ on TV. One thing really gets me though. As I watch this programme, the adverts come on every five bloody minutes and you know what they´re promoting? House! Yep, they stick an advert of a programme I´m already bloody watching! Needless to say shouting ensued and people started banging on the walls telling me to shut up.
Anyway, the days pass slowly. Then, good news. We find out the ship (called the Navimag) has been delayed due to, yep you guessed it, bad weather conditions. Damnit. So we have to stay ANOTHER night and reorganise our plane tickets. Luckily Alison flirts with a nice chap called Herman who worked for the airline (Lan). He agreed to change our flights for free! Great, thanks Herman buy you a drink next time our paths cross!
So finally the day comes, we wander down to the docks and look upon our vessel with awe and wonder. Awe, because there´s a huge black mark where the name of the ship should be and wonder because we were starting to wonder how long it would take before the smell of the cattle in those trucks parked on the deck would take to reach us (as it turned out, not long at all).
We find our cabin and to be honest, it´s not bad at all. Four bunks but we´ve got the whole cabin to ourselves, get in there! We take a stroll around the ship. It´s designed as a cargo vessel, hence the cattle, but takes a certain amount of passengers as well, for an eye-wateringly large amount of money. I won´t bore you with how much but I could have had a second holiday with the money (or a honeymoon even).
We settle in and watch the rather beautiful fjords roll gently passed us. It´s cold but somehow that doesn´t seem to matter, everyone is in high spirits. Maybe because they all seem to have bought three cartons of wine each. Westerners are such alcoholics. (We bought bottles, none of that carton crap.)
We met a nice American couple who were on holiday and bored them stupid by telling endless newsroom anecdotes. They got their revenge by shagging all afternoon in the cabin next to us. Man, they went on ALL afternoon. It was like ´´Come on buddy, give her a rest, you´re gonna break her.´´ He, apparently, couldn´t hear me. God, it was like porn for the blind. I was starting to feel a little insecure when someone shouted ´´Whales off the port bow!´´
I left our porn-star neighbours to it and climbed the stairs outside to the main deck. I looked out. Our guide had mentioned we were cruising through a protected bay area of Chile which housed twenty Blue Whales. Neat! I stared at the rolling white horses, the blue sky and felt the raw wind whipping at my face. Nothing. What the hell. ´´Did someone say they saw a whale?" I asked. ´´Yes, over there.´´ Someone replied and pointed. I looked again. In the far, far distance I saw the unmistakable spray of whales. ´´Wow,´´ I said ´´That´s amazing.´´ Seriously, it could have been a guy with a hose for all I knew. Whales! Great. We did see some dolphins playing in front of the ship which was nice. And once very few hours we would see a few sea lions swimming calmly. Then, seeing the ship and crapping their pants they desperately tried to get away from us. That was funny.
The days roll passed and we finally get to Puerto Montt. We say our goodbyes to our ´´Debby Does Dallas´´ comrades and walk to our hostel. First impressions of Puerto Montt. Crap hole. What the hell is this place? Looked like someone was having a laugh when they designed it. Like ´´We´ve got all this natural beauty around us, mountains, streams, fjords...let´s build a damn-ugly port, fill it with oil tankers, build some truly hideous buildings and oh, just for good measure have our sewage run out of a pipe right in front of the main promenade. Good job, fellas.
We walk up a forty five degree hill, backpacks in toe because I foolishly thought the hostel was right next to the port. Wrong. Alison had wanted to get a cab but I had put her mind at ease but assuring her it was a five minute walk. Wrong again. Twenty five minutes later, we arrive panting and in a sweat and are greeted by this old lady with weird, screwed up hair. She speaks a little English and shows us in. The place was nice enough, she had two little poodles which never took their eyes off us and would occasionally bark. I suspect to make sure they still could. Scrawny little rat things.
We thought we´d done okay, the hostel wasn´t expensive but the woman started behaving strangely. Alison went downstairs to give her our passport details. Things were going well till she opened mine. "Daniel Grant?" "Daniel Grant?" I thought perhaps she had been reading my blogs. But no, she knew my name and she didn´t like it. I had tried to make a reservation a few weeks earlier but she kept replying in Spanish so...I had ignored her. She made her feelings known to Alison who just shrugged and said ´No entiendo.´ I sat on the bed listening and shivering. It was like being in a cabin in the woods where the monster is outside stalking you. I was just glad Alison was dealing with it. That woman was scary.
Whilst we were in the hole that is Puerto Montt and after counting our money, we came to the conclusion we had none. Well, not strictly true but we have used far more than we ever intended, so after much soul searching and a few beers we came to the conclusion that we would not spend any time in New Zealand. Instead we will fly to Auckland, use our plane ticket to Christchurch a few days later and move our Sydney ticket so we just arrive there as soon as possible. We have friends in Sydney who are being ridiculously generous by letting us stay in their house. I´ll have to get them a really cool Christmas present. Not sure what though. A plane ticket to Puerto Montt has been crossed off the list so that´s one down at least. Is it coming through that we weren´t impressed with ´the Montt?´
We catch our flight to Santiago the next day and take a cab to our hostel. The Happy House Hostel it´s called. Let me tell you, dear friends and readers, there wasn´t much happiness going on there. The Lonely Planet (authoritative, indispensable guide book that it is) describes this hostel as ´´...simply the greatest renovation this author has ever seen.´´ This chap obviously hasn´t seen the new Wembley stadium.
It was nice enough when you got there but we have learned, painfully in some cases, that looks can be deceptive. And they were in this place. Our room was next to the smoking room so every five minutes a waft of smoke would gently find it´s way in to my nostrils. The windows had about as much soundproofing as a Wendy house, so when those buses and dust carts came thundering by at 0600, I felt I was about to get run over by them. The hostel itself was, wait for it, above a bar. Oh yes...Happy, HAPPY days! And...they had live bands on every night. Smiles all round. The heating did not work (and let me tell you Santiago is cold at night). Thought I might warm up with a shower. But after waiting with my hand under the water for ten minutes, quickly realised the place had no hot water either. But the pièce de résistance was the dogs. I swear they´re still barking in my head now and it´s been a week! Happy times at the Happy House Hostel.
There´s more. Plenty in fact. But I fear I may have lost you somewhere after paragraph four. Your eyes are glazed and you seem a little sleepy. I shall let you go. But I will be back and with even more tales of our epic, soon to be finished trip around the Southern American continent. Till that day comes, take care of yourselves and each other.
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