A St. Patrick´s day to remember

Warning: This post is quite long. You may need to read in segments.

Well, I´ve returned to Chile once again. This entry comes to you from Cochrane, Chile, a modest town of 3,000 on the southern Careterra Austral. Perhaps the best feature of this town is a reasonably priced internet shop!! It feels great to no longer be trapped in the frustrating universe of $4 internet. Just to shock myself, I like to convert that into Baht and think of paying 160/hr for the internet, oh the horror! My past week was obviously internet free and really quite enjoyable. One of the lessons you repeatedly learn while traveling is the importance of flexibility. So you have to wait an additional week for the ferry?? You do your best with what you can and that is exactly what I did.

My week began with a tale of two pick-ups. I had to hitch from El Chalten to the southern edge of Lago Del Desierto, where the road literally ends. My first pick-up was old, maybe a 1975 Chevy. The windshield had been overtaken my dozens of spider-web like cracks. The visor on the passenger side was stuck in a permanent down position and the one wiper was operated by a local man in his 60s, whose family owned one of the local estancias (large farms) in the area. We chatted about the weather and the isolation of the place. He was friendly and it was nice to talk to a true local. About a quarter of the way to the lake he dropped me off and I walked in light rain for the next 45 minutes. My next pick-up was about as different from the first as you could get. A 04´ or 05´ Toyota Tundra, fully loaded with leather seats and a 6 CD changer. The plates said Washington. Turns out this guy, an obvious Seatellite if there ever was one, had driven down with a friend from Seattle to Ushuaia in only about 3 months and was now making his way back north again!!! He took me the rest of the way, while we chatted about our respective trips. Only by hitching can you meet two such opposites!!!

The lake where the road ends, Lago Del Desierto, was under under dispture between the two nations untill just 10-15 years ago and there is still a small army/border patrol base here. I camped on the south end for one night, the only person within probably 20 miles. It still astonishes me sometimes what short distances you have to travel to escape from everyone. The next day I hiked for 4 hours from the southern to northern end of the lake and set up my tarp tent. The view from this camp/border patrol base was astonishing, across the length of this 7 mile turqoise lake to the mountain of Los Glaciares national park 35km beyond. Again, my apolagies for not providing the corresponding photo at this point. The following day I hiked for 5 hours to a remote shelter a few hundered meters from the border (not a legal crossing point). From here you could look and even step into Chile (somewhat illegally) to view a glaciar on the edge of the massive southern patagonian ice field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Patagonian_Ice_Field (this page has a map on it which provides a good view of my route from El Chalten to Villa O´Higgins)

The following day and night were spent returning to and camping again at the northern edge of Lago Del Desierto. On Friday I walked with Vincent, my Irish friend, across the legal border point and into Chile. About a 14 mile walk in total. From here on the edge of the stunning green of Lago O´Higgins, Patagonias 4th largest lake, we camped at a private farm run by this amazing old couple, both of whom appeared to be at least 80 years of age. We bought fresh steaks cut from her own cows at the price of 1 dollar per pound!!! I also got to watch her making a fresh batch of beef enpenandas. Saturday morning broke and finally my day of embarcation had arrived. At 5:40 pm our boat pulled out into the rather large swells of the wind blown lake and we rocked and rolled for 3 hours before arriving at a dark Villa O´Higgins. We were taken to a local hostel and quickly informed of the true limitations of a town of 500 which untill 1999 could only be reached by boat or plane. There are no restaurants and no bars ( a rather big dissapointment for Vincent considering we had arrived in Villa O´Higgins on St. Patrick´s day, after crossing a lake that required no dye to be made green!!! The hostel owner told us the only way to get food was from one of many tiny food shops. He of course recommended the shop of his girlfriend and there we purchased beer, frozen chicken, cheese, rice, frozen veggies and returned to the hostel to prepare our St. Pattys day feast. I should also mention that this town had no bank and no doctor, both of whom make only monthly visits. This morning I was ready to go, ready to get to a real town (Cochrane) that would provide me with some real food and internet. We jumped on a mini-van run by the same hostel owner(he made a killing on us) and flew up the extreme southern strech of the Carretera Austral to Cochrane. The road was all gravel and quite bumpy but provided constantly changing vistas of glaciar capped mountains which produced more waterfalls in one 200km strech than I am sure I will ever see again. This trip took about 6 hours including a 45 minute ferry ride over a wind and rain swept fjord. We finally rolled into sunny Cochrane and Vincent and I found a camping spot in the back yard of a hostel, surrounded by amazingly delicious apple and pear trees which I quickly proceeded to gorge myelf on.