Santiago to Puerto Natales, Chile (Post #105)
Hola!
Michele here…just want to give an update on our travels from Santiago to Puerto Natales, Chile between April 6th and April 10th.
Since arriving in Santiago, Chile on April 6th, we had been moving around a lot until recently when we decided to just chill out in Puerto Natales for a few days. We got into Santiago late on April 6th and spent the entire day on April 7th running errands. We accomplished a lot and enjoyed running around the streets of downtown Santiago. The downtown area is very pedestrian friendly with most of the streets closed off to traffic. For this reason, it has sort of a European feel to it especially when you spot a musician or band playing in front of a crowd of people. However, you know you are not in a European city because only Spanish is spoken here (although I suppose you could be somewhere in Spain). Anyway, my point being that gone are the days of us getting by on English. All of our communication with people is now in Spanish.
The morning after our one full day in Santiago (on April 8th) we walked to the bus station in the dark a.m. hour where we boarded a bus going to the airport. At one of the bus stops a ticket inspector came aboard the bus and checked everyone´s tickets. This is generally the way it works outside the U.S. The bus driver has nothing to do with you buying a bus ticket. He is responsible for driving the bus and you are responsible for obtaining a ticket. A ticket inspector makes random stops on different bus routes and you better have a ticket or else you will be heavily fined. Anyway, we arrived at the airport within about 30 minutes and checked in for our flight to Punta Arenas, Chile. The flight from Santiago to Chile´s most southern city, Punta Arenas, was fairly uneventful except for the fact that we had to get out of the runway line and go back to the gate so that a technical problem could be fixed. Some time later, we took off and arrived in Punta Arenas where we took a bus from the airport to the downtown area. We had a small map and found our hospedaje. A hospedaje is a person´s house that you can stay in. Although breakfast is included, it is different from a bed and breakfast in that you are sharing the kitchen, bathroom, living room, etc. with the person or family that lives there. We stayed only one night in Punta Arenas. The next morning (April 9th), we took a bus north for 3 hours to Puerto Natales, Chile.
Although the bus ride wasn´t very scenic, we turned a corner and whoa! We were pulling into the small town of Puerto Natalas and looking out across Last Hope Sound to glaciers and snow covered mountains. Here´s a picture:
We had a small map in our guidebook and easily found our hostel after the bus dropped us off. We had previously made arrangements to stay in a hostel called Erratic Rock. The hostel owner, Bill, who we met in Punta Arenas grew up in Oregon and is a very helpful, personable guy. We attended his 3:00pm briefing on hiking in Torres del Paine National Park. Hiking in Torres del Paine is the reason we are in southern Chile. Listening to Bill talk about all the different hiking trails and options for spending 3, 4, 5, or more days in the national park was somewhat overwhelming. Mike and I decided we needed to meet with him separately after the main briefing was over. After meeting with Bill, we got a general plan together then realized we still needed to do several things on this Sunday night. First, we wanted to buy another pair of hiking socks. Second, we had to rent additional clothes and camping equipment. Third, we had to buy 4 days worth of food. Fourth, we still had to eat dinner. Fifth, we had to separate our stuff into three bags – bag #1 was to be the stuff we would leave behind in the hostel; bag #2 needed to be stuff we would want over the entire time we were hiking, and bag #3 (actually two bags — one each) would be our small day packs. Sigh. We knew it was going to be a long, stressful night and it was. We did accomplish all of these things but it took about 6 hours and we didn´t go to bed until 1:00am. The next morning (on April 10th), we were up eating Bill´s great breakfast at 6:30am and getting ourselves ready for the 7:15am bus to Torres del Paine.
The next three blogs are on how we spent our time at Torres del Paine National Park. Even if you get bored reading the blogs, my personal opinion is that you should look at them for the photos. Torres del Paine is unbelievably beautiful!
Bye!
Tags: Category #27: Chile
Michele Harmon
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