Chaiten: Steep Sided Fijords and Beat-Up Old Fords

From peaceful Chonchi to still peaceful-but-somewhat hectic Castro, we made our micro move. Micro that is, and we mean bus, and by bus, we meaning busting a move! (Since we are being cheesy).

In Castro Chris had his long awaited ¨curanto¨a seafood and meat dish, that was supposed to come in the form of a stew. Stew it was not, and a huge wood platter was placed in front of Chris full of clams, mussels, 2 sausages, chicken wings, smoked beef, half a potatoe, and some sort of mystery seafood meat. Chris persevered and managed to down what he claims was over half the platter, but sources close to him claim it was less. Nevertheless, with the fine view and good eats we embarked on walks around the city, to see the houses built on stilts into the water called ¨palafitos¨and to otherwise enjoy the sun which we really hadn´t seen much of since we set foot on the islands.

Yesterday we decided to augment our busing blues with another ferry and we waited patiently for our ferry to arrive and leave at 4pm. It took them an hour to figure out how to load about 15 vehicles and we watched from the sunny deck above. We opted not to sit in our predesignated seats that were riped out of some old bus, and to enjoy the top of the boat as we cruised past the idlic pasture lands of the outerlying islands. Soon the fijords and mountains of the mainland were in view, along with yet another storm on the horizon, but we were fearless and remained deck side for about 6 of what turned into a 7 hour ride (was supposed to be 5hours).

We arrived last night in Chaiten around midnight, and wasted no time hoping in a touts car who offered us ¨free¨transport to the hostal; who would have known that it was a 4 seater van which they piled 6 people into, along with all bags and possesions. This resulted in the geribals in the engine calling it quits on a slight incline and a few people hoping out to push the van up after repeated attempts.

The day here dawned once again rainy, but the skies have been lifting and we have enjoyed walking down the deserted streets that are wider than most city´s, and we are really not sure what for. Not much is happening here, there are two agencies in town, busing is sporadic, there really is no supermarket (just corner stores glorified as supermarcados) and of course there are the random horses grazing in peoples yards in the city.

We thought we would enjoy the day here, resting and checking out local options to parks and such in the area. As busing is still in winter mode we would end up getting stuck in most places to the north and have opted to head south tomorrow. Internet is expensive and surprisingly harder to come by than in Bolivia, so we repeat that blogs may not be appearing with the same frequency. The plan is to head tomorrow to Puyuhuapi and spend a couple of days. From there we would like to head to Coyhaique.... but who knows... wide open road and hopefully blue skies and fijords await.