Chiloé

I bailed out of Pucon this morning, catching the 6:40 bus to Puerto Montt.

Pucon actually grew on me as I spent a few days there, but in the end it was the Americans in my dorm room at the hostel that made me feel like I had to get away imminently. Going all the way to the other end of the world to have a couple of nice Americans speaking English and talking about all the sweet powder we are missing in Utah, while partying every day and making my trip feel more like a weekend in a dorm room at Any College USA, eventually cracked me. Or maybe it was Steve´s chainsaw like snoring 6 feet away from 2 am on every night.

Anyhow as soon as I walked next door to the hostel to the JAC bus depot I was back in Chile, and on my way. I was on the bus for a bit longer than I wished, and by the time we arrived in Puerto Montt I was looking at "ESCAPE" printed on the window, and wondering under what circumstances it was to be used.

Arriving in Puerto Montt was a relief from the bus, like the LA airport is a relief from the seat of a plane; it was nice to be off the bus, but I wanted to get the ¿*^¡ out of there as quickly as possible. People everywhere, lots of beggars, and me with my huge ass backpack. All around the depot there was just a kind of wasteland of metal roofs, and tin buildings, and a shady looking waterfront, so instead of wandering away as I wished to do I found a bus to Chiloe, the 10th region of Chile (as the government labels them from North to South).

It was 2 hours including a 20 minute ferry ride to the island region, and I got off at the first town, Ancud. The bus actually started to take off with my backpack still in the luggage compartment, which really freaked me out, thankfully the driver heard my yelling and stopped.

The town seemed like a really sketchy run down waterfront hole in the wall at first, but once I had put my muchilla (backpack) down at the San Jose hostel, and took a walk around town I had a change of heart.

Antun is a colorful town of what I would guess to be 5000 people. When I say colorful, picture a rainbow of color splashed every where-boats, houses, fences, and usually faded a good 20 years. The people are a hard up, but generally friendly, and it is great to see a real working fishing fleet of small colorful boats. It makes me think of Hemingway´s "Old Man and the Sea."

Tomorrow I´m off to the south central part of the island to Castro, and on to a national park on the west coast of the island. I bet is will be wild ocean and green green vegitation.

Unfortunately I was operation on some bad information regarding the ferry to meet Lindsay in Coyhaique, and I was very disheartened to learn that the boat I was to take no longer runs. I will return to Puerto Montt on Wednesday after visiting the park here to catch the Navimag Ferry to Puerto Chacabuco, a 24 hour trip. That will put me in Coyhaique about 58 hours later than I was supposed to be, hopefully not too much of an inconvenience for my traveling companion.

That´s it for now. I´ve been taking lots of pictures, but once again can not find a computer where I can download them to again upload them to the net.

I´ll be back online in a couple of days, look to see another post sometime Wednesday.