Our trip to Chile started with a potentially problematic trip to the airport – it was Election Day here in Bolivia and no vehicles are allowed to be circulating on that day with the exception of the election judges and UN observers and a few taxis specially licensed to take foreigners up to the airport for international departures. But we, being foreigners with an international departure, actually made it without any problems – the streets were largely deserted, with the exception of people walking to the polls and many thousands of policemen walking their special Election Day beats. Up at the airport we checked in with the Chilean airline, along with six other American families that we know who were also headed to Chile for the holidays. That first day of our trip was eaten up with our multi-stage flights from La Paz to Arica (200 miles – where we passed through Chilean immigration) to Iquique (120 miles) to Santiago (950 miles – where we passed through Chilean customs) to Puerto Montt (600 miles) to Punta Arenas (820 miles). We finally got to our hotel in Punta Arenas at about midnight – just after it got dark. Punta Arenas, the city farthest south in Chile, down on the Straits of Magellan, is at 53 degrees south, which puts it as far south as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is north.
Our first day in Chile we explored the town of Punta Arenas a bit in the morning, then picked up our rental car (a 4WD Nissan Mistral) and headed north (400km) across the Chilean Patagonia. Along the way, we spotted condors, rheas – one trailing 11 babies, pink flamingos, black necked swans, guanacos (which look like a slender, long-legged llama), and gray foxes. Our goal was to do a little trekking among the granite towers of the Torres de Paine national park. To do the complete trek around the park takes a week or so, so we limited ourselves to trekking the “W” – a three prong trek to see the best sites in the park (as advised by some of our friends who have done this before.) We did the west side of the W the first day we arrived, starting with a 30 minute catamaran ride across a lake to the point of departure, and hiked 11km to see the Glacier Grey – it was particularly fun to see the icebergs that the glacier had calved off into the Lago Grey. Our second day in the park we did the middle part of the W with a steep 22km hike up through the French Valley, where we were surrounded by landlocked glaciers – it was particularly exciting to watch an avalanche way up on one glacier (far away enough not be scary.) Our third day we finished with the east leg of the W and hiked 18km (the last km was a scramble straight up a boulder field – I tumbled a good portion of the way back down) to see the namesake granite towers themselves. While we were in the Torres national park we stayed in backpacker hostels called refuges, where we shared bunk bed filled rooms with other hikers. Colin Jr. and I had our compact down filled sleeping bags from our Scouting years, so we slept very warmly. Leslie had made herself and the girls some fleece sleeping bags, which were nice and compact, but were not quite warm enough at night and they ended up sleeping with their coats and hats on. And speaking of our rubbing shoulders with the young, backpacker crowd, you should have seen the looks we got as we came trekking into our first refuge packing our roller bags and Army surplus duffel bags on our heads with everyone around us in full North Face backpacker mode – it was pretty funny. Of course, when we started the serious trekking we decanted our essentials into real backpacks and fit in with the crowd a bit better (although, Les and I were considerably over the average age of these backpackers – which just proves that experience and tenacity can compensate for lack of youth and fitness.)
After the trekking segment of our trip, we headed back to Puerto Natales on the Chilean coast for a night, where we enjoyed some great seafood (including yummy abalone) and local ice cream (made with rhubarb and the calafate berry.) From there we headed over into the Argentine Patagonia, crossing their heavily mined border, where we drove 300km to the town of El Calafate. The big draw there was Argentina’s Glaciers National Park. We spent our first full day (Christmas Eve) at Glaciers on a cruise on Lake Argentina (Argentina’s largest lake) to see seven glaciers (including the Upsala that is over 1000 sq km – four times the size of Buenos Aires) that are only accessible via the lake. The iceberg choked lake was really spectacular and it was particularly interesting to see that compact snow in the glacier turns blue the more compact it gets – from powder blue at the top to sapphire blue at the bottom. At one point we were allowed to get off the boat and hike through the hills a bit – Les and the kids waded out into the lake and took a little ride on an iceberg while I played photographer on dry land. That night, just as we were settling into bed at midnight, it seemed like Chile must have attacked Argentina because the sky lit up with tons of booming fireworks – so we stayed up another hour, watching the show from the window – I don’t think I’ve seen many firework shows any bigger than that one. The next day, on Christmas Day, after the kids opened up the few compact presents we’d brought along, we drove to what was billed as the most spectacular glaciers in the world – the Moreno Glacier; it really was spectacular and is listed as one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Who would have thought that watching ice melt was a spectator sport – but we spent most of the day watching the glacier crack and drop off icebergs. That day, back in Calafate, I finally got on-line and found out the results of the election in Bolivia the week before. I was surprised to see that our socialist/narcotrafficker, Evo, won an outright majority with 54% of the vote – the first Bolivian president to ever have a majority. Well – he ran the best campaign of the lot by refusing to elaborate on his dual platform of resource renationalization and coca legalization and by refusing to debate with his educated opponents. In his speech after the results were released he was quoted as saying: “Long live coca, death to all yankees.” So, the near future should be interesting in Bolivia. Anyway, while we were down in the Patagonia, you can bet that we enjoyed some seriously great steak dinners (2" thick and as tender as you could imagine.) The day after Christmas we made a 700km marathon drive back across the windswept plains of the Patagonia (following my handy GPS navigator) all the way back to Punta Arenas, where took a little side trip to see a penguin colony. As Katie would say: “They’re so cute!” And they really are!
On Tuesday the 27th we flew back up to Puerto Montt. At the airport I had reserved another 4WD vehicle to rent, but they didn’t have a 4WD in stock – our first glitch in the trip – so they gave us a full size sedan instead. Actually, the sedan turned out to be a better deal because, unlike the Patagonia, most of Chile has very nice paved roads, and a 4WD vehicle would have been less comfortable. This sedan, a Nissan Primero, had a large computer console in the dashboard, which drew a crowd every time we parked anywhere. While in Puerto Montt I decided to try one of the local seafood dishes highly recommended in the guidebook – called “curanto” – which turned out to be a huge stack of mussels, clams, salmon, and dumplings all topped with a sausage and BBQ pork ribs. Anyway, armed with a nice sedan and some great roads, we made a 1000km circuit of the lakes region, touring the towns of Osorno and Valdivia, and finally settling in the ski resort town of Pucón, where we rented a small apartment. At 40 degrees south, it was interesting to see that it got dark by 10:00PM, a whole hour earlier than down in the Patagonia. Pucón is nestled at the foot of the glacier capped Volcano Villarica, so on the 29th we got outfitted with snow-gear, ice-axes, and helmets (for the falling rocks spewn out by the volcano on regular intervals) and made the 2,847 meter vertical ascent to the lip of the volcano where we found that watching lava boil and spew is as fun as watching glaciers melt. From the top of the volcano we could also see several others to the north and south of us in a long chain. When we decided that we couldn’t take the toxic fumes any more, we walked over to the edge of the volcano, sat down, and slid our way to the bottom – it was the funnest roller coaster I’ve ever been on. It took us four grueling hours of walking heel to toe to get to the top, but only one thrilling hour of sliding on our backs to get to the bottom. Whipping down the mountain in the channels smoothed slick by the bottoms ahead of us was like riding a luge without the luge. Whew! The next day we decided to try our hand at white-water river rafting – so we fudged Katie’s age (12) up to the minimum 14-years-old and signed up for a 3-hour series of class 4+ rapids. At first the river was smooth, so our guide had the time to teach us such skills as row forward, row back, turn left, turn right, all the weight left, all the weight right, and hang on for dear life. The skills weren’t that hard, but hearing, understanding, and doing them when they were all in Spanish was a little tricky for some of us! Satisfied that we wouldn’t get ourselves killed, our guide took us through the funnest roller coaster of rapids that I’ve ever been on. On one killer rapid (just ahead of a 30-foot waterfall, where we had to walk around), our raft went completely vertical and, as I was executing an “all weight left” maneuver, I broke my rib on my son's bony knee (no, I haven’t gotten it x-rayed, but it sure hurts.) But I hung on anyway, as did the whole family, and we didn’t tip over – our guide said that it was a very near thing. Whew! When it was all said and done, everyone agreed that we were white-water fans. After so much high octane adventure, our next stop was at the Puyehue thermal hot springs, for a couple of days of serious relaxation. On New Years Eve we were awakened at midnight when Argentina invaded Chile – or maybe it was just a fireworks show that we couldn’t see. On New Years Day the girls decided to take a horseback ride – they said it was really pretty, even after it started to pour down rain—like the prettiest hilly part of the Lakes district in England. The hot thermal pools really felt good that afternoon.
On Monday the 2nd of January we drove back to Puerto Montt and then flew up to Santiago, where we rented an apartment in Las Condes. When I lived in Santiago 25 years ago, Las Condes was a neighborhood full of mansions – now it’s all been torn down and rebuilt with office buildings and high rise apartments. We took a walking tour of the city and even got to walk through the rebuilt presidential palace that the US Air Force bombed back on 9-11-73 when we overthrew Salvador Allende and installed General Pinochet (Pinochet’s Chilean pilots used to congratulate me on the fine US pilots when I was a missionary in Chile way back when.) It was fun to see the city and how much it’s grown and advanced. The subway system that had only 1-1/2 lines in 1981 now has five whole lines. On one of our days in Santiago we visited the Pablo Neruda house – a Nobel Prize winning Chilean author who spent his money building fanciful eccentric houses. The house in Santiago was so fun that we decided that we needed to see his even bigger and more eccentric main house out on the coast. So, on the 4th we took a bus out to the coast town of San Antonio, where I’d actually served as a missionary. We walked along the pier, ate a yummy lunch, and took a quick side trip up to see the chapel that I had helped construct during my P-days. I didn’t see anyone I recognized – I guess after 25 years none of us looks the same. At the Isla Negra house, we decided we must become rich and successful eccentric authors and start building wild houses for all our stuff. Neruda was fascinated with boats but terrified of the sea, so his houses are built a lot like boats. He is buried facing the sea there, in a monument that is shaped like a big boat. The beach was very pretty in the rocky kind of way, but there was a little sandy beach just below the house, so we got our pants wet at the ankles before we headed back.
On the 5th we thought we were supposed to be flying back to La Paz, but when I was arranging for a ride to the airport I found that our plane tickets were for the 6th. After calling the airline, I found that there isn’t a flight from Santiago to La Paz on Thursdays, so Friday it would be. Oops. Well, there are worse places to spend an extra day than Santiago, Chile. Besides, the kids were really enjoying the local cuisine of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Dunkin Donuts (plus completos, Barros Lucos, and pastel de choclo.) And then I found out that our apartment was already rented for the next night, so I spent a few minutes on the phone and got us a hotel for the extra night, whew, and so we spent our extra day seeing an extra museum (a palace built by a family that owned the coal and silver mines) and then catching the Chilean premier of “Narnia” (in English, no less.)
Finally on Friday the 6th we flew back home from Santiago to La Paz – we arrived safe and sound, complete with all of our luggage, so we can count this as a successful trip. At home that night we held our family Christmas Eve. On Saturday the 7th we opened our Christmas presents and today (Sunday) we finally cooked and ate our Christmas dinner. Tomorrow it’s back to work and school, so I guess Christmas is well and truly over now. The only thing we have left to do is undecorated the house and take down the tree, but because we’ve been gone for the past few weeks, it hasn’t started to wear on our nerves, and it can easily wait to next weekend.
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