CHILE : From Puerto Montt to Ushuaia

Continuing the saga, we endured about 60 hours of bus travel in just a few days, 12 from Santiago to Puerto Montt, around 33 on to Punta Arenas, and a further 12 to Ushuaia. Not really an endurance test as the buses are pretty comfortable 'semi-cama', ( i.e : reclining seats) coffee and snacks served and stupid movies shown in case the scenery gets boring or you can't sleep during the night. The towns got progressively more upmarket as we got further south, and just over the border into Argentina was a small town with a very swish patisserie selling pastries and chocolate to drool over. Not having changed money on the trip down, we had to wait until the return bus trip from Ushuaia to Punto Arenas to partake in the pastries, though a kind young guy gave us a couple of pieces of chocolate when we tried to pay with Chilean pesos the first time.

Punta Arenas was a pleasant enough town, with a great bar called Santinos where we went twice for the happy hour pisco sours and plates of papas fritas (french fries) and a delicious selection of mariscos (seafood) floating in parmesan cheese. On our return trip it also offered us a bomberos celebration (firemen are really important here as so many of the buildings are of wood), an equestrian competition and a military exhibition



including a variety of tanks, gun displays, soldiers in camouflage uniform and parachute drops into trees and cars, which we came upon after a visit to the cemetary. Cemetaries in Chile are almost like small towns in themselves, with small buildings housing families, whole walls housing glass fronted boxes with photos, little figurines, flowers and messages, and at the other end are tiny colourful plots devoted to children. This one also had huge topiaried trees throughout, quite surreal. The names on tombstones and crosses range from the Irish to the English, German and Yugoslav, some French and assorted others besides the Spanish, reflecting the varied history of migration to Chile over the last 200 years.


We passed through snow-capped mountains and around large lakes in both the northern and southern part of this journey, while in between were endless expanses of pampas, occasionally relieved by low hills, small oil drills and dusty run-down farmhouses. In Ushuaia we stayed in a backpackers hostel called the Patagonia Pais, sharing a room with two Spanish women from Madrid, people friendly, kitchen available to organise our supermarket food, and conversation with a couple of young French puppeteers who somehow survive performing at lots of festivals - puppetry is popular in Chile.

We took a boat ride around the local waters, seeing sea lions and cormorants, and walking on a small island full of shell middens from the Ona tribe that once lived there. But even the all-you-can-eat-for-36-Argentinian pesos (Aud $12) meal of too much meat, fish and desert didn't make up for the general lack of cooking skills and varied tastes that is common everywhere we've been so far - plenty of fruit, vegetable and meat available, but little use of herbs and spices.
So now I can tick one more dreams off my personal list: I have been to el fine del mundo ( as they call patagonia in Chile), the end of the world (or at least this past of the world) and was only 3000kms from south pole!It was no way near as wild as I imagined and in fact Ushuaia reminds me a bit of ...Megeve, the swish ski resort in the French Alps. The weather was glorious and not even cold. My hug boots - which are always travelling with me now - did not even get an outing from the backpack!