Leaving Patagonia for the Chilean Lake District

This section of my trip was one of those rare ones where I had put in a little bit of effort planning: I shall have one night to rest back in Puerto Natales before boarding the ferry to head North up the coast of Chile (I announced to no-one in particular while standing on a rock with my fist clenched). This was a good plan. There's not a lot to do in Puerto Natales in Winter. I know this because the ferry was delayed by four days and my diary entry for three of those is "same".

In Winter, there are 3 (easy) ways of heading North from Puerto Natales: fly out of Punta Arenas, bus out on the Argentine side of the Andes, or the fery. By far the most expensive and slowest of these options is the ferry, so I was hoping my temporally and financially ill-advised choice would prove to be a good investment, measured in terms of the length of the slide nights I'm bound to unleash upon captive extended family members in my twilight years. I did have high hopes for the scenery - Chile is quite squiggly down the bottom of the map - though it appears the water level's a little too high to see anything particularly glacial these days (global warming!). Maybe the water would drain out a bit if we spun the earth a little quicker. I shall put this idea to the Chilean tourism board post-haste, nay, forthwith!

OK, so in case you hadn't guessed, not much happened on the boat: lots of drinking, lots of games of Uno, lots of spirited discussions about the interpretation of some Uno rules I never knew existed, and a little bit of muffled sobbing from the seasick French guy in the cabin next to me. I think the main thing I took away from the trip was continued confusion as to whether or not Uno has a yodh.

We arrived in Puerto Montt like a ship passing - but, like, stopping - in the night, three days after we set out. This town is a little dead in Winter, so two of us immediately decided to continue our trip North to the Chilean lake country; namely a pretty lake- and volcano-side town called Pucon. My travelling companion was a Swiss cop-but-train-driver-if-anyone-asks (plot for a wacky Vin Diesel movie?) called Roger who didn't speak expressly in the third person or use words like "affirmative", so may well have been a train driver pretending to be a cop pretending to be something else Swiss. Like a banker, or cheese, which I think is more likely.

This part of the google earth is unbelievably beautiful (much like Argentina on the other side of the hills) and Pucon is the type of town that I instantly like because there are obviously lots of things to do in and around the place. The reason I actually came here was a recommendation from Ollie The Bolivian Bomber who I'd met a few months earlier in Peru: there's an active volcano looming over the town and you can climb it. So Roger and I did. Slowly. Although fun, this excursion was one of the biggest rip-offs of the trip so far: we were forced to trudge in single file up the equivalent of a learners' ski slope and later an icy-but-not-that-steep slope, continually stopping so our lard-arse guide could rest. The view from the top was nice, though copping a lung full (lungful? lungfle?) of volcano hole acid belch wasn't. My advice for this activity: hire a taxi to the ski centre, throw caution to the wind, stand upwind of said caution, then walk uphill. Hire some crampons if you're a pansy.

My delay in Puerto Natales rather annoyingly cut into my time in Pucon (I had to get back to B.A. as I had a pressing appointment with my Aunt, Uncle and a 2 kilo steak), so I decided to conquer my long-standing mutual unease with horses and go for a trail ride. The reason for my unease was a rather nasty incident when I was about ten. As all sisters are around that age, both of mine were obsessed with horses. Eschewing generally accepted child-rearing practices, Mum and Dad decided it would be a good idea to fuel this obsession, so we booked on a family trail ride while on our annual summer holiday in Orford. My steed for the outing was a failed racehorse with wind (Danny) who had the particularly endearing trait of doing whatever the hell he wanted, which mainly seemed to be farting. That, and galloping completely out of control on the return journey. Somewhere during this stretch, Danny managed to trip over, sending me over the handlebars and head first into some cutting grass. It has taken nearly 15 years of painful corrective surgery for me to start looking normal again. So, my unease stems from a feeling of being out-of-control, which I assume is a result of being a novice rider and riding obstinate ex-racehorses. In case you were wondering why I dropped the word "mutual" in there a while ago, I don't know why horses feel the way they do, but I've seen the way they look at me.

Anyway, I actually really enjoyed the trail ride - the horse did what I wanted, we went for a gallop, through a stream and up and down some steep muddy trails. If anything, the four thousand barking dogs added to the tranquility. After horseriding I cajoled Roger into coming with me to the thermal pools to ease my aching buttocks. Stop tittering at the back, you're not funny. Fairly standard thermal pools: freaking freezing outside (including an icy river plunge), too hot inside, alcohol banned (obviously ignored); though they did have the attraction of being mostly empty. I found out later that this was because two weeks earlier a had guy carked it and cooked in one for a couple days. Oh well, the pool guy did a good job scooping out all the floaty bits.