Calafate to Puerto Natales Chile

Calafate to P. Natales March 17
Motorcycles full throttling through the dark streets, a hundred different barks from dogs in all directions and distances - I think I could accurately create a sonar 3D map from these alone. strange whirring police sirens, "Titaniun" thumping at a house party on the next block. A drunk stumbles through the backyard behind the tent plots we are staying at and jiggles a door quietly for several minutes until giving up and then it's a series of uncontrolled staggerings as he crunches over trash cans and metal piping on his way out if the yard. Haven't slept since 3.30 Am when all this woke me up.

Los Dos Pinos has locked the joint use kitchen for the night so the tent campers are locked out still at 6 am and I am hungry and we have a bus to catch soon. I imagine the must give keys to those staying in the cabins and dorms. The place is carelessly kept up, not based on need but perhaps only when a tenant complains. Overflowing toilet paper in the bathroom baskets, food left in the communal kitchen sink for a couple of days, seems they do as little as possible. I suspect they unlock the kitchen at 6 so they can save on electricity.

The grumpy stoic woman running it finally broke a smile after several very gruff interactions. The huge hood for the stove extends some 6 inches beyond it and down to a heigh of 5 feet off the floor which would be perfect if I was under that height like the women who work here. I have to grab a chair so I can stir our jambalaya of a dinner. I guess not much can be expected for 30 (6$) pesos per person a night. The wifi is good and the showers hot.

The tent camps filled up with three Long distance cyclists - two from the Netherlands, very tall and thin couple (father daughter perhaps) riding all the way down from just south of Santiago to punta arenas sometimes making as little ad 5 to 10 km per day if it is windy or as much as 50 if not. First 7 days were straight rain, all day and all night. Mostly super remote washboardy dirt roads. They met up with Willy, a German that started his ride in Cartagena Columbia 7 months ago. Willy is a smoker and has a llama skull mounted on his front fender.

They said since we are heading to puerto natales today to Be on the lookout for another Oregonian pushing a two wheeled cart. He started five years ago and is nearly at his goal in Ushuaia. 40 km a day he averages so several days he had gone further than the cyclists and they were playing catch up to him. It took The cyclists 5 days to cross for p. natales to calafate. It will takes us 5 hours - if the border crossings go smoothly.

There are two checkpoints apparently. The strict regulations against bringing fresh or even dried fruit. we have read the Chileans are tough and will often search and impose fines. This means we are gorging ourselves this morning on our dried kiwi, pineapple and dates as well as the fresh apples and bananas. Good thing the road is pretty straight or I would be throwing it all up. The bus driver stopped obligingly for his full load of touristas to get a good view of a guanaco family just off the highway but we were all too sun slothed out and a few lazily pointed there cameras at the windows from their seats.

The 9am rays are blasting through the windows, a kind of rolling greenhouse with a the passengers planted as varietal nationalities, at least 10 represented, Japanese to eastern euro and flowering out in expensive marmot, Patagonia and Berghaus jackets and expensive trekking boots. I imagine most will only do the day tours via bus in Paine despite the expensive kit. The average mean age is about 25, a decidedly different group from the Perito Moreno glacier tour with its run of infants to octogenarians. Strangely, the only sign taped ove the defunct TVs with several paragraphs of highlighted information in different colors is only in Hebrew.

The passengers are thumbing through music on iPhones, munching sandwiches and soon to be contraband apples, snoring, drooling on girlfriend shoulders, shifting endlessly in their seats, coughing, rustling plastic bags, reclining seats into knees, sliding window curtains to adjust the heat, tapping away on iPads or reading on them in Japanese, thumbing guidebooks. Totally different experience from Peru. Much wealthier breed of traveller and prices - at least in these launching points for the parks - tourists dressed as though they were in Jackson Hole and prices are on par and even steeper than what you would pay in the US. Especially with the shitty exchange rate we are subject to now. It will cost 40$ US to get into Paine national park for just one person.