Puerto Natales

One of the things that I (N) love about this country is it’s no-nonsense approach to a sandwich. Every restaurant we’ve been to has “Barro Luco” on the menu, which is a winning combination of meat, bread, cheese, and mayonnaise. The meat is pounded flattish and the sandwich served hot. Delightful, drippy, and inexpensive, the Barro Luco has turned into my go-to meal.



Puerto Natales is a three-hour drive north of Punta Arenas, through kilometer upon kilometer of sparsely populated pampas. About 15,000 folks call it home, most making their living off of tourism somehow. It too is a coastal town, but the mountains in the distance loom large. It seems a much cheerier place than Punta Arenas, and brightly colored houses line the streets. Tourists are everywhere, as is the Milodon, the official town mascot.

The Milodon, we eventually figured out, is a giant, prehistoric sloth. A cave with Milodon fossils was discovered about 15 minutes north of town, and ever since the sloth has been proudly displayed all over Natales. The silhouette graces every street sign, a 20-foot tall statue greets people entering the town, and the Milodon namesake is a part of numerous Natales’ businesses. Milodon Taxi, Milodon Ferretaria, Milodon Hostal, etc.



And so it comes as no surprise that I find myself eating a Barro Luco at the Milodon Cafe, reminiscing on Natales highlights. They include:




Teresa—the woman who greeted us as we got off the bus from Arenas. She drove us to her hostel, set us up, and helped us get our bearings. But the nice thing is how sweet she was. She treated us like grandkids, and was affectionate and sweet like a grandmother.

The Elementary School—it has a UV Warning System. There is, of course, a hole in the ozone layer here and UV is a big problem. The school has a system similar to our homeland security terror alert system, but it seems much friendlier. Probably a heck of a lot more useful and accurate to boot.

The Chuchos—are everywhere. None as good as Taxi, though.

The Views—there are a couple of hills in the city that you can summit, and the views of the ocean and mountains are amazing.

The Quaintness/Remoteness—other than the weather (Oy Vey, talk about wind!), Natales is just a charming little town. As Jess put it, it’s the “million little things that come together that make you really like a place”.

The r2d2 trash cans- charming.

Punta Arenas

The next day (the 18th) we were back at the airport. We took a flight that we thought would take us directly to Punta Arenas from Santiago, but little did we know that we were traveling on a puddle jumper and ours was the last stop. We touched down in Puerto Mont, and Balmaceda before reaching our final destination. Nate calculated that he’d been on 10 flights in the last 10 days. It was neat though, to see the span of Chile from above and also to receive two airline-portioned typical Chilean meals of meat and bread, pudding(?) and cake. Nate and I do not like Chilean bread products so it left us hankering for a real meal.

In Punta Arenas, we found a taxi and informed the driver to take us to a “hostel economico”, which is how we ended up at hostel Victoria welcomed by a man named George and his yellow lab Chickie. Chickie made the place instantly endearing to me (missing Gus so) despite the fact that we paid $40 US to stay there.
We hit the town on foot. It was a nice sea-breezy ten minute walk to the Plaza De Armas and we found a little place that had chacarero and carne con queso on the menu. Awesome. This was the place I first tasted a pisco sour (archetypical high-octane beverage of Chile) and it was surprisingly frothy (egg) and served in a wine glass. We had fun chatting and people watching and eventually headed back to the hostel.

Punta Arenas is in the extreme south of Chile, in the heart of the jigsaw archipelago that is southern Patagonia. The weather is coastal, meaning gray and misty, much like Nate’s parents’ home in Humboldt County. The terrain, flatish. In the winter, it turns bitter cold, and, as Galen Rowell put it, “The wind sweeps the land like the broom of God.” It’s the only city of size in the area (130,000) and is a hub of shipping, ranching, and, it seems, strip clubs. It’s known for having a nice cemetery, which is probably better than being known for having nothing nice at all. But barely.

Nate already mentioned the stray dogs. In Guatemala they were called Chuchos, so that’s how I refer to them here. I read in a guidebook that chuchos (the ones with balls and no collars) as well as dogs who have owners (plumper with collars and no balls) roam the streets at will. I think they have learned to hang out by restaurants and wait for portly tourists to come out with leftovers for them. I think they also know they will get sympathy from people like me wielding huge backpacks indicating they are not locals and that they might have a shot at some sympathy and a snack. Anyway, on our walk, I spotted one or he spotted me (I’m not sure who spotted who first) and I started talking to him (“hola perro! El Chuuuuucho…”) and he seemed to like my tone or could smell that I’d recently been around meat (one of the two) and he began to follow us around every corner. We talked to him along the way and noted that he was easily distracted by passing cars. He seemed to be specifically on the look out for taxis at which time he would abandon our gait and tear off into the street barking and trying to bite the front wheel of the taxi traveling at 35 miles per hour. The taxis would not break or even slow down. It seemed like a game (Taxi drivers vs. Chuchos). We were laughing so hard and affectionately started to call our friend “Taxi”.



When we got back to the hostel, I ran upstairs to find something for him to eat. I unwrapped a peanut butter granola bar and tossed it on the ground. I hoped he would enjoy it but he stiffed it, left it where it was, and looked up at us wagging his tail as if to say, “I can find better shit in the trash, would you come back out and play with me?”
We snapped a few photos and said goodbye. After ten minutes or so I went to see if he’d taken the granola bar but it was still there on the sidewalk…In the morning though, it was gone.

Santiago

Previous to touching down in Santiago, Chile, I (Nate) had been flying around the east coast doing interviews for professor-type positions in Vermont and North Carolina. The interviewing had been a bit nerve-wracking, and my anxieties and thoughts often kept me awake through the quiet hours of the night. One solace was being able to talk to Jess, and prattle on about events and hopes and dilemmas. Each time we spoke, the conversation concluded with, “See you in Santiago” because it sounded so silly and dramatic and kinda romantic, like something long-separated lovers might say in a old black and white movie. It was also true: we were flying separately to Chile and meeting in Santiago. Jess from Salt Lake via Atlanta, and me from Miami after touring Vermont. She would arrive a day earlier, and let me know of her accommodations via an email.



On the afternoon of the 16th, our proclamation came true when she poked her little head out of the second story window of the hostel I stood in front of. We were in Santiago, together, and on our way to a neat little vacation in Chile.



We had given ourselves about 24 hours in the capital city before flying south. Not much time, of course, to see a large city (6 million; about 1/3 of Chile’s gente), but it was enough time to get a sense of the place. We walked through the city center, up on a hill to see an old castle, and through the bustling downtown area. Stray dogs ran about the sidewalks, competing for territory, or a bit of empanada dropped by a passerby in a business suit. Business suits abound; downtown Santiago is full of well-groomed people walking from one place to another, checking watches while being important.

A couple other things about Santiago: the man-mullet is hot, and public groping is all the rage. Chileans love to cuddle in public, and everywhere we went folks were gettin' frisky with one another. Everyone in the parks were coupled off on benches, tables, or a patch of grass, and rapped in some sort of embrace. Jess and I were a bit surprised, but, well, when in Rome…

That evening we had dinner in Barrio Brasil, a somewhat hip neighborhood with a hoppin’ nightlife. Jess fell in love with her dinner, a sandwich called a Chacararo, and made such a big deal out of it that the waiter ended up showing her the kitchen and how the sandwich was prepped.


Afterwards, sitting in the open air on the rooftop of the 3-story hostel, we played some sort of drinking game with dice and a large bottle of Escudo (not a particularly good beer) and watched the nightlife below. Tomorrow we’d go to Punta Arenas, and experience another bit of Chile, a much rainier and grayer bit.