On Wednesday, I woke up early to catch the twice a week bus out of Futaleufú down to Coyhaique, Chile (the biggest city of the south). I was a bit surprised when a 44 person bus arrived to take us and the only passengers were an Australian woman, myself, and the 2 bus drivers. This began the 14 hour trip south along the Carretera Austral (the Austral Highway). The Carretera Austral can hardly be called a highway and for most of the road it´s still a dirt road. This is the road that connects the so
uthern section of the country with the northern part with the road going from Villa O´Higgins up to Puerto Montt. Up until 1976, the southern section of the country was completely isolated from the the northern part. It was only accessible by boat from Chile, or roads from Argentina. The road was the grand project of General Augusto Pinochet during the reign of his military regime. As we moved along, we picked up a couple people along the way, but the most that was ever on the bus at one time was only 7 passengers for the 44 seats. I met a father and son from the small town of Palena, Chile who were taking the 10 hour trip to Coyhaique to buy a television set since that was the nearest city. There was a French couple who we picked up on the side of the road who had been backpacking a bit in a nearby national forest. There were also two Israeli guys who hadn´t had much luck with hitchiking. With the bus drivers, I was pretty amazed at how many people they knew. We stopped in probably 10 towns along the way and they got out of the bus probably 3 times in each town to greet people they knew and pick up a cake or something that someone had baked for them. Many places along the road, road crews were working to improve the road which seems like a neverending task considering it´s a gravel road and the large downpours cause erosion that then has to be repaired. All along the way there were billboards on the side of the road that said something like ¨Mira el Progreso¨ (Look at the Progress) with a picture of the road to highlight the improvements being made in the region´s infrastructure. The gravel road made for a bumpy ride most of the way, but the scenery was beautiful; tons of very blue rivers and snow capped mountains and green pastures. We finally arrived in Coyhaique around 10pm and I went with 2 Israelis to a Hospedaje (like a hostel) that someone had recommended. The city was quite a lot bigger than little Futaleufú. After getting lost a couple of times, we finally found it right next to they Municipality Cemetery. It turned out to be basically a woman´s small house that has a room or two that was converted into bunk beds, but it was still very much her house. The Israelis didn´t speak much Spanish and the lady not much English so I was able to do a little translating to help out. Also at the hospedaje were two British girls, one from England one from Scotland, that were both teaching English in Santiago, Chile for a year before going to college and they were traveling a bit during Chile´s school summer break. I spent a while laughing at the words the British girls were using that i´m pretty sure were not English words, but they seemed to think differently. On Thursday, I went with the Israelis to figure out bus transportation and see what there is in the city. I learned that there are a ridiculous amount of Israelis traveling everywhere in the world. At least in South America, they are probably known as the nation with the most tourists that come to South America. Israelis all have to spend a mandatory 3 years in the military beginning around 18. One of the Israelis I was with worked as a Tanker Gunman and the other as Special Forces. The Lebanon W
ar had been going on during 2006 so they had both fought in combat during the war. Remembering back to the Israeli River Guide at Futaleufú, he had some pretty horrific stories about his experiences during the Lebanon War. Both of the Israelis in Coyhaique had finished their service a year ago and they had worked for a year, then travel for a year, and then return to Israel to begin university. That seems to be what most Israelis do which means that there is a huge number of Israelis traveling around with their friends, everywhere. This has been confirmed by my experiences of running into tons of Isrealis all along the way (they´re not too hard to spot), on buses, in the supermarket, while backpacking..... There is tons of American television programming and music in Israel which helps them to learn English. Also, none of the American television programming is dubbed, only subtitled so that means that they are constantly hearing the American accent and English being spoken. The result is that most Israelis speak English pretty well. Chile on the other hand does dub a lot of their English programming, but most movies still only use subtitles. Considering the fact that Hebrew outside of Israel is pretty uncommon, they pretty much have to learn English or another language to get along when outside of Israel. While making dinner back at the hostel, the woman whose house it is kept saying I was cooking the meat wrong and that I was using too many bowls so she basically took the spatula from me and cooked the meat herself. I wasn´t going to argue with her, but I didn´t realize that there was really a wrong way to cook meat. She also didn´t like when people washed the dishes and used too much water or didn´t clean it well enough so she didn´t allow us to clean our dishes. I wasn´t going to complain.
ar had been going on during 2006 so they had both fought in combat during the war. Remembering back to the Israeli River Guide at Futaleufú, he had some pretty horrific stories about his experiences during the Lebanon War. Both of the Israelis in Coyhaique had finished their service a year ago and they had worked for a year, then travel for a year, and then return to Israel to begin university. That seems to be what most Israelis do which means that there is a huge number of Israelis traveling around with their friends, everywhere. This has been confirmed by my experiences of running into tons of Isrealis all along the way (they´re not too hard to spot), on buses, in the supermarket, while backpacking..... There is tons of American television programming and music in Israel which helps them to learn English. Also, none of the American television programming is dubbed, only subtitled so that means that they are constantly hearing the American accent and English being spoken. The result is that most Israelis speak English pretty well. Chile on the other hand does dub a lot of their English programming, but most movies still only use subtitles. Considering the fact that Hebrew outside of Israel is pretty uncommon, they pretty much have to learn English or another language to get along when outside of Israel. While making dinner back at the hostel, the woman whose house it is kept saying I was cooking the meat wrong and that I was using too many bowls so she basically took the spatula from me and cooked the meat herself. I wasn´t going to argue with her, but I didn´t realize that there was really a wrong way to cook meat. She also didn´t like when people washed the dishes and used too much water or didn´t clean it well enough so she didn´t allow us to clean our dishes. I wasn´t going to complain. On Friday February 6th, I went to the office that sells Ferry tickets to buy a ticket to go down to the south of Argentina but unfortunately I only found that they were sold out until Monday. I found that out and decided to think about it and as I was leaving the office, a man called me over in English and asked where I was going. I told him Puerto Natales and he said he was going to Punta Arenas which is even more south than Puerto Natales and pretty close too. He was a 40 year old Spaniard working for his own tourism company in Argentina renting out motorbikes to those that wanted them. His office is in Punta Arenas but he had driven up the motorbikes to Coyhaique to hand them off to two clients there and he was heading back to Punta Arenas on Saturday. He seemed like a crazy guy and I was thrilled to get a cheap ride considering it would cost about 80$ USD for a bus ticket. We planned on meeting up on Saturday to start the 2 day trek through Argentina to Punta Arenas. Later, while I was at an internet café, these 2, probably 75 year old, proper Irishmen came and sat down at the computers next to me. They were severely technologically challenged and they had the task of opening up gmail and sending an email back to family. They didn´t speak a word of Spanish, and everything on the screen was written in Spanish. Not to mention that the letters written on the keyboard were rubbed off so they couldn´t see what keys they were pressing. They spent probably 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get to www.gmail.com because they didn´t recognize the url area in the screen. Next they spent 8 minutes entering their email addresses asking me every couple of seconds ¨where´s the letter r¨ or ¨where´s the letter ´m´¨ intermingled with sailor´s language of ¨fuck¨and ¨shit¨. The situation was very comical for me. I finally just said let me do the typing and h would tell me what he wanted typed. They kept saying that they really did know how to use the computer well, but I have my doubts. I really don´t know how they got along so well in Southern Chile (or maybe they didn´t) because English is not very common, but kudos to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment