Advertisement
Published: January 19th 2011
Edit Blog Post
The main purpose of going to Puerto Montt was to get on the Navimag ferry which would take us south through the Patagonia Fjords over 3 nights and 4 das and ultimately to Puerto Natales from where we would begin walking in the Torres del Paine national park. Puerto Montt itself is not very picturesque and we managed to see all of it in the late afternoon and evening we arrived, it has a fish market where we managed to find a tasty dinner of locally caught fish overlooking the sea.
We were due to leave the port at 2pm the next day but when we arrived to check our baggage in at 9am that morning the they informed us that the boat was delayed and we wouldn't be leaving until 5pm. This left us with an unexpected day in a town we had seen all of the night before. We had heard good things about a place called Puerto Varas on a nearby lake so we hopped on a bus there and had a lovely day exploring the very pretty town and walking along the shores of the lake. You can see two Volcanoes over the lake and the
whole place has a very German feel having had German inhabitants since the early 1900s.
Then it was back to Puerto Montt to stock up on vital supplies such as wine and rum for the ferry journey and then onto the ship. It is a cross between a passenger and a cargo ship, very basic and fairly big sleeping somewhere between 150 and 200 people. Alongside cabins and bunk rooms for sleeping there was a big canteen style room for eating in and a bar and that was about it. We loved every minute, as the ferry made its way south we saw dolphins, penguins, seals, jelly fish, birds including albatross, amazing scenery and a glacier. It got colder and colder and there was a mixture of sun, rain and snow. There were lectures each day on the local area, movies, bingo and even a disco on the last night! It's hard to believe how quickly 4 days on a boat passed but it was well worth it.
As we moved south there was news that there was a general strike in Puerto Natales and the surrounding region which meant the airport was closed and roads were blockaded
(a similar story to when were in Bolivia!) so we weren't sure what the situation would be when we got to the port. The crew were concerned that we wouldn't be able to dock because the port would be closed. We were also dependent on public transport to get us from the town to the national park to begin our 5 days of walking. We were already delayed getting to Puerto Natales because of the late start but we spent the last afternoon waiting for news of what would happen which certainly added a bit of unexpected excitement to the journey.
(later) Taking up the story from 2 days later in the safety of Puerto Natales I can say that the situation did get a bit hairy at one time but in the end we were very safe and cosy and glad of the extra excitement the possibility of a strike gave us. As we approached Puerto Natales, we were told that we would only be allowed to dock if we arrived at 10 (instead of 8 which was instead of 12). As the port came into view we could see that there was a welcoming committee of locals
jeering and shouting and blaring car horns, seperated from the dock by a row of police. After about an hour of standoff the captain asked us all to the canteen area where he would address us. Amid much excitement and trepidation everyone rushed to the area where we waited for the captain for almost an hour. He arrived and said only that there was a disruption in the port before handing over to a delegation from the local union who had blockaded the roads out of town, the airport and the port. They said basically, very politely and apologetically that they were protesting a national increase in fuel prices, that we were welcome in the town and would be safe everywhere but that they would not let us leave if we went on transport that needed gas. In other words we would be stuck there, they gave us the opportunity to return on the ship or to get off into a problem that would be indefinite. They rightly pointed out that we had known or should have of the situation before we boarded the ship and would not be allowed to leave (as some other tourists had earlier that day).
The news was not well received and a lot people became angry and started to form groups to stay on the ship because they couldn’t be made to leave into a dangerous area and various self important people began to make speeches about our safety and how we could protect ourselves.
We thought that this was ridiculous as the people who had visited the ship were at pains to make sure we realised that they were essentially peaceful protesters and that they knew how important tourism was to their area which they were passionately proud of. We decided to leave and walked off the boat while everyone else was talking about it. We came through the protesters who were very welcoming and keen to apologise for the disruption and found our hostel where the owner had waited up (until 1am) for us to arrive. In the morning the boat was leaving to return to where it had come from. We only heard the blast of the horn as it left but later heard that it had been fairly unpleasant left on board as people who were embarking found others refusing to leave their berths. We were lucky that we
had enough time to wait out the trouble in Puerto Natales if necessary. In the end we needn’t have worried as at about 10am we heard that the strike was over. We had had the fun of it without it disrupting our plans at all and the best news was that the national park we were hoping to visit was empty as there were no tourists left locally so we spent the day renting equipment for trekking for 5 days through the Torres Del Paine national park and will not be near civilisation for that time from tomorrow morning.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0352s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb