Being Howard Hughes in Chile

But only in his final days, unfortunately. No starlets or spruce geese for me - just quite a lot of sitting around in my undergarments drinking wine. Indeed, I did so for 3 straight days in Santiago. Arguably two days too many, but I needed to regain my mojo after the bacterial onslaught that was Bolivia. My hermitic existence was interrupted only on my brief sojourns into the city and on one occasion by a rather surprised housekeeper who intended to turn down my bed and deposit a complimentary chocolate bunny thereon. When I did venture to leave my humble lodgings (The Sheraton) I found myself gulping down the oxygen at the comparitively low altitude, and bounding up staircases like never before.

Santiago is a great city to relax in, but there isn't much to do as a tourist, and I knew that I was getting stir crazy when I became hysterical upon discovering an uncalled for tomoto in my burger. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have cried over a ruined burger (Jon, Al etc). The big problem with visiting Chile at this time of year was that winter was setting in with a vengeance, minimising the number of fellow wanderers to engage with, especially down south. Indeed I met precious few other travellers, and most of my time was spent alone. Not an unpleasant time, just different from the boisterous antics of before. During my time in Chile I wallowed in the beauty of the scenery like an eighteenth century dandy and had a number of aesthetic 'moments' (jaw set, wind beating into my face, gazing into the middle distance, contemplating the nature of the sublime etc).

I headed to the coast in search of fun, and found a couple of towns that merited a longer stay. Viña del Mar is a chic-ish resort for escaping Santiagans, and was fairly quiet because of the time of year. Ten minutes down the road, Valparaiso was eminently more interesting. One of Chile's main ports, and built in a ramshankle way into the mountains behind the shore, the town's upper reaches are accessed by a number of funiculars, or 'ascensores', that climb shudderingly into the mist. The town itself has the same faded wealth of most port towns, including a restaurant called Bar Ingles that looked like Rules in London would look, had it not been decorated for 50 years. Peeling wallpaper, and warped wood panelling, but still packed with overweight businessmen hammering out deals. I had my head shorn and was mistaken by the barber for an Eastern European sailor on leave. I'm not entirely sure that this was a good thing. A couple of days was more than enough to see the sights and to bore of travelling up and down in the funiculars like a simple child, so I booked a plane down to Puerto Montt - about halfway down Chile's landmass and located at the southern end of the Chilean lake district, and then on to the much more pleasant Puerto Varas.

The first day did not bode well - 18 hours of torrential rain and a brief moment where the wind, not my own for a change, threatened to lift me off my feet. Day two, and a trip to the tiny town of Peulla, involving a bus and a catamaran across one of the enormous lakes. The weather was perfect, and the scenery spectacular. Two massive volcanoes rise from the shores of the lake, and waterfalls cascade down into the emerald water from melting glaciers high above. In Peulla I signed up for some horseriding, and not for the first time I was transfixed with smugness at what an astonishingly good time I was having. We rode through rivers and ancient forest encrusted with lichen, stopping every now and then to procure apples for the horses or to snap shots of llamas. I liked to think that I was the first person to attempt to tame the skittish steed asigned to me, but quickly realised that I was on the horse reserved for gringo tourists who have not been born wearing chaps (indeed chaps have an entirely different connotation in London). Nevertheless a fantastic experience that was not replicated in coming days when I was confined to the hostel due to poor weather. I worked my way through the limited number of english books available in the small town and can now safely say that I have read one too many books involving a hapless duo of a special forces operative and a CIA psychic who together avert an international terrorist incident. I was almost despairing as I kicked my heels in Puerto Varas, and was hours away from resorting to reading the wide selection of Sweet Valley High teen romances available, stopped only by the inevitable distrust and approbation that this would have engendered. Luckily the weather broke and I was able to take a trip to Pumalin Park. The journey involved a bus, taxi and then air taxi to the town of Chaiten.

One of the more remote places on my journey so far, Chaiten lies a couple of hundred kilometres further south than Puerto Varas, and is the beginning of the road down to the end of the continent. With just 7,000 inhabitants, and very bleak for the majority of the year, the town had a certain charm nonetheless. Very friendly, in a small town kind of way, with just the faintest hint of banjo music and innovative animal husbandry wafting down from the hills. I met with my guide Nicholas, a Canadian / US / Chilean hybrid who showed me the sights and the wonderful Pumalin Park, a nature sancturay that covers some 700,000+ hectares of temperate rainforest. Nicholas was a great talker, and I nodded sagely as we (he) discussed the problems with Chilean bureaucracy, canine parasites and cabin fever. I visited the local hot springs and took some short treks into the forest. The sanctuary is a botanist's wet dream. Not being a botanist, I slept very soundly without being hampered by nighttime emissions, yet still enjoyed the calm and peaceful surroundings. It was also great to spend time with Nicholas and his wonderful family. His young daughters (3 and 4 years old) helped me with my Spanish, and I helped them with their jigsaw puzzles. The elder of the two, Skye, drew me some pictures to take with me on my travels: one of me (with a huge smiley face), one of my mum (uncanny resemblance, given they have never met) and one of a blue monster (that looked suspiciously similar to the picture of me, albeit with hair). Yet again I was pleasantly surprised by the kindness and generosity of strangers.

Extracting myself from Chaiten to Buenos Aires would take three flights and countless land vehicles, with another brief stop in Santiago, and the opportunity once more to spend some quality time in my underpants. I enjoyed Chile as a counterbalance to Bolivia, but also made the effort to organise more exciting excursions for the remainder of my trip. Now, I decided, was the time to loosen the purse strings and to start spending in earnest. Actually, I suppose the purse strings had already been loosened (they even had a casino with craps in Puerto Varas) so the decision was more to hold the purse upside down and shake for all I was worth.

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