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Published: February 11th 2009
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Coihaique Chile
Land of Rainbows We stayed in a purple motel in down town Coihaique. Even though it was purple it was still rather spendy, so we only stayed one night and then moved to an old hostel. The bed and bath were clean but other than that it was a real dive. The toilet would slowly drain all of the water out of the bowl until the toilet vent was exposed and the aroma of septic gases would fill the room. The shower fluctuated between 210 F and 40 F so rapidly that I bailed-out onto the tile floor on several occasions.
Before I paid for the room I ensured that WIFI was available throughout the hostel, so I could work on the blog. It was true, there was WIFI throughout the hostel, although it was difficult to access due to a security enabled network key that had been misplaced. At my current Spanish level I am not able communicate complicated sentences such as “network key please”. I showed them the Microsoft Windows command prompt that asked for the it. Unfortunately the combination of my Spanish and their English fell pathetically short of translating “network key”, so we had several good laughs, played several
rounds of charades with the word “network key” (more difficult than one might imagine), and then went to bed.
We came to Coihaique mainly to see the Patagonia branch of the National Outdoor Leadership School. Samantha and I both have friends at the branch and it was great to catch our buddy Christian Steidle on his home turf. Unfortunately, our other Chilean friends were out working courses in the mountains or on the sea. We were invited to crash at NOLS for a couple of nights so we left the hostel and pitched our tent in the field. We spent two nights hanging out in the staff-house with Christian and some other friends I had worked with in Alaska, it was great.
It was sometime during this week that I decided I was not going home on February 5th. Samantha and I were both enjoying ourselves way too much to go home after just one month. I got all excited about heading to hotter, cheaper, more remote areas of South America. We decided to extend our tickets another 2-4 weeks and fly to Bogota, Columbia. We had the time, why not?
In my typical fashion I
It's a flower
I'm a pilot, not a botanist. had oversimplified the task of a mere change date. Usually I can make things happen if I push hard enough, but I think the Good Lord said, “not this time Matthew” because every time I turned around I got punched in the nose by another “detail”. I hate details. Ultimately it was sitting on hold with Travelocity while spending a mint on phone charges that ended the whole “trip extension” idea. I spent a full day and a small fortune on phone calls and internet charges before throwing in the towel and sticking with our original plan. I still have not recovered emotionally from this disappointment but I still have more time left in South America so I better shut up and enjoy it. I guess we will just have to come back.
During our time in Coihaique we stumbled across Chalten Travel (1147 Av. Ogana), a small travel agency in town. The gal that works there is extremely helpful. I highly recommend her to anyone trying to make plans out of Coihaique. She hooked us up with bus tickets to our next destination, Chaiten, Chile. And then boat tickets from Chaiten to Quellon on the Island of Chiloe.
She explained that there are only two buses per week that go from Coihaique to Chaiten direct, one on Monday and one on Friday. She strongly recommended that we leave on a bus Thursday that goes halfway. We could then spend Thursday night in Puyuhuapi and catch the direct bus coming through on Friday. It was a good idea but we wanted more time at NOLS so we decided to do a marathon bus ride on Friday. What’s the big deal it only takes 12 hours on a “mini-bus.”
NOTE: The term “mini-bus” is a major clue in. It means the road sucks therefore not allowing a “bus” but a “mini-bus”. Not just a bumpy road, but a scary one.
Somewhere during this time I lost my brain. I left our Chile map sitting in a restaurant, my Spanish-English dictionary at the bus station, and misplaced our bus and boat tickets, all on three separate occasions in one short day. Maybe I was still grieving over the loss of our trip extension. But when I got my brain back I said, “SAMANTHA!!!!…we don’t want to sit on a mini-bus for 12 hours! We need to leave on that
Thursday bus today!” She readily agreed, and after more phone calls, taxi rides, and frantic packing, we said goodbye to NOLS Patagonia and rushed to the bus station for a 3 PM departure. At approximately 4 PM were told that, “This bus decided not go to Puyuhuapi today”, and then 30 minutes later, “The bus is ka-put, dead, broken”. And then after a mere 2.5 hours of standing in a gravel parking-lot we were told, “The bus is going to be late.” As if it was not late already. As if this “lateness” would occur sometime in the future and that the “late clock” had not already begun ticking. We were about to learn that this area of Chile does not have a “late clock.”
At 5:30 PM we started the first half of our 12 hour journey to Chaiten, Chile. By the time we arrived in Puyuhuapi we had both decided that leaving a day early was the best decision of our lives. Thankyou nice lady at Chalten Travel.
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