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Published: February 18th 2009
The bus stopped in a mud-puddle on the main drag of Puyuhuapi, Chile. It was 11 PM, pitch black, and pouring rain. After a quick group huddle, Samantha and I decided to find a place to sleep. I suppose this decision would be obvious to most people, but it actually took some thought to on this night. Maybe it’s the constant state of travel that numbs the brain.
Anyways we walked to the first hostel we saw and it was full. We walked to the second hostel two short blocks away…yep, they were full too. I had one of those fleeting thoughts that maybe we should have planned ahead, but then I remembered that planning is for lilies. We saw a sign for “CABANAS”, held our breath and tried not to get our hopes up. They had a nice clean little room above a shop with our own bathroom for only $18 USD. The front door was so short I am still picking slivers out of my chin but other than that it was perfect. We were sopping wet, tired, and mildly car sick from the roller coaster mini-bus ride through the mountains.
In the morning we took a
self guided tour of the town in about 42 seconds and then settled in to wait for our 1 PM bus. We occasionally mentioned to people that we were headed for Chaiten. The normal response was a drawn out “wooow!” and then something like, “Man, you kids are really going for it!” Initially I took their expletives as a response to the eternally bumpy bus ride, but as the expressions escalated in severity I became increasingly suspicious of our Chaiten destination. Someone finally offered the fact that Chaiten was a ghost-town due to a massive volcanic explosion only six miles from town. Well, this added some interesting spice to our next 72 hours. We began to wonder if there were any hostels open to sleep in, cash machines to pay for things, or more importantly, food to spend the cash on. The only thing we knew for certain was that we were 6 hours out of Coihaique, half way to a ghost town, with tickets for the only bus in several days.
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