"Two weary travelers step off a dusty bus into an unfamiliar port town on this quiet Saturday afternoon. One of them looks up into the sky. His eyes can't help but squint. He puts on his sunglasses. For a moment he wonders if the UV rating on his sunglasses is adequate. He puts on sunscreen. For a moment he wonders how long SPF 45 can last. The sky is blue. The clouds are white. But he has never seen clouds like what he is seeing now. They reside high in the sky, but their edges look like cotton balls that have been carefully pulled and brushed by a fine hard-bristled comb. More intriguing is the sun that shines so brightly, yet so coldly. The never ceasing westerly wind only adds to this coldness. The streets, the buildings, and everything else seem to have been bleached a shade whiter by the cold punishing sun. The two have traveled far and wide, but what they do not know is that above this beautiful port town, there is no more ozone. They have just taken a bus into ... the Twilight Zone."
I had slept very poorly the night before, with vivid dreams bordering on hallucination. I turned and tossed so much that it woke Ed in the middle of the night. He asked me if I was all right. That pulled me back into consciousness. I had a couple of hours of good sleep after that. Most part of the bus ride from El Calafate to Puerto Natales was an extension of my last night's sleep. Maybe the hallucination extended a little bit too.
Once outside of El Calafate, the asphalt roads quickly turned into gravel. The ride didn't feel all that much rougher, but it must be murderous on automobiles - flat tires and broken windshields. Our bus had a mesh screen over its front. A hole is cut out in front of the driver's side. The endless road is lined on both sides with endless fences. On the endless desert plain, I could see so far that the distant clouds seemed to hover just above ground. The low hanging clouds accentuated the vast expansiveness of the desert plain all the more. It felt a bit like walking inside a giant parking garage with very low clearance. I began to understand a little better the word "ceiling" for describing cloud covers.
Even though I was one of the first to get off the bus at the border check into Chile, I had the misfortune of being the last to get my passport stamped, because I filled out my forms on the side rather than while waiting in line. When I got out of the small passport stamping room, my backpack and a cordial Chilean were waiting for me. I unlocked my bag to reveal the plastic bags inside. I compartmentalize packing using shopping bags because of the convenience despite the annoying ruffling noise they make. The customs officer felt around but never bothered to open anything. I thought everybody got searched only to find out that it was really a spot check and I had the misfortune of having my backpack loaded last.
The reasons for these checks often escape me. Driving from Cancún to Mérida last year, we passed at least two check points along the highway. We stopped somewhere near the border between the provinces of Quintana Roo and Yucatán. The policeman asked us to open one bag in the truck of the car, took a glance, and waved us through. At first we didn't understand what the checks were for, then we saw a sign that had an English translation. They were checking for pork! Pork, because of cholera. It's not likely that the Chileans were checking for smuggled goods. Anyone who wants to could have easily done it anywhere along the largely unpatroled and remote frontier. Maybe they were checking for agricultural products, but land crossings, unlike transoceanic landings, usually don't involve very foreign plants and animals that can't come on their own. Then again, I must say that a semblence of formality and authority needs to be maintained at any customs.
After the bus crossed into Chile, we began to see taller plants, and cattle. As the bus approached Puerto Natales, the landscape became greener and lusher. Maybe it's because that we were now on the other side of the Andes and the climate is different on this side. We saw some low growing trees that looked as if they had been burned and dying. The limbs twisted and turned in contorted agony.
Once in town, we went to the LP "recommended" Hotel Natalino. The "traditional LP favorite" midrange is a bit out of the way. We asked for the price and asked to see the room. The manager, probably also the owner, asked us some like "combanion". At first, I thought that maybe it's a Spanishified word for companion. Well, we were going to see the room, so we just nodded and followed him upstairs. He showed us one room with a bathroom. It's tiny, and it's right next to the communal bathroom. We asked to see another. He showed us one without a bathroom down the other end of the hall. It's larger and cheaper. I found the hotel to be only minimally acceptable. The communal bathrooms looked okay until I actually had to use one later on. Then I found them to be small and not very clean, and that the shower heads didn't work very well. I was still sick, so I was not particularly interested in lugging my backpack around checking out hotels. Ed didn't object, so we accepted. I think the moral of the story is that guidebooks provide only rough guidelines at best. Often times, the descriptive words like recommended or favorite are subjective, inaccurate, and not very well calibrated with every reader's standards. The owner was very friendly, though. Maybe LP, being a backpackers' bible, value the intangibles like friendliness more than I would value cleanliness. On the way back down to the front desk to do the check-in stuff, it dawned on me that what the owner said to us before was con baño. Con baño, sin baño; with bathroom, without bathroom.
We went out to take care of a few logistical things. We booked a day tour to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine for tomorrow. We found out where to take the bus to Punta Arenas. We also exchanged some Chilean pesos. I suddenly had more trouble buying stuff in stores. In Argentina where the peso was one to one against the dollar, most things didn't cost more than a hundred. The Chilean pesos being at 420 against a dollar meant that most things were priced in the thousands. I could count to 15 in Spanish with no problem, and to a hundred with some effort, but trying to understand the suddenly much larger numbers was a bit more taxing on my brain.
Puerto Natales has the most beautiful waterfront. Nested inside Seno Última Esperanza, the Sound of Last Hope, it conjured up images of Alaska. Snow capped mountains stood silently in the distant background. A few passing boats bobbed up and down with the waves. A great many seabirds circled in the sky and floated on the water. A few buildings dotted the shore. Kids played on the narrow stretch of beach. It wasn't very cold, but the unceasing wind whipped my face into a slight numbness. The most unusual, however, were the clouds. I simply had never seen clouds like the ones I saw in Puerto Natales. It was as if someone had started with a batch of normal clouds, and then used a fine brush to smear out the edges. I wonder if this type of clouds was the result of the strong wind so prevalent in this region. I had also never seen a sun that shines so brilliantly like the one I saw in Puerto Natales. The buildings and the streets seemed to have been bleached into a whiter shade of pale. Yet there wasn't any warmth in that brilliance. I wondered whether it was because I was indeed having a fever, or whether above my head there was indeed a gaping hole in the ozone layer.
We went to the tourist office right on the beach to check out flights from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia. The woman there didn't speak any English, but was pretty helpful. She made phone calls to various airlines that flew the route. Since it's Saturday, none of them was open. There wasn't much we could do, except to wait until Monday when we get to Punta Arenas.
My cough wasn't getting any better, and I was still sick. I couldn't open my mouth to say anything without coughing violently by the third syllable. Being sick sucked. It made everything so much less enjoyable. Fortunately, Ed knew what he was doing, so I didn't have to worry at all about taking care of important logistics. I went to bed really early hoping that more rest would help. Ed went out by himself to explore the city a little more. I regretted pushing myself so hard at the beginning. I had not anticipated such a bad fever and a bad cough. I was worried that the limited amount of antibiotics and cold relief that I had packed with my medicine kit was quickly running out.
