Driving on the Southern Road - The Carretera Austral

Hi everyone.  Another update from Patagonia, this very long and lonely stretch of most southern America.  When I last posted, I was contemplating heading north on Chile's Austral (or southern) highway and I am now about 1000 miles further north and all I can say is wow.  The road basically cuts through untouched land, across giant cliffs with a dozen waterfalls cascading at once, through snowcapped mountain passes, by untouched lakes, fjords, rivers, hot springs and even a rain forest.

To start the trip, I took a 14 hour bus ride on an Argentinian dirt road that is some of the most desolate and God forsaken land I have ever seen.  We only crossed a few cars during the whole day. The bus dropped us in sorry border town called Los Antiguos at 10 pm and the hostal where the bus dropped us was full. Only myself and a Canadian couple had reservations and warm beds awaiting us.  The rest of the bus, about 40 people had to walk around this desolate town at 10pm looking for a place to sleep and I did not envy them.

Crossing the border the next day was a complicated game of connecting the dots.  I opted to walk across the border and hitch-hike to the next chilean town.  It was kinda cool to walk to the border post on foot and get my passport stamped and continue on foot still.  I then waited and waited.  Hardly anybody body crossed this excuse of a border for the three hours that I stood there, until finally I got picked up by a nice Argentinian couple who manage a farm nearby.  That I think will be the extent of my hitch hiking career.

Once in Chile, myself and the rest of the back packers I happened to be with had to wait a day for a boat to cross a lake  that is a few hundred miles long and around which no good road exists.  Then once in the next big town, Coyhaique, there were only two boats a week leaving, so this place is not for people short on time.  It was therapeutic coming from New York where every minute counts, to be in a place where it is acceptable and even normal to wait a few days for a transport.

More pictures in http://picasaweb.google.com/chertar/DrivingChileSSouthernRoadTheCarreteraAustral#

I went to pick up my little compact rental car and to my surprise and great luck, I got upgraded for free to a 4wd pick up truck which was a huge blessing because the road is basically unpaved for the most part. My consciense was acking a bit though at the waste of fuel but I figured I would pick up hitch hikers to compensate for the emissions.  I had litterally seen glaciers melt a few days earlier partly because of global warming so I felt guilty adding my own drop to the sea of carbon that already gets released every day.

I rode up and down the carretera for 3 days giving rides to back packers and locals alike, and by the end of it, I can say I really got a hang of driving through pot holes, mud and gravel.  On the last day, I picked up a couple of hitchhikers.  A Swiss cheese maker and her French boyfriend, and to the best of my understanding, they run a summer retreat for cows in the Swiss Alps...They had been hitch hicking for over a week and told me that at one point, they waited for three days in the same spot.  Crasy...

My hitchhikers and I had heard about hot springs along the carretera but neither of us had any idea what to expect.  We came about a turn in the road with a sign for hot springs and stopped to check it out, and before we knew it, we were on a small boat heading for a luxurious hotel and I can't stress how unusual this is because there is basically NOTHING for hundred of miles, not even a paved road.  We had the entire place to ourselves as we were the only guests that night, and the staff had no one else to care for but us.  We felt plucked out of wilderness and placed in a royal setting.  Needless the say, the springs were fantastic, with views of snow capped mountains, and we jumped into the clean and cold waters of the fjord in between sessions in the hot springs.  The Swiss-French couple who only hours earlier looked like homeless people were now ordering wine and lavish three course meals.

I could not get to the northern most point of the carretera because a volcano has been erupting and has basically wiped out the town so I had to take a 36 hour boat ride to the next town.  I did not get sick on the boat but the ground kept swaying for a good 6 hours after I got back onto solid ground.

I found that back packers move in waves. I have been sharing parts of my trip with various people heading the same way, only to lose them and meet new people on a different segment.  I sometimes find myself wishing I would speak spanish more, but English is invariably the lingua franca that we all revert to.  My French has been quite useful though.  I think I am the only Arabic speaker on these shores as border agents always get a puzzled look on their face when they open my passport and realize that it reads right to left.

There are a lot of couples traveling together, some new to each other, others, long time companions, and it is incredibly easy to tell the couples that functions from those who don't.  Somehow the strains and discomfort of travel and the necessity to constantly make decisions bring the best and the worst in people and small internal discords get magnified.

Learning spanish is proving much harder than I thought. I am still incapable of correctly asking for most things. I had this silly idea that it's basically French with slightly different vocabulary and accent - wrong.  It's an entirely different language with complicated rules that need to be memorized and internalized. It takes me a good 10 to 30 seconds to form a sentence in my head, so having a converstation is still frustrating. I miss how relatively easy to learn English grammar.

Next I am chilling for a few days in the quiet fishing Island of Chiloe, then I will continue on north to the capital, Santiago, while in between, attempting to climb a volcano!  Stay tuned :-)

Tarik