Another Ferry Tale, from Hornopirén

Many times I’ve driven Chile’s Carretera Austral, but it’s been some time since I began at its official starting point in the city of Puerto Montt. On Tuesday, though, I chose to take the shortest leg of roughly 100 kilometers to the port of Hornopirén, where I would catch the Wednesday ferry to Caleta Gonzalo—or so I thought, as I’ll explain below.

The port of Hornopirén

Leaving Puerto Montt, it’s a smoothly paved two-lane road until Caleta La Arena, where the steep headlands still necessitate a ferry crossing to Caleta Puelche, where the road continues to Hornopirén. At the moment, though, this latter segment is one big construction project, with slow single-lane traffic, until within about 20 km of the town.

Once in town, I found a room at a funky hotel which, however, was reasonably comfortable and had better WiFi than I’d had in purportedly posh Puerto Varas the previous couple days. I’d purchased my Caleta Gonzalo ferry tickets online, but had to report to the local Somarco office to get them printed out.

There’s not a lot to do in Hornopirén other than wait for the ferry, but I found the pleasantly surprising Cafetería Rincón Piedra Lobo down the block for an ave palta (chicken breast and avocado sandwich) on homemade bread, plus a calafate sour for a nightcap. Later at night, though, it started pouring rain and, the next morning, I learned our departure was tentatively moved from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Even if that change had happened, it would’ve been inconvenient because the Ruta Bimodal itinerary I’d booked is a ferry shuttle, with two separate crossings linked by ten-km gravel road. This would have meant a very late arrival at my planned destination of Chaitén where, I learned, the storm had left the town without electricity. There were also rumors of trees fallen onto the gravel road from Caleta Gonzalo through Parque Nacional Pumalín Douglas Tompkins.

Hospitable Hotel Hornopirén is about as good as basic gets.

That meant another night in Hornopirén, where I moved to the gracious (and slightly cheaper) Hotel Hornopirén, where my room was smaller but far cozier. During the night, though, heavy rains still pounded the sheet metal roof (typical of this area), and I worried there might be another postponement.

Boarding the Capitán Andrade at Hornopirén

At first light, the clouds still hung low over the mountains, but the movement of ships in the harbor showed that the navy had lifted the port closure. And, as it happened, the Capitán Andrade—a spacious ferry with comfortable seating for passengers and small cafeteria with empanadas, sandwiches and kuchen—sailed on time up the lengthy Fiordo Comau. From the ramp at the hamlet of Leptepu, all the vehicles (and bus passengers) rode the 10 kilometers to Fiordo Largo, where we boarded the Andrade’s twin ferry Hornopirén for a shuttle to Caleta Gonzalo.

A view along the Fiordo Comau

I wasn’t sure what to expect here, especially since I’d received a friend’s alarming Twitter message about floods, the park’s evacuation, and conditions in Chaitén, but those turned out to be mistaken. But for a few potholes, the road was fine and, when I got to Chaitén, all was back to normal (though a crew was restoring some power lines). After a brief stop to purchase a ferry ticket to Chiloé on the 19th, I was on my way to La Junta’s Hotel Espacio y Tiempo for a restful evening.

My modest quarters at Hotel Espacio y Tiempo

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What's Brewing Among the Mapuche?

Last month, I was driving north on Chile’s Carretera Austral and stopped in the tiny town of La Junta to visit the Hotel Espacio y Tiempo (pictured above) – the best place to stay and dine in a long stretch of graveled highway that’s presently being paved. Screened from the highway by a corridor of mature conifers and other evergreens, it manages to offer the ambience of an isolated mountain lodge.

The hotel’s Chilean-Colombian owners, Alan Vásquez and Connie Palacios, had something different to show me this time. Their indigenous Mapuche chef, Donald Manquenahuel (pictured above), had recently resigned to follow his passion by opening a brewery – and, rather than pleading for him to stay, they built a new structure (pictured below) where he could install the equipment, brew and bottle his Cerveza Kawiñ (the name derives from a Mapudungun word meaning an “agreeable encounter with nature,” and even sell it to passersby here.

Manquenahuel stresses the purity of Patagonian water that goes into the beer, aims for sustainability in a local market (you won’t find this beer in Santiago, at least yet and probably not any time soon), and recycles everything (nothing is canned, and 80 percent of the bottles are actually reused). Kawiñ comes in two varieties, a light ale and a dark porter; the shop, which includes other local products such jams and crafts, keeps long hours in summer.

But how’s the beer? Well, I may not be the best judge of that, since I generally prefer wine and my annual beer consumption is (considerably) less than a six-pack. That said, though I consider beer refreshing in small amounts on a hot day, I was able to finish my bottle of ale and later, in Santiago, suggested it to the owner of a parrilla (grill restaurant, pictured below) who specializes in meats from the region. Maybe, in the future, you’ll be able to chug a Kawiñ in Chile’s capital after all.

Chile Digest: Heat Wave, Health Care, the Anti-Quake & the Peso

Today’s entry deals with various topics related either directly or peripherally with Chile’s Carretera Austral, the reach of the country’s health care system, an earthquake that briefly made headlines, and the ongoing relationship between Chile and California.

A Vote for Rural Health Care
In northern Chilean Patagonia, the old year ended and the new one began with a heat wave in which temperatures in normally mild Futaleufú soared into the upper 80s or low 90s Fahrenheit (around 30 to 35 degrees Celsius). After a sweaty but rewarding New Year’s Day hike on the outskirts of La Junta (which yielded the above photo of the Cordón Barros Arana), and a Sunday excursion on the new road to Raúl Marín Balmaceda, I arrived yesterday afternoon in the hamlet of Puerto Puyuhuapi, settled in the mid-1930s by Sudeten Germans. Unfortunately, my exertions had contributed to a case of sniffles that developed into a full-blown cold.

Among my meds, I had no antihistamines to attack the symptoms in a town that has no pharmacy. Fortunately, almost every Chilean village of any size has a posta rural, a clinic that attends to the needs of locals who can’t get to a doctor. On request, they provided me a small packet of chlorphenamine tablets that has kept things under control. The price for this service: free of charge.

The Anti-Quake v. the Peso
On Sunday night at 8:20 p.m., Chile again headlines for a significant earthquake fairly close to the epicenter of February’s massive quake. Originally reported as a 7.1 on the Richter scale, the new quake had its epicenter in the Pacific Ocean northwest of the city of Temuco; by some accounts it’s since been downgraded to a 6.9, and there are no reports of deaths or even serious property damage, and there has been no tsunami. Nevertheless, it apparently caused some people to take shelter on high ground, and others abandoned their vacations in Pucón, the resort city nearest the epicenter, clogging the tollbooths on the highway to Santiago.

Fortunately, despite the initial reports, there’s simply not much of a story here - in fact, it only briefly appeared on the home page of the Santiago daily El Mercurio before being crowded out by a story about the government’s readiness to intervene in the exchange rate to depress the soaring Chilean peso. For the tourism industry, which has much of its income in dollars and euros but has to pay its costs in pesos, this is a positive development. It would also attract more visitors by making travel here cheaper. This morning the dollar has gained nearly 20 pesos, from 465 yesterday to 484 at this hour.

Hasta la Vista, Baby, ¡de Nuevo!
As a Californian, I did not vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, and I am not sorry to see him leave office even if he may not have been the unmitigated disaster that most of fellow Golden State citizens now consider him (when Argentines and Chileans asked me my opinion of Arnold, I would tell them that “At least he speaks better English than George W. Bush”). I am particularly disappointed, though in his failure to live up to one promise - in mid-2008, when then Chilean president Michelle Bachelet (who also speaks better English than Bush) visited California, Schwarzenegger pledged to visit Chile and has not yet done so. Perhaps, with free time after leaving the governorship, he will do so now.