Days 30 & 31 - Coyhaique, the armpit of Chile.

I have not known cold like this for a long time. When out and about, I wear four layers, plus hat, but the lack of feeling in my fingers makes map work doubly difficult. And it’s no use saying that as a Russian, I should be used to the cold; back in Soviet times, we had central heating 24/7, as well as proper winter clothes. My room at the Hospedaje Maria Ester has no central heating, and I’m learning just how important that is in Patagonia in the autumn. I manage to steal the portable heater for a while in the evening, but when I wake up, I can actually see my breath.

Coyhaique is one of my least favourite places in Chile, and I’m not entirely sure why. The scenery outside the town is pretty spectacular, but the town itself is drab, functional and downright confusing, and the two times I’ve been here, it was cold and wet, and now it’s just cold. Also, I would cheerfully throttle whoever thought it’d be a good idea to have a central plaza in the shape of a pentagon, with ten streets radiating from it. Normally, map work is one of my favourite tasks, but I find myself wandering in circles even with a map.

The town’s one saving grace are the people. The family running my guesthouse is very welcoming and friendly, and Gaby who runs the tourist office in town is absolutely wonderful – I met her a year ago, and she’s just as super-helpful now as she was then. She clearly loves her job, and not only does she answer all my queries about practicalities and gives me restaurant tips, but she goes one step further and emails me the complete list of bus companies, phone numbers, accommodation options and prices and anything else she can think of. A real jewel. I also manage to find lots of info on the little towns south of Coyhaique which I won’t be able to visit due to time constraints this time around, but which I explored thoroughly two years ago.

Lunch at El Reloj – a place that makes Coyhaique bearable. It’s supposed to be quite a fancy restaurant since it’s part of a hotel which houses groups of wealthy North American fly-fishing enthusiasts, but I discover that the prices are actually lower than the über-touristy ‘Café Ricer’ on the plaza – where the service is lacklustre, the most exciting dishes on the menu are perpetually missing, and the soundtrack consists mostly of Olivia Newton-John songs. At El Reloj, not only do you get amusebouches (crackers with sheep’s cheese and pickles, and with cured ham and sweet onion jam), but the salmon ceviche is great and all their fish dishes are equally superb.

Make lots of phone calls. Type up a lot of work. Finish the excellent ‘Travels With My Aunt’ by Graham Greene – my first Greene novel, believe it or not, but certainly not my last! – and exchange it for ‘Black Hawk Down’.

The writing on the wall is certainly topical; “No ENDESA, Aisén sin represas!” Aisén is another name for this part of Chile, and for quite some time there has been talk of damming Patagonia’s mighty rivers in order to power the mining industry up north – which would have a devastating impact on local lives, on eco-tourism, on local sources of fresh water, on the landscape. It remains to be seen whether local protests will succeed against international interests…

I get emails from both Erratic Rock and Zoe. Ever since Zoe’s expressed an interest in widening El Chaltén’s existing recycling scheme, I’ve put her in touch with my Erratic Rock friends, who’ve managed to set up the first recycling scheme in Patagonia and who think that it’d be great if Patagonia on both sides of the border could lead Chile and Argentina in recycling. As it happens, Erratic Rock is also looking for trekking guides in El Chaltén, and it’d be great if Zoe and Leo got more work and Erratic Rock got trekking partners they could depend on! This is one of the best things about my job – the dissemination of positive ideas and sometimes helping to bring the right people together.

I cook for the first time in a month. Get a random craving for all the E-numbers in Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, but can only find the local version. Chileans seem to have an aversion to fresh milk; all I can find it the long-life stuff. My guesthouse lets me cook, but I notice the bizarre extra charges on the wall: kitchen use: CH$2000; use of microwave: CH$500; filling up water bottle from the tap: CH$200. Has the world gone mad?

The darn mini-poodle keeps me awake. It’s pretty friendly (because I fed it pasta) but it’s hard to take a creature seriously if it wears a daft knitted sweater, and its incessant yapping is not conducive to working. In the morning, I find it in bed with the lady owner. I’ve nothing against cats on beds, but feel that there’s something inherently wrong about cuddling up in bed with a little yappy beast. A big dog, maybe, but not a rat.

Speaking of dogs, I can now add ‘menaced by large, unpleasant dogs’ as yet another reason to dislike Coyhaique. I go in search of two hostels which are a bit out of town. I descend down the Piedra del Indio – a really picturesque dirt road that leads to a suspension bridge over the fast-flowing Río Simpson. Lovely autumn colours, forbidding-looking mountains in the distance, warmer weather – in short, a perfect day for good stroll. I find Hostal Kootch easily, along the first bend in the road, but Las Salamandras turns out to be a problem. I know that it’s supposed to be 2km out of town, so I cross the bridge and walk further. At a bend in the road, I spot a large dog lying down. As I walk past it, it ignores me, but then I hear barking from above, and as if given an order, the lazy dog comes at me with a threatening manner, barking furiously. Am really not looking forward having to come back this way, so I rejoice when the dirt road meets a paved road with a ‘Coyhaique’ sign. Little do I know that it means a far longer walk back to town and being menaced by new dogs pretty much every time I walk past a dwelling. They ignore the cars, but are happy to threaten pedestrians.

My friend Subo and I have an ongoing dog v. cat debate; he doesn’t like cats but loves dogs, whereas I love both, but hate certain aspects of dog behaviour. I have never ever been menaced by a kitty cat, whereas with a large dog it’s quite conceivable that should it choose to mangle me, it probably could. I hate how once one of them starts barking, it brings a whole bunch of them running, and they attack you en masse and from behind. Yet if you turn around and stomp in their direction, they flinch and cower – it’s the mixture of malice and cowardice that I can’t stand.

After two hours of zigzagging across the road to avoid dogs and traffic, running purely on adrenalin, I’m exhausted. More ceviche at El Reloj calms me down somewhat.

Back at my guesthouse, I discover that Las Salamandras was nowhere near where I thought it should be, but that I should’ve walked past it on the way back.

The map work is finished. I finalise contra ad arrangements with a Peruvian tour company, meaning that I’ll be going on a nine-day expedition into the Peruvian Amazon on the 23rd, rather than the original date of the 30th, which suits me well, though it means that I won’t be able to dilly-dally in Salta, Argentina, as I would’ve liked to – I’ll have to catch a series of buses straight to San Pedro de Atacama in order to then make it to Arequipa on the 13th.

I haven’t heard from the Inca Trail company that originally agreed to a contra ad with us, so try and track them down. They’re not picking up, but it occurs to me to try calling them later, as they might have extended lunch breaks, just like in Chile. The Inca Trail is not something that you can arrange at short notice, and it’d be extremely disappointing if they’ve let me down. Manage to get through to them in the end and speak to Joaquín, the manager. He hasn’t changed his mind; he’s just been very busy. All is well.

Finally manage to locate the correct phone number for Transaustral buses which run from Futaleufú – my next destination – to the Chilean Lake district via Argentina’s Bariloche. It’s amazing how after two years, none of the guidebooks (including my own) have the correct phone numbers, and the official Futaleufú wed page is not much use as it lists a wrong number. I find the correct number online, on the sister site of a nearby village, Palena. Go figure. The woman confirms that tomorrow’s bus will stop at the exact office where I have to buy my onward ticket. Hurray! Am almost excited about tomorrow’s ten-hour ride.