When the little Buses Becker bus pulls into the Coyhaique terminal, I’m at first dismayed to find that I’m the only passenger on board. It’s gonna be a long an eleven-hour drive to Futaleufú…But it actually works out for the best: Don Luís, the driver, invites me to ride shotgun and turns out to be a treasure trove of local information.
Buses Becker have been driving up and down the Carretera Austral for thirty years, and he himself had made about five thousand journeys, so he knows it pretty damn well. He informs me that there are weekly services to Chaitén, the town which was rendered practically uninhabitable two years ago when the nearby volcano erupted. Yes, there are people living there – about a hundred and fifty of them – because part of Chaitén was completely untouched. There are even boats directly to and from Puerto Montt (though none to the nearby Caleta Gonzalo – the gateway to Parque Pumalín) and there’s even a guesthouse and some places to eat. Good to know.
I explain my work to him, and he proceeds to educate me about the Southern Highway and its surroundings – the fauna and flora, the people, the places.
“Is it difficult to drive here?” I ask, since it’s often been described as a real driver’s challenge. “Not for me.” He also dispels the myth that you need a 4WD: “A high clearance vehicle is enough, but you have to drive slowly and carefully.” A lot of the foreigners are just not used to pitted gravel roads covered with fist-sized rocks; they go too fast and crash.
The first part out of Coyhaique is fine. It’s green, misty, and rainy. There are mountains covered in dripping vegetation on either side of the road, and we pass a waterfall known as ‘The Bride’s Veil’, just like every other waterfall in Chile. We pick up a middle-aged lady in tiny Mañihuales and stop for empanaditas – which turns out to be pretty much our only source of nutrition for the day.
The road deteriorates and becomes unpaved and bumpy, but it’s wide and there’s no traffic, so I reckon I’d happily take my chances driving here than in a busy city. Then just before we come to a turnoff to Puerto Cisnes – a village whose inhabitants work in a salmonería (salmon farm) – the road becomes a smooth ribbon of tarmac for miles.
The scenery is stupendous – trees partially disappearing into the mist, leaves changing colour everywhere, the road criss-crossing bridges over various rivers, craggy cliffs towering above us with ribbons of waterfalls cascading down…Then we hit the worst stretch of the road, at times going 15km/hour, Don Luis steering carefully, the bus bouncing over massive potholes and lumps of rock. “Landslides are common here.” The dream is to pave the entire length of the road, but it’s taking a while.
We pass signs indicating that we’re passing through Parque Nacional Queulat; there’s supposed to be a beautiful hanging glacier here but there’s no public transport into the park, so the best you can do is hop off a bus and hope that another one will come along. Which doesn’t happen with great frequency.
Don Luís points out a salmonería near the town of Puyuhuapi; it turns out that different salmon farms deal with salmon at different stages of growth; and this one is Stage 2, when the fish are still small. One stretch of road towards Puyuhuapi is the worst yet – narrow, rutted, steep, rock-strewn. We’re crowded from both sides by growths of giant nalca - wild cousin of rhubarb. I can’t look at it without remembering the time when I was ten years old and I ate my way through the rhubarb patch in the back of our garden. I couldn’t taste salt for days afterwards.
I stayed in Puyuhuapi two years ago, having met my friends Christina and Simon earlier on, just past Villa O’Higgins at the southern end, after which, our travels along the Southern Highway kept overlapping. They made it to Puyuhuapi first and helped me to sort out my room; in the summer, the town was a bustling hub of activity. Nothing is open now, and there’s nowhere to buy food. Not that I’m in any immediate danger of starvation.
“Puyuhuapi is the oldest town on the highway; it was founded in 1939 (by some Germans); the other settlements, like La Junta and Santa Lucia, are all Pinochet-era towns. La Junta (so called because it’s at the confluence of two rivers) is not as dire as I remembered – it’s actually quite large and cheerful-looking. We pick up more people, more packages. “You’re a postal service,” I tell Don Luis. “Yes, and also a taxi, a doctor, and many other things.” He clearly provides an essential service, and not just by way of transporting people. He knows everyone, brings news from loved ones along the highway, gives people lifts, shuttles packages door-to-door and dispenses medication.
“BusesBeckerBusesBeckerBusesBecker!” goes the communication system. “Adelante!” he answers. The woman on the other end clearly can’t hear, because she keeps summoning him, he keeps responding and then nothing happens. Me and the other passengers begin to giggle. We stop by some random farm along the road and he toots the horn. A little boy runs up the hill to the bus. Don Luís hands over some medication and says: “And tell your grandmother to turn up the volume; I keep answering but she can’t hear me.”
Once or twice, we get stuck behind a bunch of cows, herded off the road by ‘gauchos’. “That’s what they call them in Argentina,” Don Luís corrects me. “Here they are called ‘pobladores’ or ‘camperos’”. “Aren’t they also called ‘huasos’?” “That’s right – but that’s in Central Chile. Same work, different name.”
Past La Junta, the weather and the road improve. We speed along a wide gravel road through the fading light. Don Luis points out what looks like clouds hanging over the water – it’s steam from the thermal pools. By the time we pass the little settlement of Santa Lucia, the sun is sinking behind the mountains. There’s snow on the mountaintops and it’s getting seriously cold. As we pass by isolated houses from Puerto Ramírez on the last stretch towards Futa, dogs jump up and chase us, barking. “Look at their eyes,” Don Luís tells me. “Dogs’ eyes appear blue in the headlights; if you see reddish eyes, it’s a deer or a fox.”
The stars are incredible. Don Luís asks me if I know the Southern Cross. I do. One of my favourite places as a kid was the Moscow planetarium, and ever since, I dreamed of seeing the Southern Cross. I first saw it with my friend Mike in San Martín de Los Andes, Argentina, five years ago. It was a momentous occasion.
I ask Don Luís what he thinks of the new president. He’s in favour, but won’t expand greatly. We laugh about the current situation in the UK – an absence of a leader following the current election. I tell him that I’m concerned about the pound dropping in value, but that it’s time for a change, that thirteen years of Labour is enough. He tells me that having the centre-left in power for 21 years is more than enough. I wonder how he felt about Pinochet, but don’t ask; it’s a touchy subject, and he may have been in favour of the dictator because Pinochet really opened up this part of Chile.
Futaleufú is almost unrecognisable in the thick fog. The last time I was here, I got to know the town pretty well, even if I didn’t get a chance to go white-water rafting on the world class river of the same name. I get my ticket to the Lake District from the post office which doubles as one of the bus stations. Don Luís gives me a lift to my guesthouse, Carahue. He’s staying there also. It’s a creaky house with crooked floors, run by a nice family; it’s certainly no-frills, but at CH$5000, I’m not complaining.
I go forage for food and to do map work in the fog. I feel like I’m in the horror game, ‘Silent Hill’. Strange shadows move through the fog. It’s absolutely silent. Any minute, I expect my radio to start crackling and for monsters to come at me from the mist. Everything is closed – all the restaurants, most shops. I chance upon a Telefonica Sur outlet which doubles as an internet café and has a burger shack attached. My meal of the day is a ‘Chilean’ hamburger, meaning it’s smeared in avocado.
Early the following morning, I’m on a Transaustral bus back to the Lake District – another day-long bus ride. The original plan was to reach Pucón by late afternoon, grab the rest of my gear, catch the night bus to Santiago and then the morning bus to San Pedro de Atacama from there. Having been informed that we wouldn’t be getting into Osorno before 6.30pm, I have to rethink my plans. I’ll play it by ear; maybe it’ll still be possible to catch a bus to Pucón via Villarica, or maybe I could stay in Puerto Varas for one night, or…
We climb towards the border crossing to Esquel, Argentina; currently, the only way to get to Futa is via Argentina, and Chilean buses are not allowed to drop passengers off in Argentina. I’m thinking that there’s nothing they can do if you just have hand luggage and happen to walk off the bus and not return during one of the pit stops, but no. At the border crossing, the bus driver collects everyone’s travel documents, including my passport, and tells me that I’ll get it back at the next Chilean border crossing. My documents are held hostage.
The weather and the landscape is just super – mist hanging over sunlit water, low clouds nestling along distant mountains, frost gleaming on the grass, cows grazing in yellow fields, stretches of pampas, covered with ‘mother-in-law’s bed’ – bushes which look soft and squishy from a distance, but which are actually covered in thorns, roadside shrines to victims of motor accidents, lined with myriads of plastic bottles. I’ve noticed that in Chile as well, but haven’t discovered the significance of using recyclable materials to commemorate someone’s untimely demise.
Whenever I’m in Argentina, the weather’s always good, and today’s no exception. We speed along the massive blue expanse of Lake Nahuel Huapi; I haven’t been here for five years, but when Mike and I were here last, we went swimming in the lake, freezing even at the height of summer.
By the time we make it to Pajaritos, the border crossing into Chile, it’s clear that I’m not getting to Pucón. My plans have gone to pot along with my nutrition: all I’ve had today was a bologna sandwich and instant coffee with about seven sugars, kindly provided by Transaustral, and some smoked trout I picked up at the supermarket along the way.
In Osorno, I make the decision to spend the night in Valdivia, a but closer to Pucón, only to discover that most buses are sold out. I completely forgot that it’s Mother’s Day, and everyone’s coming home. Get the last ticket on the last bus; people are standing in the aisle. Nab the last room in Hostal Totem. It’s amazing how grateful one becomes for things like central heating and hot showers. I could just weep with joy.
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