02mar06
rolled over and pillow was soaking. looked up and a drop of condensation fell in my eye. it was still early but awakenings like that are hard to recover from, so pestered e-j until she stirred and soon we were eating porridge and honey, looking out to the lake and making the most of our blessed hours of sunshine. got the water container working and we washed our clothes and plates, and took another round of film and photos. packed up the car, regretfully wished lago yuelcho goodbye, and got back on the road.
an hour along a car-less, winding road into the mountains we realised we were not heading south but east into argentina, so i u-turned. e-j temporarily suspended navigational responsibility from the passenger, and we were therefore clearly both at fault for the error. my frustration was positively channeled through ‘assertive’ driving which made the return journey time to lago yelcho a personal best. e-j’s indirect penalty was a dosage of car sickness.
about midday we stopped for a coffee in a wooden house by the road. i asked what people do for a living and she explained that other than tourism with its short january to february season, most people raise animals for meat or sell wood. she had 252 hectares and was selling off 50 of them. i couldn’t resist having a look and we jumped in the car for her to mark them out to us. in the 10 minutes she was with us i swung from thinking this was possibly the worst investment opportunity we’d come across during our trip, to this was a clear no brainer with an asking price of £40k and planning permission for a fishing lodge on the river and soon to be tarmac’ed road access, and back to i must be mad and lets stop wasting this lady’s time. e-j shared only my last view. we took her number and dropped her back, no more certain either way.
a quick stop at la junta to refuel and buy some vegetables and milk and chocolate (which was instantly devoured as lunch) and 50km later we arrived in puyuhuapi, a town established in the late 1930s by four german engineers from the sudetenland who came to avoid another european war. they all married chiliean women and founded what was now a rustic and touristy village in a beautiful setting, only accessible by boat or plane until the 1980s. we checked in to the lovely wooden Hotel Ludvig, run by Louisa Ludvig, daughter of Herr Ludvig, one of the original four. a wander round town revealed how strong the germanic influence had survived, with blond and blue eyed children running around the german style houses. we briefly visited the carpet factory founded by Herr Hopperdietzel (more interesting than it sounds www.puyuhuapi.com) and ate a guidebook overrated steak and salad at Rosenbach restaurant. cuisine is not chile’s greatest asset.
on the way back to the hotel we passed some men playing a game similar to boules, but with the jack replaced by a taught string, and the balls replaced with iron pucks which landed solidly in the mud. an onlooker explained to me this windproof game was played every day, and things were hotting up for an imminent tournament. an indian looking guy with a beret, whose supernatural accuracy was equally matched by his consistency, was no hustler – he was the clear the winner today and clearly always would be. others offered weak competition, but one guy with a red sweater recognised his own natural inability and opted for the crowd-pleasing, predictably random shots.
