Day 3 –
Another Travel Day
February 2, 2008
Puerto Montt to Balmaceda to a small farm near the Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael
Submitted by Pat
I’m up by 7:00 am and we meet at 7:30 am outside the hotel’s top floor restaurant for a buffet breakfast. Nothing looks or tastes “normal”. Still I chow down on rolls and muffins and fruit and cereal and coffee. Although I have to say that what I think is a tube of cocoa turns out to be a tube of instant Nestles coffee that I pour into my first cup. Blech. I don’t look closely obviously. Back to our rooms to finish packing, then we haul our luggage to the lobby to wait for the cab. We get to the airport in plenty of time to make our 10:40 am flight to Balmaceda. When we arrive, we struggle to squeeze our way through the baggage claim area into the terminal and crowds of travelers. We finally find a small restaurant and go upstairs for something to eat. We are starving. There we meet three of our fellow Earth River Lakes trip folks: Curtis and Carol from Maryland and Mary Anne, an OB-GYN from Philadelphia. We cram chairs around a table meant for two and I help everyone order. Here’s where my Spanish comes in handy although I have no idea the difference between a Barros Jarpa and a Barros Luco. The waitress is patient while I sort out our order.
After our food comes, a gentleman wearing shorts and hiking boots and a broad white-toothed smile approaches our table. I had seen him in the DVD that Earth River sent with their promotional materials — he is Roberto Currie, the Chilean partner of the Earth River founder Eric Hertz. We introduce ourselves, and once we have finished eating, join him at his table where he is sitting with several other members of the trip and one of the four other guides that are joining us. There we meet another couple, Don and Ozella from Denver and their friend Karen also from Denver. The three of them are fresh 
off the Futaleufu rafting trip that we are going on after the Lakes trip. We meet Greg, one of Earth River’s senior guides who has not been on the Lakes trip before and is going to be the lead guide for a trip scheduled a couple of weeks after ours. We also meet Kate, an application security analyst from Berkeley and Frank, a drummer from LA who is fresh off a trek to Antarctica. Rounding out the group are two brothers from New York City.
When everyone has finally arrived, we cram our luggage into a van seating 15 and cram our bodies in for what the itinerary on the web said is a 3-hour bus ride but it takes five hours. We drive on asphalt for about 45 minutes before the road turns to dirt, and we endure rough corduroy for the rest of the journey. The scenery however is absolutely incredible. Tall craggy snow covered peaks, beautifully preserved national park land where we experience a sighting of a rare and endangered species of deer called Huemul. We drive by the third largest lake in the world — Lago General Carrera. Glacier fed, its waters are a silty blue green. We stop about four hours into the drive at a small store in a village near the lake where we eat, drink, pee and stretch. Back in the bus and an hour later we turn off onto a narrow, rutted road leading to the farm that is feeding us and allowing us to camp in their field.
We cross one bridge that is pretty sketchy and come to the next one. Roberto and the driver get out to look and decide it isn’t safe so we all get out and walk the last fifteen minutes to the house. Our luggage will be transported in the Earth River truck in short order. First order of business is to set up our tents. Since I am a single person and there are four single women I pick Kate, the IT person from Berkeley, as my roomie. Roberto shows us how to set up the tents and then let us at it. That first set up is pretty funny – which pole goes in first, is it the medium short one or the short short one that goes in the fly, and which end is the front again? We all manage to get our tents set up and haul what we need for the night out to the pasture where we have set up the tents. Dinner is almost ready.
The farmhouse that hosts us opens to a room where the cooking is done on a wood stove set in the middle of the room. They have running water but cold only. They have a bathroom with a toilet too and we all make use of it since it will be the last time for a while. The meal is served in a larger room next to the kitchen where there are two tables and just about every usable chair and stool in the house set around it. Our meal is a traditional Chilean dish called curanto — a sort of Chilean version of our New England boiled dinner, consisting of chicken, chorizo, pork, beef, potatoes, corn on the sob, and carrots cooked in a broth. We also have cucumber salads, pico de gallo, and homemade bread. There is a huge bottle of Chilean red wine and a smaller bottle of white wine made by the farmer who is hosting us. I toast with my water. Dessert is a huge bowl of peaches with some kind of oatmeal mixed in. I’m too full to try it.
I am pretty much done by the time dinner is over. I brush my teeth and head for my tent and into my sleeping bag. I’m sure I slept but it feels like I am awake all night.