Vasta poissa olen viimein perillä: Puerto Natales and the ferry to Puerto Montt

Firstly, I wanted to sum up just briefly my thoughts on the Torres trek. It's definitely an amazing National Park with so many highlights to keep the whole trek, everyday interesting. Unfortunately the W and its sights are way too crowded, the NP and its campsites are really on their limits. This will definitely cause massive problems in the near future, the development is very unsustainable. The waste management, number of people on the routes, the attitudes of the park employees and for example the usage of cooking stoves (in too crowded areas, being used by people who do not have the know-how and the stoves falling over etc.) are amongst many troublesome things. The amount of people on the backside is still reasonable and it is a lot more pleasant compared to the front side but I do wonder about the waste management for one. For people interested in doing the trek, I would definitely recommend the backside and from the W: the Torres (Grey of course, but it is an inevitable part of the backside too). This is if one has to choose, otherwise I recommend the whole thing naturally.

Anyhow, since we were way too early in Puerto Natales, we had to come up with some alternative plans. For forever we had tried to organize ourselves on a Navimag boat from Natales to Puerto Montt. This proved not easy but after approximately 5 visits to different travel agencies (which all told us that there's no such boat at all!), ~3 calls to Navimag, a couple of emails and 4 visits to Navimag offices we finally got our tickets! 3 days and 3 nights we would spend on a cargo/passenger boat passing through the Chilean fjords and the coast line. The boat would only go on Tuesday 18th and we came back to Natales on Wednesday 12th so we had some time to kill.

We went to have that terrific massage I gave Chris and myself as an "anniversary" gift..it felt like heaven! Although, it was funny, our muscles never really got sore... I guess the body just got so used to the walking. On another day we decided to pop in a hostel called Erratic rock, since we heard there were some climbers there. We found a big group outside the place with ropes and helmets and didn't really have the time to much when they already commanded: "Go, get your climbing shoes, we'll pick you up from your hostel!". And so we did, and soon we hopped into the hippiest van of all times. Also, so did another 13 people and in the end we were 15. You can imagine, the van was pretty packed. A quick stop and a jump into the cold water of Laguna Sofia before we arrived to beautiful climbing spot on a hill with quite the views over the valleys and all the way to snowy mountains.

There were some sport routes and a small but tricky bouldering traverse in a cave but since we didn't have any gear or a crashpad, it was all a bit difficult. We did toprope a nice 6c (couldn't quite finish it though) and did some bouldering. A condor was flying right next to us beside the hill and we got to admire the massive bird for quite a while. It all felt so nice, the climbing and bouldering but exhausting too. It's a shame we can't really climb as much as we'd love to and also borrowing other people's gear is somewhat annoying plus you don't really have a say on what to climb and how much to climb. Well, climbing happens when we get back home and then on specific climbing trips, that's just how it goes. It was still superb and we were so happy that these people would take us with them!

Puerto Natales

Packed van on the way to do some climbing

Laguna Sofia

Getting ready

Struggling

But getting there

Chris too!

Quite nice setting for some bouldering

Going back

We also had some lazy days in Natales, just chilling in our excellent hostel (W Circuit hostel) with nice rooms, reasonable prices, superb breakfast and kitchen plus very friendly staff! One day we walked some 5 km to a 5-star hotel called the Singular. A former factory, now turned into a hotel and a museum withheld the original machinery and buildings etc. and it was open for visitors for a bit too pricey of an entrance fee. We did pay it though and it was a good waste of time, since time was what we had.

On our last day we rented bikes and rode 25 km to visit the Milodon caves, some caves where they had found some remains of a prehistorical creature called Milodon (looks like a bear sized sloth...?). In addition to this weird thing, the residents of the caves included e.g. Saber-toothed Tigers and other mystical creatures. This had all turned into a quite a tourist site but it wasn't really very interesting..we did admire the effort of the tourism board anyway! And the exercise from all the cycling felt nice, eventhough the 25 km back to Natales were painful: my butt and back weren't agreeing with the mountainbike. At the W Circuit we had a nice last evening with some Chilenoes, Americans, Germans and Israelis. We were happy though to finally leave Natales and hop into the ferry.

Evening entertainment; a super singer-songwriter from Spain whose name I do not know

A five star bar at the Singular

Walk back from the hotel

The cutest Kimba at the W Circuit

Evening walk at Natales

Milodon cave

Milodon was here

The ferry only left one hour late, which we thought was pretty lucky since there had been some problems with the cargo in the morning. The boat was full of German speakers and some French, Americans and Chilenos. This ferry, Eden, was new for Navimag but old in all the other ways. Rusty and simple, it reminded some Eckero Tallinn boat but a lot more simpler with only one dining hall, one television room and a small kiosco/bar. Entertainment was limited to two wildlife documentaries and one night of bingo.

The food was excellent though, or at least it was plenty when not that rico. During the meals we would always meet new people which was great! There were different types of cabins, cheapest were 3 person cabins with no window and that was what we had bougth. But when we entered our cabin, we were happy to see it had a window to the back of the ferry! Perfect, we thought. Soon enough the staff at the reception figured out that there'd been a mistake in our booking and we had been given a wrong cabin. But since the mistake wasn't ours, we were given a first class two person cabin with a private bathroom and a window to the front instead! WOW! (To be honest, this cabin was crappier than any of the Eckero ones, but we truly didn't care: view to the front and a private bathroom!)

For 3 days and 3 nights we rode through really narrow canals (where apparently the former boats had, if no sunk, then at least taken some proper damage) and beautiful, wild, rugged fjords! Sadly the first days were quite rainy and the winds were rough but gladly we had good gear so standing out on the deck was no problem. Also, the wind was fun to play with: standing on the deck against the wind was quite the skydiving simulator. The third day was amazingly sunny and it got so hot on the deck that people would just lie and bathe in the sun!

We saw quite a bit of marine wildlife which made me extremely happy! First, some dolphins and later many many whales: blue whales, told our guide! Most weren't very close but the huffin' and puffin' was visible even from afar and closer we could see some tails before the whales would do a deep dive. That sunny last day we spend on the deck, whalespotting and enjoying the heat. In the evening we played cards with nice young climber boys from Germany and Holland before the evening's enchanting game of bingo with the most unworthy prices. All and all the atmosphere on the boat was excellent!

But after 3 days we were happy to be in Puerto Montt, to get some excersice and see new places and faces. We arrived around noon and by 14.00 we had figured our way to a small town of Puerto Varas, only half an hour away from Montt. But of this I will tell you later!