About 4 kms from Villa Cerro Castillo, we stopped briefly at Alero de las Manos Rupestres - caves dwellings with red handprints painted along the cliff face. The caves belonged to the Tehuelches people and their handprints are similar to handprints found throughout the world. No one knows quite what they mean, but they are interesting to see and since we couldn't stop at Cave of the Hands in Argentina (a cave with 1000's of handprints), this was the next best thing.
Once back on the road, we got our monies worth out of the 4-wheel drive as the pavement ended and a very dusty, rocky, and narrow road twisted its way through a forest, along the coastline of a blue-green lake, and passed hermit occupied houses. We knew ahead of time that the road was supposed to be crappy, but it turned out to be quite beautiful as well, and, for the most part, the drivers coming from the other direction stayed on their side of the small road. I only hit one issue driving and that was for the last hour, I was stuck behind a collectivo van that kicked up so much dust I couldn't see unless I was driving 1/2 km behind him. It kind of sucked, but he drove like a maniac, so I didn't want to pass him.
We reached Puerto Rio Tranquilo (PRT) at about 4 pm. Not bad considering our late start in the morning trying to figure out how to get the rental car and then grab money since this was our first real day in Chile. We came to this 4 square block town with about three restaurants and a ton of cabin/hostels because they offer boat rides to Carpillas de Marmol -or Marble Caves. If you google "Marble Caves and Chile", beautiful pictures of blue/purple swirling cave walls hovering over a green sea will pop up. These images influenced our decision to rent a car and drive 6 hours one way on a shitty ass road to visit them. We had also heard that the caves were best viewed at sunrise, so we had pre-booked a 2 bedroom cabin with its own kitchen for the night, months earlier. It worked out well because Jon and Makarena ended up needing somewhere to stay and we had the room.
The town is also a jumping off place for glacier hiking where you actually get to crawl inside the ice. If we had know ahead of time, we would have changed our plans to go on another glacier, but we had only the next morning to see the caves and then drive to the airport, 5 hours away. Jon and Makarena didn't have a time constraint and book themselves a glacier tour. They said they'd have fun for us.
It turned out to be Jon's birthday, so we wandered PRT looking for a cake in all the bakeries. He was obvious to our numerous stops in and out of bread shops. I think he thought we were looking for the perfect bread. Eventually we found one store that sold a fruit tart. Better than nothing, plus it ended up tasting rather delicious. We had local beer in a small cafe and tried the Chilean version of nachos - french fries topped with cheese, onions, meat or vegetables. It was amazing, greasy and heart clogging, but finger-licking good.
Our boat to the caves was at 7am the following morning, so at 6:15am, Jon cooked us all eggs and veggies. He also let me use up the last of his instant coffee, so I guess it was a good thing we let him stay in the cabin. Once we all packed up, we headed the 3 blocks to the beach. During the 20 minute boat ride to the caves, I came to realize that the drivers just open the throttle and turn the wheel back and forth while racing headlong into waves. We hit 3 foot swells going about 30mph (or it felt that way). Our boat was luckily loaded up with 10 people, which made me feel safer, maybe the weight would kept it from capsizing. But we made it to the calm turquoise waters of the marble caves.
Most of the caves are attached to the cliffs surrounding the lake, but "the Cathedral" and another cave were independent of land and rose out of the water to stand 100+ feet high. Our driver took the boat inside two of the caves, giving us an up close view of the swirling walls. The pictures online look blue and purple, but in person, the cave walls are yellow, white, and some have a slight green tint to them. Robby and I were a little disappointed that we weren't seeing what Google toted, but our cameras ended up capturing some blues and purples. Maybe a little Photoshop work and we'll have the google pictures.
We left Jon and Makarena in PRT and headed to the Balmaceda Airport. We tried to find more hitchhikers to help out by bringing them most of the way to Coyhaique, but no one was around, so we had a nice drive with just the two of us. Balmaceda is a shit-hole town of 1 scary restaurant, 2 mini-marts, and the airport. Good thing we only needed to hop on a plane and not actually stay there. 3 hours later we touched down in Puerto Montt. A representative of Say Hueque, our tour company, picked us up and drove us 30 minutes to our airbnb in Puerto Varas.
The airbnb turned out to be a 2-bedroom upstairs apartment with full kitchen, living room, and dining room. All ours, so of course within 10 minutes our backpacking bags exploded all over the living room and we had wet laundry hanging from the doors and over the backs of chairs; we really know how to make ourselves at home. Sergio, the proprietor, lived downstairs and also operated a small Knicks-knack shop out of the front. We used Google translate to talk, while he told us a little about the town and how we were lucky because it had been raining the previous days and was sunny now.
No comments:
Post a Comment