the bus jounrey from futaleufu to el chiaten was beutiful with glaciers and huge lake the only problem was a mother and her wee girl were sick the whole way but they were obviouly expecting it as thy had lots of bags at the ready for the sicknesss!
once in chaiten we found a nice sea front hostel with the only probelm the old dragon of the landlady who took an instant dislike to us haha and we annoyed her even more by asking for the hot water to be turned on and having very bad spanish haha!
l chaiten so reminds me of home its right on the water with promenage a wee harbour fishing boats and there is links land with gorse bushes as well, also the temperature is just like summer at home with a cool sea breeze making it very pleasant indeed!
in the afternoon me and abel went for a wonderful walk to pumalin park!
Located in the tenth region in the province of Palena between Hornopirén and Chaitén, the park consists of approximately 300,000 hectares set aside to be converted into a nature sanctuary and subsequently transferred to a Chilean organization, the Fundación Pumalín, to make up the world's largest private park.
The idea for the creation of this model project of conservation was born in 1991 by the iniciative of North American environmentalist and billionaire Douglas Tompkin, a regular visitor to Chile in the 1970's.
anyway we walked up to the waterfall and visited the musuem which was all about how the army took 20 years to build the long road from puerto montt to oh higgens way in the south!
then we followed the river wathing the salmon fisherman and helped a woman with her injured horse which had a huge gash on it leg, then walked along the beach where i felt so at home on the sand with the wind blowing and links gorse butch land nearby!
the main difference between home though is that behind the town are huge jurassic park like jungled mountains and also in the distance is a magnificaint pointy vlocano which we would have liked to have climbed but unfortunaly its just to far away and no public transport! in the evening went to wonderfall indoor food market where i had huge plate of mussels it was yummmy and going back there tonight where gona have the salmon!
so today we are walking 10km to santa barbarba beach and will try out the pacific sea!
actaully its the first time ive seen the pacific on this trip so its real nice contrast to the atlantic and the caribean!
it didnt take us long to hitchike a nice woman picked us up and drove us almost all the way there.....
once we got there it was lovely deserted beach with fine black volcanic sand jungle the volcano and a rio like sugar loaf mountain...
we went to some rocks and drank the remainder of our pisco sour and then feeling raether pekish knocked on the door of a beach house that said bread and eggs for sail and we were greated by the very loud and welcoming elsa and her son who took as into the kitchen and she cooked as up a magnificaint feast of pasta fish potatoes bread and seeemd very happy to have us it was a really higgelty pigelty place with so many anicamls outisde, her son went off to fish and we said we would catch him up laters.....
afterwards we walked along the long long beach and you would not believe it unless you were there but literalyy 20 to 30 wild dolphins came right up to the beaches edge and followed us as we walked along the beach im not sure whether they were really floowing us or putting on a show or maybe there was shoals of fish near to the waters edge whatever it was it was fantastic to witness!
at the end of the beach we found elsas son who was picking sea weed which you can eat he gave us his fishing gear and we tried unsucessfully to catch something, then we wlaked along the rocks for a bit and yet more wildlife i think it was a sea otter running in and out of the wee rocks hunting for crabs! he was completely unbothered by our presence and we spent at least 15 minutes walking over the rocks with him watching him in action!
next the long walk back began which was nice especailly as the 3rd car up a wonderfull we open lory type thing gave us a lift what a ride so much more fun than a bus there doesnt seeem much this hitch hiking thing although the road is very quiet!
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