Hitchhiking, boat trip, new travel mates...

I wonder which is worst; feeling like cattle in a bus (it's my personal problem after getting the taste of hitchhiking, there's nothing wrong with the buses here) or freezing outside in the wind waiting for a lift and having a sore throat the following week. Last weekend I put myself into a challenging situation: hitchhiking a long way from Tolhuin, Argentinian Tierra del Fuego to Puerto Natales, Chile on a Sunday, when traffic is sparse. I got up at 6 am - just to wait for an hour at a petrol station, because there was no traffic. But I thought I should start early because I knew it would be a long day. In Rio Grande there were no trucks leaving - the following day there would have been a hundred. I got some lifts that helped me out of the city, to a very windy spot, where I started to question if I should have spent the day at a hostel in Rio Grande instead of wasting my time on the roadside... But I really wanted to get to Puerto Natales that day. I got a lift to the border and found a young trucker who agreed to help me. There was an error in the computer of the truck and the ride on the gravel road was slow, but at least I was advancing. It started to get dark and I got a bit worried if I'd have to get off in dark and cold when our routes would separate. And maybe change my destination, too. I was so happy on the ferry (between Tierra del Fuego and the mainland you have to take a ferry) when I found 3 guys from Puerto Natales returning from a mountain bike competition. I begged them to take me in their car and arrived at my hostel at 10 pm. What did I learn that day? Never hitchhike again? No. I learned that you should never give up. If you really want to do something and are determined, things will work out.

On Monday night I took Navimag company's ferry called Evangelistas from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. It's about 1400 km i.e. Finland from one end to the other - and only a third of the length of Chile. It's good to be travelling outside the peak season: I managed to bargain the ticket price and got a cabin just for myself. There were only 20-30 people on the ferry that can take 300 passengers. That was enough for always having someone to chat with, especially during the meals. I met e.g. Sam (New Zealand) who had travelled the Pan-American highway with his motorbike, Amelia (Australia) who had visited her sister in Mexico and was going to travel much more, Andrew (USA) who had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia and Paraguay and Felix (Germany) who had been a volunteer at a national park in Chile and stayed with a local family. Talking with the last two made me realise how different it is to stay in one place for a long time instead of constantly moving on, how much better you see the culture and the society. Felix had experienced a lot of talking at work - the action always came later, seen the values: church, family, and the other things only after these first two and witnessed guys taking their engagement/wedding rings off when going out and scoring other girls.

The boat ride took 3 days. Do you think I got bored? No, I didn't. The first day I admired the landscapes with beautiful, steeply rising islands on both sides, was reading a book and listened to a lecture on glaciers. The next day the boat started to rock when the sea was more open and I spent several hours lying on my bed. During the cruise I finally got my diary written. At the bar they showed us some movies. No Chilean ones, but "international" movies, which all happened to be American. The boat was also transporting some cattle. I could see the poor cows, or actually young bulls, packed so tightly in the containers on the car deck that they could hardly move, let alone lie down. Hearing their mooing from my cabin made me feel pity.

After arriving in Puerto Montt, I took a bus to Castro, on the island of Chiloé, with two people I met on the ferry. I've really enjoyed their company; we've had a lot of fun. We - Amelia 44, me 31 and Felix 20 - make a good team and you couldn't tell we have so much age difference. We're staying at the best hostel so far. I really like the architecture: there's a lot of wood, a lot of light, a balcony on the waterfront... It's such a beautiful and peaceful place that today I decided just to stay here, relax and cure my cold.

And the sentence of the weekend is: "I just physically can't buy anything." It means that a traveller has to carry all the new shoes, clothes or souvenirs in her backpack, so one just can't buy much. Amelia managed to put it in such a good - and funny - way.

Photo of the sunrise taken from the boat at the harbour of Puerto Montt (such a beautiful photo, but the city was so ugly that we escaped as soon as we could):

Below a photo of the palafitos (houses on stilts) in Castro, Chiloé. Our hostel is the one with brown and yellow paint. The level of the water depends on the tides.