On the morning we left Esquel there was yet another accident
in town where at least one of the cars looked totalled like it was in a highway
accident. Esquel more than other towns
we have been to in either Argentina or Chile seemed to have a dearth of stop
signs, yield signs or traffic lights.
Generally everyone yields to the first one in the intersection and in
some cases they did not slow down much to sort it out hence the accidents. I was thankful to see that in one case the
totalled car was one I had seen and heard around town that was particularly
noisy. YES! They should make video games
for adults where you get to blow up loud cars and motor bikes in addition to
all other sorts of common rude behaviour.
The cars in Argentina are mostly European makes like Fiat,
Renault and Volkswagen. There are also
Fords but they must be a made in Europe.
Many of the models you see are either very old or they had longer
production runs of them than they did in the US. There are models of Renault
that look like the ones seen in the US in the seventies but have all been laid
to rest many years ago there. One car you see a lot of in Argentina is a Ford
Falcon that looks very much like the ones made in the US in the sixties. Those did not sell well in the US only
because gas was practically free and why not have a living room couch on wheels
that had a V8?
There was good pavement for the thirty kilometres out to
Trevelin on the way to Futaleufu.
Trevelin is fairly small but in a beautiful farming valley settled many
years ago by Welch immigrants. It was a
bit odd seeing all these pretty white girls around town that lived there and
spoke Spanish. At one time they grew wheat
in the valley that won international competitions. They no longer grow wheat
because the Argentinian government in the late forties decided that no wheat
would be grown south of some town and that the people of Trevelin should breed
cattle. Good old boy government at its
best I imagine. You would be naïve to
think that sort of thing does not happen in the US.
The pavement turns to relatively bad unsorted river cobble
gravel after Trevelin on the way to Futa but we had been warned by many people
so were mentally prepared. We probably
could have ridden to Futa in a day but Laurie was still recovering from a
stomach bug so we pulled out at a refugio type campground on a river with hot
showers in a central communal building.
There was a German family there with two boys ages 8 and 10 who were
taking a year off to travel in the area on horseback. When we pulled up the boys were out in a
field playing polo with mallets and a ball they had made from scrounged
materials. The family had six horses to travel around with. They were talking
about places that they had ridden to that were several hundred kilometres away.
Mom and dad were a doctor and a nurse but we
are not sure which was which. They home schooled the boys. The boys had long
blond hair and we thought they were chicas at first.
We pushed on to Futa the next day in the rain that we hoped
would have stopped by mid-day but didn’t .
At the border crossing on the Chilean side they examined our food bag
for the first time at a border crossing. They also were searching many of the
other vehicles, also a first. We never did hear why. This same border crossing
would not let the German family through even though their horses had all their
shots. In case you are imagining stereotypical
corrupt border guards they were all pretty friendly and nonchalant – just doing
their job. From the border the ten k to
Futa there is good pavement which oddly ends there.
Futaleufu is a big whitewater and fishing
destination. A big whitewater festival
was just finishing up when we pulled into town.
Futa is to kayaking as say the north shore of Oahu is to surfing. It was unusually rainy and the river was up
higher than it usually runs so much so that they were cancelling trips. It came
down a bit and Laurie and I rafted one of the big but runnable sections. Still
the guides had two safety catamarans in addition to a safety kayaker for only
one paddle raft with eight people in it. That should give people with white
water experience some idea of the risk as that sort of back up would be pretty
much unheard of in the US. We paddled
around some of the features that are commonly run and they were huge. I was hoping to kayak the same stretch today
but the problem is the river is difficult enough that they will not just take
anyone down in a kayak so you have to show them what you can do on less big
water. Even then it is not cost effective for them to take just one person out
as they still want to have the catarafts for safety. This is not something you
would do kayaking typically even with people you didn’t know but these guys
reputation are on the line. The guide
who owns the company we are working with, Chris Spelious, has a reputation as big as the river in
addition to being about six foot five.
He had just gotten back from a private trip with a very wealthy American
who chartered a plane just for him at a cost of twelve thousand dollars to have
Chris meet him in Argentina. This was for a sea kayak trip on a remote river
trip in the pampas.
On the raft trip there was a couple from New York, a couple
from Switzerland (also bike touring) one Israeli guy and another red haired American
guy with a doughy look originally from Montana. He was traveling around central
and south America. One of young big
armed safety raft guys with long hair and a beard was somehow also finishing up
a degree in Math and Economics in Walla Walla.
The other two very cheerful safety guys were from Ireland. There was a
fair amount of talk about the trip the day before where a couple of Russian
guys insisted on being in the front of the raft and then put their paddles down
and pulled out their cameras right before heading into one of the bigger
rapids. Devon the long haired guide at the oars apologized for “losing it” with
them.
It was curious to see the rafters many of whom had little or
no white water experience get upset about not running every rapid in the teeth.
They were really focused on the numbers.
“Was that a class five?” “Can I
write my mother and tell her I did a class five?” The guide kept trying to explain to them that
if they flipped it would be very difficult to gather them all up with the water
so high and fast but it did not seem to matter to these tourists as they were
intent on marking off their big South American adventure checklist or they
wanted their money back. It was no
surprize that some of them were headed off to Tourist del Payme and El Chargem
as soon as possible to check those off their list.
Last night we ran short of cash. The place where we are
staying in addition to the one and only bank do not take Visa. They only take
MasterCard which up until now we have not needed. Think you can get by without
a lot of cash and just a credit card, well not unless you stay at the more high
end hotels and eat at the finer restaurants and in the less touristy areas
those don’t exist. Back to the story…… The whitewater service called one of the
hotels to have them act as an ATM. So off
I went to see about the money and maybe renting
a room from them. Even though I needed to tell Laurie about the deal first, the guy insisted on handing me the
cash because “I needed it” and that I didn’t have to show him the visa card
until tomorrow. The is the first time I
have ever had a total stranger hand me a hundred and fifty dollars cash as a
loan without any collateral.
Most of the tourists
used to come here from Chaiten but they had the volcano eruption there that
destroyed a lot of the town so now much of the business comes in from
Argentina. The problem is that it is very difficult to take rental cars across
the border and Futa is only ten k over the border. The money situation here is also
a bit jumbled up with the Argentinian currency needing to be exchanged. Many places will take both. I joked about stealing a chicken to get by and
was told the penalty for that was five years in prison. In Argentina the tax
man mentioned a couple of times that there was no penalty for not paying your
taxes. He knew as Americans we would be incredulous
to hear that. Chris Spelious said he thought about opening a bank account in
Argentina to help deal with the clients now coming in from there but was told
by an Argentine that no one uses the banks there. The collapse of the peso is
still very fresh in their minds. Word has it the wealthy were tipped off and
they flew out of the country with cash. That doesn’t sound too terribly different than
the way the mortgage security meltdown was handled in the US. The English woman we met living in Buenos
Aires said that if you really want an education about Argentina ask the cab
drivers as many of them are former professionals and successful business men
who lost it all.
Laurie just came back from the supermarkedo of which there
must be a at least a dozen in a town of about a thousand people and said there
are no eggs anywhere. That is amazing as the chickens running around town must
outnumber the people five to one. Futa
is very much like most of the towns where there is no zoning and no real big supermarket
so the little grocery stores are all over town. You frequently have to shop
them all to get what you want. One has integral
(whole grain) crackers but not integral cookies. One has good carrots but the tomatoes
are terrible but the little house three doors down does have good tomatoes. Let’s see the only thing left on the list is
oatmeal and we forgot to look for it so we might have to go to all twelve
stores again to see if anyone might have that. Did I ever mention there is no peanut butter
in Patagonia? What I wouldn’t give for a jar of that. What they have here is a caramel
spread everywhere called Dulce de Leche. We draw the line at having that stuff every
day or even at all for that matter. There is a whole grain bakery in a house here
in town that Laurie says has big loaves of integral banana bread for cheap. The
lady who runs it looks like a typical fifty year old Chilean woman not some
hippy transplant.
That is enough blogging for today. It looks like the river
has come down and the kayak trip with Chris is on for tomorrow plus it is
supposed to be sunny and warm!
