CONVERSOS

farmhouse and lake

LAGO LLANQUIHUE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
My hosts have arranged for an elderly gentlemen to show me the countryside. He drives an equally elderly eight-seater minibus. We make a fine threesome, creaky but functional. I am in questioning mood. Agricultural land sells for 1,500,000 pesos a hectare - US$3000. Dairy farming is profitable on farms of a hundred hectares or more. US$20,000 builds a good house such as the Golden Boot. The monthly minimum wage is around US$240, a wage on which a Buddhist monk would starve. Chile's Government is Centre Left. Last week two Government Ministers were appointed to the Supreme Court. The Cardinal officiated at a family memorial mass for General Pinochet.
We drive through country that holds continual reminders of northern Europe: rolling hills, green paddocks, trees, dairy cattle, wooden barns and houses.
Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism in the 16th Century are known to historians as conversos. Lutheran conversos founded a tiny village midway down the lake between Puerto Octay and Frutillar. They built a small church on the landward side of the road. Austrian Catholics arrived some years later and built their church exactly opposite on the lake-side of the road. The churches are built of wood and are indistinguishable. We pass a small hillside cemetery shaded by fine trees. Snowdrops and daffodils have become naturalised and spread between the grave stones.
My family built the first Catholic church in England after the Persecution. The church is in the tiny village of Hanley Swan. Members of the Church of England immediately built a bigger church with a taller steeple. Their church is hideous. Ours is pretty. I shall be buried in the graveyard.

UP-MARKET BROTHEL

view from hotel centinela

PUERTO OCTAY:

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

German settlers founded Puerto Octay in 1850 or there abouts. Chile is a Catholic country and the Germans were Catholic - so they claimed and were given land grants.

How long did they pretended to be Catholics and how thorough was their pretence?

Eventually they shed their camouflage and built a Lutheran church. Amusing to discover that the town's one upmarket hotel was built as a brothel. The Hotel Centinela occupies the tip of the peninsular that shelters the town. It has the feel of a turn of the century hunting lodge. Views over the lake are superb. For the better-off, this is the place to stay. I prefer family life at the Yellow Boot.

RESTFUL AND JOYFUL

zapato amarillo

PUERTO OCTAY: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

I am eating proper family breakfast: a family of mother, father and two children. These are the owners and builders of Zapato Amarillo. I have slept in a comfortable bed under a goose-down duvet beside an immaculate bathroom. Everything functions, everything fits, everything is very Swiss. So it should be. It has been designed and built by a Swiss trained as a mechanical engineer. These must be the only doors in Hispanic America which shut with a slight wush of expelled air. Breakfast is enormous: fresh baked bread, butter, homemade jams, eggs from free-range hens, fruit salad, coffee or tea. I am immensely happy. Dominik, eleven, is an artist. His sister, four, is a minx.

GOLDEN BOOT

lake view

PUERTO OCTAY:
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
At over half a million acres, Lago Llanquihue is Chile's second largest lake. I am heading for a small town at the head of the lake, Puerto Octay. The next bus leaves at 11 a.m.The road passes through rolling country reminiscent of my own Herefordshire, a country of small paddocks and woodland, of dairy cattle, sheep, fruit trees. Mimosa and daffodils glow in the Spring sun. Orchards are beginning to flower. Roses and camellias are in bud while early magnolias are already fading. Werner of Casa Cecilia in Puerto Natales has made a reservation for me at Hostal Zapato Amarillo. The owner, another Swiss German, waits my arrival at Puerto Octay's bus station.

PUERTO MONTT

SUNDAY MIDNIGHT: SEPTEMBER 16
The weather has been exceptional. We dock in Puerto Montt twelve hours ahead of schedule. Disembarkation is after breakfast on Monday morning. We say our good byes. The Frenchman is cool. The British students are immensely polite. The two students from the US mooch in their private huddle of near despair. I catch a cab to the bus station.

ANGLO FRENCH WAR

FERRY: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Our last dinner on board: sadly, we have entered a war zone. Music is the fuse. The Frenchman is incensed by the non-Japanese Brit student's opinion of the Blues. The Frenchman is totally ignorant of the student's opinion. The student is a typical Brit; ten years of school French and he remains monosyllabic. The Frenchman is typical in loathing the supremacy of the English language. He wishes me to translate his contempt for the Brit student's musical taste and knowledge. I have been translating for three days. The student of Japanese parentage and I are enjoying our own conversation. The Frenchman departs for bed in a huff. Too bad. He is a nice man, intelligent - though somewhat dogmatic. His wife left him a few years back. Not for another man. Perhaps his retirement drove her out. No longer a few evenings and weekends. The full Monte. Imagine, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Bernadette would show me the door...

I AM NOT A POLAR BEAR

cambridge students


CHILOE: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Cloud finally closes in and as we sail up the east coast of Chiloe island. We view the coast through a thin drizzle. We have no complaints; Chiloe suffers or enjoys an average of three hundred days of rain each year. The Belgian woman and Cambridge student of Japanese parents are determined seekers of marine mamals. The student reads the temperature from a large thermometre screwed to the bridge bulkhead: three degrees centigrade above freezing. Good. I thought that I might be sickening for something. Reluctant to desert, I crunch myself into a corner out of the breeze.

NO WHALES, ONLY A LONE SPHYNX

lone sphynx

FERRY PUERTO EDEN:
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
A third morning of brilliant sunshine. I share the bridge deck with two Cambridge University students and a charming Belgian woman. The Belgian scans the sea through binoculars. Both she and one of the students are indefatigable in their search for whales. The student´s parents are immigrants from Japan. They own a Japanese restaurant off Piccadilly on Half Moon Street. I have walked past the restaurant, glanced with longing through the window, accepted the financial realities that forbid my entrance.
The second student studies physics. He wants to study music.
Later I talk with a young couple from the US. The young man is a math student at Cambridge. He has a grant to study at Cal Tech over the summer. Math and physics have always fascinated me: that a mathematician or physicist can have an original thought, think where no one has ever thought before.
The math student should be writing a commentary on an equation. He doesn't understand the equation and doubts that he has the mind for original thought.
His girlfriend studies chemistry at Cal Tech. She has left behind important notes for her summer project. Both are deeply depressed. They cling to their open lap-tops as wrecked sailors cling to a life raft.

HGH SEAS AND SEASICKNESS PILLS

HIGH SEAS: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
The French scientist reports that a friend voyaged on the Puerto Eden last year. Rain fell continually. The coast was barely visible. Our second day on board, not a cloud and a mere breath of breeze. The coast glows in sunlight, snow peaks glitter.
Midday and we face a notoriously stormy sea passage. Twelve hours before we regain shelter. The ferry carries a male medical assistant. He issues pills to combat seasickness. Our guide advises us to stay on deck in the open air; should we suffer badly, take to our cabins and lie in the foetal position.
A dozen heifers moo occasionally in an open truck on the upper vehicle deck. Their ancestors came from Herefordshire - as do I. I wonder how they will fare. Were they fed seasickness pills?
The ferry edges out from behind the islands. We meet a gentle swell.
The swell remains gentle.
This is the calmest passage the crew can recall.
We watch for seals and dolphins and wales.

MONUMENT TO CUPIDITY

FJORDS AND CHANNELS: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
A statue of the Virgin guards sailors navigating the narrows of English Channel. Currents swirl in from the open sea. A wrecked Greek sugar ship from the 1920s perches on a reef mid channel. The wreck is a monument to cupidity.
The Greek captain reported that the sugar melted into the sea.
Insurers asked whether the non-existent sacks had melted.
The captain had sold his cargo in Uruguay.

VALIANT WOMEN

FJORDS AND CHANNELS: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
4 a.m. and the ferry lies off the one village in 1000 kilometres, the village after which the ferry is named: Puerto Eden. Fishing for King crab sustains a community of some one hundred people. Some are mestizo descendants of the original inhabitants. Those "Indians" also lived from the sea. Men built canoes and fished. Women dived naked for mollusks in water a few degrees above freezing. So physically tough and resilient, they died of despair and alcohol.
I wipe the condensation from my window and try to imagine the lives of these modern residents. Twenty or so street light are the only sign of habitation. Sailing north and south, the ferry passes twice a week.

BOOK NOW

FJORDS AND CANALS: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
Book a passage with Navimag now. Out of season would be best for the mature traveller, or the traveller with a distaste for crowds. I have travelled much of my life. The beauty of these fjords is staggering. As always in Patagonia, the clarity of light is extraordinary. Not a house nor single sign of man besmirches the forested shore. Snow caps tower above the forest. The sky is cloudless blue. The barest breeze faintly marks the sea. I look and look and look.
And talk during meals with a retired French scientist who has adopted me as his companion for the voyage.
He is insistent on the superiority of French culture and language (he speaks no other), yet carries four music DVDs of US jazz, Blues and the Doors which he has the Purser play over the DVU.

PRIVATE YACHT

FERRY PUERTO EDEN:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
I am cruising the fjords and chanels of southern Chile on a private yacht. So it seems. We are twelve passengers on a ferry with accommodation and crew for 200. Vast meals of adequate quality are served at a cafeteria in the lounge/dinning room: breakfast at 8 a.m., lunch at 1.30 p.m., supper at 7.30 p.m. Cabins vary in price from economy-dormitory to upper-deck swank. Top berths run at US$690 in a two berth cabin. US$300 buys a dormitory berth. Meals are included. Oldies earn a 20% discount. A guide offers a commentary on geography, fauna and flora in Spanish and English. The ferry sales Friday morning. Arrival in Puerto Montt depends on weather, but sometime between midnight, Sunday, and noon on Monday.

ECSTATIC

NAVIMAG FERRY:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
We sailed at 4 a.m. Dawn and we creep between islets, the channel a bare eighty metres wide. Each island is a Japanese garden of rock tufted with bonsai. The shore is as perfect in proportion and differs only in scale. Above tower the mountains. Rock and snow and ice glow in the early sun. The sea is silk smooth. Duck and moorhens momentarily crease perfect reflections.

FORTUNATE IN CHILE

cute tin cottage


PUERTO NATALES:
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
Puerto Natales exists for tourism and the ferry. Foreigners and outsiders own most of the businesses. Why? Because few locals have capital and banks charge 20% on a business loan or mortgage - extortinate in a stable economy with low inflation.
Casa Cecilia is a way station on the tourist route. The owners (Werner is Swiss, Cecilia Chilean) are helpful beyond the call of duty. Mattresses are plump, water is hot and Werner´s bread baked for breakfast is delicious. How much? US$20 for a single. Two bathrooms are a hop away. Last night I ate good fillet of fish a block off the main square at Esperanza. Add a half bottle of good red: US$$10.
Passengers board the ferry this evening at 8 p.m. A tourist with two good legs would spend the day touring the national park, gazing at volcanoes, frozen lakes, waterfalls. Unfortunately all the highlights are a good walk from the track.
I explore the town on crutches, photograph a couple of cute tin cottages and the church. I walk too far, eat a mediocre lunch in a restaurant packed with locals. Better is a sybaritic chocolate shop/cafe a block back from the waterfront: chocolate brownie served with alcoholic cream and excellent coffee. Better still is the welcome on board the ferry. Our guide for the voyage is a young woman. She shoulders my pack and leads me to a cabin with private bath opposite the lounge restaurant. The cabin is two grades up from that for which I paid! I have four births to myself and a large window. Water is piping hot in the shower. The lavatory flushes.
We sail at dawn.
Time for early bed.