My most recent trip to southern Chile was in November of 1998. I went down on board a merchant ship from Hawaii. Near the end of our voyage we sailed around Cabo Quilan, at the southern tip of Chiloe Island, and turned north into the Golfo del Corcovado, part of Chile's great inland waterway. The waters of the Golfo were dark green ink. The heavily forested eastern shore was almost black. Above all this darkness, the setting sun painted the snowcapped peaks of the Andes with a pink glow.

Later that night we could detect only a few lights on the shoreline and almost no other ships or fishing boats. The inland waterway is so empty, it's spooky. While moving through absolutely flat waters, the ship's propeller churned up bioluminescent organisms which lit the wake for 200 yards aft. Later a Chilean oceanographer explained that the inland waterway was unusually warm and the planktonic bloom particularly heavy; reasons unknown.

The next morning, by the time I woke up, the ship was idling off Puerto Montt at the northern end of the inland waterway.

A couple of days later, I reversed my course and flew southward from Puerto Montt, over the same stretch of inland waterway, to explore the eastern shore. Although the weather in Pto. Montt was sunny, a wall of clouds loomed ahead. Our small, twin engine aircraft dropped lower and lower to maintain visibility. We could see that the surface of the water was covered with whitecaps. The plane began to bounce around and the passengers, all four of us, gripped the backs of the seats in front. The pilots ducked into the Chaiten airstrip just ahead of the worst of the rain and wind.

Waiting in the terminal were some American sport fishermen returning from a week at an expensive lodge on the Rio Yelcho. I was carrying a fishing rod so they asked me "who are you with?", meaning which lodge and guiding company. They did a double take when I admitted that I wasn't part of a group and wasn't under any lodge's guidance and protection. I like to putter along beautiful rivers, but I am not willing to pay several hundred dollars a day just to catch a few more fish and stay in an American style cabin.

It was not obvious how we would get from the airport to the town of Chaiten, but I noticed that my fellow passengers, all local Chileans, were waiting patiently. After the plane loaded the fishermen and took off for the return flight to Pto. Montt, the lone remaining airline employee bundled us into his pickup and delivered us to our hotels and homes in town. There is no airport shuttle. Chaiten doesn't even have official taxis. Get set to leave all that nonsense behind; relax; don't worry; it all comes to he who waits.

Previously, Carolina, of the Pumalin headquarters in Pto. Montt, had booked me into the rambling Hotel Mi Casa, which sits on a small hill overlooking the town of Chaiten with its surrounding mountains and water. Mi Casa is a friendly and comfortable place, but not the cheapest accommodations in town. I paid about $25 USD per day for a room with private bath and a modest breakfast. There is a little bar, a TV room and a couple of sitting areas.

Chaiten has few diversions, especially in the evenings and on weekends during the off season. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon. Everything was new to me so I had fun just looking around and imagining what it must be like to live there. The town sprawls over a limited amount of flat land between very steep mountains and the inland sea. It has been divided into a rectangular grid of broad streets with storm water drainage ditches, rough sidewalks and regularly spaced, overhead lights. At night the streets are better illuminated than the interior of the houses. Private Chileans are frugal about everything including home lighting and heating.

In the geographical center of the town there is a desolate plaza with a few monuments. The Catholic church and a few other buildings face the plaza. The Carretera Austral runs along two sides. Someday this plaza may be the heart of a city like Juneau, Alaska. The setting reminds me of Juneau.

On that Sunday afternoon one particular hub of activity was the Genesis video tape rental store run by Pablo. Not only a video store but also a video game arcade, picture framing workshop, candy store, computer school, copy shop and internet cafe. A bunch of kids were huddled around the video games. I paid about US $0.40 to compose and send an e-mail message home. The computer was actually online, through a telephone modem, only for the few seconds it required to transmit the message. It may be expensive to stay online and surf the Web. You can send messages to Pablo at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , but they should be in Spanish. Pablo's computer has a digital camera. With my e-mail I could have enclosed a picture of myself.

Carolina had also made a reservation for me on the Monday mini-bus from Chaiten to Caleta Gonzalo. The bus was scheduled to depart at 8 AM, but I didn't know if I had to find the bus or the bus would find me. On Sunday afternoon I located the vehicle itself in front of the closed office of BV travel, and noted that I could keep an eye on it from the dining room window at Mi Casa up on the hill. Two people were working around the building, and they seemed to know who I was and that I would be going to Caleta Gonzalo "manana". That made me feel more confident. On Monday morning I positioned myself and my bags at the dining room window. I saw that the bus remained parked until about 8:30, then did a couple loops through the town and started up the hill towards Mi Casa. I was the only tourist among the eight passengers.

In Chaiten there are a lot of small grocery stores, a few of which were open on Sunday afternoon. Their selection of goods is not very great and the produce is wilted. The lettuce usually looks terrible, but I had excellent butter lettuce at Mi Casa and at people's homes. They must know where to get it fresh. Some salad greens may flourish in Chaiten almost year around. The potatoes range from good to bad. South America was the orginal home of the potato, and they seem to have more varieties. Some are outstanding, but I don't know how to identify them in the raw. (There should be a detailed food travel guide for each country - color photos, recipes, warnings, sample restaurant menus, local specialties, what to expect in the market, ...)

There are some isolated flashes of wealth in and around this middle class town. When we flew into the Chaiten airport there was a corporate / personal jet sitting on the side of the runway. I saw it leave later in the day, and I think that I saw another small jet arrive and depart. Parked next to Hotel Mi Casa was an imported jet boat that probably cost $20,000 to $30,000 in the US, a lot more here. During my travels I would occasionally get a glimpse of a beautiful house along a distant shoreline. At Caleta Gonzalo some fancy launches dropped off and picked up a few fashionably dressed people. I did not see a lot of small, private planes like you might expect to find in this rugged country. There may be some restrictive governmental controls on private aircraft.

I was able to convey the people at Hotel Mi Casa that I wanted to eat an evening meal. Hunger is universally understood. They said "ocho", but ocho came and went. I drank wine and read in the little bar. Gladys finally waived me into the large dining room about 9:30 and seated me at a window overlooking the town. I was the only person in the room. I was treated to locos (abalone) salad with butter lettuce and a delicious white dressing, a tender filet mignon and wonderful pureed potatoes. Chilean steaks are tasty but seldom tender. This was a nice exception; maybe even a mistake :) Future steaks at Mi Casa were not so tender. I think the bill was about $10 USD for the food plus $4 USD for a bottle of wine.

At night, from the hillside the town is a grid of street lights and a few illuminated windows. I could see some cars moving about, but couldn't figure out why. Nothing is open so these people must be visiting friends and relatives. I don't think Chilean teenagers have yet discovered cruising.

The local chapter of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a Catholic organization dedicated to helping the poor, is building a home for elderly people.

Chaiten is one of the gateways to the amazing Parque Pumalin.

After returning from Parque Pumalin I was fortunate to link up with the bi-lingual, multi-talented Nicolas La Penna and his low cost ecotourism agency Chaitur.

One day I paid Nicolas to take me fishing and then to the Thermas Amarillo. Copious amounts of very hot water pour out of the earth, enough to fill a large swimming pool and a couple of small, steaming baths. The springs are located in a wooded canyon just above a cold stream. There are some conveniences, like toilets and changing rooms, but the site still looks very natural. The caretaker sees that the hot spring water is mixed with just enough cold to avoid scalding someone. He also adds a small amount of chlorine to the swimming pool. There was an icy drizzle when Nicolas and I visited. It was perfect for us, but maybe not so nice for the bike campers who were overnighting there.

Nicolas sort of adopted me for a few days thereafter. He hauled me around when he had to meet tourists and dispatch busses; a unique experience. Nicolas also got me in, as his music group's official photographer, for some of the annual, all-Chile Teleton events. Their Teleton is like a Jerry Lewis-style fund-raising telethon in the US, but in Chile it is really a big deal. Every little town holds some sort of homespun entertainment event as the basis for fund raising. In Chaiten they have several folk music and folk dancing groups which participate. On Sundays they all piled in vans and drove a hundred hair raising miles to give performances in St. Lucia and El Amarillo. It was an unbelievable crystal clear day. A few little white clouds were bumping into the mountainsides. Down below it was spring green; looked like Switzerland. Someday I will retrace this trip, in good weather and with a better camera.

This is a picture of the ferry dock and the passenger shelter recently built by civic organizations (Rotary?). Nicolas frequently meets the ferries, either by previous arrangement or just looking for new customers. The airlines often dump their passengers at this office in the bus depot. One day he met a couple of old Belgian trout fishermen and put them on a bus to Futuleufu. He found very low cost accommodations for a young French couple who couldn't understand Spanish or English and were mentally adding zeros to what they thought was the quoted price. They relaxed when Nicolas wrote the figure on a piece of paper. I remember there was another group of four huge German youths carrying everything but the kitchen sink.

Chaiten has an impressive folk dancing group with their own band. These are some of the young members performing on the outdoor basketball court at Santa Lucia. Its difficult to take pictures of folk dancing; there is so much rapid motion.

This Chaiten WWW link is only mildly commercial and it has a lot of useful information on accommodations, etc. I found Chaitur here (and in the Lonely Planet guide).

Here is a personal travelogue page for a group of photographers who did the Carretera Austral in Nov/Dec of 1996.