Casa Lili

January 18, 2016

Life is slow here in Puerto Natales. You'd think I'd be gone by now, but what with slow internet. The hostel internet is connected to the phone, which doen't mean much to me except only about ten people can connect at any given time. So being a busy hostel with lots of people using wifi on their phones, I've only been able to connect to wifi a few hours a day and therefore it has taken a week updating the journal.

The hostel, Casa Lili is fine. There's lots other cyclists and hikers either going to, or coming from the nearby national park. The climate is cold. The TV weather showed Puerto Natales having a high of 11 and low 2, like a January day in Ireland. The Umart supermercado has limited stock, as all food has to be trucked in thousands of kilometres from the north. There is vacuum packed meat imported from Argentina, not looking too appetising. Then a day later fresh meat fills the display. The Korean guys from the hostel stand looking at it in glee until I join them.

In the supermercado I meet Dirk, the German I met outside the shop in Torres del Paine. He says "Do I know you?" I reply 'Yes. We met in the park.' "Yes, but we have met before this. This isn't you're first time in Patagonia?" At that moment it donned on me. Dirk was the motorcyclist in Salamancas hostel in Coyhaique when I stayed there in 2011. It's a small world. We talk as he fills a basket of supplies to return to the park.

Of the other hostellers there's Ishbel, who speaks with a wonderful Glasweigen (my spelling) ascent, rides a retro touring bike provided to her and is a freelance travel-writer. At the moment is writing a two-thousand word article on Torres del Paine for the Sunday Telegraph. There's Deja from California but living in Montana, who will soon finish her tour from Ecuador in Ushuaia. At the moment she is applying for a job in the fire service back in Montana where she'll be fighting countryside fires rather than urban structural fires. By her bike in the garden I see two new Maxiss tyres and say to myself "Where did she get those?" Later when I mention them to her, she says she only needs the one, being so close to the end of the trip and offers to sell one to me, which I except. I now have two spare tyres.

I spend the afternoon of my final day here riding back to the Milodon cave. I never thought it to be so big, being as big an aircraft hanger inside.

Back at the hostel in the evening I impress with my making of veggie-burgers: a recipe learnt from Swiss brother and sister, Malin and I forget what he is called; anyway, they called their burgers "Torres del Paine Burgers", so mine get dubbed "Milodon Burgers"

Cut-outs of prehistoric animals that once inhabited the area, including a kind of horse.

The road back with Sierra Dorotea, the big hill which rises behind Puerto Natales.

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