| Jan 12, 2006 - Puerto Pirehueico, Chile (nowhere)
| (click to enlarge)
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 | | The old houses where we ended up staying | | Just off to the right is where we camped |
| | We got into Puerto Pirehueico and quickly examined our options. There were a few cars and trucks being transported on the ferry as well, but none were going on to Argentina. And none would give us a lift, even for money, because they did not have the driver's license or something like that they needed to cross borders. And pretty soon, we were the only one's left. We didn't get it. All we heard was how there was absolutely nothing on this side of the lake, yet dozens of people got off the boat and left either on foot or by car, yet none were crossing the border just 8km away. Where the hell did everybody go? We never got a good explanation for this. In this small cluster called Puerto Pirehueico there were a few small houses, and the hostel that we had heard about owned by Eliana. We asked Eliana about rooms in the hostel but they were too expensive. This was a very nice all-wooden house type hostel, with a large dinig room area full of table-clothed settings. Yet not a single guest in sight. We asked about food, and all she had available was sandwiches. Ham sandwiches, or cheese sandwiches. We asked about ham and cheese sandwiches... impossible. And they were expensive too. Being the only food option we had, we all had a few of these just to hold us over till morning. I probably can't really describe why this entire place had such a strange and eerie feel to it, it just did. And we all felt it. So to go with this feeling we decided to camp out on the beach, right next to the two old decrepid and abandoned stone houses that stood there, rotting. At one point while walking back and forth Nenet and I passed a homeless man sitting on the beach near the port who asked us for a cigarette. Where the hell did this guy come from? By this point we stopped questioning and it all just seemed to fit in. We sat around a campfire at night, with an iPod and speakers, as well as Nenet's accoustic guitar to help pass the time. At one point a strange man showed up to tell us we had to put out the fire and move onto the sand, since we were on the grass and not the beach so technically this was private land. See his job was to watch over this plot of absolutely nothing, and if his boss the owner saw our fire he would get upset that we were there. But when we assured him we would only be up a bit longer and would turn the music down, he said we could stay and keep our fire. Go figure. |
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