Puerto Natales, Chile

We left the river this morning and headed back into Chile, this time with the intention of staying in the country for a few days so we could visit Torres del Paine park, one of the icons of South America. Our destination was Puerta Natales, a small port town a couple hours from the park.

We had to retrace our steps back over the long stretch of gravel once we entered back into Chile. Our timing was perfect as we pulled up to the loading dock to the ferry, and literally didn’t even have to stop in the road, but instead drove right onto the ferry for the ride back over the Strait of Magellan.
The problem we were now facing was that there were no real towns or gas stations for a long stretch, and we also didn’t have any Chilean pesos, since unlike the Central American borders, the shady money changers were nonexistent here. After driving about an hour we did finally come to a tiny little gas station. They didn’t take Argentinean pesos, but they would accept U.S. Dollars. The exchange rate they were offering was terrible though, so we only bought $20 worth.

We continued on through the pouring rain, and even though the gas gauge was dipping far into the red, we thought we would make it to Puerto Natales. Unfortunately literally five minutes out of town, the van started sputtering and lost power. Bummer! We weren’t all that worried since we had our spare tank on the back, but we weren’t excited to have to go do it all out in the pouring rain. As soon as we pulled the spare gas can off the bumper, we realized we didn’t know where the pour spout was. After rummaging through the van it suddenly dawned on us, that the spout was in the yellow toolbox, the one that was taken out of the van back in Colombia. Damn it! This just became harder than it should have to be. We had a funnel and some hose, so we figured we could use that to pour the gas into it to get it into the tank, but after a few attempts with gas only running down the side of the can and all over us, we bagged the idea. A few minutes of head scratching and searching around the van yielded an idea from Noah to use a plastic grocery bag. We put the bag around the bottom of the gas can and caught all the dripping fuel until the bag was pretty full. Then we put the bag in the funnel and poked a hole in it to get a nice controlled flow that was actually going into the tank. Nice! After a few more rounds we had pretty much emptied the gas can and were heading back down the road.

Badly needing a shower and wanting to dry out a bit, we found a hostel that was run by a cute little old lady. We showered up and headed out for what turned out to be a great dinner at a local pizzeria. It was nice to enjoy a warm bed for the night, it had been a while!