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D L M M J V S Objetivo: Viaje a Santiago

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21 18 de diciembre Modo: Omnibus Y Tren
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29 30 31 Distancia: 165 Kilómetros
Pucón to Temuco, Chile

Seven more shopping days until Christmas! We were up again at

6:00 for the volcano assault, and I felt surprisingly good considering our
late night. Outside, though, things did not look so promising. From
the window of habitación numero cinco, the 2,847 meter smoking crater
of Villarica was
volcán villarica totally shrouded in
dense fog and light
rain. Our chances
of making the
ascent did not look
martes p.m. miercoles a.m.
good. Still, we were
the first two people to show up bright and early at the Trancura office.
We took it as a bad sign that there were no other tourists or rafting guides
in sight.
I suddenly had visions of our guides waking up, checking the five-
day Volcano Business Planner on The Weather Channel, rolling over and
hitting the snooze. As the early morning cloud cover lingered, our doubts
about the likelihood of making this trek increased for another half hour.
Finally at 7:30, when all of the Israeli couples
had made their way two-by-two into the office,
the Trancura guides arrived toting big mugs of
joe and looking very well-rested. Wiping the
sleep from their eyes, they let us down gently:
“Sorry, folks, no volcano trip today. Moose out front
should have told you.”
Disappointed and tired, yet still excited about the new travel
possibilities that had just opened up, we walked the two blocks back to
the Salzburg in search of a little more quality bed sleep. Andy crashed for
three more hours while I read, wrote in my journal and cranked out four
postcards to friends in Buenos Aires and family back in the States.

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I could not have gone back to bed if I had wanted to. As a train fanatic,
the thought of taking the overnight express north to Santiago had me
pretty fired up. At 11:00, I went to a nearby laundromat to do a quick
load of whites, hit the post office, and picked up my cash refund at
Trancura for the aborted volcano junket. While in the Trancura store, I
got into another long conversation with the receptionist, Patricia, who
gave me her e-mail address in Pucón and invited us to come visit her
beachside home in Concepción. You had to hand it to these Chilean
girls. It was much easier to strike up a conversation with them than with
the average club-hopping porteña. On the other hand, I had met some
very personable females in Argentine towns like Tucumán, San Martín
and San Carlos de Bariloche. Rather than being a cross-border comparison,
it was just the usual contrast between big city socialites and easygoing
country girls.
Back at Chez Salzburg, we showered and left our bags down in the
front office with Maria since checkout time was twelve noon. We
bounded down the hostel’s front steps, determined to get some form of
extreme activity packed into this overcast Wednesday.
At 12:30, we rented a pair of nice-looking Trek mountain bikes from
a downtown cycling shop for 2,500 pesos apiece. We took a trail map
from the shop and started off on the road out of town for
/
what would be a forty- kilometer round-trip to Los
Ojos del Caburgua, a waterfall-ringed natural
mountain spring on a private patch of land just east
of Pucón. After an initial series of mean uphills, the
trip was bottom-line fast and furious. Fortunately, we did not encounter
a single car or pedestrian on the way out of town. The winding dirt road
had its share of steep grades, wide mountain streams, wooden suspension
bridges and furry obstacles in the form of plump, slow-moving sheep.
Around 14:00, we reached the front gate of the private farm where
the Ojos are located. The cycling shop owner had told us that it would
take over two hours to get there, but we had made it in only ninety
minutes. We each paid 380 pesos for park entrance and walked around
the falls for about thirty minutes. General consensus was that the twenty-
kilometer ride out had been well worth the effort. The tree-covered
oasis was accessible on all sides via a man-made wooden catwalk that
snaked around to multiple levels of the waterfalls.

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 At 14:30, we walked back to the bikes to start the return
! leg to town and found Andy’s back tire completely flat.
Upon closer inspection, we pulled a rusty two-inch nail out
of the tire and looked at each other in utter disbelief. After a
rousing chorus of “Oh, #&*@, we’re never gonna make the bus!”,
we walked back to the farmhouse where we had paid the entry fee
and asked the farm owner for some help. He and his son, who
was close to our age, came out and offered to take a crack at the
lifeless bike tire. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the necessary
tools or even a simple patch kit. One of the bikes did have a
spare tube and pump, but the tube was just big enough for a
Powder Puff Mini Trike . Moreover, the cheap, plastic pump
was not even compatible with the tube valves on either of the bikes.
We were starting to feel the pressure of being twenty kilometers from
town without a reliable means of transportation. Intent on making that
20:00 train from Temuco to Santiago, we would have to catch the 17:00
bus leaving Pucón to do it. Finally at 15:45, a nice Canadian couple
who had been visiting the falls with their two children, just happened to
be going back to town in their, milagro of milagros, Super King Cab
Toyota pickup truck. They were kind enough to offer us a ride to
downtown Pucón which we accepted on the spot. A collective sigh of
relief went up, as it appeared that we were back on track.
At 16:15, we were entering town where a donnybrook was imminent
with the boys at the bike shop. The owner and his son got on the defensive
the second that we pulled into the driveway. They
watched intently as we lugged their two wounded Treks
from the back of the Toyota to their front steps. We
stormed into the office dirty and cross-eyed and
explained what had happened on the trail. We also
refused to pay the full rental price of 5,000 pesos for both
bikes. Much to our surprise, the once friendly cycling staff was convinced

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that the flat tire was our fault and told us words to that effect. We
countered by showing them the crappy plastic pump and tiny tube.
With his whole machismo mojo seriously threatened, the owner
insisted that there was absolutely nothing milagro: miracle
wrong with his cosas. And to prove his cosas: things
quejando: complaining
father’s point, the son immediately began compromiso: compromise
to take off the old tube on Andy’s bike. Vamos a llamar a la policía:
We’re gonna call the cops!
Evidently, he was going to repair the tire Something you don’t want to
right before our eyes just to prove that we hear in any language.

were a pair of incompetent gringos.

Finally, we said, “Look, we’ve been trying to do that for the past
hour, it’s not going to work, the tube is too small, the pump doesn’t fit
over the valve, we’re not paying full price, we’re already late for our bus
to Temuco, we’re leaving now!” It was unfortunate
that after such a great stay, one of our most vivid
memories of Pucón would be the town bike rental tycoon
who was intent on putting the screws to us big time. After
fifteen minutes of pointless quejando, it was obvious that
some sort of a compromiso would have to be reached.
Desperate to get the flock out of there and on to the bus station, we
each coughed up 1,500 pesos for the bikes, dropped our money on the
cash register, grabbed the potentially incriminating photocopy of my
passport from behind the counter and ran out of there with threats like
“Vamos a llamar a la policía!” being launched at us from behind. This
was the first and, hopefully, last time that someone in Chile would drop
the “p” bomb on us.
Comfortable with our new-found status as Patagonia outlaws, it was
back to the Salzburg for a hot shower and a quick good-bye to Señora
Zehentmeyer at 17:03. We flew down Avenida O’Higgins to the bus
station and bought our tickets with, literally, two
minutes to spare. There was no sign of cops in the
terminal so our bike confrontation had gone
unnoticed. We were indeed the last two passengers
to jump on the 17:05 bus with scheduled arrival in
Temuco at 19:00. That would give us just enough
time to make it across town to the Temuco train
station for the 20:00 train up the Chilean coast.

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Unfortunately, we made at least a dozen
stops picking up and dropping off local
commuters along the way.
At 19:30, we pulled into the bus
terminal in Temuco and frantically asked the
bus baggage handler to point us toward the
train station. After running down the
crowded sidewalk streets of Temuco for five
minutes, we finally saw a large yellow sign
looming in the distance with the letters EFE:
Estación de Ferrocarriles del Estado. We
sprinted to the ticket counter and, much to
our delight, found out that tickets were still
available in the cheap seats: turista class was
going for a low, low 3,550 pesos. The salón
seats, which normally went for 5,000 pesos,
were already sold out. At that moment, the
station was pretty empty. Most passengers
were already on board.
Andy and I walked out onto the platform and were shocked to discover
that our train car was not even connected to the train. The conductor
explained that, due to the unexpected high number of passengers that
day, our car was going to be backed up to the train shortly. This gave us
a few minutes to relax. Andy made another phone call from inside the
station to give a final heads-up to some of our friends in Santiago.
Meanwhile, I watched the arrival of our two seats and the aging, eighty-
foot metal vessel which housed them: a white, blue and yellow German-
made passenger car that had been built decades ago and seen its fair share
of abuse.
Once on board, we plopped down into our comfortable reclining
seats and Andy started talking with a young guy across the aisle. Rodrigo,
a native Chilean, now living
with his family in Sydney,
Australia, was back in Chile
visiting friends and relatives.
Rodrigo was very outgoing
and spoke fluent English.

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 After establishing a rapport, Rodrigo opened his backpack and flashed
us a bottle of fifty-proof pisco. We knew that we were on the right train.
Not to be outdone, Andy made his way up to the dining car and bought
us a couple of chelas and a bottle of cheap Chilean red, Tres Medallas, for

only 2,900 pesos. The train started to pull out of the Temuco station at
20:10, and we all decided to head to the outdoor platform at the back of
our car, which also served as the back of
turista: coach class
salón: the first class section
the entire train.
on a South American train. We stepped outside onto the rear
pisco: national liquor of Chile. platform of Coach “B” (for Booze
Best served with sugar, lemon
juice and water in a pisco sour. presumably) to watch the tracks, sunset and
chela: slang for beer southern Chile slip away. The sun sent a
sugerencia: suggestion
blinding reflection off of the twin rails, and
a stiff cross breeze made for the perfect backdrop to Chile’s fastest happy
hour. Rodrigo started to pass around his bottle of pisco, and we shared
our wine and a couple of Cristal beers. Minutes later, a couple of attractive
Argentine girls, whom we had noticed back in the Temuco station, joined
us on the outdoor deck to have a Lucky Strike and share in the
conversation. Being accustomed to the icier cara dura of most porteñas,
I had deliberately avoided making eye contact with the girls in the station.
These girls, however, were much more talkative and receptive than the
average Argentine siren. Sisters Sylvia and Alejandra were also on their
way to Santiago after spending a couple of days trekking around Villarica.
I was especially interested in Sylvia, a beautiful girl with black hair and
green eyes. I now had my glasses on, because my contacts had been
driving me crazy ever since we left Pucón. When there was a brief pause
in the conversation, Sylvia leaned over to me and said, “You looked better
at the station without your glasses on.” Never one to turn down a good
sugerencia, I took my glasses off and got used to the idea of things being
blurry. From this point on, they would only get blurrier.....

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Rodrigo had mixed his pisco with a two-liter bottle of ginger ale and that fine Chilean concoction began making the rounds. After that, it was on
to our bottle of Tres Medallas tinto which we polished off in about five minutes. This was definitely not a sipping crowd. With near perfect
0
timing, the porter then opened the door to the back of the train and asked if we needed anything. Quickly sizing up the lush quotient of his
customers, he shoved his entire beverage cart out the train’s back door onto our festive deck and we grabbed every remaining Austral that we could

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Grité de alegría. La botella circuló. Salieron estrellas

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resplandecientes....estaba casi borracho y no me importó;
todo me parecía perfecto...
- Jack Kerouac, En El Camino

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forage. For some, things must have gotten even foggier when a young guy dressed in a leather bomber jacket joined us at the back of the train and
began dragging fiercely on a Paraguayan cigarette. Rodrigo swapped his pisco for the smoke and the two of them became instant amigos. Andy

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and I took a rain check on The Great Train Bakery and stumbled back in to sit down content with our tinto, cerveza and pisco light-headedness.
Fortunately for the two of us, Sylvia and Alejandra had the same idea and plopped down across the aisle from us a few minutes later.

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E
j Once Alejandra decided to curl up with young
Andrew, I knew that my wing man was in good
shape. So as not to cramp his style, I opted to take
my libido and rusty Spanish pickup lines down the
aisle with Sylvia where I could contar cuentos in a
semiprivate setting.
Total intimacy would be out of the question on
this rollicking train car full of thirty sober, sleeping
passengers. Still, Sylvia gave me a brief window of
opportunity when she complained, “Ay, tengo
mucho frío.” Despite the pisco-induced haze, I
somehow managed to reach up, wrestle into my
backpack in the overhead compartment and
brandish my oversized, red Patagonia®pullover in
what, at the time, seemed like one contar cuentos: to smooth talk.
fluid motion. In retrospect, it Ay, tengo mucho frío: Oh, I’m very cold.
echando una pestaña: catching a few
probably took me five minutes winks or getting some sleep.
muy contento: very content
during which time I knocked partuza: A wild party, a blowout.
over our drinks, bumped my head, andando con la tranca: the state of being
hungover. The actual word for a
swore excessively and woke several hangover is resaca.
passengers. dolor de cabeza: headache

If that was the case, I will take this opportunity to apologize profusely
to my fellow mates aboard Coach B on the night of December 17th. I
assure you all that my ruckus was for a very worthy cause. While standing,
I looked up the aisle and saw that Andy and Alejandra were sitting together
echando una pestaña under a heavy train blanket that the porter must
have brought them. To the best of my knowledge, Andy did not own a
yellow blanket with a Ferrocarrilles del Estado logo printed on it. I sat
back down and got comfortable with my newfound friend.
Sometime later, I opened my eyes and found Sylvia curled up next
®
to me with the Patagonia pullover wrapped around both of us. I wasn’t
sure how long we had been asleep or even how much further we had to
go before reaching Santiago, but I was muy contento. Looking out the
cracked window at the night sky, the speed at which we were blowing
though central Chile was a sad reminder that only two weeks of travel
remained. For some comfort, I leaned over and hugged the pretty Latin
stranger sleeping beside me.

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