One "End of the Road"...

Friends from a few different places/times during my trip recommended that I check out this village far and away at the end of Patagonian Chile... 

Called Caleta Tortel it's in the coastal rainforest/fijords area and nowadays it's known for its history in providing cypress wood (doesn't rot and lasts a long time so is excellent for fences and telephone/power poles...) but was originally settled (very sparsely) early in the 1900s very slowly as people were looking for land to colonize for animal production but most early efforts failed, including a settlement where more than 100 people perished when a supply ship meant to provide winter provisions sunk en route, stranding the colony with no means of getting food nor escape over the winter and so they were doomed to die... 30 or so ciprés (cypress in Spanish) wood crosses remain on La Isla de los Muertos as a testament to the difficulty of pioneering the area... The rest of the graves have been washed into the sea and river estuary as a result of tidal action and river currents... 

This island is a short boat trip away from the village and I went with the proprietor of a local lodge (incredibly beautiful. Highly recommend it if you have the cash... Entre Hielos Lodge) Noel Vidal, who beyond doing all the amazing woodwork in his and his partner's lodge, also fitted put his boat

And it was a great ride!

Back to the area's history... It was isolated with no road... everyone originally arrived via boat and overland whether down the Rio Baker or by sea... and there was a government policy in the larger region of granting land but it had to be cleared within a year... Which was near impossible to do by hand with the thick jungle-like vegetation so the solution was to burn it all... Which is really a sad environmental history to the eyes and soul of a botanist... This whole region that I've traveled through in mid-Chilean patagonia (from Chile Chico west and south and north) suffered the same fate over a period of around 10 to even 30 years periodically... Even high mountainsides that couldn't even be used for grazing... Wherever the fire was carried by the wind. One result of this was a lot of standing dead cypress trees because they wouldn't rot.  Thus they were easy to harvest and thus developed the highly local/regional industry of cipres harvesting.  

Once there developed a more organized way to collect the cipres poles-- they are tied into rafts and floated down river to be collected and taken by boat to Pinta Arenas--  the collection after a time centralized into a main collection point around this village of Caleta Tortel. The special thing about the village is that the area has such steep hillsides, and flat land is usually wet or tidal, that the houses, when they were eventually developed in a central location, were built around a system of stilts and boardwalks

It was previously a really unique way of life but like anywhere things evolve... the carretera austral (the all important 'southern highway' that links the country together but down here is still a washboarded dirt road) arrived several years ago and the cipres has become a dying industry-- as the easy and closer to harvest trees have been taken and it's hard work that isn't being valued commensurate to the current effort-- and now the town is becoming more focused on the road and tourism and government services rather than a more simple/basic country/rural (i.e. limited) way of life... but they still don't have reliable electricity (it's a water generated system but there isn't enough water/rainfall lately, ironically, and not everyone has generators) even though the cell phone tower arrived last year...  Despite the loss of the 'authenticity' of true isolation (how easy it is to lament that, as some do... often those that live in comfort  with conveniences and a high standard of living) it's still a very interesting, beautiful place with really great people.  

There was also a great trail that showed off the amazing scenery of the area plus some of the interesting local plant communities...

This is the Baker River, has the largest volume of all the rivers in Chile... once descending to the coasts the large rivers open up from tight canyons to huge braided rivers with extensive wetlands... really stunning scenery.  Sadly (but inevitably) there are plans to dam this and a similar river... supposedly for power but really it'll be to eventually send the water north, somehow, to the mining areas in the desert where there isn't enough water (or power) currently...more on this topic next post...

And here's a cypress tree, about head high and maybe my forearm thick... 3" maybe?  It could be 30-50 years old...

More sights...

And one (more) neat thing, in all of these rural places, almost every house has some sort of greenhouse, even here in Tortel... make due with what you have (or can create!)

It's on solid rock!

With soil from somewhere else... But it works!  Rock on!  (Oh jeeze, no pun intended, I swear!)

Such a great place and some really super people... my final day was spent helping a friend unload a cargo of firewood and then he took me across the water to an island with totally original (untouched by fire) vegetation... I'd been talking with him about being excited about doing some botany in the area but bummed about how everything had been affected by fire and he suggested this trip... there was a lagoon in the middle of the island and a low area in between cliffy mountains to try to get there... so we tried it!  

Talk about jungle vegetation... It was awesome. Felt like we needed a machete as he was bodily throwing himself forward off fallen logs into masses of vines and bushes and whatever else was there to open up a route... made me think of the cloud forests of Hawaii/Maui with all the mosses and tangle of vegetation underfoot, not knowing if you were on solid ground or a fewaywea of rottingogs above it... luckily there are no venemous critters or harmful plants to worry about (unlike my beloved desert home!)

  We did reach the lagoon but had to climb a  tree to see it as the vegetation was thick around the shore and there was nothing of a beach or any way else to see our goal!  This photo isn't of this exact place (used my camera instead of iPod on that outing) but it's just about what our entry at the shore of the island looked like...

more than that, you'll just have to imagine us thrashing about in the wet evergreen forests of coastal Chilean Patagonia... fantastic!  Of course this fueled my thoughts of how I can come back to do some plant work!  

Buses are infrequent in this part of the world so as the timings worked out (or didn't) This was my southern-most stop on the carretera austral so from here I was heading north.  For my next stop I wanted to visit an area recommended to me by a friend and in an 'off the beaten track' guide book but my timing to go was counter any of the regular bus services and also against the tide of hitching... the goal was a farm homestead 13km (7miles or so) off the carretera where there was a place to stay and a neat hike along the Rio Baker to visit an important historic spot in the region...  the Corte de San Carlos... a tunnel and passage cut into a wall of rock high above rapids of the river which was to serve as a trade/delivery route between the coast and the interior... and in the end I found someone to drive me the hour and a half up the road right to the doorstep so I didn't have to hike the seven miles in from the road at dusk... but of course all things more convenient 

have a price! But it was ok... you save some places so you can spend in others...

Last notes, here's a bad picture of a map of the larger region (hope it posts ok), with Caleta Tortel off to the left towards the bottom (and the next stop at the farm and the tunnel in the rock is on the map, the spot is halfway between Tortel and Cochrane, there's a little blue line stuck off to the left/west of the main route), then a bit up and to the east/right, General Carrera lake which I originally traveled along the south side of to get into the area via the border crossing at Chile Chico, and then for future reference sort of above the middle of the map is the town of Coyhaique where I eventually catch a flight north to Puerto Montt to take a ferry back south through the fijords only way back to Ushuaia. Still with me? Stay tuned... :)

Fijords and greenness and a ton of great people... oh my!

After chilling out in the wee hamlet of Rio Tranquilo for an extra day or so (which allowed some time to do laundry in the kitchen sink, buy lettuce and chard that we picked right then from an older woman who had a lovely garden down the street-- most folks have their own hoop houses for veg production since centers of distribution are so far away...)

make several unsuccessful passes by the only place in town that serves cafe de maquina (espresso), and see an amazing sunset over the lake 

I was then bound for Laguna San Rafael via an overland route that has recently become possible with the construction of a road through Exploradores Valley... an amazing route to travel in and of itself... I was wishing I was hiking or on a mtn bike during the two hour or so truck ride. 

Pics are on my other photo device aka camera so just take my word on that.  But the following part of the trip, a boat trip down Exploradores Bay into the Laguna I do have...

This was the view of the San Rafael glacier as we entered the lagoon. Doesn't look like too much maybe from afar but one of the reasons that folks want to come to this place is to see the icebergs that calve from this glacier...

I haven't been too hyped to see all the glaciers in Chile that are on the tourist circuit... not entirely blasé about them but I have seen a few during my time further south... but this glacier is squeezed through a narrow spot right before it's exit into the lagoon, and in the process, as I understand it, most of the air bubbleds are compressed out of the ice-- leaving less air to diffract the light and more pure ice which reflects the blue wavelength... thus the intense blue color of the icebergs.  Little did I know this was just a wee crumble off the cake that would prove to be my trip with the company Destino Patagonia which I highly recommend.

So that was a neat introduction. Next up was encountering a whole host of folks from two other expeditions that were all using the same transport to the lagoon and accommodation at the national park 'service area'.  I was a sort of tag along on existing trips (couldn't pay for a trip just on my own... takes a lot of gas and logistics to get to these out of the way places...), one with a journalist who was being shown a new route the company is wanting to de pop for tourism... continuing on the other side of the lagoon by trek/kayak across and through the Isthmus of Ofski, where back in the 30s I think some business interests wanted to open a 2km stretch to enable a more interior navigation route rather than have to detour to the open ocean coast via the gulf of Penas... but the logistics were too difficult and the plan abandoned... but by foot to the navigable stream to the coast is possible... so there's interesting cultural history in addition to the amazingness of there trip that ends on a miles long white sand beach and the possibility of continuing along to to view and/or kayak to another glacier, I think maybe the largest to come off of the souther ice sheet or something like that... Anyway, cool stuff.  The second expedition group was larger and with kayaks also, and planning to do the whole route, kayak to the other glacier after crossing the isthmus, taking 12 days in total rather than just a day trip for the journalist party.  Fantastic people all around... I have to say that my trip has been punctuated so far by amazing things to see but just as much or more by the people I'm meeting and sharing a slice of life with... even though I feel like I'm half in a underwater world of understanding conversations I'm having ( I speak better than I comprehend and am really bad about asking for clarification so as not to break the flow of an experience so I spend a lot of time trying desperately to follow a conversation or just sort of floating on top of it, catching a familiar word or concept here and there...) I'm just caught up in the energy of a place that's ripe for discovery, with a lot of young energy developing plans to do cool things in an amazing place with great people... and me too, wondering how I could come back to do plant work on the amazing stuff in these forests...

Anyway, back to San Rafael, at the beginning. So we arrived with the boat ditched our gear at the cabin and then I got to accompany the journalist and one other of the kayak group on a special trip to the far side of the glacier via a small zodiac they had along to assist with one of the expeditions.  And hol.e.moley was this an amazing chance/experience!!!

started at a tidal inlet

zodiac across the lagoon

To the right side of the glacier

Where we found almost jungle like vegetation, super lush, mosses, streams, reminded me of the coast of Maui in some ways...

and then there was bare rock that only last year had been under the glacier's ice... it's retreating several meters per year.  It was a bit mind blowing thinking that we were standing on 'new land' that hadn't seen fresh air for thousands of years.  That we could touch scratches in the bedrock that the glacier had caused scraping along rocks and boulders as it had advanced in earlier times

and of course, all the BLUEness of the glacier...

and then the sun came out of the clouds just before it set and all of a sudden the glacier was orange and green and yellow and an iceberg was revealed to be an errant piece of kryptonite glowing green for all the four of us to see...

Don't know that these photos really do the experience much justice... but just trust me on this. Wow.

Hokes in the air rounding forests and the boat ride back the next day had me standing up on the motor box just soaking in all the lushness of the fijords and musing about how I could come back to do some botanical work...

Next stop, Caleta Tortel, the village on stilts and connected by boardwalks, developed at a time when the 'road' was the rio baker, which has the largest volume of any river in chile. There's a dirt road to get there now but if you spend some time there you can still feel a different essence of life happening...

:)