It was raining lightly when I got up at 6AM yesterday to pack the rest of my stuff and leave Huinay. It had been unseasonably sunny and warm over the past week, and I was a little glad that it was raining; it kind of made leaving easier. When I came in to Huinay it was on La Mailen, a huge barcassa, and I was pretty excited about finally going on La Serenade. La Serenade is a spunky little blue ferry that has “Serenade” painted on one side, but only “ade” on the other. It comes in to the fjords on Tuesdays and Thursdays and returns to Hornopiren on Wednesdays and Fridays, and it does both ways on alternating Saturdays and Sundays each week. I’d often be there watching from the office window when La Serenade came in, or down at the dock myself if we were expecting someone, and I loved what a big event the coming and leaving of the Serenade was. Especially on the weekends, it seemed to me that the whole village (which, granted, is not that many people in the first place) would be at the dock waiting for loved ones or sending them off, with laughter and hugs and waves all around. Since it was very early (La Serenade is supposed to come to our dock at 8AM) it was just me and Don Marcos waiting. Marcos is one of our maintenance workers, a very proper gentlemanly type who doesn’t speak very much but has a steady presence, and I was glad that he was there. La Serenade had to be notified by radio that people were waiting to be picked up, and while I was sure that I could have done it, I was relieved that Marcos was there to do it instead. We waited at the dock while the salmoneras (salmon farm workers) who stayed the night in Huinay got picked up in little boats to go to work and it wasn’t until 9AM that La Serenade showed up. I was a little worried because the bus from Hornopiren to Puerto Montt left at 1PM, but in my “infinite wisdom” I had given myself an extra day to travel from Huinay to Puerto Montt so I could always catch the bus on Thursday in case I missed it on Wednesday.

The ride on La Serenade was awesome. The rain had stopped and while it was cloudy, it was still warm and the sun was peaking out in some places. Besides Marcos and I, there was only a handful of other people on the boat. I talked easily with crew-members and a little abuelita that we picked up from a lonely house about two hours into the ride, and before I knew it, it was 12:40 and we were pulling into la lancha at Hornopiren. Marcos and I marched off to the bus station. Meli had called the Kemel bus company the day before to reserve me a seat, but when I got there, a bored looking man told me that the bus was full and they only held reservations until 10:30. Crap! I really did not want to stand in the bus for the 4 hours until Puerto Montt. But, I said, I came on La Serenade, it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t be here earlier. You see, Marcos said, with your opening hours there was no time to buy her a ticket yesterday. The bored looking ticket lady looked at her seating chart and said that she still had seat #15 free. Yes! I bought it, said goodbye to Marcos, and boarded the bus as it was leaving immediately. The bus was way more crowded than it had been on my way down strangely enough. I thought that since it was Wednesday and off season it would be empty, but the middle aisle was full of people. I hadn’t slept much the night before on account of saying goodbye to people and waking up early to pack the rest of my things, so, I mostly slept through the 4 hour ride very very grateful that I had managed to swipe an actual seat. We arrived in Puerto Montt a bit before 5PM. I immediately went to an hospedaje two minutes away from the bus station that Ulo had recommended to me, a small red house on the quiet side street of Miramar. The street gets its name, I’m guessing, from having a look-out point over the ocean a bit further up. I had made it Puerto Montt and was ready to take a quick peak around the city center.

What I first noticed were a lot of kitschy looking shops that spilled out onto the sidewalk and also (at least on that one main street that I walked up and down several times) a lot of video game arcades. Puerto Montt is nicknamed Muerto Montt and everyone says that there’s nothing to do there and you should leave immediately to go to Puerto Varas or a more palatable destination, but I kind of liked it. It had a gritty feel to it, but there were also tons of school boy and girls in uniforms out and about. It didn’t feel like a city you visit, it felt more like a city you live in. And being on a hill, even going a couple of streets up you get beautiful views of the ocean and surrounding mountains.

But I was really tired, and after taking out some money and buying lunch/dinner, I was ready to call it a day and leave the exploring for tomorrow. I came back to the hostel and talked with the very chatty hospedaje owner and a French girl, Alexandra, who I was to share a room with. I hadn’t spoken French in a while, and it was a very pleasant change. Alexandra is an artist from Savoie who spent the last 5 months biking around Chile and Peru. She had one month to go and left this morning to hike in Argentina before going on to Tierra del Fuego. So who knows, we might meet again!

I spent today walking around town a bit more. I bought myself a warm jacket from one of the kitschy, but cheap shops (20 euros for a nice jacket isn’t a bad deal, right?) and also ventured into a small supermarket, where I resisted buying a pot of manjar (this delicious and sweet dulce de leche spread that we had in dessert sometimes in Huinay) but I did buy a few bread rolls and fruit for breakfast. Other produce quirks were mayonnaise and ketchup and jam and yogurt in bags rather than bottles or jars. Funny.

While I was sad to leave Huinay and all the great people I got to know there, I am ready to start the next leg of my adventure. Puerto Montt is considered a transitional city; no one come here to stay here, people come here to go somewhere else. I feel like my day in Puerto Montt was a good time to transition from my experience living in Huinay to seeing the rest of Chile. A lot of Chileans have asked me what I think of Chile, and I don’t really know what to say because all of Chile that I have experienced is centered around life at Huinay and the fjords. Many of the Chilean visiting scientists at Huinay were quick to point out that Huinay, in all it’s remoteness and particularities, isn’t Chile, or at least it’s one very specific aspect of Chile, but Chile is a lot of things and Huinay isn’t very representative of them. So I feel that I am ready to take my perspective of Chile, which is between visitor and inhabitant of Huinay, and let it be challenged and transformed over the next few weeks. Watch out Chile, here I come!

I’m leaving Huinay in less than a week. The weather is really beautiful now, the sun is shining, and there is not a cloud in the sky.

It is not always like that, sometimes Huinay looks like this:

When it rains, it rains hard and it rains for days on end. But at the moment its very easy to forget that, so here are some pictures of what I’ve been up to while the sky has been blue and bright!