Thursday 27th – Sunday 30th, Oct
I had a good feeling about Tortel, it was a uniquely beautiful and quiet place to slow down after a month of movement. It was a shame to miss the border crossing at Villa O’Higgins and the national park at El Chaltén beyond but thinking ahead I could always include them on my return journey. I decided to stay here for a while. For me it was the end of the Carretera Austral, I would wait for the next boat to Puerto Natales in nine days (usually every Saturday but bank holiday weekend), my best bet for getting a new phone without backtracking hundreds of kilometres. The boat looked like an experience in itself, 40 hours through the south-western fjords direct to the gateway of Torres del Paine national park; I was set on the plan.
Tortel is a tiny community that spreads down and along one side of a steep cove at the end of a one-way road. It’s power comes from diesel generators on the outskirts, shops are sparsely stocked and the only Wi-Fi was at the library. If I wanted to get any communications out I had to ask someone for a hotspot to my iPad and, still being low season, there weren’t that many people about. I quickly realised that there wasn’t much I could do in terms of planning or getting a new phone until I got the the bigger city in the south, I had just enough cash to cover me until then so I settled in.
It was all seasons over the next few days, howling winds swept through, battering the small boats, and the snow-line stayed low on the mountains overlooking the cove. The boardwalks remained slick and I witnessed a few people take slips and falls, luckily nobody saw mine. One particularly treacherous path was the trail that looped around the town and connected both ends, parts of it composed of slippy beams, 30cm wide, staked into the the boggy ground. I walked it with a Spanish/Chilean couple who I’d met days before as they hitchhiked on the Careterra, they had got a ride with a German/Chilean pair and were all heading to the trail. I bumped into them sitting in the harbour drinking maté as the sun began to burn through the clouds and so I joined them walking towards the trail-head. Out towards the even quieter end of town piles of wood lay near where walkways were being repaired, boats in varied conditions leaned sideways on the marshes. The trail climbed up and around to give a view over the mouth of the Río Baker, along through the fjord and later down over the rest of Tortel. I hiked the trail again in the opposite direction a couple of days later when the sun returned, both times I was accompanied by what became a pack of local dogs, strays and pets. Ever up for the adventure a couple of dogs would start following and soon be joined by others, appearing seemingly out of nowhere on the backside of the hill.
The next morning the power was out. I sat by the window with a cup of tea and watched as linesmen scaled the bare wood pylons, leaning back into their belts as they hauled new cables. I thought the town couldn’t get any quieter but now there wasn’t even the drift of music from a house somewhere. The only sounds in Tortel were occasional bursts of a chainsaw in the distance and small boat engines fading around the headland. I’ll remember these days fondly as a period of meditation, simple eating, inspired reading and great napping.
Austral Spring 