Evacuation

Although I have been in South America for a couple of weeks now and have just finished trekking in Torres del Paine national park, due to rather strange and interesting circumstances I am going to have to start at the end rather than the beginning.

Right now I am in Santiago a few days earlier than expected so I am staying in the city waiting for my flight to Paraguay. This has come about because at the end of my trip in Torres I discovered that there was a strike on in the area so no busses were running – in fact there was no road transport whatsoever as roadblocks were in place around all the towns as part of the protest over fuel price increases by the government. Anyway, this meant that I was stuck in Torres for a couple of extra days until a bus was allowed through by the protesters to evacuate the tourists from the park (food was running a bit short so the authorities were eager to get rid of us). This got me back to Puerto Natales where I was once again trapped due to the roadblocks. The Red Cross had set up in the local school and were organizing buses to the boarder with Argentina (some folk chose to walk the 24km) and had linked up with the Chilean airforce who were putting on flights to Punta Arenas airport. There were hundreds of tourists in the town by this point some sleeping in the school and being fed by the Red Cross; who seemed to be very twitchy about getting foreigners out of the area. I managed to find a hostel but did have free lunch in the refugee camp served by the local scout group – all good fun. It was the most affluent and multicultural refugee camp you are likely to see, with most of the ´refugee backpackers´ sat around using iphones, blackberrys, laptops, etc. Some had been stuck there for over a week.

So I had a couple of nights in Puerto Natales, checking in with the red cross each day to get myself a flight (free by the way!) to Punta. On the morning of the third day I made my way to the Red Cross only to find the place almost deserted, the last few tourists were being ushered onto on of the last buses to the airport, so, like the fall of Saigon I grabbed my backpack and ran for the last bus from the besieged town lest I be left behind. At the airport the Chilean airforce took over and a military plane flew me to Punta Arenas airport which was also surrounded by roadblocks so nobody could get to the town about 30km away without walking. The airforce had put on a soup kitchen and somewhere to bed down for the trapped tourists. I did consider walking to town but I was able to get my ticket brought forwards by a few days and so get out of that mess and to Santiago – which by the way is not suffering from any protests. Unfortunately I got here at 4am and so had to spend a great many of the early hours walking the deserted streets looking for a hostel. I got quite a nice place in the end and so I am sorted for the next few days.

I’ll have to get around to writing about the Torres trip later.