This is the last full day in Patagonia. It has been quite an adventure. I was thinking about the two guys Nephew and I talked to the previous night, and it brought some rumination. On one hand we were very fortunate that we had guiding hands in Nephew and Abi for the week - it made the difficult parts easier to navigate and brought us an immersive experience that would not have been otherwise possible. But while I'm glad I didn't have to try to communicate too much with my minimal Spanish, it would have been interesting to struggle with it. Sometimes struggle isn't the question, sometimes struggle is the answer.
I left my Spanish/American dictionary in the cabana when we left.
We all packed up and Abi picked us up around 10:00 to head north to see a bit more and be close to the airport. The Mitsubishi bumped along the rough road; there appeared to be more traffic than we had previously.
We stopped at one of the Paredon de Manos to see the painted hands on the wall. We first went through the museum showing a very early school for the area. It had been restored, and while the restoration was good, it would be hard to call it a faithful restoration with a metal grate second floor, plywood and cabling throughout. But it was mildly interesting. I especially like the actual boleadoras which were the traditional method for killing guanacos.
We headed down the path to the wall of the hands. There are several signs en route of various interest. One had a significant spelling mistake - I know I have my share of spelling mistakes in my native language and I wouldn't dare try to create signs in Spanish, but a public sign with an error (both mathematical and spelling) should probably be corrected as soon as possible. Either way, it is a bit troubling...
We got to the wall of hands and at first some of the hands were hard to see. There were both positive and negative hands. The signs along the way said they were not terribly old - only as old as 3000 years and they may have been still doing them in the 17th century.
Abi wonders if they were a school project to bring people in, and at this point I've learned to trust her. But given that I'll likely not have the ability to see these again, I'll suspend my skepticism for now. At best, they are barely prehistoric. But to be fair, it is believed that a small populations of mastodons still lived around 3000 years ago between present day Alaska and Russia. So by that logic mastodons aren't prehistoric either.
And one hand had either been vandalized, or it just looked plain fake.
We drove the short distance into Cerra Castillo and bought lunch at a bus restaurant. We've seen a few of these - restaurants made of discarded buses. The sandwiches were phenomenally good, especially the bread. It was funny to see a dog come on board the bus. He seemed to know exactly how far he could go without getting kicked off. My guess is that this does work for some free food sometimes. It almost worked this time.
I've eaten a lot of Chilean bread on this trip - loaves of bread are nearly unheard of since bread almost always comes as these flat, chewy bun-like individual breads. I used to make something like this for my lunches at work but haven't in years - perhaps I'll start again. (Or maybe I'll just continue to buy loaves since it is so much easier.)
Back on the road we drove into Coyhaique and to Abi's house in the hills above the city. She owns quite the property and an interesting house partially made out of old shipping containers. She has several horses and dogs as well. Her view of Coyhaique is amazing.
We went into town and into the main square. Walking around the tourist shops, I bought my boss a mate straw and am cooking up a story to tell him about mate. Although I may not actually give it to him? We'll see once I rotate back to the world.
As we were walking around, we saw the lady who we were on the glacier tour with. It is a small world - or vacations might be a little bit predictable?
I was also happy to see Monkey Puzzle trees. I've always thought these were really neat; I can't help but wonder if I could get them to grow at home?
We had dinner at a really good restaurant. With all the sheep I had seen over the previous days, I decided I needed to eat lamb and it was quite tasty. While walking around I had seen a really big dude get off a really small bike. I saw him again eating at the restaurant and noticed his colors were "Baguales" - Feral - Nice even if caricaturesque. Ice cream while walking back to the car rounded out the day.
We went back to Abi's house, ready for a final night in Patagonia.
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