Puerto Rio Tranquilo and the Capilla de Marmol
The bus ride is incredible. I think about how there must be no bus ride like it in the world. We are heading to Puerto Rio Tranquilo and I’m excited to show Mon “real Patagonia”, even though I haven’t even been this way yet. The bus stops at Cerro Castillo and we stare out at snow capped jagged mountains, the bus continues past icy blue rivers and crazy looking rock walls and it becomes apparent that part of the Carretera Austral has actually been cut out of rock. As in literally cut out. The walls rise on either side and then we are stopping for what seems like an eternity, waiting for some road work ahead to stop. Mon’s telling me some hilarious stories about The Gambia and I’m laughing so hard - there is nothing better than a friend and god did I miss this one! Some days it has been really hard on this trip missing hanging out with our friends or family and it’s great having all these visitors from home.
The view is the best, but the bus also doesn’t have a working bathroom so soon I’m dying as hour 3 without a stop ticks by. A lady at the back is in the same boat as me as her child desperately needs the bathroom and thank goodness for that because she comes to the front of the bus and taps on the driver’s window until he agrees to pull over at the next road crossing. We are all relieved to hear this until he actually pulls over and people stream out of the bus and it becomes very apparent that we are all meant to just find a bush to hide behind. The thing is, there are really no bushes and the few wooden structures are taken by people (why are you placed there, wooden structure? What is your purpose?). About 15 people actually take turns behind whatever they can find in the rain. A car even goes past and if this phenomenon were odd for us it must be quite the weird site to see.
We trundle along for another hour and finally arrive at Puerto Rio Tranquilo where we are informed the town is meant for 100 people but currently has 500 people. So we set about finding somewhere to stay (as there are few places listed online). Each place seems to be full and then we find one place with bunk beds that tells us we can have that room. This room is the size of the bunk beds x 2, as in there is really not any room in there once we cram in with our bags. There is Internet apparently, however upon closer inspection it is a private router meant for a single computer. There is a schedule up with the Internet hours but when we are within these hours and the Internet still doesn’t work the lady tells us it’s because everyone is trying to use it (it works for nobody).
We head out into town to the row of pop up tourist tents that advertise glacier expeditions as well as trips to the marble caves. We go to check in with 99% Aventura (none of us know what happened to the other 1%) as we had scheduled a glacier climb for the next day but find it closed.
It’s raining but we need to figure out our bus back to Coyhaique so we go to the information booth that tells us they don’t sell tickets but there is a booth 3 booths down that does and if not the completo stand across the road does. The place 3 booths down is a marble caves tour company and they don’t understand why we are asking them so we buy some marble cave trip tickets for $8.000 each (it’s the same price everywhere) and head to the completo stand where a lady inside motions that they are closed by running her hand sideways across her neck as if to actually say “we’re dead”. Alrighty.
We happily head to our marble caves trip all kitted out in our rain coats (but not rain pants because we’re idiots). It’s 5:30 pm and has been raining all day but from the bus Lago General Carrera looked pretty calm. We soon find out that is not the case. We are in a small boat with 8 people and the waves are actually quite large and we are getting tossed up and are actually soaking wet from waves by the time we reach the marble caves. We are, of course, laughing hysterically because we don’t comprehend why nobody would warn us about this.
The caves themselves are phenomenal. The water is a bright turquoise regardless of the rainy weather and it reflects up into these white caves. The walls of marble look as if they have many circles dug out of them, and our guide explains that when the caves were still underwater there was an explosion and there were bubbles that hit the marble so hard they left their impression on it. We go on to see Capilla de Marmol, the only named marble cave with a historical record and so the only one of the caves that is eligible to be a wonder of the world.
Apparently during the winter the water level of the lake drops and you can see parts of the caves you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. When this has happened in the past there have been 3 different weddings at the Capilla, where the bride and groom have stood on the marble and all the guests have watched from boats.
The guide points to another set of caves very far off and explains that during prohibition in Chile people would stash wine in those caves and then ferry them out in other cases. There are all kinds of stories about these caves. The boats actually head into the caves a little bit so you can take a closer look at the walls, but I found them to be much prettier from outside looking in.
We begin our trip back and it’s apparent that the waves are now bigger. There is a lady in front of us who is clearly freaked out and is being consoled by the two people next to her. Nathan decides to take his one picture of the trip which happens to be a selfie of us three on his disposable camera. This happens right as as wave actually crashes over Mon, so here’s to hoping the photo turns out.
The local brewery beckons us because we are famished and deserve a beer after our extreme boat ride. We all order beer only to hear “THAT one…we don’t have. But we do have a different local beer.” How a brewery completely runs out of their own beer is beyond me but we end up having the tastiest lamb sandwiches so it’s alright. After our boat ride we had stopped in at 99% Aventura again to check in about our glacier climb to find it cancelled. That day it had rained 5mm and the next day it was meant to 30 mm, so for obvious Noah’s Ark style reasons we would not be using ice picks the next day. We would have consoled ourselves with a beer if the brewery had any.
We return to our no Internet hospedaje to change out of soaking wet clothes and meet an Israeli guy who is also looking to leave the next day. We’ve both been informed that we just need to head towards the bus in the morning as there are 3 buses between 9 and 11 am. Although the entire town sits in the booths on the one main road day after day, nobody can tell us an exact schedule and some people even go as far as to tell us there is no bus to Coyhaique.
The Israeli guy and his girlfriend team up with us and we try to call a transfer bus for the next day that we have seen advertised throughout town. When I ask the hospedaje owner, a very frizzy haired lady, whether I can use her number to call the shuttle she tells me there is no shuttle. She tells me to show her the flyer and laughs out loud at it, pointing and beckoning over another lady. She asks where I’d seen this and when I said the whole of town she types in the phone number and gets busy signal 5 times in a row. After the number is typed in I can clearly see she had this number saved as a contact. She then tells me this guy (insert name) runs his shuttle at 4 pm every day but that’s if there is room.
Why the song and dance about no shuttle?
We are getting ready for bed when someone tells us it is the 62nd Anniversary of Puerto Rio Tranquilo as a town and there is a huge celebration in the gym. We all look to each other as we obviously want to just go to bed but we also want to show Mon a Chilean experience. She thankfully decided yes to bed and no to event.
But then Nathan stepped out the front door and realized the gym was right across the street. As in 50 feet away. So on our shoes went just as we heard some guy come in and go “PARTY! PARTY!” but it was more like “partee? Partee?”. This person entered with beers and was talking to our new Israeli friends (whose names we never got) about this celebration. We head over to the gymnasium and it looks like a middle school dance to begin with. There are boys on one side and girls on the other and then both genders lined up along one side. There are chairs set out in the middle of them gym and a stage at the front and people are sitting in the stadium seating. We aren’t quite sure what’s going on but there’s a kid in a karate outfit and so we stay.
Looking around there is also a guy with a crown and several little girls that are dressed up. We assume there will be a talent show. A man begins speaking over the microphone and we understand that they are actually about to choose the new Queen of Puerto Rio Tranquilo. The kid with the crown is last year’s King. From what we can understand there must be two rivaling schools as everyone is told to sit with either the Allianza Azul or Amarillo.
Two girls go up with their dates and are seated next to the King. I don’t quite know how their dates play into this and whether they have to battle the current King for their Queen or whether they are irrelevant oe why the current King has no Queen or what is going on? The microphone voice announces that there has been a tie and so it must be settled with a costume show…obviously.
There are exactly two people who come up for the Allianza Amarillo: a China man (this is not a joke, this girl was actually just wearing a plaid shirt and tan trousers but somehow the MC announced “Chinito” as her outfit) and I don’t even know, a fairy perhaps? The Allianza Azul goes up and there are a good 12 people dressed up and the MC sassily says, “Well, I don’t need to tell you who has won because we can all see with our eyes.”
It is at this point that we realize there will be no karate (thanks for fooling us, kid) and leave.
While we were standing there we see the Israeli couple come in along with Mr. PARTY PARTY who had pregamed this very family friendly event and watched as this look of confusion and then horror settled over them as they realized there was no party, and it was actually a family friendly event they had pregamed. We befriended a Pennsylvanian couple the next day who put it perfectly: it was like when you get invited to a stranger’s party by a friend and you ask whether they’re sure it’ll be fine and the friend responds something like of course so you show up but it’s clearly not fine and you’re clearly not from Puerto Rio Tranquilo and why are you at the 62nd Anniversary celebration of this town.
