4-Feb El periodista y el fótografo

Confluencia de Rios Neff y Baker

Lago General Carrera

La Gringa y Lago General Carrera

Capillas de Marmol

El periodista y el fotografo

After my last post, I bought food and was about to look for a ride northbound when I encountered a tourist bearing car keys and asking directions. I gave him directions to the bank and a recommendation for lunch then coyly asked if he was heading north and had room for one more. As it turns out, I got a ride from a travel reporter (el periodista)and a photographer doing a story on the southern Carreterra Austral for the Sunday magazine in the Santiago paper El Mercurio. Perfect! We had lunch and hit the road.

The really great part about traveling with these two is that we stopped everywhere to check out the sights and take photos. This is something I could not do if I took a bus. We had a good time.  El peiordista was both chauffer and DJ.  He played mainly brooding artist type music = The Smiths (depressing, but generally good 80s and early 90s music); brought me back to my disgruntled youth.   Somewhere during the course of the day I became a model- wild hair, no make up, and dirty trekking clothes. However, I was wearing my buffanda de suerte (lucky scarf). I attribute all my success hitch hiking to this scarf rather than my gender, hair and eye color. It's my one fashion statement. El peiodista encouraged me to wear the scarf in all photos.  Im not sure if he was making fun of me or not, but it was all light-hearted and we had fun.  I would be surprised if a photo of la gringa appeared in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper, but it was good fun striking poses.

We stopped at the Confluencia of the turbid Río Neff and the turquoise Rio Baker which was stunning. We took lots of pictures. It was great fun traveling with professionals. We stopped at a mirador of Lago General Carrera- the largest freshwater lake in Chile.

We capped the day off by renting a boat outside of Rio Tranquilo to check out the Capillas de Marmol.  These are some unique rock formations in Lago General Carrera supposedly formed by thousands of years of erosion.  They looked fun to boulder on, but deep water soloing was out of the question.

We arrived in Rio Tranquilo around 8ish and had difficulty finding a place to sleep.  We ended up sharing a 2 room cabin.  It was my first bed in well over 2 weeks!

Palabra del dia = bakan (very good)