El Queso Perdido y La Cámara Rota

We took 4 days downtime in Puerto Natales, Chile, following our Torres del Paine trek, restoring the tissues and enjoying the relaxed, down-to-earth feel of the town. We also met up with Alvaro from the trail, who turns out to be the head of tourism for the region. He supplied us with maps and suggestions at his office where his window looks straight out into the waters and mountains that border the town.



We had beers with him at an incongruously hip hotel bar and then a good seafood dinner.





Our real treat was being invited to his house the next night where he whipped up pisco sours (the ubiquitous Chilean and Peruvian cocktail) and pizza. He and his girlfriend Yessica are wonderfully kind, hospitable people we hope to see again someday.



To get to our next trek in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares we had to cross back into Argentina. This was our 6th border crossing between the two countries and you might have thought we were old hands at it. Traveling into Chile posters everywhere warn you against bringing in fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese. You have to sign a declaration that you have no products of plant or animal origin and your bags may be searched. Going into Argentina there are intimations that the same rules apply but no declarations are required and there are no huge posters showing apples with lines through them. And we let our guard down and forgot about 3 fat supermarket cheeses in Mike's backpack.

A young soldier's search of the bus luggage turned up our contraband groceries, along with the banana in the lunchbag of a middle aged couple from Buenos Aires and a young woman's apple. Mike and his fellow offenders disappeared into the border office and for 45 minutes the rest of us waited at the bus. Eventually they were released, Mike with a closely printed page detailing the discovery, confiscation and planned destruction of (1) kilogram of cheese, approximately. This notification, signed by Mike and the soldier, will certainly be going up on the wall at home.

The loss of the cheese was hard, though the receipt of the notification did make up for it. The breaking of our camera as we got off the bus was tragic and made for a difficult transition. Calafate, our layover town, had no electronics repair shops; neither did Chaltén, our new base town. We hiked into Los Glaciares National Park on a beautiful clear day, our broken camera left with our extra stuff at the campground.