Out of Humous: Osorno

Osorno turned out to be an unattractive Chilean town with a rather small but hopeful night scene. The hostel scene, however, was much less promising. We passed on a hostel ruled out by Eti for "sanitary deficiency" in favor of what we thought was a domestic dwelling run by sweet old people.

That first impression, deceiving as first impressions are sometimes, soon gave way to a rather more disturbing scenario. The owners, an irate and loud-mouthed old man and his ageing, unwelcoming daughter, who habitually wore only a bathrobe, refrained from connecting the stove to the gas and instead used one big wood-burning oven for heating, cooking, drying (their) clothes. And also for keeping the tens of birds which slept in the kitchen overnight warm. No one was worried about bird flu here.  

The old man was distinctly aggravated when I opened the cupboards in search of the utensils, and the daughter made it very clear that if we returned after midnight we would only get back in with the help of the fire department.

Sitting at the dinner table with that lovely couple, I read (Frankenstein, by coincidence) while they occupied their intellects with a TV show on which half-dressed people attempted, for about 45 minutes, to hold a tray with a glass full of liquid in the air, hoping for some prize.

Having survived the night (anyone seen Psycho?), and reinforced with five other Israelis whom we met at this family-hosted hell-hole, we took the minibus to the nearby national park.

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I loved the park. We were lucky to pass the entire trek - except for one mild hour - in the dry, and it offered an almost incomparable range of natural phenomena.

Our trip began in a green meadow, dotted with cows - and their deposits. Soon enough, we crossed the cattle gate and entered the forest covering the mountain which was the main part of our walk for the day.

At the end of the trail it was pretty chilly, and there was a refugio (mountain cabin) populated by cheerful crowd of Israelis and a woodstove. I spent the night there on one of the wooden beds. We shared travel stories, the best of which, I think, was about the girl in the next bed, who had brushed her teeth in the dark with a bottle of cooking oil.

On the second day we left the forest and started to climb a volcano. The thin air and the steep, slippery incline were all forgotten when we looked into the crater at the top of the dormant volcano, with a ring of mountains surrounding us. It was the first time I had stood at the edge of a volcano crater. It simply made me happy.

Coming down, we continued through barren volcanic hills, seeing from a distance an old lava trail and emerging fumes, the result of the ongoing volcanic activity in the area. The night camp was supposed to have been set up next to a natural hot spring. We hadn't quite reached it, however, by the time it started getting dark. And right then we encountered an energetic little river. We had made some river crossings before, but there we had all the time in the world. The darkness and cold, just minutes away now, would be complete.

I threw my muchilla to the first guy who crossed, but it slipped, hit the other bank and rolled into the river. Devoted as a mother bear, I jumped into the water with all my clothes on and grabbed it. The river kept on going, quick and cold, indifferent to the prey I had just deprived it of. Since I was already standing in the river, I helped the other cross and we all hastened to set up our tents in the delicate sulfur atmosphere of the hot spring. While I merely spend a cold night, my shoes were frozen in the morning.

The next day took us to a half-dry lagoon, through a colorful, gas-emitting landscape dotting with boiling, bubbling mud pools. The ground in some places was highly unstable, and any limb sinking into it might suffer rather unpleasant burns. For some, however, it was hard to resist the inviting colors and hot mud splashes. Luckily, only one traveler had to pull his leg out of the ground, with only a mild burn.

It was time to head back, camping out for another cold night and finishing the next day's walk at the restaurant through which we entered the park, this time having a significant stopover for some of the best empanadas so far. Were they really that good? I was more into eating than objectivity.

Arriving back at the Osorno bus station I learned that the return bus to Bariloche would leave in less than an hour. I had just enough time to salvage my belongings from the "Hostel of Terror" - and to share my impressions of that place with the very kind people at the local tourist agency (one of them proudly showed us a watch with Hebrew letters he bought on a visit to Jerusalem) who initially referred us there. They all started laughing - a relative of the 'hostel' owners, a police officer, was right beside us.

He was a pretty good sport about it, but just to be on the safe side me and two other Israelis (Dana and Nir) politely said goodbye and proceeded to the bus to Bariloche, from which we will hit the road again and meet in Buenos Aires.