Chile Day 12 - Transit and Lack Thereof

I'm trying to look at it as a few days of forced relaxation, not ones wasted in transit. I waited a long time in puhuyuapi and rode the bus north to the turnoff point for Futalefu. The driver made several unscheduled social stops, so I missed my connecting bus. I unsuccessfully tried to hitchhike the rest of the way, but no change of variables seemed to help. (Smile or no smile? Bandanna on head or waving? Telltale Zingermann's T-Shirt declaring my americanness to the world, or turned inside-out to hide it?) I hopefully watched each distant dust plume, hoping that it would turn onto my side road and pick me up. Most didn't even turn, so I at least faced little opportunity for rejection. Finally, I found a Residencial in town and resigned myself to a 22 hour layover in Villa Santa Lucia, population 30, activities none.

As usual, the weather for the bus ride was astounding. Not a single cloud in the sky all day long. (In contrast to yesterday's flat-light no-shadows conditions for the glacier hike.) The view down the valley at km175 left me wishing for a long clif bar break. This region really is beautiful and I can see why so many people are biking the road. If it were paved, I'd probably do it too.

My two most rapidly dwindling resources are cash and fiction. ATMs have been scarce since leaving Puerto Montt, and those which I have found were either broken or out of cash. I'm conserving by eating less, since it's my only real area of flexibility. The few english-speakers I have encountered are not carrying any books to trade and there's no hope of a take-a-book-leave-a-book anywhere. I feel really stupid carrying these finished books up and down mountains, but I stand even less chance of getting new stories without them. For lack of reading material, I have been working on my spanish from the phrasebook in the back of Let's Go. Now I'm trying to reverse-engineer conjugation/tense and coming to a new appreciation for the archeo-linguists who worked on the Rosetta Stone. (Which I doubt contains such useful phrases as "the cockroaches are biting me".)

I am eating dinner across the table from an entire cured hindleg of some medium-sized mammal. I'm so hungry that this does not deter anything. This plate of sliced cucumbers is the best thing to happen to me all day. Let's hope for something better tomorrow.