Chacabuco and Coyhaique

So today was a bright and early day! We had to be dressed and had something to eat and in the right spot ready to go for 6:30am . . . and let me tell you, after 2 days of hardly leaveing your cabin, that was extremely and painfully early! But it was well worth it as it is very beautiful here! The farther South you go, the less rain they get and the more barren it is, however here they get 3,000mm of rain a year and it is squeezed inbetween the Andes and other mountains. It's very lush and green and since this is the begining of their summer months, the flowers were all in blossom. There is really nothing more then a port in Chacabuco and the nearest town (about 10 minutes) is Aysen which has about 10,000 people but another hour away is Coyhaique which is a huge city of 29,000 (it's all relative here). Mostly it's picturesque here . . . people have only started living here in the 70's and they do have paved roads (which more then say Punta Arenas had) but mostly because it was developed by the military which are mostly engineers. Otherwise, it's very quiet and has only really been developed because tourism and because it has the second best fly fishing in South America. . . . the only way to get here is by boat or you can drive but you have to drive to Argentina (which is only about an hour away from Coyhaique) and then around the Andes and into Puerto Montt. Punta Arenas is not connected to the TransAmerica highway so Puerto Montt is your only and best option, other then flying or just purely trying to walk out! It's strange to be in a country where spanish is the main language but their national hero is a guy called O'Higgins . . . he was the guy who fought to get the spaniards out of Chile and everywhere you go there is a street called O'Higgins or a restaurant. His father was (you guessed it) Irish but he was Chilean born. Crazy Irish!