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22/1/2018 Bus from La Junta to Puerto Raul Marin Balmaceda

We got to the plaza at 6:50am. The white minibus is leaving at 7am. Already many people waiting outside and a lady loading the back of the minibus with all the luggage. We gave her our rucksacks and paid 2500 clp per each of us to get to Raul Marin Balmaceda. Some people came late and didn’t fit to the bus. Now also inside of the bus is full of rucksacks and one Asian guy got an extra spot sitting on a rucksack next to the door. 16 people + one driver + one extra seat in the floor. 

It’s sunny and me met many cyclist on the way to Raul Marin Balmaceda. The road is very bumpy unpaved dirt road and it is very hot and humid inside of the  bus. Also the driver is playing some crazy shit and loud music and I’m feeling sick. 

At 8:45am we are getting on a ferry to cross the river Río Palena and around 9:15am we got off at a supermarket in the middle of the Raul Marin Balmaceda village. There we bought some simple breakfast and walked to find our accommodation. We couldn’t find it for a while. The village is all in a bush and all the roads are just sand. Houses hidden in trees, like in a forest. 

After while we found the house I remembered from booking dot com website. Colourful simple wooden cottage surrounded by trees and other bushy plants. We are walking towards the house and a young guy comes out to welcome us. So that we met Jorge. I would call him an artist... 

The cottage is called Casa el abuelo, it has a kitchen inside, heater to burn wood and two nice rooms to rent. There is also a Brazilian girl Guilia. Jorge is very nice and he speaks fluent English. He told us he volunteers here in this place. The cottage is very basic and it is also a bit weird and dirty in a way. 

In the afternoon we went for a walk called Sendero de Chucoo. It is a bird who comes close to you and does noise. We could see also many hummingbirds and other birds. After that we bought some food for lunch, had lunch together with Jorge and Guilia and went to see dolphins. Then we tried to get some bread for dinner and next day breakfast and snack, but the supermarket didn’t have one. We found also another supermarket, neither that one had any bread, but had some tuna cans. Someone pointed us in a direction where we can find a panadería with bread, so we did. Again. The village doesn’t look like a village. Sand and bushes and trees. Few inhabited houses, not many people anywhere, almost no tourists. 

This day was also a first day we discovered an annoying horse fly called tabana. It’s big and it bites and it flies around you like mad. 

In the evening was getting cold, so I had to set up a fire in the heater. We had all dinner together. I also paid 20000 clp to Jorge for the room for one night. Jorge told us earlier, that the village has electricity generators and they switch the electricity off at midnight and so they did. 



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