Back in Puerto Natales

So we are back in Puerto Natales with some time to kill (4 days till the Navimag leaves)... Suki comes up with another one of her hairbrain ideas.. "let's volunteer at a hostel!" A few emails later she gets a hit from one place in town whom we coincidentally got our bus tickets from the week before. We rock up and explain our cause and "Ah! Si, si!" we are welcomed inside but not really sure what's happening as the Juan owner doesn't speak English. Finally Paula (one of the staff) returns from lunch and in her intermediate English has a chat and shows us our room. We navigate to the back of the old hostel in dire need of tlc and arrive at a dimly lit 8 bed dorm room with clothes strewn everywhere (at this point Trav gives Suki one of his "what have you gotten us into" looks). Fortunately its only Sergio, the other guy that works here, staying in the room too. Phew!

We are ushered off to go have lunch and come back, still not entirely sure what we're meant to help with. We get back and Trav is asked to help with manly things like "move the bikes" and "move the dryer". We discover the bikes need fixing... Yes! We (Trav) can do that! We spend the rest of the afternoon fixing bikes, eating cookies and trying to have conversations in Spanish. Juan seems suitably impressed with Travs "mechanico" skills :-)

We have dinner in the hostel with Paula and she tells us all about her upbringing.. makes me realise just how lucky we are. A few whiskeys (the JW red label is a bit hit) all round after dinner and its bedtime at our new "home"!Read more