Day 50 Puerto Williams, Chile 4 September

Got up around 8 to a dark and quiet house. Had warm showers and then the breakfast included in the room rate of our hostal: little round flat buns with ham, cheese and jam as well as coffee. Set out around 9:30. Firstly to the bank to get money then to one of the minimarkets to get water and chocolates. Then we headed south following what we had understood of the directions we got the previous evening from our host and fellow guests at the hostal on how to get to Cerro Bandera (Flag Hill). Chose completely the wrong path and found ourselves on a cowtrack through a bog of snow and mud. Kept going rather than turning back as we ought to have. Finally, much later, wetter and colder, found a road which we followed only to discover that we were on the wrong side of a gate demarcating a restricted naval area (Puerto Williams is first and foremost a Chilean naval base) to which access was prohibited. Oops! Luckily we could easily get through the gaps in the gate and a while later, around 11:30, finally found the real start of the trail up the hill. We were very grateful for the bridges, planks and steps provided on the trail as it was still very muddy and snowy. The path up the hill led through a beautiful and rather wild indigenous forest (lenga, coigue and canelo). Many trees had recently fallen over, we suppose in the winter storms, several across the path which made for some tricky moves. We called halt at a lookout spot 290m above sea level with a view of the town, the bay, the Beagle Canal and Tierra del Fuego across the canal. We prayed, giving thanks to God for all the beauty around us and praising him for his marvelous creation. We thanked God for the good news of Jesus Christ and as we spoke about the gospel the wind started to blow. We took communion and shared it with creation. We blew the shofar 3 times and declared the lordship of Jesus, his victory and imminent return. The shofar echoed in the forest.
The snow was melting pretty fast by this time so the way down was wetter and faster than the way up. We got to town just after 14:00 with very wet and cold feet (shoes not quite up to the challenge of snow), just in time for a late lunch at a little ´tratoria´ offering a 3 course set menu (carrot soup, lasagna, rice pudding and coffee) to the soundtrack of Depeche Mode. We had met the waiter outside the restaurant the day before and wanted to support his very determined positive attitude. A young Argentine from Buenos Aires somehow washed up here at the end of the earth, he was so beautiful and so sad.
We headed home to put on dry socks and shoes, wash the muddy socks and set them and the shoes to dry next to the wood-burning stove.
(In Puerto Williams, as in Punta Arenas and Puerto Montt, it seems they use electricity for light and running appliances, gas for heating water and wood for heating their houses. So Chilean Pategonia smells of snow, sea and wood smoke.)
We headed back to the Martin Guisinde museum and finished reading through the English translation of the text of the exhibits. Found an atlas in the museum library where we could finally establish the distance from the equator for Pategonia as compared to Alaska, Greenland and Norway: 55 degrees south compared to 70 degrees north. This explains why there are trees at the ends of the earth around here but hardly any vegetation in the north.
On the recommendation of the owner of the Angellus we went to the yacht club to inquire about the possibility of a lift to Ushuaia but we were too late: the yachters had already cleared customs and were leaving early the next morning. We went past the evangelical church again but all was quiet and dark. We had hot chocolate and cake again at the Angellus. And we we got home we could not manage to avoid being fed another dinner. Very delicious king crap salad and a kind of shepherd´s pie. Then straight to bed around 20:00.