40 Hour Famine and other stories

It´s actually not as hard as it sounds, especially when you don´t have a choice. Everything was going according to plan Saturday. We went shopping for a new camera among other things, and ate our favourite new food (Lomito for Clay, Completo for Piet) at the mall foodcourt at 4:30 pm. We were tempted by Pizza Hut for about half a second till we came to our senses. Anyway, to make a long story short, this was to be our last meal until 8:30 Monday morning. Here´s the long version:
We took a bus to Puerto Varas, where we apparently caught the last bus to Petrohue, thanks to the unexpected help of some friendly Chileans. The driver dropped us off near some waterfalls in Vicente Perez Rosales National Park, and we camped for free next to the river. The new tent is awesome, by the way. We got there pretty late so we just went for a walk till it got dark, then went to bed. We planned to walk to Petrohue, 6km away, on Sunday. We made a little fire in the morning and had our instant coffee. Soon after that it started raining so we sat in the tent to wait it out. It stopped raining at 9:30 pm. At one point in the afternoon I thought we should try to make a break for it, but Clay convinced me otherwise thankfully. With no food, and only the little riverwater we had boiled in the morning to drink we had only one thing to do: think about food. Well, that and sleep, read, practice Spanish and listen to the radio. I actually listened to a newsbroadcast from Holland on shortwave. We did have my emergency Powerbar (don´t laugh) but we wanted to save it for the morning. We went to sleep at 10:30 but didn´t sleep well on the hard ground.
Monday morning we opened that Powerbar, and no, it still didn´t taste that good, but it gave us some form of sustenance for the walk to Petrohue. It seemed like we would never get there. For the first 45 minutes we saw four signpost, each saying Petrohue was 6km away. We did get there eventually though, and ate exactly what we wanted, a sandwich with ham, cheese, and tomato, and a coffee. Very good. We also bought groceries for supper, macaroni, peas, asparagus soup, and two chocolate bars. After a little boat tour on the lake we got dropped off at the other side at our campground. The lake is nice, but with the clouds we couldn´t see any of the three volcanoes which give it its apparant spectacular scenery. We hiked up the hill to gather firewood. Supper wasn´t that good, but filling, except for the chocolate bars.
This morning it was raining again, but we had no choice but to go since our ferry for Puerto Chacabuco leaves tonight. We packed our bags, and right when it was time to pack up the tent there was a 10 minute break in the rain. When we were ready to go, the fisherman who was going to boat us across couldn´t get his boat started. He told us to yell across to the men at the other side. It was pouring rain, and it took us about 5 minutes to get there attention. In the meantime, the bus back to Puerto Varas was on it way, but saw us yelling and waiving our arms, so he started honking and yelling to see if we needed a ride, so we started waiving at him too. Quite a scene, but maybe you had to be there. We got across, and made our way back to Puerto Montt, where we are now. Our ferry leaves at 8:00pm.
For those of you who are interested, we are now as far south of the equator as York, NE is north, and in one week we will be as far south as Dauphin, MB is north.
Pieter