Puerto Montt is for Lovers

Puerto Montt was grey-skied, rain-puddled, and quiet today when I arrived after several hours southbound on Ruta-5, the great panamerican highway. This is as far south as the fabled road goes, unless you count a short stretch on the island of Chiloé - but there's no bridge, so I think it's fair to call Puerto Montt the terminus. South of here there are still hundreds of miles of paved and unpaved roadway connecting far-flung Patagonian towns like Coyhaique, Villa O'Higgins, Puerto Natales, and Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, but you start to get really far down there pretty soon, and I feel a bit like I'm in Vancouver or some other smaller port town in British Columbia, about to head further north.

I learned a lot this weekend in Villarrica, mostly hanging out with Aaron and asking constant questions about the state of Chile's native forests (poor) and the political and economic forces that threaten them (grim, with a glimmer of hope). I also went to a Saturday evening BBQ where I sampled my first (and second and third) Pisco Sour, and got to ask more questions of several Chilean forest protection experts and a German guy with a PhD in sustainable forestry management.

Without boring anyone to tears (feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you don't care about forest conservation plans), the basic situation is that Chile's native forests are biologically rare and globally significant, containing many species found nowhere else on earth. They're also disappearing before our eyes, mostly through clearing to make room for some of the world`s most expansive pine and eucalyptus tree farms to feed the North American market for pulp and chips. CPMC and Arauco, Chile's largest timber companies, both agreed to put a moratorium on logging their native forest holdings in 2003 after pressure from Aaron's group in the N. American marketplace, among other things. Although a huge step forward, this still leaves the majority of native forests unmapped and unprotected, as small and medium-sized landowners are still converting their forests to plantations, which generate some revenue... whereas preservation ain't worth squat. A big coalition of groups are now in the process of developing a comprehensive native forest management plan and creating, from scratch, a market for sustainably-harvested native forest products that will incentivize conservation for landowners, putting a value on previously worthless native forests. Forest Ethics is convinced that this is the only way to save forests here, and this year is when the rubber meets the road to see if the green groups can rise to the challenge of not just being against logging, but instead creating alternatives that work.

Anyway, I'm here tonight in a nice guesthouse and jump over to Chiloé tomorrow to stay for while with Sergio from the Federacion Huilliche de Chiloé before possibly taking a ferry to Puerto Chacabuco in Patagonia next week, or maybe just heading up to Santiago and then Bolivia by mid-March.

My spanish is improving, my stomach's staying healthy, and my spirits are good. I realized today on the bus that in the past 5 days I've seen 4 volcanos - 1 of which was glowing at night with magma - 2 ancient tree species, 1 early morning rainbow, and 5 beautiful sunsets. I´ve pretended to be married to a magical unicorn-pegasus while roleplaying with a brilliant 4 year old child, talked serious politics with a Bolivian traveling sweater salesman, learned about fine Chilean wines from a professor of oenology at la Universidad de Chile, and flirted with two girls with mullets from Barcelona, among other adventures. Life is good.