after i wrote that last entry i went back to the hostel and sat around reading for a bit, when rafa stormed in announcing that we had to go with him to buy a whole lamb for the bbq he had decided to have, which seemed like an entirely sensible idea. so we all went to the butchers and chipped in for the lamb, which came wrapped in a black bin bag with its feet sticking out, was quite concerned that none of the people we passed on the street seemed at all surprised to see a tattooed chilean metaller walking down the street with a badly concealed carcass slung over his shoulder. the patagonian method for cooking lamb seems to be to impale it on a large skewer suspended over an open fire, however this prompted an argument between rafa and omar, the hostel owner, about which way to insert the stake. after about 10 mins of ¡culo! ¡no, carote! ¡culo! they eventually agreed, but had trouble getting it through the meat until someone had the idea of getting the sledgehammer involved. best cooking utensil ever. so eventually we got the lamb cooking, which took about 6 hours, so spent the time standing around drinking wine and getting our freshly laundered clothes smelling of wood smoke, ideal. when it was finally cooked they just dumped it on the table and we ripped off bits with our hands, manliest meal ever! meat was awesome as well. stormer.

so the next day we sat around in the hostel waiting for the navimag ferry, which we boarded at about midnight after buying ridiculous quantities of alcohol to fuel our 4 day voyage. boat was really good, they gave us 3 square meals a day, and were more than happy to dish out seconds, so i basically got up for breakfast each day, went back to bed till midday, had 2 lunches, sat around playing cards all afternoon then had 2 dinners, which was pretty much ideal after the starvation rations in torres del paine. loads of people from the last hostel were on the boat and found the dutch blokes from ushuaia again, so had loads of mates and generally awesome time. got involved with pisco as well, which is the chilean national spirit, kind of a grape based whisky, mistaaaake. really calm journey until the 3rd night when we went out into open ocean and it got a bit choppy, which was good for me because it made everyone stagger round drunkenly and so made any pisco related balance issues easier to disguise. scenery was really beautiful most of the way, loads of little islands and a glaciar and stuff, saw some whales from far off and possibly some penguins, although they may have been seagulls. yesterday was really hot so sat on deck all afternoon, actually getting a reasonable tan finally. so now we're sitting around in puerto varas (near puerto montt where we got the boat to) waiting to get a bus to pucon, which i decided to stop at for a day or two to see the volcano (apparently you can toboggan down it!). sent danny and rachelle away to bariloche so i'm travelling with jason for a bit longer and an irishman called franz who we seem to have picked up, also i met a couple of chileans on the boat who invited me to stay at their place in santiago so may meet up with them if i make it up there, more bqqs yaaaaaaaaay! nothing else to report i dont think, i heard castro has stepped down finally, didn't see that one coming! let me know if anything important happens in the news, especially if it involves any wars in columbia that i should probably know about.

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