Upon arrival to Puerto Natales we saw a barricade at the entrance to the city.
¨This doesn´t look good¨ I thought to myself, and I had no idea how right I was...
 
We got to our hostel - Josmar2 at 9:30P.M. and were told that a strike will begin at 10:00.
The strike was due to an increase in the cost of natural gas that the government wishes to apply. ¨No alza al gas¨ was written everywhere, and all the houses and cars had black flags waving.
 
We thought it´s just a matter of a day or two until it will be settled, and that in the meantime we could go to the famous Torres Del Paine park and start our 4 days hiking there. By the time we´ll be back - it should all be over. Or so we thought...
 
However the citizens had a different thing in mind. The hostel owner told us that the strike is supposed to last a long time and that most of the city stores will be shut. No one can enter or leave the city, and no one may enter or leave (!) the park.
So we were stuck there in the hostel for 4 days. Luckily, we met a group of Chilean guys who were stuck like us. We had a lot of fun with them, drank Piscola, played Truko, tasted Matte and enjoyed our time together.
 
after 4 days we were told that the governor of the region wishes to speak with the tourists and explain the situation. We went to the city hall, where he explained to us that the demonstrators operate on the southern area of Chile and that they are blockin the roads so it´s impossible to get to the border. He also told us that if we try to break through the barrier it may cause violence.
Then he proceeded to explain that the red cross will supply us with food and shelter until they could arrange a way to get all the tourists across the border to Argentina. So basically we were hostages, or refugees in Chile...
 
Later that evening they led us, with police escort, to a nearby school where the red cross settled and started giving us food portions (like prison food). Most of the Israelies gathered at the gym together on mattresses and opened tents and sleeping bags.
It was all very surreal and felt more like a war zone than a calm chilean city. Soldiers around us and red cross signs everywhere.  
I sent a message to Sally, my friend who works at Nana10 news and on the next day she posted the details including a photo I took - online on the Nana10 news website. I became a mini celeb as a lot of the Israelis who were stuck with me heard about it. Here´s a link to the report:
http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=773013 
 
Later on I heard that Galatz - A radio station in Israel tried to contact me for an interview and called my parents. Unfortunately I was offline for a few days and only got the message much later when I was already in El Calafate.  
 Every 2-3 hours they gave us an update about a plane or a bus that the red cross is trying to arrange to let us all out of there. They managed to send some tourists on 3 planes to Punto Arenas (another Chilean south of Puerto Natales), and 2 busses to El Calafate (Argentina - my next destination), but most of the tourists remained there. 
Some people started to walk to the border with all of the equipment - it was 25Km away...
 Then - one evening we were told that there was a settlement with the demonstrators - they will open the barricade towards the Argentinian border from 6PM until midnight to let tourists cross, but the red cross cannot supply us with buses as they were stuck trying to get back from Argentina to Chile. 
We immediately left the shelter with our stuff looking for a taxi or another way to get to the border and run away while we can... There were some citizens who felt bad about the situation and offered to give us a ride. We gladly accepted... And found ourselves finally out of Chile and crossing the border to Argentina. 
From the border we hitch hiked our way to Rio Turbio - a small city in Argentina and spent the night at another school. In the morning we took a bus to El Calafate and could finally put this episode behind us. It was... an interesting experience...
So no Torres for me! But many more adventures await nonetheless.

Hasta luego!

Gilad.