Real Food and Friends...

Puerto Natales, Chile

March 6, 2007
S 51°43.585
W 072°30.366

We spent the last few days re-entering society after our extended stay in Torres del Paine National Park. We had to do laundry, (yes, our clothes are officially de-funked), caught up on email and current events, and most importantly we gorged ourselves with the wonderful pizza from Mesita Grande.

We talked about the crispy, thin crust pizza from Mesita Grande since we ventured into the park. We knew it would be our first meal, complete with a bottle of wine, as soon as we got out of the park. The trip to Mesita Grande was better than expected when Luke and Fran, a nice Australian couple we spent time with in the park, walked in and shared the dining experience with us. It was perfect—good company and good food!

The pizza did not disappoint either. I ordered one with onions, mushrooms, ham and cheese. The crust was cooked perfectly in the brick oven, nice and crunchy, like a pizza from A16 or Pizzeria Delfina. Marc had a similar pizza, but his had local salami on it too. We ordered a nice bottle of local Cabernet Sauvignon, also a first since we returned from the park. We rounded out dinner by sharing a one of a kind pizza with shaved apples, walnuts, cinnamon and sugar, a dusting of powdered sugar, and a nice scoop of, yep; you guessed it, vanilla ice cream. We needed help with this pizza and called on Luke and Fran to pitch in and eat some of the scrumptious dessert.

Luke and Fran (in their mid 20’s) arrived in Chile a little over a week ago after spending four months working in the Falkland Islands shearing sheep and harvesting the wool. Luke explained the art of shearing to us, one of the last jobs that is truly manual and hasn’t changed in over 50 years, and described the shearing circuit that allows him to work all over the world. Luke is able to shear up to 200 sheep a day depending on the size of the sheep and the grade of its wool. It takes longer to shear a sheep with course hair than one with fine, and, of course, larger sheep take longer than smaller sheep. We found the process very intriguing and enjoyed hearing Luke and Fran talk about their experiences.

We bought our bus tickets for Punta Arenas. We head to Punta Arenas to catch a flight back to Puerto Montt; where we will catch a bus to Bariloche, Argentina. We’re ready to leave Chile behind, especially the food (with the exception of Mesita Grande), and really get to know Argentina. Hasta Luego Chile!