Zalman on the Go!: Patagonia

We had been warned to expect possible delays at the Chilean border and we were not disappointed. First off we "lost" a wonderful Australian couple that we had befriended. In their 80's these were people that had worked and traveled around the world. As Austalians they needed a Visa to enter Chile. When the tour leader had reminded all the Australians on the tour the night before to confirm they had print outs of their visas everyone had acknowledged they did. However at the border it appeared that this couple had the receipt for the visa but not the actual visa (which was to have been delivered to them by email a month earlier). Try as they might, the document could not be found. So it was settled that they would wait at the border as the bus proceeded to deliver us to the hotel - 30 K down the road and then return for them to take them back to Argentina.

Fine, settled, - oh but wait! We were told that you can't proceed without an Chilean guide. "Of course, we're picking up the guide when we start the Chilean part of the journey tomorrow morning. We're just going to the Hotel." We no, you can't cross the border without a Chilean guide. "But all those other buses went through without a problem!" Irrelevant. You can't cross.

So we sat for a half hour while a guide was rounded up, drove to the border, got in the bus, drove us 30 feet over the border, left the bus and returned home. We then proceed to the hotel.

Once we had managed to pass the border we skipped any opportunity to get coffee and kept going to minimize the wait time for the Australians. The tour Leader began to speak about the rest of the day and happened to mention that we would be staying in a hotel that used to be a meatpacking plant built ~1907. It was active as a slaughterhouse and cold storage facility until 1973 when the land taken back by the government. It then sat empty for decades until some enterprising outfit decided to turn it into a hotel/museum: The Singular Pantagonia

As you can see, the whole facility was built on a hill, meaning that all processes started at the top of the hill, and moved down till the end in the storage units, which are just off the lake. this minimized the amount of hauling and allowed them to use clever Elevators and conveyors.

In this shot, you see the generators and the compressors. When they first started, they used wood to generate steam. Then they moved to coal, and then finally to natural gas. It was additive - they just kept installing stuff next to the old stuff. Besides generating electricity for the facility, they also used the steam it to power the compressors which compressed ammonia to cool the freezing and storage units

If you expand this next picture, you’ll see a train engine, which was used to transport product around the facility.

The facility was built so the livestock could arrive be processed packaged frozen and stored until ships came up the fjord to pick up the products and ship it out. They processed the hides, pelts, etc. The Cold storage was put towards the lake. Currently, the bedrooms are the cold storage rooms. They preserved the machine shop, the generators, the forge, the Tannery and many other areas as museum areas but then also repurposed some for current use.

Here, the forge was repurposed as a bar for during the high season

This is the view out our window. You can see the dock going out into the lake. And you can also see where the railroad tracks were running left to right before you get to the dock.