Saturday, November 10, 2007

The town of Puerto Williams


You might be wondering what Puerto Williams is all about. Well...not much. The town is situated on the Beagle Channel and continues up a hill to the south. Its small, about 2500 people at the most. Half of the population are Navy people and their families. They are somewhat detatched from the community and there isnt much coopreation or interaction between groups. All of the Navy people have newer looking white houses. This is in great contrast to the rest of the houses which are more like shacks with metal roofs. Everyone burns wood for heat, so there is wood piles in front of everybodies houses. There is generally a fair amount of trash around as well as stray dogs. All of the roads are dirt and their are no traffic jams except for horses or cows that dont want to move.

There are a few main areas of commerse..the centro commercial and one other street. There are 2 supermarkets (very small, although an upgrade from mini mart), one coffee shop (to my great pleasure because everyone uses a poor substitute for coffee...instant nesscafe), a cool pizza shop run by two guys that work here at the hotel, and a number of other shops. Overall, not to bad!

3 comments:

Nancy said...

I laughed out loud about the nescafe. It was my arch nemisis in Ecuador. The pizza sounds good :). I'm excited to see how your perceptions of the town evolve and change!!

Nancy said...

PS: There is some terrible show on TV right now that involves midget people dressed as royalty. Gotta love Latin America.

Matto said...

There is something I love about small towns. But maybe if I lived in one for more than a few months I would change my mind. I think you better ride some form of free-ranging stock before you come back. Fox and Onyx say hi and are now off to take another nap.