PUERTO CRISTAL, THE HUMBERSTONE TO DISCOVER IN PATAGONIA
On the north shore of Lake General Carrera, a small mining town, which was once a thriving industrial hamlet, walks its way back from oblivion: a Historic Monument since 2008 and two decades after its closure, Puerto Cristal begins to tell its unknown history.
The ghosts of Puerto Cristal seem to hover over the conversation, while we eat salmon with purée at Hostería Los Pinos, in Río Tranquilo, the town attached to the shore of Lake General Carrera. It is a cold autumn night. Outside, silence. Those who already know the hamlet that we will visit the next day describe it like this: an abandoned mining town with wooden houses that crumble under the weight of time and, above all, the blows of the weather that are merciless with their homes. They say that wallpaper tears slowly and painfully. That there are people who lived and died for decades there, and now there is nothing else.
At the inn are Sebastián Barceló and Claudia Molina, from Sernatur Aysén, and Rodrigo Mancilla, who is the EcoTravel guide who will accompany us to Puerto Cristal tomorrow. For now, on this cold autumn night and after eating, we make ourselves comfortable in front of the fireplace. There are jokes. There is D'Olbek, the classic Patagonian beer. There is more information about the mining camp, about what we might find and what not. For now, there is no telephone signal or internet. It's that kind of place. It has been called "The Humberstone of the South". We'll see.
The firewood is completely consumed, and the fire -when midnight approaches- begins to go out.
THE TRUE FEAR
At dawn we meet at the main dock of Río Tranquilo with Luis Bernardo Casanova, who is the general manager of the tourism project that is to be implemented in Puerto Cristal.
Bernardo is the son of Luis Casanova, the man who bought -in 1996- the 700 hectares of land where the now former mining town is located, declared a Historic Monument in 2008. "My family always had a special affection for the place and now they have wanted to rescue it ", says Bernardo, after explaining that his father first saw the export potential that existed in this mining operation whose origins date back to 1936.
Continue reading HERE... (In Spanish)
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