A response!

The hotel in Sao Paulo still hasn't replied. The hotel in Rio did, with the same boilerplate. I asked a mate who speaks Portuguese to check the e-mail chain and I think I am correct in saying they are useless fuckers.

So I am going to just pay through the nose and book hotels in Sao Paulo and Rio that are able to take bookings over the web. A lovely task for tomorrow, while I am also packing up prior to the removal company coming in on Thursday.

I did get a reply from the ferry company in Chile, about the journey from Puerto Williams to Punta Arenas. If I understand correctly, and I think I do, they say they just don't know if there will be a passenger ferry on the weekend I am interested in, as once a week they carry gas and it's deemed unsafe to carry passengers. None of the guidebooks I have seen mention this. But I do have it from the horse's mouth.

I must admit, the e-mail was so 'surprising' that I had to get Babelfish to translate it to be sure I understood. But having seen that translation I looked at the Spanish and think I have the gist of it.

This fucks me over in terms of booking hotels around that part of the trip. But I guess taking the ferry trip is a big reason to go to the trouble of travelling as far south as Puerto Williams, so I just have to wait until they know what's happening. I have drafted an e-mail to them asking when they will know if they have a trip that weekend and I guess I will take it from there. It's a bit shit as I don't necessarily expect to have great internet access once I'm in Brazil, but if I can't sort it out now then I guess I can't do any better. I guess I can vaguely take comfort in the fact that maybe most other tourists will be equally fucked and so won't be booking up the one hotel in Puerto Williams at that time until they hear back from the ferry company either.