Some Things I Don’t Like About Puerto Natales

Given the 100+ kilometer an hour winds this spring, I’ve traded my bike for running shoes on recent afternoons. Doing my little “Perimeter Run” of town—which doesn’t take that long—I’ve caught a closer glimpse of two things that make Natales an uglier place than it deserves to be: dogs and garbage.

On the edge of town farthest from me, where all of the new houses look exactly the same, with their brightly colored red, yellow, or green, aluminum siding, an open, scrubby field marks the end of the city. It looks like a garbage dump—plastic bags cling to every bush and piece of brush, bottles and cans cover all ground in between. Blame it on the wind or a lack of consciousness or education, it is a disturbing site—all the more because Natales is such a beautifully situated city in one of the most spectacular parts of the world.

The Costanera, the edge of the sound where cormorants nest with the mountains in the background, is just as bad. Go to the shore, and you’ll find more soda and beer bottles, broken glass, and whole shopping bags full of trash apparently just dropped out of someoene’s car. Needless to say, there is no recycling in Natales.

Many families in Natales keep garbage in a metal cage on a post in front of their home. This is to prevent the other problem—the dogs—from getting into the trash. The fact that people have had to construct these elaborate garbage cans as a preventative strike against hungry dogs, I think, speaks to the enormity of the animal issue here. People just don’t control their animals at all…dogs and cats run free everywhere, none of them spayed or neutered. Needless to say, springtime can be pretty disgusting, as there are usually about five dogs on top of another one right at the door of my school in the morning. Walking, running, driving, or biking—dogs dominate the streets and sidewalks. At this point, it’s difficult to feel a whole lot of sympathy for these poor animals, having been chased on an almost daily basis. I was running near a saw mill by the Club de Rodeo when I saw two dogs jump on top of a pair of older ladies hauling their groceries home—paws on the chest, noses in the bags.

As I looked on in shock, one of the women turned my way, straining her neck from the dog’s face. “They’re just playing,” she said, not particularly fussed.

Kate just paid out of her own pocket for a stray kitten to get an infected leg amputated. She’s an adorable and friendly grey cat, but it saddens me that a volunteer English teacher had to deal with this problem in the first place. People need to take care of their animals and be accountable for them. The same with the garbage we generate. It’s a first-world luxury, perhaps, to be able to address these issues properly. But what a difference it does make in how a city looks and feels.