The Palestinian, the spaniard, the Eureka moment

One experience, one question, one realization.
I have just had the unfortunate opportunity to experience first hand, albeit in a more symbolic and pacific way, what it must feel like to be any person living in Palestine. I was there. Sitting on the rocks on the shore of Lake Villarica, in the shadow of a puffing, fuming white cone, the Volcan Villarica, I was quietly reading while eating plums in the sun and wind. From behind me came the gutteral sounds of a middle-eastern language. As the group of 5 or so approached I saw skull-caps and could see that they were of European extraction - Israelis. One sat next to me, actually touching me, and the rest sat all around me. The seemed to be laughing at me, as if it were a big joke. They asked me if I spoke english and I answered yes and where were they from... they laughed at me and continued shouting in Hebrew (or is it Yiddish... excuse my ignorance on the matter). I was not included in their conversations, nor were they conducted in a language I could understand. My space was invaded (by no means do I believe I owned that space but it is a matter of courtesy and observation I believe). They succeeded. I felt extremely uncomfortable in my own spot, my little home, unwelcome and invaded. So I got up and left the middle of a circle of Israelis empty.

On the street I met a waiter who had just arrived in Pucón from Barcelona. He spoke english, french, catalan, spanish, portuguese, and italian... Great man. We chatted, he and I and a native Puconian about all sorts of things, from the state of the Chilean military, the the suffocation of the people by tourists, to the obligatory architectural standards in Pucon (the buildings are all swiss/german style cozy stone and wood buildings - no boxy ugly messes), to the magnetic poles and the state of volcanoes and glaciers in Chile (the Puconian was a geologist of sorts). After at least 20 minutes of conversation the Puconian man asked where in Spain I was from!!! (thats just a little bit of blowing my own horn!!!)

I have decided this day, after going up to a glacial lake on a rented (and less than fully functional) mountain bike, and after strolling the streets and watching the tourists, that this is NOT, despite its self proclaimed status, an adrenaline junkie´s paradise. I´m sure it could be, I have no doubt. But 99% of the people who come here are monied european/north american tourists who want to feel like they are "adrenaline junkies" in a controlled environment. This would be better toted as the "pseudo-adventure-package-tour" capital of south america! Every tour agency, and there are literally hundreds in this town of barely 16,000, offers ziplining, climbing the volcano, rafting and horseback riding. The mountain biking, (I hate to be snobby and turn my nose up but...) was really a stroll on a narrow dirt road - a road. Though the scenery was beautiful from a technical standpoint I was left still hungry, or thirsty, so to speak - but this was "mountain biking". So thats my Eureka moment!

until next time

Attempt

This is named attempt because I can only hope to half capture what I have experienced in the past 10 days - so here I go:

I work hard, from eight in the morning until one pm every day at which time I eat a homecooked meal in the humble stone court. But this I have already said. Jobs were beginning to get monotonous and pointless - that is cutting grass and weeding herb gardens for hours on end one begins to feel pointless. But a few days ago we sent to as Ulises calls it "nature´s rock factory" to gather stones for the winepress and the rabbit pen that we are building - we got two pickuptrucks full. Another day I shovelled shit (litterally) all day - hard, hot, sweaty work. These past few days I have had the fantastic opportunity of learning how to build with stone. First we level the ground and drive stakes in, then we dig a trench where the foundation will go and then we begin laying stones and fitting them to meet the level string we have run around the perimiter of the stakes. then we pack it all with cement and... and today I left the farm. I left the misty hills and the neighing horses and barking dogs in the orange light. I left the stale bread and the fresh cows milk and yogurt. Left the wood fire and the twangy voices of local cowboys who treated me not as a tourist but as a person, one of the rest. I left the dark wood and the water gourds, the hanging pendents and the endless dust that whips up along the road.

Yesterday Orlando (an avid cyclist and boyfriend of the ex-WWOOFer accross the road from our farm) lent me his mountainbike so I went up and up and up, past small cabins viscious dogs and herds of cows and bulls being led down the dusty road. Up, until the pines started, until the clearcuts started, until the only machines were the cutting and dragging machines where the land was scarred, but out of view from people. from here the views are spectacular and the descent on the windy, sandy, dusty road was fast, scary, and slightly insane given the existence of logging trucks and the absence of a helmet!!

Today I broke up some bread into some fresh yogurt, poured a tablespoon of honey from the farm and broke my fast. I packed up, gave my best wishes to Ulises and said goodbye to Natasha (the ex-WWOOFer from Holland) and I walked out onto the dusty road and stuck out my thumb. I got a ride from two guys screaming down the road in a shell of a van from the sixties or seventies. I threw my belongings into the back and sat on the spare tire making sure not to step on the battery whose rusty exposed wires were in view.

On the bus trip from Linares to Pucon I had a moment of absolute awe that I thought I should share, no matter how bizarre it sounds. I was thinking of belonging (inspired from my conversations with Ulises), or rather, of being a part of another system, a bigger, greater system. And this is how it went: electron, atom, molecule, compounds...amino and fatty acids, cells, tissue, organs, body, society, human civilization, ecosystem, continent, planet earth, solar system, constelation, galaxy universe... and my jaw actually dropped. And I hope that no one goes through life absolutely lukewarm - that at some point the big and the small explode in space and time to reveal all the awe and all the connections. even if just for a moment. Within moments I lost this perspective and returned to the mundane thoughts that run through one´s head on any bus trip... "my bum hurts, I´m thirsty, are we there yet?..."

Now im in Pucon. Tourist central. On mainstreet, every second store is an adventure tourism shop - mountain bike, rafting, climbing, kayaking, trekking... They say this is the adrenaline capital of Chile, I can see why and I intend to find out starting tomorrow. Now I am staying at an eco-friendly hostal - more on this later.
I´m trying so hard to be a sponge and soak up all the colours and the smells and experience everything - but as I´ve said before this is sometimes hard but I´ll keep on trying.
until next time

photos fucked

someone has fucked with the photos on flickr, so i have changed the password and am going to find a way to publish them...sorry for the inconvenience ...

A day on the farm

I woke up yesterday morning and looked out my tent window to see the sun rising between a fjord in the distance. Fog rolled in between the cliffs, down toward my little yellow home in a farm field. I put my boots on, 7am and walked to the little wood house to start my day of work. Ulises, the father on the farm, and I prepared breakfast in silence - we ground wheat kernels and added water to make a dough, and we stepped outside of the quaint wood cabin into a stone and brick outdoor kitchen. Kneeding the dough we started a fire in the wood oven and rolled the dough into Chapati/tortilla type rounds and stuck them on the tope of the wood stove. Everyone rose, walking through the dewy fields to little cooking area. We spread small amounts of honey from the farm onto our hot bread, and drink tea and unpasturized cow´s milk from the farm next door.
Then we go to work, mixing compost and manure and laying it around each plant, weeding fields, feeding the chickens and the rabbits (permaculture). Around the small house there are engraved gourds and hanging trinkets, and just outside the stone tool room is a small hut for meditation and reading.
The sun is hot, and the nights are cool, and I can hear the neighing (sp?) of horses and the mooing of cows as well as the gurgle of water from the stream that irrigates the fields. We work until 1 and we have a big family meal, and then we eat stale (rockhard) bread and tea, and some fresh plums, for dinner.
After lunch we have a three hour break and then work in the afternoon is optional, something I have done the past two days. Yesterday as well, we went out to collect rocks to make a container for the wine press (grape vines hang about the house and the multitudes of gardens that scatter the surrounding area). We´ve talked much of the unsustainable, money-loving, nature destroying western culture and Ulises and I have also spoken of the damage that religion does, and we all questioned why the president of the most violent country in the world got the peace prize!!! (this is all to say that we seem to be on the same page!)
Today I came in on the bus to town, I have two hours - life seems frenetic and bustly even in this small city. I´ll go back to my farm now, don´t know how long I´ll be there!

until next time
Liam

Photos

To look at the photos i have posted on Flickr go to www.flickr.com and click login -
the username is liamwalke@yahoo.com and the password is gdaytoyou
hope you like them - flickr only lets me put about 40 photos a month so i have to be selective (mercifully for those who are sifting through the photos!)

Pichilmu

this will be short.
I left Casa Chueca two days ago to come to this beach town Pichilemu. The bus ride was far longer than it needed to be and it filled up with schoool children and families - 4.5hours of stopping every few hundred metres to drop people off at their doorsteps!
the sky was clear as we drove across the arid landscape to the sea - but as we climbed the coastal mountains we could see clouds on the lip of the range - and then suddenly we were in mist - we descended into an erie spectral haze that whisped and streaked the clouds amongst the trees and by our rushing bus.
Pichilemu is a small laid-back surf town - indeed, Chile´s surf capital. i would say that half the streets are unpaved and half the taxis are horsedrawn carriages (not complete necessity - more novelty but still!) - Yesterday i rented surf stuff and went out into the frigid bay to chatch some surf - beautiful but tiring and I have significant chaffing from the wetsuit to add to my blistered feet. So today, as much as i would love to surf again I am laying low so that i can be in good shape for my farm date in two days! (maybe I´ll surf tomorrow!)
The hostal is shaped mildly like a boat but from afar looks like a walled bastion - it is right on the beach overlooking the black sand and the crashing waves that buffet the massive rocks. If I had to choose between the sea and the mountains, I would choose the sea because it makes me feel oddly full of possibilities and gnerally very free! It is so easy to breath out all your tension here!! so thats what I´ll do!
until next time

Home II: A juxtaposition

Everything changes very quickly here. Two days ago I found myself at the end of my three day hiking trip up to the Volcan Descabezado (headless volcano) at 3830m(that’s the exact measurement). A friend remarked to me recently that he found my peace with my own solitude admirable. – that is that I just got up and went. However I would not want anyone to think that this was easy for me either emotionally or physically. Firstly, it was meant to be a 4 to 5 day hike – I did it in 3 long days, but I will come to that later. Even in the silence of other people´s company I have always found that the human energy drowns out some of our (or my) deeper thoughts from surfacing. I am not trying to be profound or to say that this experience has been life changing for me but as I sat there in my tent on a windy rock at the base of a volcano; thermal springs and some oddly green pasture below and the soaring white peaks jutting out all around me, I found I was only really enclosed physically – mentally and emotionally I was absolutely without defense but also without boundaries.
 I often found myself, in the three long days, pinching myself as I crossed the Rio Claro that wends its way in a deep valley forested up to 2000m and that continues up, effortlessly into the emerald sky. Am I here? All by myself? Is this real? Am I alive?These questions are I admit, decidedly unprofound but they return to a more primordial understanding (or should I say questioning) of self and existence. As a side note, apart from the volcano, this could easily have been the Rocky mountains.
 Anyway I had some trying and frustrating moments. My feet blistered the first 11hour day of steep ascent and descent and not knowing how many times I would have to cross the clear snowfed rivers I would sit down for 10 minutes to change my footwear, sandals to wool socks and hiking boots, only to find that another hundred meters down the way I had to cross again. I also learned my lesson to tie my boots to my bag as I crossed in between towering and crumbling cliffs the Rio Blanquillo, as I dropped my boot into the water and had to walk the last 1.5hours in very wet footwear – I swore but the mountains did not reply. 
The hike went as so: first day was entrance of the Reserva Nacional to the base of the volcano, second day was up the volcano and back and the third was back to my hostel Biota Maule. The last 4 hours of the first day were a steep ascent along a river, in between a ridge of mountains on one side and crumbling cliffs on the other. I emerged from this claustrophobic journey into an open field at probably 2500m(that’s a guess). This is unfriendly – vast, majestic but cold. But there in the middle of the white snow, and the white volcanic ash that covers almost everything, there is green pasture. I say pasture, because there are goats, sheep, cows and horses here, yes. Indeed one of the reasons the trail is so well marked is because the cowboys take their lifestock up here to feed, as, of course, it is free. You only have a painful 10-12hour journey to get there. I think that I have had the rare opportunity of stepping back in time as I think that the cowboys of the Midwestern united states probably had a similar practice – this is not a tourist attraction, this is their life. 
Why the pasture? The pasture is fed by the thermal springs that are warmed in the bowels of the volcano. The second day I decided that this was not for me. After a very cold night I arose and began my ascent. In the cold morning, the snow is hard, packed, and slippery but it all but covered the “trail” so I made my way up by memory – a route the park ranger had given me. Ash of off white, pure white snow, blue sky, screaming wind. I felt like the mountain was telling me to go away, and I felt very uneasy.
Some of my close family members might be oddly happy to hear that I chickened out. I did not reach the summit of the volcano to pear into the icefilled crater that was, some time in geological history, blown off in an explosion. Indeed the last 250m of ascent were probably at 45-60%. The snow had softened a bit but not enough to feel very comfortable. All I had were hiking poles and boots – no crampons. So made it up to a ridge about 150m from the summit where the major rocks started and I made the executive decision that an accident here was not worth it – alone, high up, indeed, stray like the dogs of Santiago. Those dogs survive because they don´t jump out into moving traffic which may or may not stop for them. So I turned back, happy with my decision and left the mountain behind me to return to my valley with the cows.
The way back beautiful again, and this time I knew where to cross the river, and I didn´t get lost but I was in excruciating pain, and indeed these last few days I have bandaged my feet up and am hobbling around like an old man. 
I left the peace and quite, I left the solitude and the birds, the loose scree and the mountain trails, to descend into a human reality. And now I arrive at something that is surprisingly un home-like.

I came with much difficulty out into the country to a hostal called Casa Chueca, run by a German-Austrian couple. I say with difficulty because the staff are german-speaking and were confused by my Spanish. We have managed to communicate in English… This place looks idyllic. Stucco/adobe houses, whitewash, with clay tile roofs and dark timber frames make up this estancia. Breakfast is hearty and swiss (!)and there is a swimming pool, trekking guides, bikes to rent…etc. Roses and palm trees are everywhere as well as the necessary herbs that the chef uses to cook dinner. This sounds idyllic, like home. But it is amazing how a feeling is everything. I feel far from home, unwelcome in a foreign language (English is the second language, Spanish is not spoken at all). But above all the owners seem more interested in themselves and their own stories, than anything or anyone else – indeed they have not even spoken to me or anyone else other than their employees, and there are photos them on their escapades as well as detailed information on how they started this hostal. They seem proud to have bought up some other established hostals in Chile – to me this is merely another indicator that money and ego are the important things here. Everything, down to the internet, camping supplies, bikes(whose quality leaves much to be desired) are of added, as well as inflated cost! 
I will quit my complaining, the people here are great, I have met some great people, and relaxation and recuperation are always good, if costly. But what sprung to mind here was the juxtaposition between a natural place that is so raw that it is difficult to exist there, yet you feel at home and a place that to the eye, is homey beautiful, welcoming and wholesome yet moves you away from an understanding of spiritual, emotional and mental comfort.
These past few days have been wonderful and I am resting up before my first farm date on Dec 8. That’s it that’s all from this hemisphere.
Ciao for now