Handcuffs, rain, and tourism

I left Valdivia, I left behind, as always, someone that I will miss. I got the bus to Osorno and from their a comfy, double decker bus to Bariloche Argentina.

The boarder guard sits down with the poorly stamped passport in his hand. He looks sorry, regretful. "Do you have a spouse here?"
"No...why?"
"Well, we are going to have to solve this some way..." He reaches over to his friend´s waist and pulls out a set of handcuffs saying, "this will solve the problem." And then he laughs and tells me he is only joking.

A scare. I was malinformed when I first arrived in Santiago so I had a resident permit but not my resident number (the final step) So I left Chile 3 days after I was supposed to (3 months would have been Feb 13 and I left Feb 16) so, thinking he was doing me a favour the Chilean boarder guard stamped my passport with Feb 13. So when I arrived on the night of february 16 at the Argentine boarder, they asked me when I left chile and I had to tell them that very day... causing more problems...

Later at the end at 1030pm I met an Australian/French couple and an American guy - none of us had Argentine dollars at the bus station at this time, outside the city of Bariloche - after some negotiation we payed the cab in Chilean pesos and we began looking around in this apparently touristy town for a hostel. This fact was confirmed: we walked for 2 hours and asked at every single hostel - all were full; it was raining, we were tired and it was the next day... we finally woke a woman up who rented rooms, only after having contemplated accompanying the drunk and homeless in the central park under some trees, and trespassing on private property... in the end we paid the 15$ each for a less than satisfactory room...

Bariloche is like Pucón in that it crawls, especially at this time of year, with tourists from Europe and North America. Off-putting. But again, it is touristy for a reason. So yesterday I took the half-hour bus trip to Cerro Catedral ski centre at about 1000m. (It used to be the biggest ski centre in South America but has been overtaken by one in Mendoza Ar. and various in Chile in the last decade.) When I left, with my American companion Jeff, it was windy and cloudy with sun peaking through like spotlights to illuminate the rocky peaks and the specks of snow that remain from the summer, and to glisten off the massive glacial lake.
I was wearing tights and a tshirt and had a rainjacket and long underwear layer in my bag along with water and some food. I ran the trail, that ran 10km along the edge of the mountain, looking down on a river and two glacial lakes in the midst of towering rocky peaks, through a burn and up up up to a rock and wood refugio above the treeline. The last three kilometres began to rain and get much colder, and when i got to the Refugio I was wet and quickly became cold. I drank and ate and sat among the dirty climbing and mountaineering bums in the refugio, playing cards and drinking mate. The rain reached torrential status and then backed off - I took this opportunity to start my 10km descent. The rain only increased and the steep sections became very dangerous to walk let alone run. In the end I probably ran about 3/5 of the 20km and the other 2/5 were a brisk walk or an almost crawl on the slippery mud... that was yesterday... today I am sore but have escaped Bariloche and my penthouse hostel with panoramic views to come to this campground in El Bolson, an area renowned for its hippies and its lowkeyness - it still has a touristy feel but is much smaller and lacks the glitz and the polish. (streets, save three, are unpaved) My campground is at the foot of a huge rocky ridge of mountains that rises behind me to block out the sun and accross the river and the small town another ridge of mountains, the Andes, runs, snowspeckled into the distance...
Thats where I´m at now
ciao

Some new poetry, and another entry (below)

Eulogy for 8 drowned in the bay

When the sigh escapes,
When the birds appear and disappear
In the same exhalation of breath -
The sound of green, the sound
Of a full forest a million mountains
That sustain relentless snows
And the naked sun

A mouth opens and in goes
A desert - in go a hundred billion
Grains of sand and four bleeding hearts
And a white washed church, a sunbleached temple
Where the life giver never came
But by the hands of a thirsty tongue

Awe. The heartiness of stupidity.
Wills like iron break and
Crush the brain to a small pea,
Picked from a fruitful
Garden; and then a storm,
A walloping enough to suffocate
A child and her family,

And the boys are drinking
And all that escapes is a sigh

Markets

The fish market smells
Like the sea, it heaves with
Life and the death of salt,
And tamed sealions.

The fruit market
Smells like the sea,
Inundated by scales
And flying machetes and guts
But brilliant - it is vibrant
And you almost smell through
The screams, the sun and the
Ripe fields, a pulse and rhythm

The Museum

Fabric and boxes
Were never here before the waves shook
Everything into a brakish cauldron,
Fabric and boxes and paint and frames
Replace the elaborate barrels and concrete
That slipped into the sea where
A tour boat stands, sits, rests,
Or is it dead? When did they tie it up
For the last time and wait for hands and stones
To smash the many windows? Was it then,
When the engine room rusted with
Urine and graffiti, when all the lines
Went stagnant?
It sits there, a white green rust,
A skeleton like the tombs and forgotten bodies
Under a shaken earth, where glass stands
Reflecting a city

Arcoiris: Three Haikus from a stormy room

Torment

Curtains fly inside
To a wind that drowns my thoughts
Disturbing live wires

The Room

Light, smoke and my mind
In the middle of the room
Where a forked bough stands

Sounds

This house like an amp;
Speakers tapped into hours of
Rain and electric wind

Finally, some pain!!!

The sun is out, I have gone from my farm, my idyllic (sp) world of steaming homemade apple pastries (from the apple tree outside the yellow house) for breakfast and long chats in a stinky cheese room. I have left, I have said farewell but not goodbye, because there are more stories to be told in the garden and perhaps, just perhaps, another few games of chess with a customs officer in a village in a massive green fjord where the many sealions swim about. Maybe I will come back to share with my friends, to learn. But I think that my time with the axe is over.
Let me explain. Last weekend I went into town again, into the grimy, stinky and fairly sketchy town of Puerto Montt, to read and write emails, to recieve some mail and so on... Upon my return the same saturday I saw in the bus station Wiley, the WWOOFer who had only one week earlier left to return to Santiago, 12 hours on the bus. He was suffocated by the city, drowned in the time that that others were lost at sea forever, Wiley was trapped by the heat and the buildings so he hopped on a bus and came back. COMPANY!!!
The next day we wandered down the rocky beach in the wind and rain around the steely sea and the deep green hills. We saw a Whimbrel (one of the birds that my Alaskan and Canadian friends were studying!!! I almost felt proud to identify it - it was all alone) and dolphins cutting about the bay. After a packed and stinky bus along a gravel road that hugged the steep green, after the bus rolled down a hill, packed, backwards because the engine failed, after the driver made another run at it and everyone´s petrified glances moved about from eachothers eyes to the cliff and the sea a hundred feet below, after all of this, we arrived at literally the end of the road. To go further south in Chile you must take a ferry, so we bought some cheesy empanadas and some sodabread and we hopped the rusty ferry to the next little village really just for the trip. We sat on the side of the boat marvelling at the fjord that at its end becomes the Valle Cochamo (a place the call the Yosemite of Chile for its landscape and its climbing) and when we arrived in the village of Puelche we disembarked and walked up the hill past the customs office. There the officer was cleaning some mats, whacking them with determination against the stone wall and as we passed he looked up and simply asked, do any of you play chess. I jumped at the opportunity, Yes I said. So we went into his freakishly clean building (the man works 16 hour shifts but there is nothing to do but clean and study chess problems). I controlled the game, I was on my game. I had seen a dangerous position he was in but i didn´t think anything of it because I was so ravenously on the attack... three moves to checkmate. I moved my queen into position - and indeed out of position as it was guarding the line that he had. We didn´t even bother finishing the game because we both knew he had me in two moves and there was nothing to do about it.

Sergio was his name (not to be confused with Checho) - the man talked to us about chess problems and historic games, and then he launched into a chess metaphor on life and existence: impressive at first, then confusing, then basically incomprehensible. His ideas about northamerican society are scewed and contradictory; after lamenting the selfish, power and money hungry attitude that seems to be human nature, he immediately praised western culture for throwing their children out the door (here everybody is a "momma´s boy or girl" and they get pregnant and married or not and continue living at home - at once beautiful to see close family units and also sad to see dependence and at times a sort of a leech behaviour). He ranted about how this, everything that he has materialy is his and belongs to him, he worked for it and it is not his childrens.
Then he paradoxically invited us in to his room and fed us and told us we can come back at any time, like children...BIZARRE and mildly hipocritical - we walked back to the ferry with our jaws on the floor. To get back to our farm we hitchhiked with a couple from Austria and Italy. Great people!
The next three days we worked clearing bush for a road - about 100m by 3 m and the chainsaw didn´t work so we did it all with axes and machetes (while nowhere close in skill to Checho, I´ve become handy with an axe!) These days were full of stories and indeed a collection of short stories is brewing so when I have written more I will post them but it was breathtaking and my respect for Checho has only grown with our talk about death. His views are decidedly (without conciously being so) buddhist. He spoke of all living things, and how we will all return to the same place, the earth from whence we came. He spoke of the respect and love we must have for everything around us and of the uselessness of material posessions in a world where only interaction and introspection can bring happiness...

I left, that familiar lump again in my throat, but this time smaller - I am, I think, becoming accustomed to this finally - is this good or bad I don´t know...

Now I am in Valdivia and after arriving here a few days ago I saw a sign for a 7km running race... Finally!!! I had complained to Wiley that I was lacking motivation to run (perhaps a canine issue) but missing the feeling of being active and in good shape. So here was the kickstarter. This morning, race day, I woke up to sun, wind and a bit of chilliness - perfect for a race and perfect for tights. I was expecting slow and rather uncompetitive race -I was mistaken. I came in about between 15 and 18th somewhere with a time almost 4 minutes off the winner at about 25mins and god was it painful, as I have run no more than an average of once per week for these three months, and thats generous!! I got to know some of the guys after the race, all very nice and welcoming - some of them are going to qualify in Pucon this month for the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii - no wonder!!! It feels good to do this and I have made a commitment to run now as I start to move south - in place of hiking I am going to run trails, where there will be no dogs! I don´t normally do this sort of thing but I bought a running backpack so that I could be comfortable with all my stuff like water and food and whatnot - it will be an interesting adventure.
Those plans that I mentioned last time, I am heading, in the next month, south toward Puerto Natales and after that no idea!!! Until next time, from a sunny Valdivia, where the massive sealions beach themselves under the stench of the seaside fishmarket, adieu

New photo plan

Here´s the plan: if you want to see photos email me and I will give you the password. I have posted 33 more of my favourite or notable photos and I will put some on the blog as well. A blog is coming in the next few days!

In the shadow of another Volcano

Try to imagine this: you wake up and your wooden house is like a microphone, better, a speaker for the wind and the rain. you feel for split seconds, like the house will collapse in on you. All alone, no one around. Warm sleeping bag. you look at the clock and it reads 7:34... you are going to be late so you drag your lethargic body closer to the howling Pacific ocean, out of bed as you dress yourself. You throw flour and water and salt in an old pot and knead it to a dough, squash it flat and put it on the fire to make some rudimentary chapatis.
Rubber boots, rain jacket, dark sky. Goats are gone and havent been milked in 24 hours - you need to find them and herd them back into their barn.

This was me: so Checho (Sergio) and I got on their tails; we tracked their footprints and their droppings. We walked all the trails and even through thick rainforesty bush. This was where they spent the night - droppings and the strong smell of goats. After two hours of tracking we finally found them. We spent the rest of the day weeking an overgrown garlic field in the scorching sun and making sharp creamy goats milk cheese from the lat, eventual morning milking.
Checho has been the sole worker on this farm for 2 decades. But I could quite literally write a book on him. I wont right now but sufficed tro say that a grade 5 education seems to be sufficient to see the inequality in the world, the corruption of governments and corporations, sufficient to keep bees, to manage tourist cabins, to farm, to fish and weave fishing nets from plants that grow in the field (befor the age of plastic!!) to build close to 10 houses singehandedly,to be compassionate and to raise some of the most polite, sociable, fantastic, well adjusted and musical kids around. And thats not an exhaustive list! I could listen to this guy for hours. He is, despite, or perhaps as a result of his bizarre superstitions, one of the greatest story tellers Ive ever met. Working with Checho is like being at an Arlow Guthrie Concert all day long!
But Checho is poor. He also understands that this country is built to keep the poor poor and make the rich richer. But in rural Chile the first thing you do is you shar. At lunch time Checho and I wander down the hill to the shore of the pacific ocean, to his red Alerce shingled house and I sit in the wood fire heated kitchen with the family - standing out but also fitting in. I with the little boy Daniel and we all laugh together, all seated around a little table and a hot meal. When there is meat or fish I don{t eat it but I try not be be a bother - I simply pick it out (its probably from next door).
Living in a house by myself, (the farm owner Matias old house, also built by Checho) - a house full of revolutionary magazines, vestiges of a fighting past, red student publications and pamphlets on sustainable organic agriculture; drums, flutes, guitars, amps, bases, tamborines; paintings and colourful shawls and old single-lense reflex cameras - living here I realize finally and with clarity that I need other people. Coming home after working all day to an empty cavernous, quiet house is heavy and depressing...

Yesterday after work I walked through the fields and picked fresh cholards, zucchini, garlic, chives and lettuce. With the flour I bought at the bottom of the hill I made little pizzettes (pizzas) with roasted zucchini, chives and fresh goats milk cheese.
Other days ive spent hours picking blackberries in my front garden, to make a sort of jam and fresh peas, well, they seem to be a different species from the frozen variety!!

Anyway here in Puerto Montt, a grimy port town, I am spending one day to catch up on emails etc. I spent the night at a pension (a sort of cheap hostal) where the old man has offered me work (and has told everyone he meets about me). He has also suggested that I work on the Navimag ferry going south, which could sounds like a good idea... but I have other plans...And Ill tell you waht they are...

Later

Ode to Chiloé

Intro

I have spent hours contemplating on cramped buses,
Squashed between sweating bodies, in the pounding rain and stench;
The vibrant yellow flowers
Against the grey sky and the rain – a forget-me-not,
And forget you I shan´t, but how do I explain?

Part I Pleas and Questions

I have sat drinking mate in rainy
Deserted restaurants, that only served empanadas and curanto
When the neighbours came to drink litres
Of beer in the early afternoon;
When they can’t pronounce “lets get in the car”
Because the salmon’s out and beer is everywhere.

Lumber built you, salmon broke you,
Left broken windows, empty houses, half-built;
Salmon left the rolled up nets that stink
Of decomposing fish; and the ghost towns
And the drugs – thousands of buoys,
Gravestones of a trade, tombs of opportunity.

I have wound through deep bushes
Avoiding the thorns, sat there in the constant rain
Among the drunkards and gangs of dogs,
Looking aimlessly, like them, at palafitos,
The manicured and the abandoned

I soaked up what I could of memories
And slurred speech of your farmers and fish folk,
Fear and hope pours from their wet eyes,
Specter memories of the mounted hero
The hundred churches and
Six minutes of pitching earth, to make way for the
Sea, that pitched upon the earth and swept the houses out –
And not by the heaving, sweating mingas but the rolling Pacific,
“Only by name” are one man’s words, who’s house is perched
On a bluff, far from the reach of the Pincoya

I´ve thought about your hanging bell flowers, pink and purple,
That speckle the bushes and run the confusing lines
Of island, point, mainland… where do they come from?

You are lost I think, in the lazy work
Of yelling “Cheese! Sopaipillas! Empanadas!”
And drunk on salty air and booze.
Part II
The Nightmare

This is what you dream of:
Blue, grey, constant rain,
Soft smell of the falling flying water, straight from
The sky,
Skulls and spaghetti come from the sky,
Pale from the midnight – A blue wind
From below till the tingling blade
Feels down your spine – no stars here, just
Never-ceasing drops that drill the eardrums,
Nerves are exploding all your senses, motionless.
You awake, sweating, to the still rain and quiet sea.

Another day passed and this is what you dreamt:
Colourless still and the bouncing drops
A dark wind is felt in the heart but not
The sea, not a ripple.
Only now, a bow breaks the calm and
The blue sail painted by a sorry moon
To appear from nowhere, and they board your soul
All the eyes in this blue hell are closed
Until fantoms rip you apart and screams pierce
The raindrop blanket – you are awake, sweating, headache,
Voiceless.

Part III
Dogs

They sleep all day like the resting fields
Green-bordered green to the rippling sea
Where leathery skinned ancients speak
Through half-mouthfuls of teeth, penniless
To wander down the seashore where some
Beg for beer – or just peel garlic and potatoes,
Screaming in the street –
So they sleep all day till sun sinks away
When they roam, limping about to settle
Endless canine battles and wake the
Sleeping workers who come from their
Dry fields and abandoned salmoneries.
The grey, the grizzled, the wild mad crazy
Bastards that hang by municipal bus station
Garbage bins to stare down anything
And spit through their teeth
Or snarl into the empty street
Because everybody has gone to sleep now,
Caressed by drink, beaten and persuaded
By the hand – that hand of mother earth –
The hand of supply and demand.

Part IV
Blood and Caves: Invunche

Maybe somewhere below the man´s little shack on the bluff
Under the fields, there is a sea
Where caves open in the dark body;
A flavour, cant say – a smell
A flutter of wings or what
Doesn´t use a broomstick to fly –
Its all charcoal, like the remains of a curanto fire,
In the earth, a burn, a scar, impregnating monsters.

Maybe, in their sea – vivid if you close
Your eyes – the shadows and blood
Human flesh in human teeth, putrid
Carcasses that make this sea an ocean
Of humanity – torcioned and twisted –
You do this to yourself! In the vastness of an
Endless dark, Invunche´s foot comes to his eye
And the arm they sowed in has been devoured
By his thirst – only a bump remains, until the growls
And the bodies that feed a cave.

This is respect.
This is humility.
Say it to yourself now,
Not only to the lashing sea.

Part V
Awe

I have stayed up all night, by lantern
Light, to the sound of fighting strays
In the street – always wondering
How to weave everything, like chilote wool
Everything that is: the tinny songs
That blast from shops; sheep wool artisans
Weaving their lives away, each knit to the
Rhythm of the infinite waves.
And where are the clams in this labyrinth?
In streets the shouting children collect oysters
300 pesos a piece, on the beach, sorting through
Barren algae and beached boats and shit on tidal flats;
Flung into a flaming pit to the sound of accordion
Flying kerchiefs, flowing dresses, stomping feet.

I lie here, jaw dropping in the grassy bluff
Above a wild animal “nothing pacific about it” –
Mist blows off crashing whit foam, curling
Toppling penguins into steadfast cows that graze
The foggy seaside pastures.

Who comes, who goes,
Who flies across spotted blue to whit cones
Like specter locomotives, lumber children
Chugging the mazy coastline of timber and iron,
Between pastures
A green – these blades – that slice the sea
Into millions shattering the shuddered landscape
So wistful branches alone for days, until
Herds come from un-walkable beaches, impassable
Straights, of a frigid sort
I see the billion birds calling banefully to
These pages, streaking their bills with ink,
Dipped in the never-ending sky that kisses
A salmon-marred bay.

Part VI
The sickness

A massive rock sits in my throat,
It contains everything that came in my pores,
A saturating fog that lifts for the
Southern cross and love – a sheet –
In the wind – millions as one and a million into one,
Moving with the power of a weeping soul,
One into this stone, one into this singular
Blue memory of brown eyes and ice cream;
The abyss of garbage caves and the putrid
Smell of rotten fish, meeting of eyes, explosion of laughter,
Driven in the solid stone the hearty hand and a number,
A blinking paradox that chokes me when
I think of grease and toothless drunks
Conversing with a priest, an educated man,
In the empty wood of towering varnish and spirits –
Never arrives, never let in –
But by a rebound, like your people that
Swim about my granite but couldn’t swim
Their boats to safety in the rusty straights
Between abandoned and uncultivated fields.

I sit, coughing and choking
On this saturated chilote stone
Here and there in space time
Sweet salt comes to my lips, I see eyes and
Millions of birds wheeling over the periodic
Dolphins; screeching cry of a lapwing – abrasive but evocative;
Others come with burning, acidic, sad and angry tastes,
Is this about you? Or me?
But a painful and life giving egg is forever
Nesting in my soul now, terrifying and orgasmic,
Beautiful and ugly, frightful, happy – must
I continue?

Part VII
In Memory

In the end, what is left is a flower,
A tiny pink and purple chandelier, a lamp
That explains the delicacy and beauty
A ravenous appetite.

It is a memory – frightful plaguy delicate touch
Of paint on textured mural, illuminator
In a corner the sun doesn´t reach;
A miniscule explosion that opens into giant
Open space, that occupies and imagination
(And a throat)
No, it is imagination. I imagine.

I´d like to thank the governor of Alaska for...

My footsteps are slow, steady. They have life. They plod along the saturated mud, a dark brown. As I move, the boot tread lifts the brown to show a charcoal black print on the tideflats. The bay curves around, and from here I can see the mainland, a giant volcano in the distance, but only when its clear; and the smell of decomposing algae fills the air - an agreeable and nostalgic smell, almost fishy, until it gets directly under your nose and becomes half nauseating. I walk with ten other people to hide in the reeds that line the edge of this remote chilote beach to wait.
We read, chat, sleep, eat, we laugh and we take bets on numbers. Once or twice dolphin fins are seen slicing the surface of the quiet bay.

After three hours and much radio communication, the tension starts. Its like the hour before a race: you know what to do - everyone does - but Jim´s orders on the radio become more frequent - "Steve, please move slowly along the beach and see what happens" ; "Nathan, can you please cross the river and walk toward me very slowly" ; "Jiji, arm the box".
Our hearts are pounding. We crouch in the reeds, ready to run. The only one standing now are Jim and Humphry, looking through binoculars and telescope ona tripod. From time to time they speak in hushed tones. No one else says a word, we are almost holding our breaths, but every time we do breath, the rising tide and the light breeze that has started, bring the comforting smell of algae to our nostrils.
We wait.
Jim comes on the radio again and he mumbles something. BANG!! The canons go off and the net flies out. Before it lands, thousands of shore birds are in the air, crying in surprise. Confusion is everywhere, except in the reeds, where everyone knows what to do. We run to the net, across the soppy beach, through grasses, mud, water, slimy seaweed. Birds sweep away in the hundreds in different directions and by the time we reach the net the only sounds are our heaving breaths, the breeze and the frightened birds trapped in the net.
We then take the birds one by one into keeping cages, from which we bring them to be "processed." Each person has a job, some put number or colour tags on the legs, some take blood, some weigh the birds and Humphry examines plummage to determine age... Then we let them go.

I met Jean-Francoise and Myriam in Puerto Varas almost three weeks ago. We stayed in the same hostal for one night and that was it. They are biologists from Quebec and were going to Chiloe to study birds with a project run by the Alaska conservation organization (i think thats what its called). I headed to the same place, Chiloe, because those were my plans and after a few emails and much confusion Myriam told me they were in some cabins inLlau-Llao near Castro. So after travelling around the island with two Chilean friends that I met in Castro I packed my bags grabbed the first ride i could get to the turn off for Llau-Lao and got on my way. I was dropped off at the turn off, at dirt road, and saw a sign for the cabins so I walked the 1.5km and went to the reception asking for two Canadians. I was led to Jim, the leader of the project (who was naturally quite confused at my arrival). He brought me down to the cabins and my reunion with my canadian friends was enough to lead everyone to believe we were long time friends - oh how the road unites us!
After chatting with Jim about things I ended up, long story short, helping out with the project of catching and tagging these birds. I lived in a cabin with JF and Myriam as well as a gregarious and wonderful Chilean masters student. We all got along so well! Dinner was served and all food was paid for as well as the accomodation about 20 ft from a secluded bay.
I was welcomed into this community of biologists (some of them extremely well-known and powerful in their field) with open arms. I asked hundreds of questions and nobody ever treated me like I was an idiot; they simply explained what was happening or what such and such meant; we talked about politics, (I was surprised - or maybe not - to find out that Alaska as well as being one of the most beautiful states in the US is also among the most conservative). We laughed together, and some even cried when JF, Humphry, his bubbly wife Jacky, and I got in the truck to leave today. A few of us spent the last night on the beach below our cabins, with a fire, a few bottles of wine and a jug of Pisco sour (not me of course).

This is what I love about travelling, and of course what I hate about it as well. As I stood along the highway, alone, with my thumb out, I could feel a lump in my throat, and it hasn´t gone yet but I´m sure it will because this is a roller coaster where the hills are much longer and higher than the lows. As for the road ahead, I don´t know what it brings but I´m hoping some more lumps in my throat because that will be the sign of a beautiful experience!!