by Brian Keenan
Los Vilos
Chile’s gold coast. Miles of white beaches. Old cars with roofs stacked with camping gear bundled up in old blankets and candy-striped sheets. Renault 4s, VW Beetles, and a ragbag of American automobiles as old as myself make up our coastal convoy.
Greenery popping up everywhere. Horses around every corner. My cough getting worse. Maybe psychosomatic.
Horseride over Andes – serious influenza – cancel Andean expedition – much relief – illness cured!
Vilu is Mapuche Indian for snake but I cannot see why Los Vilos is named after it. Many hotels named after famous seafaring characters. I recognize some names from Melville’s Moby Dick!
Los Vilos is a compact little resort full of run-down-looking café-restaurants. The feria artesanal (craft market) has the same old tat – hats, wristbands (pulserias), rock and film god posters, crystals and jewellery – that we have seen everywhere. Actually most of the naff stuff probably could be found anywhere in the tourist world: Blackpool or Benidorm, Florence or Phuket.
We have a small room in a string of cabanas in the intriguingly named Hosteria Lord Willow. With its homely wooden walls and noise of happy families, it seems an ideal cheap holiday environment. There is an amazing view out across the bay where there are a few fishing boats and, far out, some rocky islets. It is lovely but very windy. Nevertheless, caught up in the seaside ambience I decide I must have my first dip in the Pacific. Brian photographs me, laughing at my timid entrance to the great ocean. It is freezing and my swim extremely brief.
Viña del Mar
Road to Viña lush with market gardens, fruit fields, vineyards and flowers. Every imaginable colour is coming out of the earth. Horses again remind me I am anxious about climbing over the Andes on one of them. 8½ kilos of avocados for 1½ dollars. Don John would probably have paid 500!
Viña – capital of noise! Watched paper collector pull an enormous bundle of cardboard thro’ the choked streets. His burden was balanced precariously on a tiny trolley of skateboard wheels that a horse would have had trouble pulling. Discovered mosquitoes in our hotel – sure sign we have left the desert’s dry heat. I HATE THEM. Made our lives a misery in Lebanon and their droning buzz flashes me back there. I cannot bear them in my room and spend some time hunting them with bloodthirsty zeal.
Viña del Mar is really not our type of place – Oxford Circus meets Blackpool but twice as busy and ten times as hot. After some frustration parking the truck, we have a sandwich – in a balcony bar above a street blaring with people, music, car alarms, amusement arcades and honking traffic. We head early to bed in the run-down Hotel Español.
Viña del Mar
Left Viña as fast as Mad Max McCarthy could negotiate the chaotic traffic. Up into the hills filled with the scent of pine and eucalyptus, wanted to eat the leaves to cure my cough. Santiago next stop.
Long, tedious, sometimes hairy trip. We are both overtired and nervy. Jack Kerouac died of extreme fatigue on the road. Must get music for the mountains and doctor for me.
We have a good run down from Viña to Santiago. Brian is fulsome in his praise of my handling of the capital’s crazed traffic – there are fighting armadas of buses – and likewise I am delighted with his foresight in Iquique as we finally relax in Frank and Noni’s apartment.
Part Two
Santiago
•
Andes
•
Chiloé
Chapter Seven
After being on the road for a while, Frank and Noni’s flat is a blessed relief. It feels luxurious to be able to loaf about in our own stationary space. There is a bedroom, bathroom, open-plan kitchen and living area. We are in a smart residential district about twenty minutes from the centre, the streets meticulously clean with wide verges and many trees. There are only one or two low buildings; the majority, like ours, are high-rise apartment blocks. We are high up so there is little traffic noise and we enjoy a cooling breeze. Our first action is inaction. We dump the bags and Brian dozes on the sofa in the living room while I flake out on one of the beds. Three hours later we awake refreshed, although it is very hot even up here.
It is hotter still in the Metro going downtown, yet most travellers, both men and women, are in suits. A small queue develops behind us as we try to work out what ticket we need. I offer a few phrases centred around the word boleto and the station name we are aiming for but the man in the kiosk keeps repeating something that I cannot follow. We stand aside to let the other passengers through and then try again.
‘I think we can get a book of tickets,’ says Brian, scrutinizing a notice in the kiosk window.
‘Ah, good. What does it say?’
‘Boleto, carnet,’ he says and returns to the now deserted window. ‘Dos carnet, por favor, señor!’ he requests and the man immediately hands them over in exchange for Brian’s pesos.
We now approach the barrier to the platforms. Brian sticks his ticket in the slot on the post and waits for it to come out again. It doesn’t.
‘Now what?’ he asks. ‘That carnet isn’t going to last long at this rate.’
‘Is there another slot? Maybe it comes out on the other side.’
We both lean around the turnstile to test this theory. Nothing. I am beginning to feel very hot. It is warm down here but the press of commuters is also raising my body heat.
‘Let’s see what the others do.’
We garner some strange looks as we take up positions facing each other so that the passengers have to pass between us. One woman is clearly edgy when our heads follow, perhaps a little too closely, as she inserts her ticket. She hurries through to the other side as Brian exclaims, ‘How simple! You don’t get the ticket back, the fares must be standard wherever you go.’
We watch another couple of travellers just to make sure and then get ourselves through. We work out the platform we need and descend to it. I try to avoid those who seemed irritated with us above. The Metro is very clean but the colour scheme, of tiny white and brown tiles surrounded by walls painted orange and green, is drab. The advertisements are boring and once we have counted the number of stops we have to go, we realize that the Santiago de Chile Metro is as dull as most underground railways.
Although Brian still has not shaken off his bad cough, we are in pretty good shape and excellent spirits and for a few days we do not have to worry about where we will be staying. ‘Thank God you got the key from Noni,’ I say as we wait for the train. ‘It’ll be good going back later, having a shower and cooking a simple supper.’
‘Aye! I want to get some decent rest before we head up into the mountains. At least we can have a bit of a routine for a while, after all that driving and humping bags around.’
We had heard that there was a major problem with pollution in Santiago. The mountains ringing the city prevent the wind blowing the smog away and we see clouds of noxious black smoke pumping out of the racing buses. It might be just my imagination but I feel a little breathless as we saunter around the centre. Brian snorts when I tell him this: ‘Typical bloody Brit, nose stuck up wanting more air than youse need! It’s all those cigarettes you’re supposed to have given up!’
It may be due to the pollution but I begin to feel as I used to when I suffered badly from hay fever in my teens. Phrase book at the ready I go in search of medication. I get nowhere slowly attempting to explain fiebre del heno to a pharmacy assistant. I settle for Panadol.
Standing in the Plaza de La Constitución in front of La Moneda, the presidential palace, I feel rather numb. The military coup against President Allende in September 1973 had seen this squat colonial building bombed by the nation’s air force. After giving a last speech over the radio, Allende had, as far as we know, shot himself. His body was put in an unmarked grave and not reburied properly until 1990. In that final address, made as the bombs rained down on La Moneda, Allende said, ‘I believe in Chile and her destiny. Other men will survive this bitter and grey moment . . . sooner than you think avenues sh
all again be opened down which free man shall march towards a better society . . . These are my last words. I am convinced that my sacrifice shall not be in vain. I am convinced that at least it shall serve as a moral judgement on the felony, cowardice and treason that lay waste our land.’
Democracy has returned to Chile and the avenues to a better society are open again but we have discovered a very mixed response to the notion that Allende’s death has served as any kind of moral judgement.
It is strange to be looking at a building that one has seen many times in news footage and photographs; planes swooping low and smoke erupting from the windows in the dying moments of democracy. The palace was restored by Pinochet in 1981 and looks impressive, even though it is dominated by higher buildings on all sides. After the coup, many thousands of leftists were killed or disappeared and I had expected to feel some powerful reaction to this place. Yet in the hot afternoon sun with people wandering about in gay summer clothes I feel a muffled sense of anticlimax.
It is as if even the buildings have understood the national ambivalence about the ‘military period’; there is no monument or plaque to record what happened here. In the mid-Seventies, bad but, to some minds, necessary things occurred but now it is time to move on; better not to look closely at those years; safer to plaster over a few cracks in the nation’s psyche and accept a refurbished façade for the common good. One day those who suffered at the hands of the dictatorship may be properly acknowledged and those who conducted the terror may be brought to justice. Perhaps there is something in the nation’s collective subconscious that warns that emotions too long held in check might produce too violent and disturbing a reaction if the boil is lanced too soon. Going closer to the main entrance, we see the honour guard in pristine uniforms, their knee-length leather boots gleaming as they strut about. They are all young men and were probably not even born at the time of the coup, yet still they convey a sense of menace.
Back at the flat we prepare some food. Brian is slicing tomatoes.
‘Ah there you are. The tomato farm is mine!’
‘What?’ I turn to see him peeling a small sticker off a tomato.
Grinning proudly he replaces it on his forehead. It says ‘Rocky’. ‘That’s me, Rocky, and don’t you forget it!’ He does a few jabs and feints, huffing and puffing, as he used to do to vent his frustrations in Lebanon.
‘Take that, you bastard!’ he would mutter as he let rip with another haymaker. He always looked the part to me. With a low centre of gravity he is hard to knock off balance and has powerful shoulders, not to mention a determination to overcome, or rather a refusal to be overcome. Sometimes he forgot where he was as he did a passing imitation of Sly Stallone or Robert De Niro shadow-boxing around the small room. On one occasion, ignoring the Marquis of Queensberry, he had followed a blitzkrieg of hefty punches with a savage kick. His taunt of ‘Take that, you waster’ was cut off abruptly. Sadly he had used his right foot which was still chained to the floor. He tottered off balance and slumped against the wall as he caught his breath and the initial agony ran through and out of his body. ‘Wise it, Brian, for God’s sake!’ he said to himself.
I waited a moment, concerned that he might have done some real damage but also amused by his antics. ‘Are you all right?’
He turned to me, tears of pain still around his eyes but he was laughing. ‘Don’t!’
‘Don’t what, Bri?’ I said, getting up.
‘Just don’t you, don’t start, all right!’
‘Start? Me?’ I said, pretending to hobble, waving a fist down an imaginary road: ‘Come back here, you cowards, and I’ll sort you out – you just got me off balance! Just a fluke!’
After supper we lounge with coffees in front of the television. There is a big item on the news that seems to be about torture, showing a victim talking followed by officials and file footage of demonstrations and military camps. I will try to get an English-language paper tomorrow and see if the story is covered there. The issue is clearly not dead; instead it is seen as worthy of prime time coverage. Perhaps with some of the contacts we have been given, we will get a better line on the general view of the Pinochet years.
After the news the weather graphics tell us that it will be hotter tomorrow with temperatures into the nineties. An early evening breeze has died so we have a fan going. A Clint Eastwood western dubbed in Spanish comes on, interrupted by commercials. Some of the stores have English names like Johnson’s and Ripley’s which sound odd in the middle of a fast flow of Spanish.
Many times in Beirut we sat in wilting heat, sometimes with a fan going, sometimes watching the television when suddenly an Arabic voiceover would say in English, ‘Jolibon Biscuits, they’re really Jolly Good.’ Lighting a cigarette then, I would automatically cup my hand around it so that the fan could not steal any of the precious smoke.
Now I automatically number it as the third smoke of the day and recommit myself to giving up. The focus has moved from making the packet last to making it the last packet. Cigarettes were a useful prop then, now they are not needed. Now we can turn off the television and look at our books and make plans, not the plans of pipe dreams but those of definite action for tomorrow. Instead of just imagining the gear I might want, I can go through my bags, checking off torches, knives, hats and boots with the confidence that we are going on a trek.
Next morning, as Brian fries up eggs and bacon, we talk through our concerns about altitude sickness, his cough, and the potential stomach upsets to which I am vulnerable when travelling. These are normal worries and yet for a moment I do feel anxious. I have learned that prolonged traumatic experiences, where one is often in a state of heightened tension, may leave a hangover effect where one can confuse excitement with fear. For a time after coming back from Lebanon I experienced this, but now I quickly see that while my concerns may call for caution, they need not inspire distress. As we eat breakfast we run through another gear check.
‘D’you reckon we’d be better off getting some cheap bags for the pack ponies?’ I wonder.
‘I was thinking the same – I don’t want this bag going over a precipice on a crazy horse! Do you remember where that market was yesterday where we saw some?’
‘I do. We could go there after we’ve picked up Tom.’
Tom Owen Edmunds, a friend and photographer, is joining us for a couple of weeks and will be coming on the big trek.
‘Do you mind doing the airport run on your own? This cough is bad and I need to rest – I didn’t sleep last night.’
‘Is that so, Rocky? You’ll definitely need a doc in that case. Snoring while awake is potentially fatal, I’ve heard.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . anyway Tom’ll most likely want to come back here and dump his bags before doing any shopping.’
I enjoy the solo trip by Metro then bus to the airport. I like to get my bearings and feel part of the scene to a degree. I suppose this could be a way of avoiding vulnerability, by being in control and able to carry out decisions as soon as they are made. It is part of feeling at home with oneself, I would imagine, even when one is in a new environment. Certainly I enjoy greater confidence and some pride in rapidly establishing a sense of place. It is also good having our base at the flat since we do not need to make any detailed rendezvous plans.
Tom’s flight from London is posted as Arribado almost as soon as I reach the airport, which means it is early. Soon Tom comes beaming through customs, light glinting on his spectacles as he looks expectantly around.
I have been looking forward to Tom joining us. His wife Katie Hickman and he spent a lot of time travelling around the country when her father was Britain’s ambassador to Chile in the mid-Eighties, so he knows the country well and he speaks Spanish. Tom is a great photographer and what’s more he is great company. I worked with him when making a television series, Island Race. He did the photos for the book and at various times as we made our way around the British coast he would appear, stay a couple of days and then disappear ag
ain. Tom is a wide-open person, full of mirth, positive and unselfconscious. With his Eton accent and diction and his slicked-back hair, he could be the archetype of the bright young things of the pre-war years. He is in his thirties, though with his big grin and eager expression he often appears younger. Tom has travelled a great deal more than me and I value his judgement. There is always a pleasant mix of banter and serious chat with Tom and while working on Island Race we became comfortable at acknowledging vulnerabilities to each other. He and Brian have met only briefly and I wonder how they will get on. As they both have a great sense of humour I am sure it will be fine.
I was relieved to have the small apartment to myself. I really hate the heat and the smog of the city streets, and my cough was getting worse with every breath. In any case I wanted to catch up on some notes and do some reading. McCarthy was forever planning our physical route and I needed to fix my own. Neruda and O’Higgins were still ghostly outriders on our journey to the earth’s end.
I was still hungover from the desert. It had created an unresolved state of contradiction in me. Indeed at one point, probably at the height of my loathing, I momentarily thought of tossing Neruda and his poetry into the Atacama, but those last few hours spent in the Valley of the Moon had changed my mind. Loathing had been overcome by illumination. I wanted to re-establish my relationship with Neruda. Since the beginning of our travels I had felt I was getting closer to this man. The parallels between our childhoods seemed stronger now. The Canto General, one of the highest poetic achievements of the century, was written in the middle of the author’s life and at an age similar to my own. With profound insight reminiscent of Whitman, Neruda creates a tapestry of his personal and creative life as well as of the history of South America and Chile in particular. I wanted to feel my own responses in the elaborate embroidery of his work.