by Brian Keenan
Wreathed in smiles the old folk tut and nod benignly. The wife, very elegant and dripping gold, steps up and gently, hand on my elbow, guides me to Lady Number Three who checks the bag and writes out the cost on a sticker which she fixes to it. I feel I am getting the hang of this insane job-creation scheme and turn to Lady Number Two, still smiling by her till, and make a gesture to offer her my bag with a questioning look on my face. The whole company nods effusively as I master my first shopping lesson. I pay and leave hurriedly, almost flattening Brian who is clutching bags of bottles.
‘Look where you’re going, fella!’
‘My God, what a palaver! Did you get the Idiot’s Guide to Complex Shopping?’
‘They were up to something or other, so I just ignored them, got what I wanted and gave the man on the till a few banknotes and let him work it out.’
‘You devised a new ruling!’
‘Correcto!’
Smug git.
I fancy heading back to base and chilling out on the balcony. Brian has other ideas and convinces me to look at the artesanal or craft market. He seems insatiable for these tatty arcades. As far as I can judge they are all pretty uniform, usually pricey and not offering much that is different from what you would find in Switzerland or Camden. We do not buy anything and head back for a pleasant lunch looking over the lake. The afternoon is spent dozing and reading. I lose myself in the magic of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits which has lain hidden at the bottom of my bags since Arica. Having thought to ignore this resort, I happily admit that Bri was absolutely right about staying here.
A couple of days later, we wait for breakfast after em overnight stop in Liffen. We are on the shores of Lago Ranco which is supposed to be very beautiful. It may be, but the sky is low and overcast and it is very cold and windy outside. Indoors, smoke pours from the fireplace in the lounge area. The owner, a smiling, nervous man, seemed quite amused when we pitched up here after ten last night, though I cannot imagine why. Our late arrival I righteously blame on Brian who did not believe we should take the turn we should have taken. This added an hour of rather hairy driving in order to rejoin the correct route. We found ourselves on a single-lane gravel track with ridges of stones on either side and down the middle. The Toyota Tercel is just too low for such roads and its undercarriage played a frightening bongo beat. We were hemmed in on either side by tall grasses and felt we were heading down a tunnel of no return. Occasionally the road would widen to reveal a couple of houses looming in the dark, sometimes a glimpse of people on their verandas. We kept moving, my anxiety over the likelihood of ripping off the exhaust on the road encouraging wilder fears of meeting Deliverance-style hill- or rather lake-billies. I ended up feeling so spooked I nearly put the car right off the road when a vast pig raced out just in front of us.
After checking in, we went to the bar and had a couple of beers and some chips. It was full of locals. Four men sat round a table drinking a jug of pisco and beer. They looked like they were in for the duration.
Normally these backwoods dens are like a magnet to me. I tend to sit in them for hours trying to look impossibly inconspicuous, hoping that by remaining long enough the ‘locals’ will forget I’m there and then I might discover that ‘exotic moment’ that sums up the whole experience of travelling or else opens up a line of thinking about somewhere that I hadn’t considered before.
The problem with this place was that it was so tiny and so packed with people that it was impossible to merge into the background. We were definitely in the wrong bar and attempting to brass it out was merely becoming uncomfortable. When I went to the toilet and realized that the woman in the next paper-thin cubicle was having the noisiest session I have ever heard, my discomfort became unbearable. I returned to where John was sitting and suggested we drink up and leave. He gratefully agreed. As I washed down the last gulps of beer, I saw my next-door neighbour emerge from the toilet. She was a pretty native woman, but our brief intimate encounter in the lavatory shattered all my illusions.
As we drive along the road – excellent surface, no pigs in sight – that we should have taken yesterday, I realize that I must be emanating smugness. I am sure that most people enjoy being proved right, but I have been told before that the levels of unspoken ‘told you so’ I generate might lead others to homicidal thoughts. Excellent!
As it is generally acknowledged that the mindset of the domestic servant is not given to homicidal tendencies, Sancho Panza simply considered Don John’s smugness to be an aristocratic idiosyncrasy. Pity was the proper attitude, Sancho Panza thought, but pity was not an inexhaustible quality. And while Sancho pretended to sleep, he plotted the most hideous revenge.
We continue on in silence past wide flat fields of maize and pastureland dotted with clumps of trees. The fields roll away to the hills and the copses become forest. We stop at Frutillar, a very German resort looking across to the perfect, snow-capped Osorno volcano on the far side of Lago Llanquihue. But the place seems so dead and sanitized – you probably get shot for littering – that we decide to head on further round the lake to Puerto Varas.
A fiery sunset turns clouds purple, black and magnificent. On the other horizon a forest fire on a mountaintop mirrors diurnal nature. Presumably such fires are just left to burn as they are so inaccessible. The frontier is never far away despite the main roads. This place is civilized but can so easily turn primeval.
As the light faded we became lost. Fortunately a group of college students were doing a road survey, accompanied by a policeman. He approached us and, sensing our dilemma, gave us directions. Both John and I thought how, not so many years ago, a traveller might not have found the police so accommodating. He assured us Puerto Varas was a beautiful place and hoped we would have a good holiday.
He was right. It was a picturesque little village built around a sweeping bay. Its one striking feature was a large, ornate church built entirely of corrugated iron by German Jesuits in 1918. Our hotel was luxurious compared to Temuco and the food was a lot different from vicuña steaks. It had that comfortable end-of-season feel about it.
We decided to relax in preparation for our four-day boat trip to Patagonia. As we walked through this very European enclave, we noticed signs advertising an amazing range of activities: horse-riding, canoeing, water sports, boat trips, rafting, fishing, even volcano-climbing. Supper, a few drinks and a game or two of cards were as much as we were up to.
At supper Brian orders shrimps in something called Pil Pil sauce. We are merrily tucking in when he suddenly shouts, ‘This sauce would roast the tongue out of your face.’
The Belfast emphasis on the last word, ‘fayess’, and his look of outrage have me helpless with laughter.
We talked endlessly into the night about deserts, horses, the Andes, our forthcoming trip south. In a way, our excited conversation reminded me of other discussions long into the night when we had only our imaginations and dreadful hope to sustain us. But that was another time and another place, a long way from the delights of Puerto Varas.
In a few days we would be in Patagonia’s never-never and beyond that, the final extremity, Tierra del Fuego, and the long shadows of our captivity could not dull our enthusiasm.
The following morning I wake early. The sky over the lake, towards the distant hills, is very black in the first light of day. I shiver, thinking ahead to the boat trip out into the Pacific we will be making in a few days. Yet, as I watch, the sky over my head begins to clear, and soon, as if it is a roller blind, the whole black mass disappears to the south, revealing first the far shore and the hills, then the snow-capped peaks of the volcanoes beyond.
After breakfast we walk along the lakeshore. The sun is out and there is a fair breeze. Then within a couple of minutes we are forced to seek shelter as the wind turns bitterly cold and hailstones come flying at us across the lake. A frightening change. Twenty minutes later and the sky has cleared again.
En route to Puerto Montt we drive past miles of flattene
d earth. Japanese businesses have bought up thousands of acres of primitive rainforest and are systematically stripping it, chipping it and then shipping it home to make wood pulp for the paper industry. Our English-language newspapers reported on the efforts of a growing ecological movement in Chile, but apparently the lure of big money has been irresistible for government ministries and so the rape of this virgin forest goes on unabated. In Puerto Montt we see the vast mountains of steaming wood chips with huge trucks crawling across their backs: another man-made horror like the slag heaps of Chuquicamata.
We dine at the Club Alemán which is, not surprisingly, very Germanic in style with lots of pine. Modern and more upmarket than most restaurants outside Santiago, it gives us a good meal. A certificate on the wall was signed by the Commandant of the Chiloé Naval Region, one Carlos Mackenney Schmauk: a history of Chilean immigration in one name. We try to imagine what he would look like.
‘Tanned face with jet black hair and bandito moustache,’ I suggest, ‘wearing a kilt and—’
‘Simultaneously clicking his boot heels a lot!’ Brian raises his left index finger to make a mock moustache, while jerking his right palm to his shoulder and grunting, ‘Jawohl!’
Puerto Montt does not have a touristy air about it. The main shopping street is busy but a little shoddy, with the unfinished feel that most towns have here. Wires hang listlessly from telephone and power lines and there are strange little potholes in the pavements, which may be for drainage but are possibly intended as junctions for electric, water or gas supplies. I get my boots shined by a guy on the street and wander into some of the big chain stores, such as Johnson’s and Ripley’s, that are holding a liquidacion, a sale. I buy a couple of shirts for a fiver each.
Sancho Panza never ceases to be amazed at his excellency Don John’s sartorial consciousness. The purchase of shirts was not unusual but having one’s boots shined before entering the Patagonian wilderness spoke of a truly blue-blooded being.
We brunch at a Pizza Hut which is a surprisingly reassuring outpost of Western imperialism. We must be tired – next we will be looking for a McDonald’s in Patagonia.
We wander down to the port at Angelmós from where we will be departing in a few days. This is where the wood chips are stockpiled before a giant vacuum device funnels them by the ton into a ship lying alongside. Brian spots an antique shop next door to a restaurant. After a while we twig we can only get in there by going through the bar so have a beer en route. The stuff is mainly junk but much fun and from all corners of the globe – at one time many ships must have called in here, stopping off between the Horn and Valparaíso and the other ports up the coast. I am quite tempted by a wonderful brass and copper diving helmet.
‘Excess baggage?’ observes Brian.
‘You’re telling me. I already have you to worry about!’
The road is full of cars and buses heading for the Estadio, so there must be a big match on. Grudgingly I follow Bri through yet another feria artesanal. It seems the place is bustling with locals rather than tourists. He steers me into a shop selling saddles and checks out prices with the sweet old man running the place. After much sign language and use of the phrase book we work out that saddle, stirrups and reins would cost around £250 all in.
‘Yes, but think what that would cost back home,’ says Butch Cassidy, dismissing my reminder about excess baggage.
‘Be that as it may, do you really see yourself trekking off into the Wicklow Mountains on a regular basis?’
‘Sure I do!’ Brian is endlessly optimistic.
We walk past Puerto Montt’s imposing fire station. Ironically there is the burnt-out shell of an old wooden building right next door. In fact there are about three blackened ruins in the vicinity so either the developers are moving in and working insurance scams or there is a fire bug in the city. Then again perhaps the bomberos are keen on overtime within walking distance of the office.
We cruise in the trusty Tercel towards Paguar to catch a ferry to Chiloé, the large island that lies between the Pacific and the channel leading to Patagonia. This is flat land and although some houses are built of aluminium siding, most are wooden with shingle roofs. The land is divided up into neat square plots but there are large swathes of burned wood, now grey and petrified looking.
‘You’d think they’d clear out all that dead wood and use the land,’ I say.
‘Maybe there’s too much land and not enough people to farm it – this is frontier country, remember.’
The trip across the Chacao Channel takes twenty minutes over smooth water. As we go I read a little of the history of the place. The Spanish colonists held on to the island even when the Mapuche regained sway on the mainland. During the seventeenth century the small colony was supplied by a boat from Lima just once a year.
‘Talk about waiting for your boat to come in.’
‘How long did they last like that?’ asks himself.
‘Well, the book glosses over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but in the nineteenth, with the rise of the independence movement, the last Spanish governor did a runner here and, in despair, offered the island to Britain!’
‘My God, they must have been in a bad way. I mean, a really bad way.’
‘I don’t know, shows remarkable good sense in my view. But the Brits turned it down anyway.’
‘Lucky for the Chilotes, but amazing for the Brits!’
‘We get some things right. Anyway it was another nine years before Chiloé capitulated and joined the republic. So this place was isolated from Chile proper by more than water for a hell of a long time – they’re meant to be a bit different here.’
‘I’ve been telling you that about the Irish for years.’
Soon after reaching the island, we come over a rise to see the Pacific, magnificent and sparkling below us in the distance. We are both grinning and Brian turns up the tape player so that the Hothouse Flowers’ cover of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ booms out for us, words and music echoing our surging spirits. A bright, bright, bright sunshiny day indeed. It was a song with special significance. We used to sing it in dreadful harmony as we paced round our cells in Lebanon.
Chiloé’s swooping hills are covered in woods and pasture. Squinting against the sunlight across the valleys I imagine the buildings as Tuscan castelli but, as my eyes adjust, the castles become small, shingle chalets.
We wander around the main square of Castro, the island’s capital, where there is an extraordinary cathedral painted orange and lilac. Given its surprising exterior, the inside of San Francisco’s comes as a delightful contrast. Everything is in natural wood: pillars, panelled walls, statues and roof.
I loved this wood cathedral. It was in complete contrast to Eiffel’s iron monstrosity in Arica. Wood softens the most austere structures – but perhaps I was still under the spell of Neruda and his homage.
The heavy, bold limbs for the ceiling and walls looked like they were whole trees, carefully crafted into shape. They say that the stonework of Inca temples is cut with a precision that only the most up-to-date machine could achieve, and the tight, snug fit of the cathedral timbers informed me that the craftsmen who had constructed this magnificent structure owed much to their Inca predecessors. The minutely carved Stations of the Cross would have drawn the admiration of an Albrecht Dürer. The wondrous tracery of the altar and private chapel could well have been the work of a Latin Grinling Gibbons. Everywhere the sense of timeless patience, art and love permeated the building. It was warm and inviting, seducing you to prayer and meditation. The ancient Irish druids had a belief that God inhabited the trees and in here I could believe it. You could almost hear the age-rings of the timber’s heartwood sing out to you.
Down a steep hill we find the harbour area. The front is lined with palafitos, buildings on stilts. From the land side they look like any other building in town but from the water you can see the large drop left at low tide. At high tide fishermen bring their boats right up to the back door. It seems the
y are being preserved these days and certainly they add a romantic dimension in the run-down atmosphere.
There is a large feria artesanal here. I spot a woollen jacket I like, ask the elderly stallholder the price and successfully haggle with her to get a reduction. Bri tries on a few hats. He is looking for something sturdier than his straw one as rain rather than sun is likely here, according to all reports, and especially in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. He settles for a stylish black number with a wide brim and colourful band.
We try out a few, progressively more basic bars, all with matt blue interiors, a couple of chairs and committed locals. Most of the men wear hats, not sombreros but Tyrolean-looking trilbies. The last bar we try is on the first floor and has a balcony overlooking the water. It is populated by a lady barkeep and three drunks. One, enormously fat with a trilby perched on his head, picks up an accordion but seems unable to play. Two other men engage us in conversation despite repeated statements that we do not understand a word. A particularly irritating man, short, fiftyish with white shirt and blue cardigan and greased-back hair, keeps on and on. Nodding and winking, he comes up whispering in my ear about things he had seen, something to do with Argentina and the Malvinas during the Falklands conflict, I think. He reeks of stale wine. I would like to hit him. The glasses are filthy so after a couple of sips of wine it is a relief to get away.
We head off for the very south of the island, to the fishing village of Quellón. On the outskirts of Castro we stop to look at a boatyard. The craft under construction are crude skeletons at the moment but these 40-foot fishing boats should be extremely strong, judging by their massive timbers.