by Brian Keenan
We have arranged for a driver to take us to Punta Arenas. We were told, when we did so, that he would not speak English. First we reclaim our passports from the ever-smiling steward who gives us a scrawled note. We cannot work out how this has arrived but there are enough letters of the name McCarthy present to suggest that it is indeed meant for us. We study the rest of the scrawl and work out that this is a communication, of sorts, from Tom and Katie’s friend Alfonso Campos whom we hope to meet in Punta Arenas. Fortunately we already have a phone number for him so do not have to rely solely on this hieroglyphic fragment.
We lumber away from the ship, Brian’s wheelie-bag looking far more comfortable than the mountainous rucksacks of most of our shipmates, and bid farewell and fair winds to Fred as he mounts his machine. Suddenly we are approached by a large man in a stetson.
‘Brian Keenan? John McCarthy?’ he asks, beaming.
We nod, smiling back.
‘I am Tomislav Goic, your driver! Call me Tomi.’
‘Great. How are you doing?’ asks Bri. ‘We weren’t expecting an English-speaker.’
‘So you have a good luck! Hahaha!’ cries Tomi.
A big and powerful-looking man, he sports a shooting vest with many pockets (‘my office, hahahaha!’) and the thickest, blackest beard I have seen outside the Middle East. He would be the archetypal bandit in a spaghetti western. A descendant of Croatian immigrants, Tomi has a farm on the edge of the Torres del Paine National Park as well as being a tour guide.
He drives us round Puerto Natales. ‘Just to get the feel for it!’
There is little to get the feel of. A small town laid out on a grid pattern, with nothing much to note beyond the few hotels on the shoreline. Then we head south for Punta Arenas. As we drive in his vast, ancient and battered Chevrolet pick-up truck Tomi tells us some local history. Pointing to a large spread of farm buildings, he says, ‘That place has twenty-six thousand acres. Before it was one farm, but in the Sixties and Seventies the government changed things – they broke up the big estancias and made co-operatives. This one had twenty-six families.’
‘How are they getting on? Was it a success?’ I ask.
‘To start, yes. But then many children, like everywhere, see another life on television, what?’ He turns to catch Brian’s query about communications from his perch on the back seat.
‘Oh yes, they have telephone, TV satellites. So the first um, generation, worked well but more and more of the kids are going north to the big cities. Some farms are being taken back by the old families, or big business is moving in.’
‘It must be a hard life.’
‘Yes, it is. This is special place, special people!’
They must be. The landscape of Patagonia dwarfs even the giant scale of Chile that we have already seen. Jorge had said in Santiago, ‘In Patagonia you will see the planet curve.’ The expanse of sky and rolling brown, green, yellow pampa is breathtaking and I am moved. As we drive up an escarpment and look over the vastness in front of us, the clouds break to allow in light at either end of this wide horizon, revealing many shades of colour but leaving some areas dark and mysterious. I feel my heart beating fast with both empathy and anxiety.
As if to further compound the mixture of feelings – the infinite smallness of myself and the surge of optimism that the bleak, vast land inspires – a rainbow appears, forming a perfect arch across the entire plain. It seems that we are going right under the apex; through a gateway into a land of wonder and enigma.
Strange patches of decaying woodland add to the unsettling atmosphere. Beautiful splashes of red and yellow are blighted by swathes of trunks and branches bleached grey and white by the weather. Some trees, in their death throes, are draped in hanging grey-green moss – a veil of decay. It looks like a petrified forest.
‘These woods used to be much more, bigger. Forests!’ Tomi explains with what is clearly his customary explosive delivery.
The drama of his speech is enforced as he swerves abruptly off the single lane of tarmac and runs on at undiminished speed at a perilously uneven angle. Another car approaches but neither vehicle slows. The drivers exchange salutes. I duck as the Chevy is spattered with fast-flying gravel thrown up by the other car. Tomi swerves back onto the tarmac roaring with laughter as I reappear from below the dashboard.
‘You think they are shooting! Hahaha! So, the trees! Much was burned for sheep farms. Now many die from disease. It will take long, long time for recovery.’
The scarcity of trees was, as Tomi explained, due to a parasite which attacks them when they are mature. The gnarled stumps of these trees gave the landscape a post-catastrophe appearance. While John and Tomi chatted, I took up the Canto General and dog-eared the poem ‘Oh Earth, Wait for Me’ which could almost have been written in explanation of this bitter wilderness, Neruda’s words echoing the desolation in front of me.
Return me, oh sun,
to my wild destiny,
rain of the ancient wood.
Bring me back its aroma, and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded restlessness
of the towering araucaria.
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and so learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things
I could live or not live, it does not matter
to be one stone more, that dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
Tomi’s lava of information poured forth. Before Allende’s government the farms were probably four times their current size. ‘We must find a way to make the communes work or the economy will not survive,’ Tomi said. As we drove along the single-lane road that snaked for four hours to Punta Arenas, I thought how departure from the land was too often a one-way affair.
Tomi also complained that the land here was too poor to support more intensive farming. We thought the farms were huge but when I was informed that it took about a hectare of land to feed one sheep, the size suddenly dwindled. John turned and told me to ‘note that statistic for the yak enterprise!’
As it was a public holiday, Tomi explained that Punta Arenas would be all closed up. Suddenly the two nights we were intending to spend there did not seem so appealing. I thought then of the shepherds’ huts that Tomi had pointed out. The men lived alone here, with only a horse and dog for company throughout the bleak winter. Their wooden huts clung tight to the land, miles and miles away in the low hills. I found it hard to imagine their existence, locked in against the wind and wet and snow for months on end. Our trek over the Andes was a kind of splendid, luxurious indulgence by comparison with this lifestyle and I wondered how they endured such deprivation.
‘What do they do when they are not counting sheep?’ I asked.
Tomi laughed as he replied, ‘They stay until they have been paid, maybe every four months. Then they disappear for weeks, spending all their money on drink! It is a good job to do if you have much stress in your life!’
I asked Tomi what he did when he was not acting as a tourist guide. His mouth widened in a great grin and mischievously he said, his eyes rolling, ‘I count sheep.’
I thought of our guide over the Andes, Nigel, the definitive Englishman who climbed mountains, had glaciers named after him, led people on treks in the most remote parts of the world. For two years he had worked here in Patagonia, as a shepherd. He had spoken of them as the best years of his life and of Patagonia, out of all the remote places he had lived, as the one he loved most.
As Tomi drove through this blasted landscape, I thought long and hard about the isolation of shepherding in such a reg
ion. Could we really farm yaks here? You would need a skin tougher than that beast’s hide to survive! I could understand local Patagonians doing it for a living, the only living they knew. I could understand their going on an alcoholic bender for several weeks after being snowed in with no form of human companionship for months, especially when they found that during their enforced hibernation they had lost all capacity for normal human communication. So they drank themselves into oblivion, only to return when the money ran out.
But what about those men who choose solitude, men like Nigel, or those mountaineers we had met at Jorge’s, men much younger than myself? I was reminded of some monks I had briefly come to know at Glenstal Abbey. Everything about them was outwardly composed, yet there was in them a fire greater than any furnace. I am drawn to such men, and that is, in part, why I am drawn to this, one of the most solitary of all parts of the world. Aloneness is something we carry with us at all times, yet how do we understand it and, more importantly, how do we value it? Most of us hardly know where to begin to unearth this part of ourselves. All our lives we are told that love, sharing, human community, is the ultimate source of all happiness and well-being. I am convinced that this is not wholly true, and that human happiness is heightened when human beings learn to cope with aloneness; when they learn how to navigate without love, companionship or the trappings of religion. Aloneness is not a dreadful place once we understand how to be with ourselves on our own. It may not be the cup that is given to all of us, but part of me, I know, craves it.
I follow our route on the map, trying to identify the occasional rivers. One appears to flow to the Atlantic while another empties in the Pacific.
‘Yes, yes!’ says Tomi. ‘This plain of Patagonia gets smaller between the great oceans. We are nearly to the bottom of the world! Hahaha!’
The clouds close in, reducing the wide horizon. But it is still vast as we go on and on and on, the drumming of the rain on the windscreen combining with the monotony of the ride to deaden one’s ability to think.
The wide tree-lined boulevards of Punta Arenas are flooded under the dark grey sky as we enter the town at dusk. From nondescript suburbs we are quickly into the centre of smart squares and large stone buildings. Tomi drops us at our hotel, the Cabo de Hornos – Cape Horn. We bid him a fond farewell with warm feelings in this cooler climate. Our last sight of him is of his tall frame swaggering out through the glass swing-doors of the hotel foyer into the darkening street. He turns round, raises his stetson in salute and roars, ‘Have a good luck! Have a good luck!’
Before turning in we call Alfonso Campos. Tom and Katie had recommended that we try to visit Alfonso’s estancia at San Gregorio, east of Punta Arenas on the Magellan Straits.
‘An unforgettable place,’ Tom had said, ‘quite remarkable, it’ll knock you out. Alfonso is an interesting character.’
Intrigued by this comment, I am eager for Brian to get off the phone. The call is lengthy and Brian’s expression keeps changing from perplexed frown to delighted grin. Eventually he hangs up.
‘Right you are, Alfonso . . . Yes, OK . . . That’ll be grand, Alfonso! Bye!’
‘So what’s happening?’ I ask.
‘Alfonso and his wife Isabel are coming to join us for breakfast – I think!’ he answers, beginning to chuckle. ‘It all seemed very complicated.’
‘So what do you make of this Alfonso?’ I ask. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Excitable!’
The following morning, Alfonso and Isabel cross the hotel dining room with a confident, almost proprietorial air. She is a handsome, dark-haired woman, he a tall, lean man with dark hair shot through with grey. His face is intense; Isabel too looks preoccupied. We greet them and, as they sit down, relate news of Tom and Katie and a little of our Chilean experiences to date. They both speak good English, Alfonso with a high-pitched staccato delivery.
‘You want to see my home at San Gregorio?’
‘Yes, please, we’d like to very—’
‘You must hire a car – the buses are not good!’
With this he jumps up and races out of the room. Brian and I exchange glances, wondering what this means. Isabel smiles, somewhat wearily.
‘I think he talks to um, reception? Yes, reception, about your car.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I say. ‘Shall I go with him?’
‘No, let him go. To drive to San Gregorio is maybe two and half hours – maybe more. You have a map? Good. I think you will be OK. We must go soon to speak to our abogado, lawyer, about the farm.’
‘About San Gregorio?’
‘No. Another – in Torres del Paine.’
‘Ah, we are going there in two days’ time,’ says Brian.
Alfonso is back with us in a blur.
‘They will try for your car.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I say. ‘We will take care of it now. But we must let you go, Isabel says you have a big meeting with lawyers.’
‘I am in dispute with the people I own the place with there. We do not agree. I think they are fools! You want to see my farm at Torres del Paine?’ The last word, pronounced ‘piney’, comes out almost as a squeak.
‘Well, perhaps – it all depends on how much time we have up there before going to Tierra del Fuego. But it is kind of you to offer.’
There is a pause now. Isabel looks from her husband to us and then around the dining room with the same tolerant, tired smile. Alfonso, hunched forward, stares at his clasped hands. He looks up smiling.
‘My dispute in Torres del Paine – it supports whole families of lawyers!’ He follows this statement with a high, whinnying laugh. Isabel draws in a deep breath and looks at her watch.
‘Alfonso, we must go.’
For a couple of moments he stares at his hands again, seeming not to have heard his wife. Then he looks at her with a warm smile, nodding gently, and turns back to us. ‘You will come to the estancia for supper tomorrow and stay the night. It is easy to find – there is nothing else there!’ He laughs, and stands up. He and Isabel head off for their meeting.
‘Very nice,’ observes Bri. ‘Excitable?’
‘Excitable.’
We set out to explore the wide tree-lined boulevards of Punta Arenas under a dark grey sky. Our hotel is on the main square – inevitably named Plaza de Armas – a large area filled with trees and statues surrounded by fine nineteenth-century mansions. The main statue is dedicated to Magellan. There are two Fuegian Indians at his feet. Brian pauses long, looking at the face of the Indian man.
‘What a great face, so noble,’ he says, ‘and all wiped out by the people who followed the big fella on top.’
‘Yes, it seems there are very few, if any, pure blood Fuegians left,’ I reply, leafing through a guidebook. ‘Aha! It also says that if you rub the big toe of the Indian it means you will return to Punta Arenas.’
Brian touches the bright brass toe pensively.
‘I like this place, sure it would be good to come back – though this fellow’s people never will.’
Reading on, I see that the city was founded as a penal colony. Seeing Bri so moved by the statue I stifle a desire to crack a joke about him feeling at home in such a place.
The shopping streets are the familiar mix of clothes and shoeshops that seem little different from those back home and general stores with plain window displays of cookers, chainsaws, fishing rods, cutlery and furniture, reflecting the frontier nature of the place. Yet the large mansions and scale of the boulevards testify to the city’s one-time importance. In the second half of the nineteenth century Punta Arenas was one of the world’s busiest ports, a stop-off point for vessels exporting the technology of the Old World’s industrial revolution and trading across the oceans. The city became the natural centre for the export of wool after the introduction of sheep from the Falkland Islands in the late 1870s. Vast estancias were set up, to be dominated by the union of the empires of the Menendez and Braun families – antecedents of Alfonso. But in 1914 the Panama Canal open
ed and ruined Punta Arenas as a port of global significance. After the Great Depression of the 1930s, wool too saw a steady decline although it is still very important to the region. As Tomi had told us, the land reforms of the 1960s and early 1970s saw the break-up of many of the great estates.
There were two churches in the main street of Punta Arenas. The largest was gothic and ornate, awash with bleeding Christs, effigies of the apostles and long-dead bishops and priests. It seemed to me that these dead artefacts and images were pushing the living out of the building. There was hardly room to breathe, literally or metaphorically.
The other church was plain and not unlike the chapel at Los Lingues. It was certainly not devoid of images but neither was it suffocated by them. The walls were painted white, enhancing the burning colour of the stained-glass windows. From somewhere, Latin plainsong and Gregorian chant warmed the silence of the place. I sat for a moment to let the voices wrap themselves more fully around me. I was in no rush to leave. But as other penitents took up prayerful positions around me I got up to go, and walked quietly towards the entrance doors.
At the rear of the church I was stopped by what confronted me. An Indian woman, perhaps in her early sixties, stood motionless in front of a life-size carving of a nun. The statue was standing on the floor so that the Indian woman and the wooden nun looked deeply into each other’s faces. The Indian was draped in a blue-black woven shawl and a rusty red dress that reached her ankles. Her long black hair hung in strands that disappeared like snakes into the folds of her shawl. Her feet were encased in a pair of rough workmen’s boots that were too large for her. The two women stood toe to toe and eye to eye, both impassive, yet somehow the face of the Indian was more knowing. But perhaps it was only her fleshy reality that made it seem so. The flesh is always more illuminating than gilded plaster saints.