We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  “No,” Leah said without looking up from her menu.

  “That would be ridiculous,” Katrina agreed.

  “What if I gave you half?” I asked Katrina.

  “Are you trying to bribe me?” she asked sanctimoniously.

  “Yes,” I clarified.

  “Absolutely not!” she declared.

  I called for a family vote to overturn Leah’s budget decision. It went against me, three-to-one. However, Leah did authorize me to order “poor man’s steak,” which is a Chilean specialty: sirloin steak smothered with sautéed onions and french fries, all topped with a fried egg. I was happy with the compromise.

  * One of the body’s responses to altitude is to produce more red blood cells to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. To make room for the extra cells, the body dumps fluid. The biology is remarkable—and inconvenient when one would prefer not to make repeated trips to the bathroom in the cold and dark.

  Chapter 8

  To the End of the Earth (Almost)

  Patagonia was the place that inspired me to fi ure out the panorama feature on my iPhone.

  OUR BUS WAS STOPPED at a small checkpoint on the highway. Two security officials came on board. We were somewhere in southern Argentina, a country that stretches for more than two thousand miles north to south. We had passed the midpoint of South America and were headed in the direction of Ushuaia, Argentina, at the very tip of the continent. I do not know exactly where we were, as we had been on the bus for hours. Nor do I know why our bus was stopped; perhaps we were crossing some internal border, from one Argentine province to another. One of the officials walked slowly down the aisle, doing a cursory check of the cabin. Meanwhile, a dog and handler were inspecting our bags in the cargo hold below. I was listening to a podcast: Terry Gross was interviewing Bruce Springsteen on Fresh Air.

  A few minutes later, a different official came on board and asked for the owner of a bag with a particular claim number. He read the number aloud and I ignored him. The next thing I knew, Leah was waving her hand in the air. “Please come with us,” the security official said in Spanish. Leah dutifully got up and followed him off the bus.

  Some have questioned whether I might have acted more bravely as Argentine security officials escorted my wife off the bus. I understand where those critics are coming from. On the other hand, Terry Gross was having a very engaging conversation with Bruce Springsteen about his recently released memoir. Also, I was reasonably confident that Leah was not trafficking narcotics or carrying huge wads of illicit cash. If that were the case, we would have had more fun money.

  A Labrador retriever had gone straight to Leah’s bag. The security officers led her inside a small building and opened her backpack as she looked on: clothes, shoes, books, sunscreen—and also a large Ziploc bag with more than a kilo of whitish powder. One of the officers held the bag up and looked to Leah for an explanation.

  “It’s pancake mix,” she said.

  This was true. We had been stretching our budget in Chile and Argentina by shopping at supermarkets and carrying staples with us in our packs. The mix in the bulging Ziploc bag could be combined with eggs, milk, and oil to make Swedish pancakes, a family breakfast favorite.† The officers did not fling Leah to the ground and slap on the cuffs. Apparently flour and sugar do not look like cocaine or heroin to an expert eye. Also, Leah had butter and jam in her pack, which gave credence to the pancake alibi. The drug dog, which had presumably been attracted to the food, was now lounging on the floor, wagging its tail happily. The officers searched every pocket and crevice of Leah’s pack before she was released back to the bus, by which point Terry Gross was asking Springsteen about his battles with depression and anxiety.

  “All good?” I asked Leah as she walked down the aisle to her seat.

  “The dog found the Swedish pancake mix,” she said.

  “They didn’t take it away?” I asked with concern.

  “No,” she assured me. “The pancake mix is fine.”

  The road to the faux-drug bust had been a long one, literally. A week earlier, after we left the salt flats and crossed from Bolivia into Chile, we had made our way to the small city of Calama, where we rented several rooms in a man’s home. He was living with his son; they had one other guest, a journalist who was writing an article on the environmental harms done by Chile’s copper mining industry. Our host and his son were friendly and helpful. This was the first time we had stayed in someone’s home, as opposed to having our own apartment or a room with a dedicated entrance, as we had in Sucre. We had less privacy—a shared kitchen, for example—but it was interesting to speak to our hosts and the other guest about everything from politics to the local economy. There was an unexpected downside to our chats over the kitchen table, however. From these conversations, particularly our talks with the journalist, a monster was born: CJ Wheelan, Eco Warrior.

  CJ had previously shown some interest in the environment, typical for a young person raised during an era of heightened environmental awareness. But in Calama, something extraordinary happened, like in those superhero movies when a normal person is bitten by a spider or exposed to radiation. As with all superpowers, CJ’s fixation with the environment had a dark side. I teach public policy, lean left on environmental issues, and ran a congressional campaign in which I advocated for a carbon tax. Yet I found CJ the Eco Warrior to be remarkably grating. He brought all the subtlety of a thirteen-year-old to the issue: polluters are bad; environmentalists are good; mining companies are evil. There was not a lot of reflection on the fact, for example, that the minerals coming out of the ground were going into his iPod, or that our environmental footprint as we traveled around the world was less than admirable. CJ also had a habit of screaming excitedly whenever he saw a fancy sports car in the street. He spoke admiringly of people with huge houses and private planes. He had not, to my knowledge, reconciled his environmental sensitivity with his worship of energyguzzling lifestyles.

  Broadly speaking, CJ’s environmental passion was a good thing. We can all take actions to minimize our environmental impact, many of which are simple and would collectively make a big difference. On a good day, I could let most of CJ’s environmental policy illogic pass, recognizing it as a healthy passion gone overboard.

  The second morning in Calama was not one of those days.

  Our host had graciously invited us to use his washing machine. CJ became aggrieved when he discovered that I was washing our clothes in warm water. This was a reasonable objection—made less reasonable by the fact that I was the one who had collected the clothes and figured out how to use the washing machine, which is harder than one might think when the directions are in Spanish. The effect was like cooking dinner for someone who criticizes the food for having too much salt. It is not the kind of comment that endears one to the cook, even if the food does have too much salt.

  Over a long breakfast (while the clothes were in the washing machine), CJ lectured us on various environmental factoids that he had learned on the Internet—insights that apparently escaped me while I was getting my Ph.D. in public policy. After an hour of hectoring, I took the clothes out of the washing machine. “Are you going to put those in the dryer?” CJ asked accusingly.

  “I’m going to hang them on the clothesline,” I answered, suppressing the urge to hurl his wet underwear into the bushes.

  I opted for the bad mood cure-all: walking. I left the house, picked a random direction, and walked until I encountered something interesting. I ended up at a large shopping mall, where I parked myself in the food court. I ordered coffee, watched middle-class Chilean families enjoying themselves, and read a biography of Millard Fillmore. One of my goals was to read a biography of every president in order. (It turns out that Millard Fillmore did not install the White House’s first bathtub; that was a rumor spread by H. L. Mencken.) More important, reading about an obscure president for a long spell in a food court is a pleasant way to decompress, especially while surrounded by multigen
erational families having a meal together.

  When I returned to the house in a much better mood, Leah, CJ, and I had a more substantive conversation about environmental issues, including a discussion of how we can modify our own behavior to the greatest effect. I tried to underscore for CJ the importance of trade-offs: oil companies make it possible to heat our homes and drive to soccer practice; copper makes most electronics work; the sports cars he worshipped were some of the most gratuitous polluters. Still, CJ the Eco Warrior would be with us for the balance of the trip. His understanding of the issue would grow more sophisticated over time, but to my eternal frustration, he continued to shriek in excitement every time he saw a Ferrari or Maserati.

  I ran out of allergy medicine in Calama. This, like getting a haircut or buying a new tube of toothpaste, was a curious reminder that we had been on the road for a long time. We were now nearly halfway down the continent. Our budget was working, more or less. And I had used up all of my allergy medicine (easily replaced) as we enjoyed spring in the southern hemisphere.

  We took an onward bus from Calama to Santiago: fifteen hundred kilometers, more or less, straight south along the coast of Chile. Santiago is not especially picturesque, but it is functional and easy to get around. We rented a twenty-first-floor apartment with three bedrooms and a nice kitchen. Our apartment building was in a pleasant residential neighborhood; we were able to run lots of small errands, including mailing our absentee ballots back to Hanover. Having turned eighteen earlier in the year, Katrina cast her first vote for president in a general election. We took advantage of a good kitchen to make risotto for dinner and Swedish pancakes for breakfast. (This was where the extra pancake mix was transferred to a large Ziploc bag.) One night we ordered sushi online and had it delivered. The sushi itself was mediocre, but we were pleased with ourselves for ordering in Spanish. The delivery guy showed up at our door, just like home.

  As noted earlier, Leah and I had given up on Sophie doing any significant schoolwork until she joined us. In Santiago, we declared that she should at least get herself “unfrozen” from all her online courses before she left home. From five thousand miles away, we sent a parental edict: no car privileges or phone—the teenage equivalent of waterboarding—until Sophie got VLACS fixed. By afternoon, she was unfrozen in all three classes. The ongoing VLACS debacle was part of a larger debate about how to parent Sophie: Prod her along or let her learn from failure?

  “We can’t be threatening to take her phone away when she’s in college,” Leah pointed out. Like parents everywhere, we were searching for a magic formula that does not exist. Leah had been one of four children raised by a single mother who worked full-time; there was not a lot of time and energy for mollycoddling. Anyone who did not pack a lunch for school would be hungrier for dinner. One summer, Leah’s mother decided to send all the kids to camp for two weeks, which was a significant family expense and the only break she would get from parenting. When they arrived at camp drop-off, the director informed them that the session had started a week earlier. “Camp is already half over,” he explained. “The campers have made friends, they’re on teams. The social bonding process at this age can be a delicate—”

  “They’ll be fine,” Leah’s mother said. “How about if I pick them up in the middle of the second session so they still get two weeks?” The flummoxed camp director agreed.

  I, on the other hand, was raised by a Tiger Mom before the term had come into use. For example, when I received a B in gym class in seventh grade—with A’s in all my academic classes—my mother demanded a conference with the PE teacher. It was, we believe, the first time in the history of the Northbrook Junior High School that a parent had ever made such a request.

  “Why did Charlie get a B in gym?” my mother asked. “He gets A’s in all his other classes.”

  To his credit, the PE teacher answered honestly: “Mrs. Wheelan, this is the first quarter and there are fifty boys in the class. I have no idea which one Charlie is.” Suffice it to say, I got A’s in gym for the balance of my middle school years.

  The irony is that both Leah and I ended up as intrinsically motivated people. What approach would make Sophie take responsibility for her work? We considered letting her fail the online classes, which meant she would have to repeat her junior year and would not graduate with her class. That would be a valuable, if expensive, life lesson. On the other hand, we felt a parental responsibility to provide academic “bumpers”—the high school equivalent of the padding that pops up in bowling alleys and keeps the ball from rolling into the gutter. Failing three classes would definitely be an academic gutter ball. Also, we reminded ourselves that she was taking these insipid online classes because we were traveling around the world, which was not her idea. “So what are we supposed to do?” Leah asked after a long, meandering discussion of the situation.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  For reasons that should now be obvious, Leah and I were keen to visit the Concha y Toro winery on the outskirts of Santiago. Katrina was eager to go, too. Having just voted in the U.S. presidential election, she was annoyed that she was still three years away from a legal glass of wine at home, even though she could drink legally in most other countries, including Chile. She decided that America’s anomalous drinking age would be the topic for her next Valley News article. The tourist bus to the winery cost twenty-five dollars a person. That is not a budget-busting amount on a ten-day vacation, but it was too much for us to spend, no matter how much Sophie was driving us to drink.

  Leah opened her computer in our Santiago apartment and muttered, “How do the workers get there?” She found a combination of a metro ride and a public bus—sixty cents total—that got us within a mile of the winery gate. From there we walked, enjoying a warm spring day. We toured the vineyard and then settled ourselves on a lovely outdoor terrace where we spent most of our transportation savings on a delicious lunch with several flights of Chilean red wine. Katrina had me take a photo of her swilling from a big glass, which became the picture that accompanied her Valley News piece.

  And then Katrina bade us farewell. She was heading off to meet two friends from high school, one of whom had a distant relative who owned a dairy farm in Chile and was willing to loan the three of them a decrepit old Volvo for exploring. (We learned later that they had to drive the car in reverse to get up steep inclines.)

  That left three: Leah, CJ the Eco Warrior, and me. The travel dynamic changed, as it had when our niece Tess went home. This time, however, I was losing my fellow introvert. The remaining three of us made our way to Gate Fourteen of the central bus terminal to catch an overnight bus south toward Patagonia. I persuaded Leah to pay an extra twenty-one dollars per person for the luxurious “full cama” (full bed) option. The bus had two levels. I was seated in the front row of the upper deck, looking out a floor-to-ceiling window at the road ahead. The seat reclined fully. When darkness fell, a steward made up my bed and closed the curtains on the front window. I settled comfortably under a thick blanket and fell into a deep sleep as our bus made its way south along a smooth Chilean highway. If anything, the trip was too short. I was still sleeping soundly when the steward gently offered me a cup of coffee as we arrived in the city of Osorno.

  We parked ourselves on a bench in the bus station to wait five hours for the onward bus to Bariloche, our first stop in the Patagonia region. I read; I listened to podcasts. The aforementioned Terry Gross interview with Bruce Springsteen had prompted me to buy his book and download a few albums. (Book and music downloads fell into a gray area budgetwise, as they were much harder for Leah to monitor.) For the previous twenty years, I had thought it would be a luxury to sit idly on a bench for a long stretch of time. It turned out to be as good as I had hoped.

  From Osorno we crossed the Chilean border into Argentina. We were now in the heart of Patagonia, an area near the tip of South America known for its extraordinary natural beauty: dense forests, turquoise lakes, and snowy peaks—all of which we were no
w seeing as our bus rolled along. We arrived in Bariloche, which turned out to be a prosperous ski town built on a steep hill overlooking a picturesque lake. Our Airbnb rental was a quirky, multicolored, three-story cottage. Inside, the walls were painted yellow and purple and green. I expected Willy Wonka to show up and give us instructions (in Spanish) for using the coffee maker.

  Everything about Bariloche was beautiful, but as soon as we arrived the weather turned cloudy and rainy. We could see the rugged peaks of the Andes in the distance, but we were not able to do anything other than walk around town. I was getting anxious that we would miss what the region had to offer, as if Patagonia were flirting with us. Finally, the weather cleared. We bought transit cards and boarded the 20 bus out of town. It followed a route along the lake, giving us stunning views of the shimmering blue-green water and the mountains beyond. We rode to the end of the line, where we were met with a luxury hotel built on a expansive green lawn sloping down to the water. We could not afford to stay at this elegant hotel—and for the first time I wished we had the budget to do so—but we could have our picnic lunch on the sweeping lawn. Even better, Leah had struck up a conversation on the bus with a Swiss woman who told her about the Patagonia Brewing Company, a brewpub that became our destination for the afternoon.

  Leah took out a bus map and determined that the 10 bus would take us somewhere near the brewpub. We waited at the designated stop. When the bus arrived, it was completely empty. The driver welcomed us aboard effusively and told us not to worry about paying the fare. We soon understood the dispensation. The number 10 bus was also the local school bus. We rumbled along a small road for a few minutes and then stopped outside an elementary school, where about fifty students came aboard. The students slapped the driver high fives; several of them perched backward against the front window of the bus, chatting amiably with the driver as we moved on. It was a joyous group, obviously accustomed to riding this bus every day. At the next stop, a group of high school students climbed aboard. No one gave us a second look. There was usually a first look—hey, three gringos are on our school bus—but then everyone went about their business. The result was a delightful combination of anonymity and acceptance.