We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  The Patagonia Brewing Company is an architectural masterpiece. From the front, it is a warm, modern building—lots of wood and glass—that would fit comfortably in any upscale ski town. What we could not see from the front entrance, however, was the view out the back. The building is perched on the side of a mountain. Once inside, we were able to look through floor-to-ceiling windows at a turquoise lake surrounded by snowy peaks, like a giant gemstone that had been dropped into the Andes. There were even peaks that jutted up in the middle of the lake, creating picturesque islands. On the back lawn, we ordered a beer sampler and cheese fries and perched at a picnic table with Patagonia spread before us. CJ asked me to take a photo of him pointing to the Patagonia logo on his pullover while posing in Patagonia.

  The next day we went to a ski resort where it was possible to take a chairlift up the mountain to a small chalet with a coffee shop and an outdoor deck with 360-degree views of the region. Again, we were blessed with sunny clear weather. We read glowing reviews of the views from the top of this peak, but the chairlift cost ten dollars a person. “There is a cheaper way,” Leah asserted.

  I looked up the mountain. “There’s not a bus,” I said skeptically.

  “We can hike up,” Leah said.

  “It’s a mountain,” I pointed out.

  “It’s a ski hill,” Leah corrected me.

  “It’s a ski hill on a mountain,” CJ said. This was encouraging, as it suggested I might win a family vote two-to-one in favor of the chairlift. But then CJ added, “Wouldn’t it be better for the environment if we walked?”

  “The chairlift is running continuously, whether we’re on it or not!” I yelled. By then, Leah was already walking toward the woods. “Here’s the trail,” she said without looking back. The hike was pleasant, if steep. There was no charge for standing on the deck at the top and marveling at the 360-degree view: the lake’s palette of blues and greens; the mosaic of mountains and snow rising from the water, and sky that was a different but complementary shade of blue. Patagonia was the place that inspired me to figure out the panorama feature on my iPhone.

  Leah and I celebrated our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary in Bariloche. The Argentines love their beef. Having left CJ the Eco Warrior at the rental, we could enjoy an upscale steakhouse without getting a lecture from him on the environmental damage done by bovine flatulence.* The meal was simple: two giant slabs of meat grilled over a wood fire with a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes on the side. Our only regret was ordering a half bottle of wine instead of a full one. We marveled at the food, but also at the exuberance of the place, which was full of relatively thin people—men and women alike—enjoying prodigious quantities of meat, potatoes, and wine. We discussed the paradox of South America: every country we visited had a robust food culture yet relatively few overweight or obese people. My policy brain hypothesized that this is because the diet is low in processed food and the lifestyle is more oriented toward walking, particularly in the cities. (If you marry a guy who teaches public policy, this is what you talk about during your anniversary dinner.)

  Our goal at this point was to get as close as possible to the southern tip of South America before we had to double back and meet Sophie in Lima. The quest was fun; Leah chose interesting cities along the way. In Puerto Madryn on the rugged Argentine coast, CJ persuaded us to go whale-watching. We joined a group led by a marine biologist aboard a small boat. For the first hour and a half, we saw nothing but a speck on the horizon that the marine biologist insisted was a whale. To me, even with my telephoto lens, it looked like a rock.

  “Do you think we are going to see a whale?” CJ asked me repeatedly.

  “It’s not an aquarium,” I reminded him each time.

  “Look how beautiful the coast is,” Leah offered. “What a lovely boat ride.”

  “Oh no,” CJ lamented to me. “That’s exactly the kind of thing she says if she doesn’t think we’re going to see a whale.”

  And then a mother and her calf surfaced beside us, so close that we could smell them: glistening skin, massive forked tales, and sprays of water as mother and calf exhaled loudly through their blowholes. They were majestic creatures; the baby stayed close to its mother, surfacing and frolicking beside her. CJ stood and ran to the side of the boat, screaming, “Whales! Whales!” Even the marine biologist smiled at his unadulterated joy.

  And then another fifteen hundred kilometers south to El Calafate, where we rented an adorable little A-frame with a sleeping loft up top. On our second evening, just as we were making dinner, there was a knock at the door. I answered, and there were two small children dressed strangely. They held out bags, as if they were pleading for something. I recognized their mother, our Airbnb host, standing at a distance and smiling pleasantly. I waved at her confusedly, and she waved back. Then one of the small kids said, “Truco o trato.”

  “It’s Halloween!” Leah exclaimed from behind me. We rifled through our packs to find something appropriate for a treat, feeling flattered to be part of the neighborhood for that evening.

  We had chosen El Calafate because it was near to the Perito Moreno Glacier: a mass of ice three miles wide and three hundred feet high pushing through a fjord into Lake Argentino like a slow-motion avalanche. The lake and glacier, which rests across the lake like a giant curtain, are part of the national park where we spent the day hiking trails and observing the glacier from different vantage points. From some perspectives, the ice took on a cool blue hue, as if it were illuminated from within. Tourist boats the size of small cruise ships floated on the lake near the glacier; the towering wall of ice made them look like toy boats in a bathtub. Near the end of the day, several condors flew overhead—just to put an exclamation point on the adventure.

  That night at dinner, CJ ordered a six-hundred-gram slab of filet mignon and afterward vowed he would never eat beef again.

  We continued south. The roads in Argentina are long and straight, so much so that we did not need Dramamine. I was still reading Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. In the early part of the book, he writes about his passion for music and his efforts to break into the music business. I was inspired by his journey to artistic success, much of which was just dogged persistence. As a journalist and writer, I knew the drill. Now I found myself thinking about the novel I had been working on. As we rolled along on the bus, hour after hour, I resolved to finish it before the end of the trip. Maybe Bruce Springsteen was speaking to me. Maybe I just liked the alone time as I wrote every morning. In any event, I had a goal: finish the novel before we arrived home.

  We crossed back into Chile to the city of Puerto Natales, which is a gateway for Torres del Paine National Park, the gem in the crown of Patagonia. Our trip into the national park began with a ride on a catamaran ferry across a lake to the main lodge. The jagged snowy peaks rising above the aquamarine lake looked as if someone had dropped the mountains of Colorado into one of the lakes of New Hampshire and then added a glacier. The weather was sunny for our crossing, but the forecast was ominous. The wind became fierce enough that I had to brace myself on deck while taking pictures. The crew warned us that the wind would get worse, an admonition I ignored until my sunglasses were nearly blown off my face.

  We hiked for several hours to a large glacier as the weather grew steadily more brooding. By the time we reached the overlook for the glacier, rain was coming down hard and the temperature was falling fast. We admired the view briefly and then turned back for the lodge. I felt a pang of regret that we could not stay longer. On the other hand, with steady rain and high winds predicted for the next three days, I was happy not to be sleeping in a tent. Patagonia forced us to confront one of the trade-offs of the trip: we had opted to sample the world rather than going fewer places and staying longer. Patagonia is a place where I would have loved to spend more time, especially with a bigger budget.

  We had rented a flimsy one-bedroom house in Puerto Natales that I began referring to as our “shack” after I persuaded myself that I could
see the walls rattle when the wind blew. The shack did have a television, however, so we could watch the Chicago Cubs play game seven of the World Series. The games were broadcast on television with commentary in Spanish by the announcers who normally do soccer games. They treated a home run with the same enthusiasm as a soccer goal. When a hitter blasted the ball out of the park, they would yell in unison, “HOME RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!”

  I grew up going to games at Wrigley Field. Many of my high school friends sold concessions at the stadium as a summer job, walking the aisles peddling peanuts, or soda, or beer. I was a season ticket holder when we lived in Chicago. I vividly remember the “Bartman incident” in 2003, when a fan interfered with left fielder Moises Alou in a playoff game against the Florida Marlins and supposedly cost the Cubs a spot in the World Series. Now, in game seven, the Cubs had a chance to end the 108-year drought—a supposed “curse”—and win it all.

  The game was tied at the end of regular play and went into extra innings—and then there was a rain delay. Chile is two hours ahead of the East Coast; it was nearly three o’clock in the morning for us. I gave some thought to going to bed; the rain delay could go on for hours. But I just couldn’t. The Cubs were in extra innings of game seven of the World Series. The rain stopped, and the Cubs scored two runs in the tenth inning to win. I danced around our little shack. The rest of the family had gone to bed, but months of communal sleeping had taught us all to sleep through such disruptions.

  We were temporarily reunited with Katrina in Punta Arenas, Chile, a city just across the Strait of Magellan from Tierra del Fuego. She and her high school friends had driven around Chile and hiked in several national parks, including Torres del Paine. We fixed a time to meet her in a plaza near the center of the city. We arrived early and waited for her to show up. The rendezvous in a public place made me feel like I should be carrying ransom money. At the appointed time, Katrina walked casually into the plaza. CJ rushed to give her a hug. We had a lovely dinner at a quirky Croatian supper club, the kind of place where the waitress pointed at the menu and said, “Have this.”

  Over salmon and fried potatoes, Katrina shared her travel stories. She had made it all the way to Ushuaia—the very tip of South America (the “end of the world”). The rest of us would not make it that far. Katrina, independent adventurer that she was, insisted on staying alone in a hostel that night rather than sharing our apartment. She would be traveling north by bus on her own. Meanwhile, Leah, CJ, and I would be flying north to meet Sophie. If all went according to plan, we would see Katrina again in a week in Cusco, Peru.

  Back in the U.S., Sophie was days away from beginning her journey to join us. The good news was that she seemed excited when we spoke to her. The bad news was the e-mail that we received from her VLACS chemistry teacher telling us that the assignments she had turned in—the tiny amount of work she had managed to do—were in an unreadable file. Sophie had also failed to deliver on a promise to clean up her room before departure. When she did finally shovel out her bedroom, a small space usually so cluttered that it was hard to open the door, she removed twenty-three dirty towels. I was shocked to learn that our family owns twenty-three towels, let alone that that many had been accumulating on Sophie’s floor.

  Leah, CJ, and I flew to Lima, a much shorter trip than the assorted bus rides that had taken us the other direction. In Lima, we made elaborate plans for Sophie’s arrival so that her first experiences would be positive. CJ made a colorful sign to hold up when she emerged from customs at the airport. Leah found a bakery and ordered a cake.

  Early on the morning of Election Day, Sophie texted to say that she was on the Dartmouth Coach bus headed to Logan Airport. Many hours later, she landed in Lima. We held up our multicolored sign as we waited eagerly in the arrivals hall. Sophie may not be the most enthusiastic traveler, but she is savvy. The Peruvian arrival form requires a local address. We had not given Sophie that information, since we were meeting her at the airport, and she was not able to use her phone to text us when she landed. As Sophie moved slowly in line toward the immigration officer, her many hours of binge-watching Netflix paid off. She recalled an episode of Friends in which Chandler claimed to be moving to Yemen. When asked by a skeptic where he was moving in Yemen, Chandler replied, “Yemen, Yemen.” Sophie wrote, “Lima Street, Lima,” on her form, figuring there probably was one. The official waved her through.

  The happy reunion continued all the way back to our apartment, where Sophie enjoyed the chocolate cake we had bought for the occasion. “This is much better than I expected,” she commented on our apartment. CJ was delighted to see his sister. At some point in the evening, he asked her if he could hug her again. Then Sophie went to bed and slept for twelve hours.

  We learned over the course of the evening that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. It was a strange night for Americans everywhere, but it was particularly odd to be thousands of miles from home, watching the returns come in online and exchanging texts with friends. Katrina, who was making her way back to Peru, was alone in a hostel, feeling confused and lonely. As the evening progressed, we swapped texts with her, too. By the end of the night—we did stay up until Donald Trump was declared the winner—it was clear that America was entering uncharted territory.

  * Wheelan family Swedish pancake recipe: Mix together batter in the following ratio: 1 cup flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup water, and 3 tablespoons oil. Batter should be thin and easily poured. Spread about a third of a cup of batter to cover the bottom of a saucepan as thinly as possible. The pancake will have the thickness of a crepe. Turn when brown and serve with lemon, sugar, fresh berries, jam, nuts, and/or Nutella.

  † Cow farts, which, in CJ’s defense, are a major source of methane emissions and a contributor to climate change (along with cow burps). Still, it’s not the lecture I wanted to get at an Argentine steakhouse.

  Chapter 9

  Charlie’s Choice

  You can try to control my whole life all you want, but you surely can’t make me eat or speak, although the more I think about it the more I realize you may not be above forcefeeding me.

  —excerpt from the letter Sophie presented to me in the Quito airport declaring that that she was going on a hunger strike and refusing to speak.

  WE WERE UP SOMEWHERE around thirteen thousand feet in the Peruvian Andes. Our guide, Juan Carlos, sidled up to me. I had a pretty good idea what he was going to say. We were doing the Salkantay Trek, a four-day hike that would take us through some of the most beautiful spots in the Andes to Machu Picchu. On this first day, we would climb over a mountain pass at fifteen thousand feet. So far, however, we were only forty-five minutes into the walk and Team Wheelan was not killing it. I knew that was what Juan Carlos wanted to discuss.

  We had started before sunrise with a three-hour van ride up a winding road to the trailhead. This was a triple whammy: early morning, winding road, high altitude. Despite Dramamine, CJ and Sophie threw up so many times that we had to borrow extra plastic bags from fellow passengers. What was more surprising—and more alarming—was that neither CJ nor Sophie bounced back when we arrived at the starting point for the hike, a lovely meadow with stunning views of the Andes. The guides who would be accompanying our group set up an elaborate outdoor breakfast spread, but neither CJ nor Sophie ate anything. They both sat listlessly in the grass. Sophie showed some vigor when a local puppy came wandering over (Sorry, Rhonda), but other than that, neither of them looked prepared to hike over a fifteen-thousand-foot pass.

  It was an hour later, with both Sophie and CJ struggling along the trail, when Juan Carlos pulled me aside. We had four days of rigorous hiking ahead. “Señor Charles,” Juan Carlos said as we walked, “you have a choice to make. We have one horse, and there are two people who need a horse.” It wasn’t exactly Sophie’s Choice, but Juan Carlos was making explicit the dilemma I had been confronting in my own mind. Our tents and gear were being hauled by packhorses. There was one sp
are horse to help out, if necessary. I could put Sophie on a horse, or I could put CJ on a horse. But not both.

  The trek had been majestic from the moment we began walking through a meadow along a bubbling creek into the jagged, snowcapped Andes. But what if we did not make it through the first day? If CJ and Sophie were motion sick, they would get better. But if one or both of them had altitude sickness, the only safe option would be to turn back. Leah or I would have to go, too. “Who goes on the horse, Señor Charles?” Juan Carlos prodded.

  The parenting books do not say anything about which child should get the horse when two of them are pale, weak, and unhappy at thirteen thousand feet. I tried to be strategic. CJ and Sophie each get unhappy in their own way. With CJ, physical discomfort drives his mood. If he began to feel better, his mood would bounce back quickly. He had, after all, powered up and down Colca Canyon with a massive cold, in large part because Leah helped him find a comfortable pace. Sophie is the opposite: her moods tend to dominate how she feels physically. If she grew grumpier, everything would spiral in a bad direction. My best play—the one that might salvage the trek—was to give Sophie the horse in the hope that it would improve her state of mind. Also, she likes horses. Meanwhile, Leah offered CJ a brilliant suggestion: put on headphones and listen to music while hiking.