See all the pics from San Pedro de Atacama here…

Valparaiso, in the days post-earthquake. Even with the current situation, I could tell the Pata Pata hostel owners were getting a little tired of me ringing the bell, using their kitchen and being a wifi parasite – all under the pretense that I was visiting Alessandro, my friend who was staying there. After only sleeping at Pata Pata for one night, I’d moved to another place around the corner where I had my own room and avoided their screaming child, all for only a couple of dollars more. So in a cunning move, after a couple of days of ‘hanging out’ in their cozy lounge, I bought them gifts of chocolate and wine; this offering was well received and prevented the imminent and awkward ‘what are you still doing here’ conversation.

The TV news coverage of the earthquake became increasingly more dramatic as the situation in Concepcion spiraled into what resembled civil war. People were looting and burning stores, the military were enforcing a curfew by firing shots into the air and numerous buildings were in a state of collapse, all while the death toll continued to rise. I looked into options of heading south to offer my help but was told that the addition of my non-fluent and hungry mouth might not be the best help in this situation. However, my Chilean friend Matias suggested I share link a for people to donate and I promised to post various options here… Even if you can spare only $5, that would be a huge help!

Alessandro had finally heard news that his friend in Concepcion was safe, but the off-road Bolivian trip they had been planning for months (and had invited me along on) was seeming less and less likely. Amid the chaos in the south, his friend had managed to steal a small amount of gas but the infrastructure was still too rough to negotiate and he couldn’t get out of town. We waited a couple of days, just in case the story changed but finally we bought two tickets north, promising to wait for him if he ended up making it out. On my final night in Valparaiso, I worked late into the night in the Pata Pata lounge, catching up on some LA work that I’d been neglecting. On of my remote tasks is to create and send out the mass-mailers, in this case one for Mindshare LA’s next event and one for Syyn Labs and OkGo’s video release. I always find it to be a bizarre feeling when I finally press ‘send’, imagining the almost 5,000 emails that get shot out in a matter of minutes to each list. That ethereal action alone propagates so many impossible-to-track interactions and serendipitous exchanges; it blows my mind every time. Just before logging off, I got an email from the non-profit organization that I had worked with during my charitably debauched 30th birthday party; 1700 nets had just been delivered to a slew of villages in Ghana, Africa – and all thanks to a week of eating cake and drinking champagne! I closed the laptop, more than a little burnt out and looking forward to a handful of offline days.

As the bus left the station the next morning, a cute Chilean girl moved down the aisle to her seat.

“Ciao.” Alessandro said, as she looked at him oddly. ‘Ciao’ happens to be Italian for hello and goodbye, whereas in Chile ‘chau’ is only used for ‘goodbye’. I infomed him of this and told him that this was certainly the only reason that she looked at him oddly.

“No problem. She is bona, but I like a little more pork.” Alessandro said. And as was quickly becoming standard in our exchanges, the conversation suddenly turned to girls. Of course man similarities exist across cultures, but there are also unique idiosyncrasies to get used to. For example, to get the attention of Chilean girls requires a much more assertive attitude than the typical western man projects, but this is no problem for Italians, Alessandro assured me:

“In Italy, if a bellisima girl walks, everybody stop and look. Many times I almost crash my car. What I can do? It’s in my genes.” The nice thing is, that even if a girl is not so into you, she’ll find a polite way of expressing it; a refreshing alternative to the swaths of western females that think the world, and its male inhabitants, should bow before their stunted femininity. And what’s even more sad is the men that happily assume this role, thus continuing the emasculating trend. We talked about the girls we’d met at the Valparaiso club and even though they were early twenties, Alessandro, who is thirty two, said they were too young for us. Somewhat surprised by the combination of his Italian genetics and sudden morality, I informed him that the existing standard for ‘dating age morality’ is the simple equation of ‘half your age’ plus seven. According to this system, as a thirty year old man, engaging women under twenty two is morally questionable, so I believed I was in the clear. In any case it had only been an innocent encounter, any potential passion cut short by the world’s 7th most powerful earthquake in recorded history.

After a couple of hours we arrived in Santiago, where we were scheduled to catch a connecting bus that would take us twenty-four hours north to San Pedro de Atacama. As we waited, we drank some coffees and watched TV in the terminal. It was refreshing to watch ‘TV Bloopers’, a favorite Chilean TV show of social pranks filmed by hidden cameras, instead of more earthquake coverage. For example in one skit the sound of kittens-in-distress came from a bunch of cardboard boxes and when people got closer a man in an alligator outfit jumped out, scaring the hell out of them. You get the idea, simple but hilarious. In fact we were laughing and chatting so much that we missed our bus, which was in fact at 7pm, not 7:30pm, and had departed from about 10ft away, directly behind the bench where we were sitting. Alessandro, who had identified the problem when he went to confirm the ticket, is just the kind of person you want to travel with; on his return he was smiling, showing no indication of stress:

“So, we missed the bus.”

I spun around like an idiot at first, somehow assuming that this might make the bus reappear – after all they’d been the last two tickets departing that day, but soon followed his calm lead. For an extra USD$10 we booked a bus for the following morning and to appease our feeling of stupidity, we both agreed that we must have inadvertently avoided some mangled alternate destiny. I made an unexpected call to my friend Matias, who generously said we could stay at his house and proved, yet again, to be a very welcoming host. After exchanging earthquake stories (he’d been with ten of his closest friends at a party at a 10th floor apartment!) I played with his pug (not a euphemism, see picture above), jumped in his pool and his housekeeper cooked us an excellent meal. The next morning he dropped us at the metro station and after hustling to the bus station, and waiting for our delayed bus, we finally began the twenty four hour ride towards the Atacama, the driest desert in the world.

Chilean buses, while not quite as plush as their Argentine counterparts, are pretty fantastic affairs. You can book the cheap clasico, which is a little tight but good for a strict budget, the semi-cama, which provides deeply reclining seats or the plush super-cama whose seats recline fully into beds. To assist the driver there is a steward, who passes out blankets and serves snacks. And of course there are flat screen TVs that project movies and TV shows for the duration of the trip. As we left the city, somberly noting some collapsed structures and cracked pavements that passed by, David Blaine, arguably the world’s most famous magician, appeared on the TV. ‘Street Magic’ is a show in which he walks around town, when he’s not busy publicly freezing or drowning himself, and drops the jaws of passerbys with his magic. In one illusion, he gives a basketballer a deck of cards and asks him to pick a card, and to show it to everyone except him. At that point he asks the suspicious man to shuffle the cards and finally to throw the entire deck into the air. As the cards lie on the ground, Blaine feigns the typical yet suspense building monologue: ‘Oh damn, this isn’t going to work… I think I messed it up…’ etc., but finally he approaches a basketball that is near the edge of the court. He rolls it over to the man, and handing him a knife, asks him to cut the ball open. To the amazement of the crowd that has gathered , the man cuts it open and reveals the contents: his card. In another illusion, he coaxes the wedding ring off a nice old lady who said she’s never taken it off since her marriage, and then he promptly bungles the handover and drops the ring down a New York sewer grate. ‘Oh, so I’m sorry.. Oh that wasn’t meant to happen! I don’t think this can work now… How much can I pay you for your troubles?’. Of course at this point her expression is one of fearful hope, exclaiming that this must all be part of the act, and just before she really gets upset he walks the lady, and the crowd, down the block where he picks up a tiny glass liquor bottle, which impossibly contains the ring. Tears of joy from then woman, applause from the crowd.

Of course these are amazing illusions and never fail to shock the witnesses, one man even fell to the ground laughing and exclaiming that Blaine ‘is a real goddamn magician’, but with each illusion Blaine is actually displaying that what appears to be magic is actually completely possible. As we left the city and sped through valleys blanketed in vineyards I considered that as humans, we so often mistake our extremely limited perception for ultimate truth; I can’t help but wonder what are we fooling ourselves about on a daily basis?

A little time later a horrendous smell reached my nostrils. It was the smell of damp feet. I turned up my nose, amazed that someone could be so rude in such a confined space. The guy in front of me even put his seat in the upright position and the cute, busty girl next to me turned to look out the window; it was at that moment I realized, in a terrible flash of guilt, that the smell was emanating from my very own flip flops. The last time I had worn them was in a hygienically-uncertain shower some days before, after which I had packed them without letting them fully dry. The moldy-funk had now been officially activated and was a shock even to its owner. At the next rest stop I walked barefoot through some sand, and upon returning to the bus, hid the offensive flip-flops in the only place I would really need them; the bus toilet. On my next trip to the toilet however, I noticed they had been removed, presumably upon complaint by a fellow passenger. Eventually the steward, probably seeing me barefoot at one rest stop, handed me a knotted plastic bag containing my flip flops. I mangle together an apology but he didn’t seem impressed. What a filthy backpacker!

By sunset I was amazed by the shear amount of climates and diverse scenery that we’d traveled through. It’s not really that surprising, Chile is about the same size north-to-south as the US is east-to-west, and we were covering almost half of that on this bus trip. Farms sprang up that used closely grown together cacti in place of fences. As we left the valleys, we passed rocky coasts and slowly the lush greens turned to arid browns as the vineyards and trees were replaced by dusty shrubs and barren expanses..

For the fifth time, an advert for sandwich bread appeared on the TV, followed by the media company’s pitch to attract more advertisers; happy to publicly indicate that their clients were guaranteed an ‘audienze cuativa’ that was not able to change the channel, thus ensuring the viewing of their advertisement! The honesty was impressive, but since I was only mildly interested in sandwich bread I decided to get some work done on my laptop. Being a functional Technomad, I had activated Gmail offline at the beginning of the trip and so even while I had no wifi signal, I was able to spend the subsequent five hours replying to neglected emails from friends asking if I was still alive and smoothing over the inevitable business nags. After that and still very impressed with my netbook’s battery, I watched two great videos that I had downloaded the previous night; one on the future of gaming and how it’s positioned to enter all sorts of unexpected areas of our lives and the TED talk of Sir Ken Robinson, who was lamenting the currently archaic structure of education that does not take advantage of a student’s natural gifts. As he received a standing ovation, my battery ran out and I fell asleep, happy that there was so many great people in the world, but as is always my concern, a great idea is a great idea, but the real measure of success comes with an idea’s execution.

I awoke to a bright, cloudless day, whose sunlight fell upon an austere desert, ringed by snow capped volcanoes and mountains that looked like they’d been touched by the brush of an abstract painter, brightly reflecting streaks of red and white mineral deposits. By the time we disembarked, between my social compulsiveness and Alessandro’s Italian charm we had befriended a good portion of the bus, including a cute English girl and a wonderfully sweet Australian couple with whom we walked towards the main street. Every structure in the little town of San Pedro de Atacama was adobe styled, made of baked bricks of mud, which gave the town a wonderfully rustic charm. Just below the surface however, San Pedro is a blatant tourist mecca, brimming with packaged adventure tours and delicious restaurants centered around fire-pits; but still, it made a welcome stopover.

As we went our separate ways on our hostel hunt, we made plans to hook up later, explore town and to research tour agencies advertising expeditions to the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flats. Eventually Alessandro and I checked in to the Eden hostel which had clean rooms, spacious bathrooms and a charming, shaded courtyard which provided a welcome refuge from the sun’s intense rays. After showering and both leaving our shoes outside, we met the others for freshly squeezed fruit juices before hitting the dusty streets in search of the next adventure. Susie, a cute girl from the north of England, took her recreation quite seriously indeed and suggested that we book three excursions over the next thirty-six hours:

“It’s nice to have it all planned, and then we can relax for a day before leaving for Uyuni” which she called anything but ‘Uyuni’: Uuni, Unuyi, etc. Alessandro and I still held off on the Uyuni portion, hoping that his friend might still make it north.

Later that day we hit Valle de La Luna, where we were shown strikingly bizarre mineral formations, climbed around and stood at the base of huge cliffs of quartz and salt infused rock. As the heat expanded the minerals that had cooled during the chilly nights, the cliff let off the sound of tired and heavy cracking. Large piles of discarded rock lay uncomfortably close to the minuscule tourists. We decided to move on.

On our second day, deftly led by Susie’s delegation, we woke up at the ridiculous time of 4am so we could catch the sunrise at some local geysers. It was intensely cold, and a fine layer of frost covered much of the ground. I remember thinking that there was no way that it was going to be like the picture the slick tour agency had shown us – which was obviously snapped on a perfect day and then Photoshopped. However, as we arrived at the geysers, a giant valley of smoking vents unfolded before us. It was a glimpse of a different planet, one where fleshy humans surely could not exist! Our guide told us about the different types of geysers and was even able to predict seconds before one erupted in a giant, steaming column of super-heated water. He pointed at the mountains that encircled us on every side, telling us they were in fact fifteen volcanoes, five of which were still active. From the volcanic destruction of Chaiten, to the earth rattling mayhem of the recent earthquake in Concepcion (which NASA was now blaming for a significant shift in the earth’s rotational axis), I couldn’t help but feel incredibly tiny and vulnerable amid the natural power of this seismologically active country.

After returning to San Pedro for lunch, we found out that Alessandro’s friend, who was also Italian, was being sent directly home by his company and so the chance of him joining us was now impossible. We decided to book ourselves on the same 3-day Uyuni tour as the others; thankfully the agency had been kind enough keep two spaces for us. To celebrate we decided to spend the afternoon taking fun pictures on the slat flats, splashing around in local hot springs and buoyantly bobbing in super salty pools; getting wet in the middle of the world’s driest desert seemed like a perfectly decadent way to spend an afternoon. Incidentally I think ‘perfectly decadent’ would make a great epitaph, but since I intend to be cremated and spread across the earth by a hand picked group of my most adventurous friends, it might have to just be the title for my auto-biography. Our guide was a chubby and wonderfully friendly local called Danilo who regaled us with stories of his youth in San Pedro and his departure after Microsoft had seen some of his software engineering work and offered him a job. After a couple of years in Redmond, one day he’d just stood up from his desk and left the building. Later that day he was on a flight back home:

“That morning I had no idea that I was going to do it, but over coffee I saw a brief glimpse of my future in the faces of some of the old employees. I didn’t like this future. A few days later I was back in San Pedro and had enrolled in a outdoor leadership program. I’ve been leading groups in the outdoors ever since.” He grinned broadly, “Now, I am so happy, every day!” Then he turned to me and quietly confided: “And do you know, it is many times that a Dutch or Australian tourist girl asks me for a personal tour around town after the official tour is over!” He laughed loudly, startling the skinny French girl next to him. “It’s a good life!”

Danilo told us more facts about the Atacama, and said that in some places there had never even been a drop of rainfall recorded. “The dry heat preserves everything. The buildings last for a long time, even though they’re made of dirt. Even bodies! The indigenous people had a technique of mummifying their deceased relatives – and you could visit them – until the tribal people complained. But I saw them before, very strange!” Danilo explained the mummification technique which included replacing the organs with mud and sticks, and adding a wig of human hair before allowing the body to dessicate into human jerky under the desert sun, before finally wrapping it and burying it.

Before we parted ways, Danilo expressed his excitement for the upcoming “Running the World” competition that was coming to the Atacama in a few weeks. Every few years a handful of closely vetted runners attempted to complete a circuit of the world’s most challenging runs, one of which being a marathon across the Atacama. The last time, 300 runners had started the race but only 15 had completed it; the most surprising completion by a blind Korean man! No matter how hard you think you can push yourself, there will always be that blind Korean man to make you feel like a pussy.

On our last night in San Pedro, Alessandro made yet another amazing pasta dish for the group and afterwards I showed them the music video that Syyn Labs had created with the band OkGo; it was on YouTube’s homepage and had almost reached 4m hits in 3 days. It was in fact the first time I’d been able to watch it and I quietly felt a rush of pride for the team that I’d helped put together. I may not always be the most book-smart guy, but when it comes to seeing value in people and putting them all in the same place, I’m pretty on point. In my absence the team was getting interviewed by CNN, had been posted on all the biggest blogs and even Stephen Colbert was asking if a Rube Goldberg machine could work on his set!

The next morning we awoke early and packed, extremely happy to have a bag of freshly washed laundry to bring with us into the desert; it was going to be 3 days of very tight conditions in a 4WD Jeep. Alessandro smiled, which always made him look like a mischievous devil with angular features and dark eyebrows, and happily exclaimed:

“Aaah, it’s great! Today I change my panties!” I laughed out loud and explained the specifics of underwear in the English language. We left the delightful Eden hostel, walked down the dusty road, past colorfully clad local women and leather faced men, to a bus that was waiting to take us to the Bolivian border. I changed the last of my Chilean pesos and a sense of excitement bubbled inside me as we bobbed away from San Pedro, down the desert road.

I still have to write the update from Isla Chiloe to the Las Campanas Observatory but wanted to post my earthquake experience ASAP. See all the photos here…

It had been a wild couple of weeks while I raced to La Serena, in order to catch Stella Kafka, the most lovely observational astronomer that I know, on her last night of observation at the Las Campanas observatory. I blazed through Santiago and only spent about 8 hours in Valparaiso – the most colorful and expressive town I’d ever visited. I was sad to have to rush, but the invitation was too fantastic and in the end it was absolutely worth the race – the observatory felt more like a moon base and the stars were unparalleled in their clarity. I was Stella’s assistant for her final night and kept her awake while she searched for distant suns with orbiting planets that might, or might not, be appropriately stable enough to allow for a ‘habitable zone’. (I will write this story next – very cool stuff  – thanks Stella!)

I was at the bus station and in a sudden impulsive move, bought an overnight bus ticket back to Valparaiso – I told Stella that I didn’t know what it was, but something was calling me south again.

“I’m looking forward to reading what happens!” She said as we parted ways.

The next morning I arrived at the crack of dawn, and after a nap on the charming Pata Pata Hostel’s couch on Cerro Allegre (one of Valparaiso’s 44 hills), I finally found a peaceful place to finish my Chiloe story. As is customary after finishing a big piece I decided it was time for celebration and decided to hit the bars with a fun Italian fellow named Allessandro who I’d met at the hostel. He’d just arrived and I coaxed him out of his jet lag to join me.

Some hours later we had a first hand experience of the 7th largest earthquake in recorded history! I was rocking out to some minimal house (I’m having to adjust my musical tastes down here) in an underground club called La Sala when the columns of the room began to fluidly jiggle like jello. It was like the feeling when you realize you’ve had one drink too many – but I had only had a couple of beers so was a little confused. Before it clicked it, a very pretty girl grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the entrance while yelling ‘terramoto’!

The crowd heaved for the the only exit and as we finally emerged we noticed that fallen pieces of the building had crushed some cars that were parked outside. That was when I realized it was more serious than I’d originally thought – but we still had no idea of the extent of the damage. A minute later all of the town’s lights went out. Cars, trying to make a quick getaway, narrowly avoided stumbling pedestrians. The club emptied out and the bouncer told everyone to consider their items in the coat check as ‘lost’. As the club barricaded it’s doors, two fights broke out in the madness and a group of four of us headed away from the seaside street, fearing a tsunami. Street dogs ran around wildly, barking at nothing. We were four, two chilean girls (including the one who’d pulled me out of the subterranean confusion) and Allessandro who was babbling a creative tirade of Italian curses: “Porca puttana, que casino!” or “Pig prostitute, what a mess!”. At a dark bus stop we offered to wait with the two girls for their ride home. Finally, a packed collectivo. a psuedo taxi that picks people until they’re full, stopped and they managed to cram in for the ride. We walked home in the darkness amid broken glass, rubble and more than a couple of crazies that were shouting at the almost full moon. At one point a couple of kids said to me:

“Da me tu plata.” or give me your money.

“No, da me tu plata.” I replied and walked past. It may have helped that I was openly carrying a blade. It always seems that would-be muggers are less likely to go for someone openly carrying an unfolded knife.

Two days later the electricity was still out in some parts of the town (my hostel included) and it was impossible to find a way out of town as all the bus systems were down. While there’s a bunch to clean up in Valparaiso, it’s mostly superficial. The town, while still mostly standing other than some facades, roofs and balconies, felt post-apocalyptic. Many windows were smashed from their frames and few people came out in the following evenings – most probably staying home with their families. The cell phone credit systems were also broken, but in a generous move they opened up their networks for free use. The south was hit far worse, many roads and bridges collapsed and airports are closed. As the following days unfolded, news from the south hit the airwaves and it really looked like a warzone. Looters hit the stores, fully clad riot police threw tear gas and blasted the crowds with water cannons. A prison break led to 270 prisoners escaping. As is the typical human response in catastrophe, things get primal.

The earthquake hit 8.8 on the Richter scale and lasted for a couple of minutes. Significant aftershocks were felt for the next 36 hours. Wine trembled in glasses like the classic scene from Jurassic Park. People reached for something solid to hold.

I’d felt compelled to return to Valparaiso after already heading north last week, determined to find something that I’d missed. And besides a town that I could really consider living in one day, it’s so full of art and creativity – so much that even an old prison has been turned into an art gallery, I also found an intense story of personal threat and happy survival.

Eventually the bus station reopened it’s systems and I planned my next move. This time, I was going to head significantly north. Allessandro’s vacation plans had taken an unexpected turn as his friend, who he was going to drive into Bolivia with, happened to live near the epicenter in Concepcion. The last we heard he was trying to steal enough gas from the broken pumps to drive north but it was unsure. So Allessandro decided to join me on the bus and we bought the last two bus tickets to San Pedro de Atacama, home of the driest desert in the world and a healthy 25 hours drive north. For now we plan to travel together for a while, hitting salt flats and some of the more severe roads in the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

Willard was aggravated. A comical fellow in a Chilean cow boy hat had just strutted down the pier and announced that the ferry had been delayed by 9 hours. Apparently, a distant storm was preventing the boat from approaching and thus preventing him from reaching the Chilean island of Chiloe. He’d planned to arrive yesterday and here he was, still wet and still waiting, in this godforsaken town of Chaiten.

Two years ago, Chaiten had been completely evacuated just before flood waters had engulfed it, triggered by a volcanic eruption and a rapidly melting glacier. A day later the flood hit; the river had burst it’s banks and rerouted itself directly through the middle of the town, taking a few dozen houses into the bay with it. In the coming days, most of the rest of the town had been submerged below the waters. It was a damn shame, Willard thought to himself. Now, two years later, the waters had retreated but not much had been cleaned up and the exposed ruins sat frozen in time. The government said that it was a bad idea to rebuild on such a vulnerable spot, but the word among the locals was that the eruption had spewed up more than just ash. Some people said that gems and precious minerals had been found and that private interests now wanted to ‘research’ the local geology. Even though many signs hung in windows, proclaiming love for the ill-fated town and promising the owner’s return, only a handful of the town’s 7000 inhabitants had actually come back. It was a sad bunch, mostly occupying the small northern area of high ground that had been left partially intact. The surrounding area was a ghost town, many buildings still submerged by a thickly packed ash, up to five feet thick in places. Doors stood ajar, now locked in a permanent snapshot of a fleeing tenant. Discarded items, or items that couldn’t be carried, lay strewn about. Dishes sat in sinks of empty houses, left over from final meals. Boats of all sizes had worked together, evacuating the town in less than 24 hours; it had been Chile’s largest exodus by sea in it’s history. The only remaining supermercado had partially stocked shelves, and a wilting batch of produce. The inn where he’d stayed, La Picada del Turco, was one of only two that had reopened, running off a generator and a wood burning stove. As he’d departed that morning, he said goodbye to the old innkeeper, Senora Hortencia, who was baking the day’s bread for other travelers and accidental tourists. He couldn’t help notice the look in her eyes, a look that silently explained to him that if she kept baking bread and repeating her routine, then the world outside her inn would return to the way it used to be. It was a damn shame.

After buying some cheese and crackers at the supermercado with the last of his pesos, Willard had walked down to the pier, where he now waited. He didn’t want to go back to the Picada – it was just too depressing, so he took shelter from the rain in a little wooden hut next to the pier. He was reading a book and had just pulled the crackers from his briefcase when a dog approached him, obviously looking for a share of his snack. The dog was a sorry clump of damp mange, but possessed the most striking brown eyes that Willard had ever seen; like melted milk chocolate, they met his own eyes with a human intensity. Willard threw him a cracker, which the dog swallowed without even appearing to chew.

“Don’t think you’re getting any more, Ojos, these need to last me all day now.” Ojos seemed to understand and crawled under the bench for a nap.

Each hour that passed was lost research time on the island, and less of a chance to find out what happened to this missing boy. Willard, a freelance writer, was working on the story of a missing American man whom he’d read about in a paper. Or would you call him a boy? He was early 20s, old enough to be a man, but immature enough to get himself lost on a remote island. The ill fated manboy had last been seen heading to Chiloe and then suddenly dropped off the map. This kind of gig was the norm for Willard – find something bizarre, hustle to be the first to document it, and then pitch it to the highest bidder, with the occasional help of an agent in the US. Willard had been killing time in Southern Chile since his last gig but was running out of cash. When he read about the story, he decided it was time for a little adventure. He planned to get to Chiloe and to follow in the manboy’s footsteps, to see what turned up. Going via Chaiten had been the most direct route, at least according to his superbly out of date guide book, which was handily published six months before the eruption. The book had promised him a pleasant stopover in this ‘emerald’ seaside town, where ‘seafood restaurants and streets cafes line the sidewalks and local artesian markets sell local craft to the bustling tourists’. It had also promised a working ATM that had turned out to just be a hole of it’s former glory and a piece of misinformation that now had him sharing dry crackers with a damp dog.

The night before, after the generator had been turned off, the torrential rain had pummeled his window. Willard sat in the darkness, and sniffed the sheets. Where was this smell coming from? It was subtle yet pervasive; the acidic scent of ash. After sniffing around, he realized that it wasn’t the sheets, or his pillow but hung in the very air of the inn itself; his brain, now spared from processing any visual signals in the darkness had finally sensed it. He tried to free his mind from the stark contrast of the book’s description and the reality that lay just beyond the streaked glass. Broken windows. Flapping sections of corrugated tin roofing. Empty streets with hanging electricity lines. Silent school classrooms with desks knocked over. A doll that was forever left behind. A swinging gate. Not a soul. He had finally fallen asleep, but not before being harassed by his own vivid imagination.

The hours ticked by and as the evening began to encroach a few people, who he’d seen milling around the pier earlier in the day, reappeared. A couple of tourists and a few locals, all looking expectantly at the ocean and its depressing lack of ferry. Finally as the sun set, ten hours after the comical cowboy had said eight, the ferry arrived and slowly unloaded it’s passengers, cars first and then passengers. Willard found a little bit of dark enjoyment in the shocked faces of some of the disembarking tourists – they probably had the same book as him! Then the boarding process started; cars first, and as if to punish his moment of schadenfreude, the skies opened up again on the waiting walk-on passengers. The rain forged a cool river down his spine. He noticed Ojos sniffing around the ferry ramp, and then watched as he sauntered past a distracted ferry employee who was checking tickets and right onto the boat. Even dogs want to leave this place!

As the boat left the pier he watched the small, seaside town disappear from view. Menacing mountains encircled it from all sides. They passed near a sandbank that was crowned with the remnants of a roof. Maybe it is better to just move on and leave this town to memory, he thought, but just try telling that to Senora Hortencia. He walked passed the ferry cafe where a few soggy people were enjoying hot drinks. He cursed himself for his lack of cash. He continued right past his assigned seat, next to a mother of two whining infants, and into the first class quarters. He randomly opened a door and chose a bunk that was still empty. He lay down and lulled by the distant hum of the ferry’s engines, fell asleep almost instantly.

The loud foghorn of the boat jolted him awake. A slice of sunlight cut through the porthole above his bed. He sat up, and looked around the room. The other three beds were now occupied and a Chilean woman was looking at him while grasping the sheets around her bosom. He nodded. She nodded. He got up looked in the mirror. His face was a spiderweb of pillow creases. In one move he splashed some water on it, simultaneously trying to re-center his dried contacts. He pushed his hands through his dark hair. He shook out his coat, straightened his collar and grabbed his briefcase. The senora was still suspiciously watching him as he slid out the door.

After the laborious disembarking process, and negotiating a slew of taxi touts around the dock of Quellon, the somewhat filthy port town of southern Chiloe, he found a taxi who agreed to take him to the bus station after a stop at an ATM. By now his agent should have wired him some cash to work with – he’d gotten used to ‘Willard’s Process’ as he called it and had even made a nice bit of income from it. As the taxi pulled away from the pier, Willard couldn’t believe it: Ojos had made it off the boat, the little bugger! He certainly looked drier and happier and his penetrating eyes followed Willard’s taxi as it pulled away from the dock.

Three hours and one bumpy bus ride later, Willard strode into the Cordilliera inn in Castro, the capital of Chiloe. A few people looked up, and then away almost immediately. He was aware of the effect of his presence – tall, slim, dressed in a black suit, loose tie and crowned with a black fedora, he knew he commanded a presence, especially in remote areas full of colorful locals and fleece-clad backpackers. A plump old woman sided up to him:

“Buenos Dias. Senor Willard?” She inquired.

“Detective Willard.” He corrected her. When he traveled for a story he would often get creative with his character. He liked to say he was a detective – it got him in the mood and usually encouraged locals to be more liberal with information. She looked slightly surprised, but continued:

“Claro, Detective Willard, I am Senora Gorda. I expect you yesterday.”

“Yes, apologies, my boat was delayed – I heard there was a storm here?”

“No, not here. But this island – it is strange weather. Maybe in the sea. Maybe at another part of the island.” Her chins moved just a fraction of a second after he mouth. Then she looked at him for a moment. “Please no guests or alcohol in the inn.” She told him a story of a tourist that had vomited everywhere, she made a sweeping motion across the living room with her thick arm. “It was a problem.” Understandably, Willard thought. He let her vent and shook his head to appease her until she was satisfied. “Now, I show you your room.”

Later that afternoon he explored the small town of Castro. In the Plaza de Armas, the name given to the main squares in all Chilean towns, he asked a few people about the missing American – by now, almost a week after it had been reported, he assumed it must have been the gossip around town. Surprisingly, most people said they hadn’t heard about it. A few quietly said that he hadn’t come to Castro – so why would they know anything? An old couple said he was probably just hiking in the islands large forest. A couple of teenagers in the central square claimed they’d even seen him, but it was pretty obvious after a few moments that they just wanted to show off to their girlfriends, who clung to their arms and giggled.

As the evening approached he returned to the inn for dinner and began to ask Senora Gorda some questions. She was now less willing to chat: ‘No creo! Terrible people!’ she cried. Apparently a backpacker had made a mess in the kitchen and she had gotten herself all worked up. After things had settled down, she offered to organize an island tour for him the following day and waddled off to make a phone call. After a dinner of soup, meat and bread, he retired to the small and modestly decorated room where he reread some newspaper clippings. The manboy, Evan Esco, was from San Francisco. He had just finished some sort of hippy mysticism degree which, Willard was betting, was was why he’d chosen to visit Chiloe – the island was famous for having mysterious myths and rituals, the roots of which were little understood. Willard planned to pursue the hidden info himself , thinking that this might turn up some clues.

Around lunchtime the next day, Willard realized there was no chance of finding any hidden info on this tour. The kind Senora Gorda had basically booked him on to a bus tour of the island’s main tourist sights. What was even more comical was that not a single person, including the tour guide, spoke a word of English. In his basic Spanish, Willard attempted to ask about the myths of the islands, but instead the tour guide started a karaoke session and the whole bus began clapping and singing. They visited artesian markets and freshly painted heritage churches. By the afternoon the only thing mysterious was how he’d been naive enough to think that this story would just unfold into his lap – the island was more modern and touristy than he’d expected. They had finally returned to the bus after the last colorful church when he noticed a very attractive girl whom he hadn’t noticed earlier on the tour. As he approached her in the aisle she looked up at him, her eyes met his for a moment before her gaze returned to the window. Willard, never one to be intimidated by a sexy woman – or so he told himself, sat down next to her. She turned to him and the corners of her lips revealed a shy smile. She had a lovely round face with smooth, clear skin. Her head was crowned with dark hair, partially covered by a purple knit hat. Her neck had a long, intricate necklace draped from it a colorful button adorned her jean jacket.

“Hola bonita senorita.” Willard flirted. “Como te llamas?”

“My name’s Alma. What’s yours?” She smiled. She had the slight, and very endearing lisp that accents the English of many native Spanish speakers.

“I’m Willard. Mucho gusto, Alma.” Their conversation continued in a mixed form of Spanglish. Alma was from one of the islands off the coast of Chiloe and was visiting the main island with some members of her congregation. That’s when Willard noticed the small button’s writing: ‘Dale colore con Jesus!’ which as far as he could understand meant ‘Oh wow, the color with Jesus!’. He wasn’t too keen on religious nuts but this girl seemed level-headed – at least enough to continue flirting with. He gently began to ask about her faith – it turned out she didn’t really care about religion as much, it was the spirituality she connected with. She followed Catholic dogma because it was the accepted path in her family and community. In fact, she confided in him that a lot of it bored her. For Willard this was a good sign, and that’s when he realized he was quite attracted to this colorful little senorita.

“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Willard asked. “Would you like to join me?”

“I go back to my congregation and then prayer. But after, I can meet you if OK? Maybe at 10:30?”

“Let me check my schedule” Willard pretended to flip through an invisible notebook and grinned. He didn’t grin a lot so when he did it had a great affect, especially on women. “I think I can fit you in.” She laughed at his mock seriousness.

“But I am not a bad girl, so you must be good.” She punched him in the arm playfully and smiled again.

“Oh, I am a complete gentleman. And what about you – can you be good?” He sincerely hoped that she couldn’t.

After they had got off the bus he bought her an ice cream. Ever since the endless Californian summers of his youth Willard held a special appreciation of pretty girls enjoying ice cream cones. It was so innocent but yet at the same time so fantastically sensual to watch their tongues and lips negotiate the melting treat. A few locals, glared at him – they didn’t even glance at her! Willard enjoyed their apparent jealousy. Alma was petite and wore a pair of impressively tight blue jeans that would even make Mary Magdalene blush.

“OK, I go this way, I stay nearby. It’s better I go alone.”

“Sure, OK, I’ll see you later. 10:30. Where should we meet?” He asked.

“In front of the church – to make sure you are good!” She smiled, squeezed his arm and a piece of Willard melted like rich chocolate in a warm pocket.

As Alma disappeared around the corner Willard was a little surprised by himself. So quickly distracted by a pretty girl that he’d even neglected to ask her about Esco! On the other hand, he now knew a local and was sure to be getting somewhere. He also was on the verge of forgetting about Esco altogether if it meant that he could spend a night with Alma. But this could still be an interesting story, and could use the cash if he was able to produce something solid. Well goddammit detective, he thought to himself, you’re just going to have to do both. And all of a sudden, something told him that he might be luckier with both goals if he didn’t mention the fact he was anything more than just a regular tourist.

At 10:45pm, Willard realized that he’d almost certainly been stood up. The faded peach and violet church loomed over the town square, framed by a few clouds that moved quickly across the black sky. A dramatic statue of a gaunt Christ seemed to mock him for his shallow intentions. A few teenagers were skateboarding in the park and a few pairs of lovers locked lips in the shadows. A man was selling fresh popcorn from a cart. A homeless man tried to start a conversation with him. Around 11pm, Just when he was about to give up she emerged from around the corner and a little wave of joy swept through him, from his pelvis outward.

“I’m sorry, I tell them I was calling my mother!” She said. “Very bad!”

“No problem, I just got here.” He lied.

They went to a restaurant called El Camahueto – over the entrance hung a symbol of a stocky bull with a solitary horn protruding from it’s head. Over a tabla of meats and cheeses accompanied by Kuntsman, a fantastic local beer, he began to ask Alma more about about the island. The indigenous people, the Mepuche, were almost completely converted, enslaved or wiped out by the invading Spanish and the resulting mix of cultures had created a odd mix of religious rituals and myths which included stories of bizarre beasts and beings. She said she didn’t know many of the details herself, nor did most young people as most of Chiloe and the islands had become modernized, but said there were still old people that remembered, especially on the smaller, surrounding islands.

“I’d like to visit some of these islands. Is this possible?” He asked.

“It’s difficult to arrive there, you must rent a boat. It is very expensive.” Willard had learned on his travels that when a local says ‘very expensive’, it’s always best to ask for actual amounts.

“Like twenty thousand Chilean Pesos, to my island for example. Isla Mechuque.” This was around USD$40 – well within appropriate for his budget.

“That’s fine. Could you introduce me to someone there?”

“Yes, there is old people that know the stories. ”

“Are you going there soon?” Willard hoped that he might be able to explore the island and her at the same time..

“You are lucky, sir! I go back tomorrow with my congregation. I could show you the island if you like. It has an old cemetary, a mysterious wooden church – we always ran up to it when I was younger. Many things to see.”

“That’s great news.” He was excited about starting some real research and at the chance of another day with with this delightful girl. She had a radiant aura. It must be the color of Jesus, he smiled to himself. “Can I come with you?”.

“I think we meet there if OK? You know, my congregation, very traditional. But I tell you how to arrive. We can meet in the center square and have lunch. We make a wonderful curanto.”

After a couple of drinks she said she had to return to her inn; if she wasn’t home by midnight she’d get in trouble. Willard had asked what her congregation would do if she was a little late, just buy a little time for a some lip locking in the town square, but she was insistent and all he received was a short kiss on his stubbled check. He inhaled her scent as she pulled away, she smelled clean and soft. His inner monologue consoled him by saying that it was better not to rush things; he’d see her tomorrow and take things from there. However by the time he’d fallen asleep back at his inn, they had already run through fields together, and made love amid shady trees near a crystal clear stream. Moisturizing cream and a vivid imagination is no substitute for the real thing, but it certainly takes the edge off.

The next morning he awoke to the innkeeper’s knocking. The door was then suddenly opened.

“Mr. Willard?” Senora Gorda said more loudly than was necessary.

“Detective Willard.” He corrected, still partially asleep.

“Yes, Detective Willard, I’m sorry,” She looked around the room as she talked, possibly looking for illicit people, items or substances. “You stay with us for another night or you check out?”

“Oh yes, I think I’ll be checking out, thanks Senora.”

“Well check out is at 10am..”

“What time is it now?”

“It’s five past ten so…” She left the sentence incomplete.

“…so… I’ll pack my things?”

“Yes. Thanks, I keep your breakfast for you..”

It didn’t take him long to pack his briefcase. He had an extra pair of socks, underwear and white shirt that washed each night in the sink and placed on the radiator while he slept. He collected the newspaper clippings and his small container of toiletries. He placed these and a few other items methodically into his briefcase and headed downstairs for breakfast. Chilean breakfast is a typically light affair, freshly baked bread, rich butter and often homemade jams or the decadently sweet dulche de leche. To drink, a juice and the almost ubiquitous instant Nescafe – or ‘no es cafe’ as coffee snobs call it – fresh coffee is a rarity in this country. There was no reason to stick around, plus Senora Gorda continually shuffled and swept around him, making him feel a little uncomfortable. After he settled his bill with her she asked where he was going. He made up some story about a fishing trip, but she had the look of a suspicious mother and shook her head. He arranged to leave his briefcase with her, promising his safe return.

“OK, well Senora Gorda, muchas gracias por su hospitalidad.”

“Adios Detective Willard” She put one finger to the bottom eyelid of her right eye and pulled down gently. Willard had seen people do this to others before – it is a Chilean gesture that means look out.

Alma had told him to go to the harbor and ask around if there was anyone who could take him to Isla Mechuque. He knew it should be around CP$20,000, so it was just a matter of finding a willing captain. He approached a group of three salty looking old men who were sitting in a beached rowboat and, as far as Willard could decipher, having a pretty intense discussion over the price of a certain fish. When his point was made, the current debater took a sip from his mate gourd and shook his head, at which point another man would begin his own tirade. And so it continued. Eventually when all three were shaking their heads and providing a moment of silence, Willard interjected in his most courteous Spanish:

“Excuse me kind sirs, I’m sorry to disturb you but I would like to get to Isla Mechuque – can you help me?”

“Can’t you see we’re quite busy, young man?” One said gruffly.

“Of course. I think most people don’t understand how difficult the life of a fisherman is.” He had planned his attack carefully. “Personally, I think fish should be much more expensive!” One laughed, the second clapped and the third said:

“Now this is a smart man!”

“Yes, smart for a Gringo!” The second laughed. ‘Gringo’ was a term left over from the war years, when the green uniforms of the US military prompted the chant: ‘Green go!’ It was now mostly used as a playful jab.

“Oh, I’m not a Gringo sir, I’m from California.” Willard joked. All the men laughed even more at this.

“I can take you there for CP$30,000.” The third smiled, revealing more gaps than teeth.

“I was thinking more like CP$20,000.” Willard said.

“I am currently offering a offer, muy especial, of CP$25,000.” The second said.

“I was thinking more like CP$20,000.” They all laughed again.

“Well, I just happen to have a space on my boat,” the first said as the others continued laughing, “but for that price you don’t get the champagne or oysters!”

Captain ‘Enrique’ led Willard down the beach to a pier and introduced him to El Fugativo, a small while fishing boat then could probably hold 6 people. Less with a load of fish. As Willard stepped into the questionable vessel, he hoped that his foot would not break through the rotting hull. Sensing Willard’s apprehension, Enrique said confidently:

“Don’t worry, this is the same bat my father used to fish!” This remark didn’t really inspire much more faith. The motor sputtered to life after a few tugs on the pull cord and the boat lurched out into the dark waters. Almost instantly as they left the shore, the sun began retreating behind clouds that hadn’t been present moments before. The wind picked up and Willard turned up his collar and pulled his fedora further down on his chilly head. Unprompted, Enrique launched into what seemed to be a well worn, historical monologue:

“It’s not so easy for fisherman these days. Not like the time of my people.” Enrique told Willard about the indigenous Mapuche, natives to this land before the Spanish had laid claim to it, and to all its inhabitants. It was a sad tale, not unlike the story of the native Americans. But it was almost certain that Enrique’s memory had become even more romantically affected:

“Fish used to jump into our nets, now the seas are empty!” Enrique exclaimed. “Men could have multiple women, now I just have one wife, and she always shouts at me! How can you bea jealous of fish?” I shook my head. “Unless it’s a mermaid!” He laughed as he brought his hands to his chest, gesturing the shape of large breasts.

After half an hour El Fugativo began to approach a few islands and Captain Enrique steered it towards the larger one.

“Isla Mechuque. Very old place.”

The island seemed to be insulated by a solid fog that eclipsed the surrounding islands as the boat got closer. A thick forest blanketed the island, and at times came all the way down to the water. In other places there was a thin strip of rocky beach. From this distance Willard could make out a little group of very small white houses right on the edge of the sea. The boat aimed for a small dock just beyond these houses where a couple of boats bobbed on the choppy water, some sat on the sand closer to the shore. As they came closer however, the houses seemed too small and eventually Willard realized it was in fact a graveyard, with many low but large concrete structures.

“They must put the body in concrete.” Enrique said. “Otherwise I might pull them up instead of fish!” He seemed to think this vivid description was pretty funny.

Beyond the dock, a few stilt houses, known as palafitos, were perched near the edge of an slim inlet that Willard assumed must snake around into the town. Enrique deftly avoided a few shallow rocks as he threw a rope around the dock’s mooring.

“OK,” He said pulling up to the wooden platform “Isla Muchuque! What time you want I return?” Suddenly it became apparent that Enrique wasn’t even going to get off El Fugativo. It was around noon, so Willard had at least 7 hours until sunset – and something told him it would be better if he didn’t make it an overnight visit.

“Is seven o’clock OK?”

“No problem. Maybe you can pay now?” Willard pulled 2 crisp 10,000 notes from his billfold. And then a third in a very obvious gesture.

“Just to make sure you come back.” Willard smiled and jumped onto the dock.

“Sure, sure. I return with champagne!” As Enrique pulled away from the dock he shouted back. “Be careful of the women, they like nice boys like you!” His laughter merged with the diesel powered rev of the motor as he motored away from Isla Mechuque.

Willard had always been impulsive. As a writer, it was actually quite a good skill to have and he often found himself in story-worthy situations. Even when the going was rough, you could always spin it into inspiration for a tale. The area surrounding the dock was empty and so he started down a trail that he assumed led to the center of town. As he ducked under some leafy trees his imagination ran a little wild. He’d been in rough situations before. He didn’t believe in scary stories – most of his travels had proved that the world was a more friendly place than most people expected. In fact the most fearful he’d ever been for a life was when he was mugged by a screwdriver wielding assailant in Los Angeles – a story he loved to tell his American friends when they asked ‘Where is the most dangerous place you’ve ever been?’. However when he heard the sound of children laughing he had to admit to himself that he was relieved that there were in fact people here. As he entered the central square, encircled by trees and small buildings, he saw a see-saw bobbing up and down – but no sign of any children. Had his senses been playing with him? Just then, two little girls ran towards him from behind a tree and as they descended on him they raised their hands, playfully releasing handfuls of acorns which bounced harmlessly around his feet. They erupted into giggles. Almost immediately a door from one of the nearby buildings sprung open and an old senora shouted a warning. The girls fled his presence and returned to the see-saw.

“I am sorry Senor, can I assist you?” She asked in Spanish.

“Yes, I am here to visit a friend – perhaps you can help me find her. Her name is Alma.”

“Aah, of course. She is making lunch now probably. Come with me.” The senora led Willard past the playground and down a small path past the colorful town church and out of the square. They crossed an ornate wooden bridge that spaned the narrow inlet that Willard had seen from the coast. The tide was low and small boats sat patiently on the sandy bank, attached to the stilts of more palafitos. On the other side, wood shingled houses sandwiched the thin path and Willard could hear the sound of other people within the houses. This put him at ease, he was going to find Alma and as usual, everything was going to be fine after all.

Eventually they cut off the main path, through a little alley and into a backyard where a couple of old women were busying themselves, cleaning a large pile of clams and mussels.

“Alma, su amigo es a qui!” The old senora said. One of the other old senoras looked up from her shellfish, obviously confused:

“Amigo?”

“Aaah, un problema.” Willard laughed. “No es la Alma!”

“Yo soy la sola Alma en Mechuque!” OK, there was some confusion. Old Alma seemed to not know young Alma – she insisted she was the only Alma on the island. Willard tried to explain the problem but he was getting no where. Eventually old Alma turned to Willard and surprised him by speaking decent English:

“Well, perhaps you join us for lunch and wait your friend. Maybe she arrive later?” This was a good point, Willard thought. Alma already had a track record for being late. Lunch was not going to be ready for a while so he thanked the senoras, said he’d be back for lunch.

Now on his own, he continued to amble further down the same path, which somehow ended in another pier – the island’s coastline appeared to be extremely curvy. As he reached the end of the short rocky beach he saw a bird hanging from a tree. It looked like it mush have been caught in a net but as he approached he noticed that it’s leg had been neatly tied by fishing line. Its body had dried out and mouth hung open in a permanently silent cry. He watched it for a moment as it swayed in the breeze. As Willard turned to head back he noticed the figure of a black-clad woman walking away from him on the rocks. She moved smoothly and quickly across the awkward terrain and soon cut up into the forest that encircled the town. By the time he reached the place where he’d lost sight of her, she had disappeared into the forest. He followed the path back towards town and met some men along the way, so he decided to inquire about Alma. They all pointed in the same direction of old Alma. Finally Willard decided to head back to the old Alma’s place – even if he’d been stood up he was going to make the most of the day on this island.

By the time he returned a couple of men had joined the two women and they all beckoned him over to a large steaming pile of leaves.

“Have you ever had curanto?” One man asked as he pointed at the pile. He told them he hadn’t but that it looked delicious. As delicious as a steaming pile of leaves could look at least. Everyone had laughed. Bowls were gathered and then old Alma removed the top layer of leaves revealing a bunch of white circular disks. These, she explained, were steamed bread. After they removed these, and the next layer of leaves, they unearthed a massive mountain of mussels, clams, sausage and other meats all heaped together. Now it truly did look delicious. The women placed all of the items into bowls and brought them inside. After some minutes, and exchanging small talk with the men, the women reemerged and beckoned them inside.

The kitchen table was simple and rustic, a wood burning stove and sat in one corner underneath many hanging pots. Four stools and a crate turned on it’s side surrounded a low table that was covered in a red checkered table cloth. On the table sat 5 large bowls of curanto. Willard offered to sit on the crate but Alma insisted that he sit on a stool. The women fussed over the men and poured them large cups of vino tinto – a red wine that they said was made on the island. As the group tucked into the feast Willard explained what he was doing on Isla Mechuque – leaving out the part about Esco. One man suggested that he’d probably misheard the name of the island:

“She is probably crying for her lost love on Isla Caucahue!” The two men seemed to find this very funny which received a scolding from Alma. Willard explained he wanted to find out more about the island and the myths. Alma got very excited about this.

“In early days people make stories a lot. Part is for fun. Part is to keep children and men good. Not naughty.” She pointed at one of the man, who Willard had realized was her husband.

“Que significa ‘Not naughty’?” He asked – and got a prompt slap on the wrist, which causes him to smirk guiltily.

“Of course, since we are a fishing culture – there is a mystery boat. The name is El Caleuche. It has a crew of wizards, singing and dancing with beautiful melodies. It can go on or under the sea.”

“La Pincoya is a beautiful woman.” The group around the table was now silent, all looked at Alma – who also translated into Spanish for their benefit.” She sing on a rock with sweet voice, she begin to dance frenetic and sensual. If she dance to the sea, it means a lot of luck. If she dance slow means to be bad.”

“El Trehuaco is a beautiful dog – it dwell in a bewitched lagoon in the South end of Chiloe. It is a shiny black- furred animal with an extraordinary strength.”

“There is an animal, very dangerous called El Camahueto” at this point one of the men stuck a finger from his forehead and bumped his friend. “Yes, he is like el toro, a bull, and has only one horn from the forehead. He is very destructive for 25 years and then emigrate to the sea. Without the horn he is weak. The horn has power for cure problems.”

Alma continued telling stories to the rapt audience. Invunche was a three legged beast that had the mind of a child but taste for human meat and cat milk. La Voladora is a witch that can change into a bird and has a habit of flying while vomiting her intestines and laughing hysterically. She must find her intestines by morning or she can never turn back to a witch. Alma describes El Cuchivilu as a ‘snake-pig’ that lives in lagoons and rivers – if you sea him you will have a ‘sickness of the skin’. Every 20 or 30 years El Culebron, a big snake that makes noises appears. “The first who look him die.” Even a horse that lived under the waves! Willard laughed to himself at these silly superstitions.

“Basilico is a lizard-rooster” This confused Willard but caught looks of fear from the others. “The being kill if you look him,” Alma described “if you look only a part of him body, you have paralysis coming in the houses and he suck the liquid from the body, until the people die completely dry.” She took a dramatic pause, “The Basilico kill to everybody and then he goes.”

“But wait, my favorite lovers!” She continued. “Fiura is a small repugnant woman with foul breath that lives in the forest near waterfalls. She combs her hair with a crystal rock and sit in the sea grass and mud for hours.” Alma scowled. “She love to make bad things for men who refuse her. But she has a big power of seduction and makes her partners sick.” She shook her finger at her husband.

Alma’s final story was about Fiura’s husband, Trauco. “A small, ugly and disgusting dwarf. He has conic hat of vegetables and deformed feet and axe of stone called a pahueldun. He live in forest and make gutural sound and is strong like giant. He attack the single women, for to rape, but with his magic, make in the girls a strong attraction for him, with erotic dreams and pregnancy.” This time Willard smirked, apparently Trauco was the main excuse for the pregnancies of unmarried village women. The other woman blushed, shuddered and said something very quickly to Alma which Willard did not understand.

“OK, enough of these stories. If you want to know more, you need to find Senora Bruja, she love to talk about them. You will recognize her – she always wears black.” Alma said. “If you want I can take you after lunch.”

After helping clean up – or at least trying to help, Alma mostly wouldn’t let him – Willard took Alma up on her offer and they left the house together. They walked across the bridge back to the dock side of town and up another path that led into the forest. After getting slower and slower, Alma finally came to a halt:

“My leg – I am too old now!” She had one hand on her upper right thigh and the other propped on her ample hip. “When I was young I run up to here!” She looked forlorn – and in her dark eyes Willard could see the pretty young girl she must have once been. A round face and such smooth skin. After waiting for a while Alma suggested Willard continue the rest of the way on his own. “Not far now, just follow this path.”

Willard thanked Alma for lunch and for showing him the way. He continued into the woods. It was significantly darker than before, due partly to the overhead foliage but also because it seemed permanently about to rain – but only a fine mist hung in the air. As he continued heading up he saw a dark, wooden church nestled deeper in the woods which had become overgrown with forest; villagers probably used the newer, easier to access one in the town square, he thought. He continued on and on and every time he thought he had reached the top of the hill, another path snaked upwards into the thickening fog. He’d been walking for some time and the path got smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared. A gentle drizzle has begun to seep through the overhead leaves and his shoes, far too formal for this terrain were now fully soaked through. It was at this point he looked at his watch, which said 6pm. He was suddenly very concerned he’d miss his ride home if he wasn’t careful and he certainly did not want to stay on this island of mystery, even if the stories were just relics of a superstitious era. He was disappointed that he’d not found this mysterious woman clad in black, but decided it was best to head directly back to the dock.

Heading down was far quicker and he was relieved when he found the path again. He zipped past the church and descended into town. There was not a soul around although a few of the houses had their lights on and smoke drifted up from their chimneys. As he approached the central square he heard the sound of the laughing girls again. He reached the see-saw but this time no girls jumped out from behind any tree. It was deserted. His watch showed just after seven so there was no time to hang around. He left the square and dipped through the trees that led to the dock. As he emerged he was looking forward to seeing El Fugitivo and Captain Enrique. The tide had risen and some the boats, now freed from their sandy pedestals, bobbed uneasily on the waves. There was no sign of Enrique. By now it was raining hard and he took shelter under a wooden roof near the dock. The time passed. And passed. He began to wonder if Enrique was really going to come. Maybe he’d missed him. No, Enrique certainly would have waited fifteen minutes at least, but by now it was 8pm and the seas were getting increasingly rough.

He was thinking to go back to the town to see if he could find a phone, or even a place to stay when he looked past the dock, just in time to see the figure of Senora Bruja walking away from the town, and once again away from him. She was briskly walking on a path he had not yet explored. He felt a bizarre curiosity for this woman – why could he never see her face? Where was she always going with such determination? The urge to follow her was overwhelming. He pulled out his note book and scribbled a note to Enrique. He ripped the page out out and placed prominently on crooked nail protruding from the mooring where he’d been dropped 8 hours earlier. He broke into a trot into to catch up with Senora Bruja. The path snaked away from the dock in the opposite direction from town. As he turned sharply right around a rocky outcrop he came into full view of the cemetery with just enough time to see the senora sliding through the ajar gate. The gate was about 200ft away and he picked up the pace. Willard ran over a bridge, almost losing his footing and closed the gap in about 20 seconds. As he neared the gate he wondered why the fence had barb-wire. Was it to keep people out, or in? Lets just get through this, he thought.

He slid through the gate and for a brief moment tried to figure out how to negotiate this place. There was no path, in fact it looked like they could barely fit in another grave. The structures that he’d previously identified as houses were so closely packed together that in order to proceed he had to step on top of graves. These people are dead, and they could care less. He launched over the first couple, crushing some flowers and almost slipping on the slick concrete surface. Many of the graves had no labels. As he gained some height he saw Senora Bruja’s head exiting the gate at the other end, he was getting closer now. He stepped off the small structure and his foot sank into freshly shoveled earth. Thoughts of what lay beneath prompted a half jump and half skip that would have appeared quite humorous to any onlooker, under any other circumstance.

As he reached the end of the cemetery he saw the senora weaving among low ferns back towards the rocky cliff. He had closed the gap by about halfway and continued running. She began to ascend the steep cliff with ease, and it wasn’t until he got closer that he noticed there was a handrail that snaked along a path. But still it was like she was gliding upwards. He prided himself on his fitness and still felt like he was about to vomit.

“Senora Bruja!” Willard called. She kept walking and was now almost out of sight. He sprinted up the stairs which ended with a splendid view of the ocean backed by thick forest. As he reached the top he saw the senora enter a small path, and by now he had almost completely closed the gap. There was just a difference of about 40ft. Behind the clouds, the sun was setting so as he entered the forest it was almost completely dark. The most visible part of the senora was the occasional glimpse of her white skin. An ankle. A part of her neck. But never her face. He was surprised when he saw the church in the distance – the terrain of the island was disorienting him. He cut off the path, towards the church so he could intersect her.

“Senora!” There was no response. He was once again fully sprinting and was about 25ft from her. Her long black hair protruded from below a shawl, and her white ankles, which occasionally peaked from the base of her black dress, seemed to move effortlessly over moss covered rocks and logs. He passed the church, which he could now see was in a state of rotten disrepair. The front door seemed to be locked. He continued towards the woman in black. After a final minute of running he was out of breath and right behind her when he blurted:

“Senora Bruja!” She stopped. And suddenly turned. A white face, partially visible from below the shawl, looked at him with surprise. And then a wide smile appeared across her face, revealing more than a couple of missing teeth.

“Hola senor – how I can help you?” Willard was surprised to hear her speak English. He was surprised that she wasn’t out of breath. Hell, after all of this, he was surprised that she even had a face.

“I’m sorry to shout,” he said, still out of breath. “My name is Willard, Senora Alma said I should come talk to you.”

“Aaah, my ears – very old. I’m sorry. Please – you come with me to my house?” She pointed upward, and as if out of no where, Willard was suddenly aware of an old wooden house about 40ft away. He must have been too busy running and concentrating on the senora to notice it. He was also aware of an extreme nausea that was beginning to hit him in waves. As they reached the door he steadied himself on a rough wooden post and promptly got a thick splinter. The pain was almost a welcome distraction from the nausea. She entered the dark house and ushered him in.

“Senora, I am sorry but I feel terrible.” Willard had run a half Marathon in Boston. He had vomited but had kept running. This wasn’t that kind of nausea. This was the nausea of food poisoning. She pulled a fur-covered seat up for him which he collapsed on to. She shuffled over to the wood-stove and put a black kettle over the heat. Sickly waves were beginning in the back of his legs and rippling in disgusting undulations up to his stomach. His arms ached and head spun. “I don’t know what it is. I’m sorry. Maybe it was the curanto I ate with Senora Alma.”

“Oh, you ate Alma’s curanto?” She projected a shrill laugh. “That is not for weak stomach! Do not worry, I have something for you.” She had been sprinkling various things in a gourd and poured the boiling water in. Then she poured what looked like milk from a little jar, presumably to cool it and handed him the drink. “This will make you feel better. Close your eyes and listen to the story of the Viuda.”

The chunky white liquid went down his throat with difficulty. But for a moment he felt a great appreciation for the care Senora Bruja was showing him. Imagine the embarrassment! You just meet someone and promptly want to vomit all over them. The thought made him feel even more sick now.

“The Viuda is a very tall woman, dressed of black color and covered her face with a robe to maintain the secret of her face. When she walks her petticoat shows feet white like milk.” As she spoke, he looked around. The dark room was decorated with animal heads and jars of all sizes. His logic was still present enough to convince himself she was jut an animal enthusiast who liked to spice her food. He continued to look around but was having a hard time focusing, tears were coming to his eyes, his vision was being affected. Another wave of nausea hit him.

“She appear in lonely places and beaches, at night she walks routes of lovers, she follows the handsomes…” she smiled a gross smile and continued.

“Senora, I think I’m going to be sick – where is the bathroom?” She pointed towards up the stairs. He half ran, half fell up the stairs. The room was a mix of odd decorations, bones and pans hung from hooks. After fumbling with the handle Willard lurched inside the bathroom. The entire room was alive with movement, even the seatless toilet bowl was weaving around the floor. He knelt it. It seemed far away but he was touching it. Where his arms getting longer? Downstairs, he heard her continuing the story:

“She give him a hug by back and breath in him face, and then bring him to the cabin, pushing to give her satisfaction frequently in the sunrise…” Why was she telling him this horrible story? What the hell, he was already about to vomit. The very thought of it prompted the first purge of his stomach. He straightened up, hoping this was all he needed. However the world was now shifting even more. A picture of what appeared to be a young Senora Bruja hung on the wall and as she continued downstairs the mouth of the picture lip-synced the story:

“She leave him any place after this, a few days he is a normal man again but don’t remember nothing. This is the story of the Viuda, the widow.” It was took much for Willard. There was a witch downstairs that had drugged him and now wanted to repeatedly rape him. At this moment a cackle started in the room below. He tugged at the window over the toilet seat. He pushed, tugged and with a swift, rotten crunch the entire lock came away and the wind blew in. Without even looking he stood on the toilet and slid out of the window. He was happy to find himself on a slanting ledge. He moved towards the edge of the steep incline on all fours and then promptly fell the remaining few feet, face first onto a pile of leaves and earth. The smell was so real, so vivid. Dampness and decay. It was more than smell, he could see the smell. And he could smell thousands of insects. His senses had crisscrossed into a tapestry of synesthetic confusion. He stood up awkwardly and stumbled into the woods, away from the house where the senora’s laughing had now reached a cacophonic crescendo.

Blackness at first. His eyes were getting used to the darkness. It was a deep blackness punctuated with pinpoints of light, like distant candles being lit and blown out. He couldn’t understand. What was happening? How long had it been? He leaned one arm against a tree and looked at his feet. Hundreds of thin vines connected them to the ground, entwined with the roots themselves. He looked at his hand which were becoming fused to the tree. His skin itself appeared to have the texture of bark. He hunched over again and vomited. Bugs and small rodents ejected themselves from his mouth and fell to the ground, scurrying over his feet in all directions.

Willard pulled himself forward and the connections fell away easily and disappeared. Amid the starscape of twinkling lights he saw one brighter and more stable than the others. He moved forward, either incredibly fast or pathetically slow; his sense of time had now completely dissolved. After an unrecognizable period of time, in front of him appeared the decaying wooden church. It was locked in a battle of man vs. nature. Vines hung from the roof, small trees were growing up from the base. The forest itself was reclaiming what had been taken from it. The sides were propped up with beams, the windows were boarded up. However, through one of the slits he saw the source of light. The front door was now ajar. He entered.

The church was filled with the sculptures of various dancing creatures. The heads of birds, oversize lizards, horned beasts and all sorts of deformed creatures stood on naked human bodies. They watched as Willard fell into the church, taking a few dusty pews over with him. He heard the door slam shut, which was odd to him, but he couldn’t comprehend why. Was that good? Had he slammed it? Was he in danger? He couldn’t reach a stable enough mental platform by which to judge his current reality. What was grabbing his shoulder?

As he was turned over he was confused why the statues were moving. In a gross yet still clouded realization he realized they weren’t statues at all. And they weren’t dancing. Most were engaging each other in sexual acts. Four hands were pulling at his clothes. His jacket was ripped off and thrown aside and shirt ripped open. In a grim moment of panic he recognized these creatures from a distant story he’d been told, he was being pulled backwards by a camahueto and an invunche. They pushed him down on a cold slab. An altar? A third grotesque figure hobbled forward. At first he just saw a conical hat but as the face turned upward he saw the grotesque horror of the dwarf, Trauco. The bones in his face were fluidly moving below his skin. His eyes were open, but their shape morphed sizes. In his right hand he held a stone axe and as he approached Willard he raised it high in the air. A pale female figure with matted hair was bent over a pew, being repeatedly thrust upon by a man with a bird’s head. A fat, horse-headed figure was pressing a lizard-headed man forcefully against a pillar. Trauco’s axe reached the top of its arc. The candles on the alter flickered stood still and then flickered for a moment. With a swift chop, an arm came from the left and grabbed Trauco’s arm. Willard’s heart had reached a pace where he couldn’t decipher the individual beats. He followed the arm down to the face of a dog. He worked down the black snout to the eyes. Milky brown eyes. And then nothing.

Trees and branches. Wetness. Tripping, crawling, running, crying. Shadows beneath stilt houses. Hiding. Climbing. So tired. Crouching. Listening. And what was so damn funny? Why was everyone laughing? Faces everywhere were laughing. He closed his eyes but the laughing continued. Willard! A sharp pull on his shoulder. Willard! And he was awake. He sat up. Where the hell was he? He looked down and was mostly buried under a pile of life-vests. He was on a boat. He looked up and kind eyes met his.

“Are you OK, amigo?” Enrique stood over him. “What happened to you?”

“What happened to me?” Willard’s voice croaked. “What the hell happened to you?!”

“Didn’t you get the message? I called Alma and told her there was a storm and I couldn’t come back. Why didn’t you stay with her? What are you doing on this boat? And what happened to your clothes.” Willard looked over the edge, the boat was once again slanted on the sand of low tide. He now recognized the laughing sound of seagulls fighting for fish scraps. He looked at his shirt, ripped open.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.” Enrique helped him up and he almost fell over. His entire body was a solid cramp. “The last thing I can remember was being in a forest, chasing a woman in black.”

“Like that woman?” Enrique pointed down the beach to an approaching figure that seemed to glide effortlessly across the rocky beach; Senora Bruja. And she was walking towards them clutching something. Willard’s apprehension was curtailed by the fact that she was smiling and waving.

“Mr. Willard!”

“Detective Willard.” He muttered to himself instinctively.

“Mr. Willard – I’m happy I catch you before you leave? I find your jacket in the forest this morning. And your hat, from my house.” She handed him his muddy blazer and fedora. “What happened to you?”

“Yes, good question – perhaps you can help me understand? I remember following you and then not much else.”

“When you find me you are very sick.” She looked concerned. “I give you some medicine to help remove poison. I laugh because you were shouting me ‘Fiura! Fiura!’ But then I try to find you, and you were no there.”

After an awkward goodbye, Enrique steered El Fugitivo away from the dock. As his eyes glanced over the crematory he thought he saw some motion between the monolithic gravestones, but he couldn’t be sure. At this point one of his contacts had fallen out and the other was annoyingly dried to his eyeball. He removed it with a pinch. He watched the blurry and harmless figure of Isla Mechuque disappear behind him.

“Amigo, your note. It concerns me.” Enrique pulled the crumpled paper and read: “‘Enrique, there is no soul? Wait for me.’ What does it mean?” Willard didn’t remember writing that. He looked at the scrawled note. ‘no hay alma, esperame.’

“No, Alma, I never found Alma – the girl.” Willard realized that he had either not mentioned her, or Enrique had been too busy talking about fish to remember him doing so.

“Aaah, ‘Alma’! A person!” Enrique exclaimed. “Alma, it also means ‘soul’.”

As soon as they hit the mainland and Willard had paid Enrique another 30,000 pesos, he headed for a farmacia. Willard popped 1000mg of Ibuprofen, chased with a Kuntsman and quickly headed to the Cordilliera Inn. Senora Gorda was standing outside minding everyone else’s business as usual. As he approached her eyes widened:

“Dios Mio! Detective Willard! Que pasa?”

“A fishing accident.” Willard pathetically smiled. His face hurt. Everything hurt.

“I’m sorry – but I told you:” She pulled her eyelid down again. Here eyes widened again: “Detective! They found your man!”

“What man?” He asked. She looked at him quizzically.

“Ivan Esco.” The name seemed too familiar. A flood of memories.

“Evan Esco??” He blurted.

“Si, si, the man you look for! They find him!” She bobbled inside the inn. He followed her. She passed him a newspaper. The headline of the Chiloe Noticias read: ‘Hombre perdido: encontrado desnudo en Chaitén!’. From what he could understand a naked Evan Esco had been found in an abandoned house in Chaiten. He tried to mask his amazement.

“Can I have this paper, please?”

“Yes of course.”

“And my briefcase?”

“Yes of course.” She reached behind the desk and handed it to him.

“Thank you, Senora.” As he opened it he could easily tell that she’d looked through it; everything was out of place. He looked at her. She looked downward. He shook out his coat, straightened his collar and grabbed his briefcase. The senora was still watching him silently as he slid out the door.

He just made the day’s last ferry off the island. This time he’d head north to Puerto Montt. Before departing he had made a call to his residencia in the south and had arranged for them to send his small bundle of belongings to Santiago. Esco was apparently a jabbering fool that didn’t remember how he came to be in Chaiten. He was being taken to Santiago for evaluation where Willard hoped to interview him; it might add some insight to the piece. As usual, his agent was going to get all bitchy if the advance of cash didn’t lead anywhere. The problem at this point was there was just a lot of odd occurrences strung together. After leaving the Cordilliera he’d tried to track down Alma. He’d circled the surrounding streets, stopping in at every inn and inquiring if they’d had an Alma staying there – or hell, even a whole Christian congregation – but he’d turned up nothing.

His memory of the night was still foggy but as the ferry finished the boarding process he thought about what he’d experienced on Isla Mechuque – searching for an angle for the story. The biggest lesson was that when people have too much imagination and time they can’t help but fill it with ridiculous myths. However, even in this era, he saw the fear in old Alma’s friends as she recounted the stories. To them, and even more so to their previous generations, those stories were the reality. Willard had witnessed, that even when a reasonable person such as himself was inundated with an archaic, yet pervasive belief structure, it’s easy to be affected by the fears and beliefs of a communal idea. Blind faith is rarely a portal to anything other than destructive and limited thinking. As time moves along, logic and reason blossom in a group’s awareness and it’s inevitable that myths begin to dissolve. Juxtaposing this with the present, it’s still possible to see the mythologically ruled world we still inhabit. We laugh at the idea of single horned beasts, but put huge communal faith into a bearded white man in the sky. We boldly walk though the forest knowing that magical dwarfs don’t exist but still greatly fear an eternity of burning in an imagined afterlife. We ridicule witches that have a lust for sex but kill each other for a promised heaven where 72 virgins await in rivers of milk and honey. Where is the border between myth and reason? Can we project forward and realize how ridiculous our beliefs today will seem tomorrow? He liked where this was going, this could be a good angle.

The sun broke over the ferry landing as the boat pulled away from Isla Chiloe. Willard had retrieved his backup, dark rimmed glasses from his briefcase and surveyed the land. People waved to their departing relatives and friends. Near the corner of the concrete dock, next to the large mooring where the ferries secure their thick ropes, a small dark figure caught his eyes. The small figure of a motionless black dog, staring at the ferry as it crept away. A man came to check his ticket. He fished it out of his jacket pocket, along with another object. A muddy button. He could just make out the smeared but colorful writing on it:

‘Dale colore con Jesus!’

I have some pretty heavy video footage of Chaiten and an interview with Senora Hostencia, an inn keeper and one of the handful of the 6000 inhabitants that have returned. My netbook is both very slow to edit the HD video and I don’t have a sufficient editor to cut the footage, but hopefully will get access to one soon. For now you can see all the pics and read notes below to give some context to the pictures.

From Wikipedia: “Beginning on May 12, lahars caused flooding in the town of Chaitén^[28], depositing ash mud to a depth of up to a metre or more, damaging many buildings, and completely filling the original course of the Chaitén River past the town. Over the subsequent weeks, the river excavated a new course through Chaitén, completely destroying a significant part of it by July 2008. (n.b. at the time of writing, this process is still ongoing; it is unclear how extensive the damage will ultimately be.) Some defensive work has been undertaken by the government, and the town will be reconstructed some 10 km north.”

My personal experience was one of surprise. I had known that there had been an eruption but figured since it had been almost 2 YEARS AGO that it would have been mostly cleaned up. The fact is that only a small amount of people remained or have returned and the fate of Chaiten is unclear – due to concerns of a recurrence and also rumors that recently found mineral deposits that have sparked private interests. I was able to walk for some hours through the old town without seeing another soul – it was spooky and of course incredibly sad. I walked through empty streets strewn with rubble and saw houses that had been quickly stripped of prize possessions pre-evacuation. On my final night in town, after the inn’s generator was turned off,  a storm battered against my windows and was so severe that my ferry the next day was delayed 9 hours.

I have two final memories of the town: Senora Hostencia, baking the days bread, no doubt clinging to a distant memory of how things used to be, and the foreshadowing welcome sign at the ferry dock: “Bienvenido a Chaiten: Naturaleza Extrema”.

The winding road towards the Carrera Austral. (See all the pictures here…)

The Chinese maid knocked and entered my Hong Kong apartment in one fluid movement. And by apartment, I really mean a single room so compact that that if you stood in the kitchen you could reach the door, bed, shower or desk in one step. She looked at me and then her eyes drifted to the two glowing monitors, mess of cables and electronic devices spewing onto my desk. From there, her gaze traveled to my bed where a giant map was spread out and covered in red circles and writing. Then, with a look of surprise probably due to the fact that the tiny apartment resembled the den of some gweilo spy, she backed out without saying a word.

It was 2005 and it was on my first Technomad journey. I had coined the term to use as a collective title for my travel stories and thus began the The Technomad Journals. However, the term became more than just a title almost immediately. I soon realized the power of being able remotely sustain yourself and furthermore if you could combine the lower costs in much of the world with the income of a Western job, it meant that you could live well and not work too much. (NOTE: The key here is you need to have the backing of Western clients or a company, not trying to convince a Thai restaurateur that he owes you money Technology has already begun to offer us this unprecedented experience – however, this was still the early days and with a suitcase full of hardware, I didn’t really understand the concept of lightweight living. 5 years later, devices are smaller, more capable and more connected than ever – and we are truly heading towards the possibility of a streamlined and wide spread Technomadic existence.

Oh boy was I smart! I had crossed the border from Argentina into Chile where I’d stayed in the charming town of Chile Chico for two nights, preparing for an impromptu journey, 500km north on the rural, and desolate, Carretera Austral ‘highway’. I was nursing a cold (probably due to my thoroughly failed wet-weather gear in the mountains near El Chalten) and was happy to catch up on some writing while consuming large amount of homemade bread washed down with instant soup. Everything was going to plan and I had bought a boat ticket for the next morning. In bed on my final night, I had tossed and turned until late; I’m not usually an insomniac but if I’ve digested or produced a lot of neuron-firing content before bedtime it takes me a while to settle down. The only boat headed to the other side of the vast Lago Buenos Aires was at 7am, but I was smiling because I’d realized that Chile was an hour behind Argentina, and I’d changed my clock hence buying me an extra hour of sleep. How smart I was, I thought to myself as I finally drifted off to my usual realm of surprisingly boring dreams. Yes, it’s odd, but I tend to dream about things like being at a supermarket or waiting in a line at the airport.

I awoke two minutes before my alarm, something that always makes me feel like it’s going to be a great day, had a leisurely shower, packed and went down to breakfast. As I walked into the kitchen I experienced one of those shortness of breath moments when I looked at the clock and it read Argentine time – it said 7:15!

“Que hora es?” I asked the owner of the hospedaje, who was up and getting ready for work.

“Siete y cuarto.” He knew that I had to catch the boat, but in his leisurely rural way, smiled, pointed at the clock, then at me and then rested his head on his two hands – the international symbol for sleeping. I grabbed my bags, said goodbye and ran out the door while projecting a slew of colorful language – my profanities fell on deaf ears of course, no one in this town spoke English. I ran down the street for five minutes to the pier, just in time to see the rear of my boat disappearing behind a peninsula. The only other guy on the pier was a construction worker who seemed equally amused by my unintelligible cursing.

“Manana. A la siete.” He smiled, then playfully frowned as he offered his advice which included a wave of his finger to indicate ‘no’ and then the international symbol for sleeping. So apparently Chile Chico uses Argentina time? What the hell, people!

I was upset at myself, then at my clock, and then at a rock which I kicked down the street. But I quickly turned my mood around, by laughing at myself: for someone who prides himself on ‘going with the flow’, I was certainly all ruffled up over a missed boat. Additionally, I will mention that if you enjoy writing, any possible upset has the potential to be the beginning of a story – if you just let it reveal itself. I had a determination to not go back to the hospedaje defeated so reframed this setback as the beginning of my dirt-road adventure around the gigantic lake. Truthfully, I hadn’t been worried about it at all, that is, until yesterday when I had told a restaurant owner of my plan and he pointed at the first 200km portion of the route on my map, and said:

“Muy Dificil! No mucho automobil” He had suggested that I get the boat, at least until the other side, which was more traveled. Come on now, how hard could it be to find a ride? Well, I soon found, in the local supermercado where apparently you buy the tickets, that the only bus leaving town was full. OK, well time for some hitchhiking, I said to myself, and crafted a simple sign out of an old shoe box with a marker I bought instead of a ticket. I posted up at the town’s main intersection – a bustling crossroads of the occasional car and a few street dogs that came by to smell the new guy in town (NOTE: I am still carrying my rusted metal pipe from Calafate…)

At this vantage point I became aware of one or two other foreigners coming through town and after friendly nods was exchanged, they would usually come by to say ‘hello’. In highly populated tourist areas, tourists tend to diverge, trying to avoid anyone that will spoil the illusion that they’re rare foreigners in otherwise untouched cultures! However, in towns with so few, we tend to converge because it’s just kind of nice to see someone as out of place as you. Next I met Kaste, an older German man who was taking a break from motorcycling Argentina’s rugged Route 40 to explore some Chilean farmlands. Kaste spoke zero Spanish – in fact it didn’t even seem like he was trying to learn any either, much to the amusement of locals who had gathered around his bike. The were asking how many cylinders, how much it cost, where he was from but all he could answer was:

“No Espanol!” They laughed to each other, until old Kaste probably felt so uncomfortable that he mounted his giant, grit-covered KLR and drove off, shaking his head at me. I had been passing the time by reading a pretty appropriate Sci-Fi novel called Snow Crash, which centers around the idea that language itself is hackable. Maybe he should read Snow Crash – or at least get a phrase book and make an effort.

After 3 hours, me and my wind blown sign had barely gotten a glance so, with the advice of a fat n’ jolly senora, I decided to move to the gravel road that led out of town – a way smarter idea, ensuring that all cars passing were actually going out of town. Under a sign that indicated the daunting distances to faraway towns, I met Victor. He worked for the local municipality and was heading over to a neighboring town – I think to visit his girlfriend, because his wife was away, or his wife’s siter, or both. I didn’t really understand fully but was amble to make idle chit chat because I had a secret weapon, one that Kaste could have benefited from greatly. Before leaving Buenos Aires, I had loaded my iPhone with a Spanish-English dictionary and a conjugator for the most popular verbs. Inputting quick taps between these two programs I was quickly being able to learn a basic and functional Spanish. I entered words that I heard but I didn’t know and speedily find nouns and verbs to mesh together into a butchered, but often intelligible sentence. After learning that Victor was a child of six, and father of three, what days our birthdays were on and the rest of the basics, we’d passed an hour under the sign, while thumbing a couple of cars with no success. Victor went over to a tree with a stick and hit it until some apricots fell to the ground. He offered me one – it was fantastic. At that point he picked up his bag, looked at me and said:

“Voy a mi casa.” As he tapped his watch. “Voy a regresar manana.” It slightly worried me that a local was giving up until tomorrow, but now in my 6^th hour, I decided to make a final stand..

It started to lightly rain as a very blonde and very wind-blown, red faced man in a colorful jacket and blue tights approached me on a bike.

“Waiting for a ride, I see?” But before I could answer, “I am Gunther from Austria!” He exclaimed victoriously. He then straddled the bike, and reached into his bike’s front pouch. His odd nature made me wonder what he was going in there for, but he harmlessly pulled out a can of already open pineapple rings which he poked into his mouth while continuing to look at me.

“Well, nice to meet you Gunther. I’m Douglas from Los Angeles.” Which seemed to aways have a more excited reaction than just saying “Estados Unidos.”

“Aah, like Michael Douglas.” He grinned. It’s funny, in non English speaking countries, this has to be the number one response when I introduce myself.

“Yes, exactly, except I’m not an old sex addict… yet!” Gunther either didn’t understand the joke or didn’t find me funny.

“And so! You are going north?” Wiping the pineapple juice off of his splotchy, reddish-white chin with the back of his sleeve.

“Yep, looking for a ride. What about you – biking north?”

“Yes, but no!” And laughed. “This next part of the road is difficult for biking. I prefer to get a lift to towns, and then ride around!” He now laughed some more, finding this idea funny. “And so, maybe see you!” He placed the pineapple can back in his front pouch and rode off in the direction that he’d come from.

Sometime later I was joined by two Chilean backpackers headed the same way – they were nice but it made me more concerned that I was now even less likely to get picked up; groups are less likely to be given lifts, but on the other hand, one of the Chileans was a cute girl – who tend to be infinitely more likely to get picked up, so perhaps it balanced out. We chatted for a while and to my amusement they thought I was Italian! Well, I am half-Italian but they said that I spoke Spanish with a slight Italian twang, a relic of having lived in Rome when I was young. I was beginning to think I might have to begin the glum march back to the hospedaje when I saw a little bus bobbing down the road from the supermercado – no doubt the full bus that didn’t have room for me. I stuck the thumb of my right hand and waved my left arm and smiled my face off. The bus pulled over and a French-sounding guy stuck his head out a window.

“We have space!” I scanned the faces inside and it seemed like he was the only other tourist.

The driver got out, an we arranged a $12 ride to Puerto Guadal – almost all the way to the main intersection of the Carretera Austral – which supposedly had more thru-traffic. Just as I had got into the bus, a large truck pulled up to the Chileans and had opened it’s rear doors where they were apparently welcome to sit with a bunch of logs. I felt jealous of their authentic hitching experience until I realized it had started raining harder and once closed in, there would be no way to look out. Suddenly $12 in a warm, dry bus with windows seemed like a great deal.

The driver bungeed my bag to the top, I crammed in next to a guy with a beret and a thick mustache and we were on our way! It’s truly a wonderful feeling, when you’ve been waiting for a ride all day and then you get one and you’re moving, moving on to the next adventure! I think I smiled for the first half hour as I pressed my face against the glass. While cloudy, the view of the mountains and lake was still spectacular. The dinky bus, packed with 10 passengers and one very serious driver, sped along gravel roads, past valleys and farms and along the edge of lake-side precipices. ‘He’s done this before’, I assured myself. We weaved around giant boulders that had fallen into the road, and passed the remains of a horribly mangled guardrail sandwiched by some bouquets of flowers. ‘Our odds are good – if we were in Vegas, I’d bet on us.’ Sometimes even logic didn’t really cut it, but I always remember the words of my Mom when she’d move us to another country or when she was plotting her next life move:

“There’s nothing to fear, except fear itself, Douglas. You could drown in a bathtub.”

We passed some graffiti on a bridge: ‘Patagonia sin represas!’ Apparently to meet the country’s growing energy needs, the Chilean government is considering the damming of some major waterways, which would cause some environmental problems, as well as displace families and take the livelihood away from many others. As I continued to travel, I saw this phrase increasingly often – showing that it’s obvious a big point of contention.

After two hours, and seeing only two or three other cars, we arrived at our last stop, Puerto Guadal. As luck would have it, one of the other passengers ran the tiny town’s hospedaje and promised to make us a delicious dinner if me and Pierre stayed with her. Oh, no thanks, I think we’re going to try the Holiday Inn down by the boardwalk and afterwards get some chicken wings at the Hooters next to the Casino. But seriously, there was not too much happening in the town of Puerto Guadal. The main action, which had turned the heads of a few locals, was the typical street dog chasing a pickup – but in this episode it was barking at another dog, in the back. Soon other local dogs had joined in and dragged the poor mutt out of the truck and were all having a showdown in the central square. It looked ugly but soon got split up by some men with sticks. Entertainment over, we went inside. As Esmerelda showed us in our rooms I got the feeling that Pierre wanted to stay in my room. There was no one else in the place so I made sure to say:

“Separado.”

The simple room was a floral print jubilee; I counted five different styles between the two bedspreads, curtains and patchwork of wallpaper. For what it lacked in style it made up for in coziness, with thick bedspreads and pillows so after a little walk to the quiet lake I decided to take a nap before dinner. When I went downstairs to join the group for dinner the entire family, a father and mother, two sisters, two brothers and a baby, had gathered around the table and was tucking in to a giant platter of grilled lamb.

“Aaah, bienvenido gringo!” The little brother playfully said as I joined them. I had a feeling that Pierre, who was sitting there grinning, had put him up to this. He had the stereotypical snobbery that people often assign to the French. Sometimes it’s just the accent, but sometimes, like with Pierre, it’s well placed:

“Everyone knows there really is no comparison to French wine.” He said, “However, perhaps Chile comes second place.” Even if true, the way he delivered it just sounded pretentious.

The lamb was tender, and even the baby got a piece to gnaw on, which everyone thought was hilarious. I offered everyone wine from a USD$4 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that I had bought – even the cheap wine down here was pretty damn good. We talked about dams, which everyone was against – but everyone still wanted more stable, cheaper electricity. Just for fun, I asked if they had Internet, and much to my surprise they had it at the library – additionally Esmerelda was excited to tell me that in April the tiny town was going to get high-speed mobile Internet. And so the disparate villages of earth get connected; whether by fiber, by copper or by airwave the net of information is seeking out all nooks and crannies of the planet.

After dinner Pierre showed us a slideshow from his trip to Antarctica using a DVD that the tour boat had given him. It turned out that they weren’t even his pictures, but still very cool and for a moment, although perhaps it was just the wine, I didn’t find him as annoying. After spending some time reading by the wood stove, I retired to my room alone which seemed to disappoint Pierre, and fell asleep in my floral cave.

The next morning I was woken up by the delightfully rural sound of chickens outside my window. The clouds had broken and the sun had brightly lit the back yard and surrounding lush hills. I went downstairs and entered the kitchen at the exact same time as a duck entered the door opposite from the yard.

“Aaah, Tomas el pato!” The father clapped, much to the joy of the little boy. The duck flip-flopped past the wood stove, to a bowl of grains that they’d laid out for the family’s favorite farm friend. Before leaving us the previous day, the moody bus driver, had told us he was continuing to head up the coast today and we could join him. Not knowing when the next ride would be coming through, I’d agreed to join him and so had Pierre. He promptly rang the bell at 8:30am and looked at his watch impatiently as we boarded.

The local buses also function as an easy way for locals to send items to other towns so on the way out of the village we picked up some boxes of various fruits and some dried goods. As the bus picked up a few more people here and there, I was happy to see how friendly everyone was. A young boy came onto the bus and sat down next to the same old man with a beret that had been on our bus yesterday – they didn’t seem related, but obviously knew each other. I always appreciate the friendliness of small towns, everyone knows their neighbors and says ‘hello’. Rural society is more transparent which means the incidence of sociopathic behavior decreases. Obscurity seems to breed sociopaths; any system, animal or otherwise, intrinsically acts for self if it can get away with it. True altruism is a rare occurrence as it’s not typically rooted in survival or genetic propagation, and certainly takes more effort than just saying ‘who cares?’. OK, I’m sure small towns can drive you crazy too, always being publicly accountable for all your actions, but somewhere between the intimacy of village life and the anonymity of a metropolis is a land of friendly existence. I began to wonder what it would be like if people had endorsement systems, sort of like the was you do on eBay, but in real life:

‘++AAA++ friend. Will hang out again!!’ or ‘Zero Stars! Poor boyfriend. Consistently inaccurate information given. Engage at your own risk!’

I’m not advocating a completely transparent system, of course it’s important to respect privacy, but there’s got to be a sweet spot where people can have the privacy they deserve while not being able to get away with being sociopathic assholes. Forms of this have already begun to happen – slowly – in many areas, from corporate greed to political agenda. Individuals and groups that would like to take advantage of the system are having a harder time doing it, thanks mainly to the transparency and communication that technology heralds. Chile, like any other country, has a political history rife with power plays and tactics for misleading the populous through deceit and manipulation. And then there’s the US’s involvement in Chilean politics, that aimed to bring down Allende’s pseudo-Socialist government in lieu of Pinochet’s rough dictatorship, that went undisclosed for 30 years. Some people might argue that the way to profitable peace has got to cost a little bloodshed, but ever the Utopian, I believe there’s got to be a cleaner path.

Apparently in this part of Northern Patagonia has an average of 1:1, people:km/sq and the roads are so curvy they’re called caracoles (snails). The next few hours of bumpiness, was broken up into iterations of scenic views and pee breaks until we reached the even more quaint and well named Puerto Rio Tranquilo. It has all the beginnings of a tourist town in the making; a great name, a fantastic view and even some local attractions like caves and rock formations, the prize being the ‘Catedral Marmol.’ or Marble Cathedral. When the road gets paved, this place will no doubt boom – and I felt privileged to see it before it does. It had started raining again but as we got off a few guides still approached:

“Catedral Marmol?”

“Do you want to go?” Pierre asked. Traveling alone is often the best way to travel. You move swiftly and don’t have to submit to decision my committee. Sometimes you even find people that you want to travel with for a while but then, you might decide to go separate ways. Occasionally for no reason other than comfort you pick up barnacles. You gotta know how to shake them. This was my chance:

“You know, I’m sort of still sick, I’m going to find a place to stay. Or going for a walk. Or I might go to one of those restaurants or cafes.” I made sure to offer a spread of my possible whereabouts. As I walked away, down the road, I waved: “See you later!”

I weaved through town and after the usual tactic of knocking on doors and asking for habatacion found a little, warm hospedaje. I still had this lingering cold so after throwing my bags in my room, stretched out in front of the little wood furnace for some cozy reading. I figured what better place than to start futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ‘The Singularity is Near’ than in front of a fire in a rural, disconnected town in the middle of nowhere. The book is close to 500 pages. I also have a few similarly sized Lonely Planet country guides and a slew of other books with me, all in the tiny little device known as a Kindle, weighing in at somewhere under a pound. The battery is good for a week or two or reading and if at any point I need to add a new title to my library, it’s equipped with a global GSM chip able to download a book in under a minute.

Later in the afternoon, it was still raining so decided to continue reading and writing from a little cafe along the main street. Nescafe has Chile by it’s smooth, tanned balls – so far every single cafe offers the rather nasty instant powder accompanied by hot water by default; I’ve only found a few places that offer a real drip or espresso coffee. This cafe doubled as a bakery and as is quickly becoming a problem for me, I couldn’t help but sample an empanada. Empanada’s in Chile are far larger and juicier than their Argentine siblings. I must have joked about the size of Chilean empanada’s for 5 minutes with the bakery owner and her three teenage daughters:

“Tu prefieres las empanadas mas grand, o mas chico?” And I had the cafe filled with girly giggles. “Con salsa picante?” They all liked big empanadas, but the mention of hot sauce had them fanning themselves. I was proud to be able to cause some smiles even with my crappy, psuedo-Italian Spanish.

I walked through and out of town where I had a face off with a curious cow but eventually returned for a homemade dinner of salad and steak with french fries and an egg, for the reasonable price of $4. The next morning it was still raining – not really hard, but hard enough that I found the pictures of the Marble Cathedral more than sufficient and luckily entered town just as a bus was pulling up. Any guess who else was also walking up to it?

“Hola Pierre, I must have lost you yesterday. How was the Marble Cathedral?” He told me how great it was, and how fun and awesome his hostel had been and that I should have joined him; I feigned deep remorse as we boarded the bus.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“You know, I’m not sure yet,” Actually I was going north to Coyhaique, but I didn’t want to encourage him to join. “but I hear that Villa Castillo is GREAT!” Luckily there were only single seats left so I sat next to a skinny man who slept the whole time. At Villa Castillo we stopped and I asked Pierre:

“So what do you think? Are you going to stay?”

“I think I’ll go on to Coyhaique.” And my internal audience laughs and claps as the ‘applause’ sign is illuminated.

When we got off at Coyhaique things got awkward. I should have just walked away, but I just couldn’t bring myself to for some reason. Typically I dislike hurting people’s feelings, even though dragging it out often compounded the inevitable. So here’s how it went: It was raining, I walked out of the small bus station to find the cross streets and consult a Lonely Planet map. By this point Pierre had hung his bags around himself and caught up. We ended up walking in the direction of where a couple of hospedaje’s could supposedly be found. After finding one or two that said they were full, we found a nice old lady that showed us to a snug room for two.

“Separado.” I said. The senora said that was impossible because she only had one room left.

“I’d rather find my own room somewhere then – you can have this one.” I said. As I left the senora said she thought were were together and if it was just oner person, the room would be more expensive. Sheisse! Now I’ve got guilt going! If there’s two things I hate it’s unwarranted expectation and guilt trips.

“I’m going to head down the street.” Trying to figure out the best method out of this situation.

“OK, I’ll leave my bags here and join you, that way if you don’t find anything we can share a room.” Sweet baby Jesus, what the hell!?

He followed me around the block and finally I found a place that had singles for USD$18, USD$4 more than the other place.

“Well that’s more than I can afford.” He said, with his body language already trying to lead me back. I saw my chance. Again.

“You know, I’ve got some writing to do and I think that works just fine for me.” I had to stop walking, otherwise he’d keep moving. “So hey! I’m sure I’ll see you as we head north!”

The best USD$4 splurge ever.

Coyhaique is best described by Lonely Planet as ‘a cow town that kept growing’ and is now actually poised to become a big city of they agrarian industry, as well as a transportation hub. I know that sounds charming, but actually the town’s surroundings were beautiful, however it never stopped raining which made exploring the hills nearby a little muddy. I realized that I had left my super absorbent travel towel in Puerto Rio Tranquil but in searching for it found a poncho that I’d forgot I’d packed, which seemed like a pretty fair trade. I bought some dishtowels as a substitute, caught up on some emails and writing and got a grip of cash at an ATM. I travel with a few ATM and credit cards, distributed in different areas just in case I lose one or get robbed. And then whenever I need to I can dip this piece of special plastic into a wall and get out paper that lets me continue to live. Absolutely amazing! Talk about a technology not to be taken for granted? Some years back, still an amateur traveler I had entered Laos with about $20 in cash, not realizing that the nearest ATM was in the capital 1000km away. That took some creative problem solving to get out of.

I was tempted to explore the cities ‘Emo’ scene, in which a lot of darkly eye-lined and androgynous tweens meet in clubs and then go somewhere for ‘kissing parties’. Maybe a reaction to overly conservative Catholic upbringings? I decided to give the club scene a miss. Instead the highlight of Coyhaique was running into Gunther again, at the town’s center market, who was ravenously eating a juicy peach.

“Hey Gunther, you made it!”

“And so! A truck found me. It had two Chileans in the back. Very wet!” He’d managed to get some peach flesh onto his chin and I had a hard time looking anywhere else on his face. I told him about the club where the Emo’s would be in case he was interested and we parted ways.

The next day – yep still raining – I dreaded hitchhiking so decided I’d stop by the bus station and ask if there were any buses. The girl at one of the offices said there were no buses to Puyuhuapi that day. I asked her where the one out the front was going and she replied La Junta.

“Isn’t La Junta more north on the same road?” I managed to mangle together.

“Yes.” Still no connection.

“So maybe I could ask the bus driver to drop me in Puyuhuapi?”

“Maybe.” OK, thanks for the help there.

I got the last seat on the bus and couldn’t believe my luck – yet again! I sat behind a friendly señora who was making the entire bus laugh throughout the ride. As we headed north the surroundings became even more wet and tropical. This was when I read that this part of Chile gets an average of ~120ft of rain per year, so rather than a string of unlucky weather days as I had thought, this was just the norm. Craggy mountains rose suddenly around us, green outcrops clinging to their edges. Snowcapped peaks melted into slim waterfalls that poured off the rocks, sometimes right onto the road. Ferns and plants with huge leaves reached into the road like giant green fingers, relentlessly trying to claw it back into their possession. Condors were seen flying overhead while the driver avoided herds of cows on the road. I felt like a T-Rex was going to jump out at any moment and crush the tiny bus in it’s jaws. Reggaeton, the country’s favorite music, was blasting out of the radio. Occasionally we’d come across men in orange waterproof outfits, trying in vain to keep the road together as water poured from every crevice. Even when we hit a pothole and the back doors exploded open causing all our bags fell out into the mud, there was humorous camaraderie as we worked together to get them back inside, securing he doors handles inside to a handrail with a rope.

I used my iPhone to take turns trying to decipher the thick Chilean accents and listening to a pretty intense audiobook about the social structure and behavior of courtiers of the 1500s (trying to read on the Kindle surely would have led to me vomiting over the nice senora). I tried to imagine how utterly ridiculous our connected world of information and devices would have seemed to Cristopher Columbus or Sir Walter Raleigh; a white tablet that contains the text of a small library; a piece of plastic that can cause a wall to eject money; a pocket sized device that can translate languages, talk to me, record pictures and even communicate with others at great distances . And all that before blowing their Victorian minds with my netbook, a device capable of uniting them all and connecting to anyone else in the world invisibly. I certainly would have been proclaimed a sorcerer and been killed in a classically grisly way. Luckily however, things are a little bit more progressive these days, and the future we face, if indeed we can get there without destroying ourselves first, offers us an social existence based on ubiquitous communication and mutual growth, and most likely augmented by a layer of technology that helps achieve and maintain this.

The bus continued it’s bumpy sprint down the caracoles. I couldn’t help but feel lucky that I’d missed my boat and ended up in this cultural moshpit, happily moving with a crowd of strangers on a wave of the moment. I didn’t really know where I was getting off, I didn’t know where the next jarring bump was going to come from or indeed, what was going to happen next at all – but one thing suddenly became clear – I enjoyed the unexpected so decided not to head back to Argentina like I had planned, but instead to the the old, Chilean fishing island of Chiloe, home of tiny deer and mythical forest beings. Now that sounds like a good story

Oh boy was I smart! I had crossed the border from Argentina into Chile where I’d stayed in the charming town of Chile Chico for two nights, preparing for an impromptu journey, 500km north on the rural, and desolate, Carretera Austral ‘highway’. I was nursing a cold (probably due to my thoroughly failed wet-weather gear in the mountains near El Chalten) and was happy to catch up on some writing while consuming large amount of homemade bread washed down with instant soup. Everything was going to plan and I had bought a boat ticket for the next morning. In bed on my final night, I had tossed and turned until late; I’m not usually an insomniac but if I’ve digested or produced a lot of neuron-firing content before bedtime it takes me a while to settle down. The only boat headed to the other side of the vast Lago Buenos Aires was at 7am, but I was smiling because I’d realized that Chile was an hour behind Argentina, and I’d changed my clock hence buying me an extra hour of sleep. How smart I was, I thought to myself as I finally drifted off to my usual realm of surprisingly boring dreams. Yes, it’s odd, but I tend to dream about things like being at a supermarket or waiting in a line at the airport.

I awoke two minutes before my alarm, something that always makes me feel like it’s going to be a great day, had a leisurely shower, packed and went down to breakfast. As I walked into the kitchen I experienced one of those shortness of breath moments when I looked at the clock and it read Argentine time – it said 7:15!

“Que hora es?” I asked the owner of the hospedaje, who was up and getting ready for work.

“Siete y cuarto.” He knew that I had to catch the boat, but in his leisurely rural way, smiled, pointed at the clock, then at me and then rested his head on his two hands – the international symbol for sleeping. I grabbed my bags, said goodbye and ran out the door while projecting a slew of colorful language – my profanities fell on deaf ears of course, no one in this town spoke English. I ran down the street for five minutes to the pier, just in time to see the rear of my boat disappearing behind a peninsula. The only other guy on the pier was a construction worker who seemed equally amused by my unintelligible cursing.

“Manana. A la siete.” He smiled, then playfully frowned as he offered his advice which included a wave of his finger to indicate ‘no’ and then the international symbol for sleeping. So apparently Chile Chico uses Argentina time? What the hell, people!

I was upset at myself, then at my clock, and then at a rock which I kicked down the street. But I quickly turned my mood around, by laughing at myself: for someone who prides himself on ‘going with the flow’, I was certainly all ruffled up over a missed boat. Additionally, I will mention that if you enjoy writing, any possible upset has the potential to be the beginning of a story – if you just let it reveal itself. I had a determination to not go back to the hospedaje defeated so reframed this setback as the beginning of my dirt-road adventure around the gigantic lake. Truthfully, I hadn’t been worried about it at all, that is, until yesterday when I had told a restaurant owner of my plan and he pointed at the first 200km portion of the route on my map, and said:

“Muy Dificil! No mucho automobil” He had suggested that I get the boat, at least until the other side, which was more traveled. Come on now, how hard could it be to find a ride? Well, I soon found, in the local supermercado where apparently you buy the tickets, that the only bus leaving town was full. OK, well time for some hitchhiking, I said to myself, and crafted a simple sign out of an old shoe box with a marker I bought instead of a ticket. I posted up at the town’s main intersection – a bustling crossroads of the occasional car and a few street dogs that came by to smell the new guy in town (NOTE: I am still carrying my rusted metal pipe from Calafate…)

At this vantage point I became aware of one or two other foreigners coming through town and after friendly nods was exchanged, they would usually come by to say ‘hello’. In highly populated tourist areas, tourists tend to diverge, trying to avoid anyone that will spoil the illusion that they’re rare foreigners in otherwise untouched cultures! However, in towns with so few, we tend to converge because it’s just kind of nice to see someone as out of place as you. Next I met Kaste, an older German man who was taking a break from motorcycling Argentina’s rugged Route 40 to explore some Chilean farmlands. Kaste spoke zero Spanish – in fact it didn’t even seem like he was trying to learn any either, much to the amusement of locals who had gathered around his bike. The were asking how many cylinders, how much it cost, where he was from but all he could answer was:

“No Espanol!” They laughed to each other, until old Kaste probably felt so uncomfortable that he mounted his giant, grit-covered KLR and drove off, shaking his head at me. I had been passing the time by reading a pretty appropriate Sci-Fi novel called Snow Crash, which centers around the idea that language itself is hackable. Maybe he should read Snow Crash – or at least get a phrase book and make an effort.

After 3 hours, me and my wind blown sign had barely gotten a glance so, with the advice of a fat n’ jolly senora, I decided to move to the gravel road that led out of town – a way smarter idea, ensuring that all cars passing were actually going out of town. Under a sign that indicated the daunting distances to faraway towns, I met Victor. He worked for the local municipality and was heading over to a neighboring town – I think to visit his girlfriend, because his wife was away, or his wife’s siter, or both. I didn’t really understand fully but was amble to make idle chit chat because I had a secret weapon, one that Kaste could have benefited from greatly. Before leaving Buenos Aires, I had loaded my iPhone with a Spanish-English dictionary and a conjugator for the most popular verbs. Inputting quick taps between these two programs I was quickly being able to learn a basic and functional Spanish. I entered words that I heard but I didn’t know and speedily find nouns and verbs to mesh together into a butchered, but often intelligible sentence. After learning that Victor was a child of six, and father of three, what days our birthdays were on and the rest of the basics, we’d passed an hour under the sign, while thumbing a couple of cars with no success. Victor went over to a tree with a stick and hit it until some apricots fell to the ground. He offered me one – it was fantastic. At that point he picked up his bag, looked at me and said:

“Voy a mi casa.” As he tapped his watch. “Voy a regresar manana.” It slightly worried me that a local was giving up until tomorrow, but now in my 6^th hour, I decided to make a final stand..

It started to lightly rain as a very blonde and very wind-blown, red faced man in a colorful jacket and blue tights approached me on a bike.

“Waiting for a ride, I see?” But before I could answer, “I am Gunther from Austria!” He exclaimed victoriously. He then straddled the bike, and reached into his bike’s front pouch. His odd nature made me wonder what he was going in there for, but he harmlessly pulled out a can of already open pineapple rings which he poked into his mouth while continuing to look at me.

“Well, nice to meet you Gunther. I’m Douglas from Los Angeles.” Which seemed to aways have a more excited reaction than just saying “Estados Unidos.”

“Aah, like Michael Douglas.” He grinned. It’s funny, in non English speaking countries, this has to be the number one response when I introduce myself.

“Yes, exactly, except I’m not an old sex addict… yet!” Gunther either didn’t understand the joke or didn’t find me funny.

“And so! You are going north?” Wiping the pineapple juice off of his splotchy, reddish-white chin with the back of his sleeve.

“Yep, looking for a ride. What about you – biking north?”

“Yes, but no!” And laughed. “This next part of the road is difficult for biking. I prefer to get a lift to towns, and then ride around!” He now laughed some more, finding this idea funny. “And so, maybe see you!” He placed the pineapple can back in his front pouch and rode off in the direction that he’d come from.

Sometime later I was joined by two Chilean backpackers headed the same way – they were nice but it made me more concerned that I was now even less likely to get picked up; groups are less likely to be given lifts, but on the other hand, one of the Chileans was a cute girl – who tend to be infinitely more likely to get picked up, so perhaps it balanced out. We chatted for a while and to my amusement they thought I was Italian! Well, I am half-Italian but they said that I spoke Spanish with a slight Italian twang, a relic of having lived in Rome when I was young. I was beginning to think I might have to begin the glum march back to the hospedaje when I saw a little bus bobbing down the road from the supermercado – no doubt the full bus that didn’t have room for me. I stuck the thumb of my right hand and waved my left arm and smiled my face off. The bus pulled over and a French-sounding guy stuck his head out a window.

“We have space!” I scanned the faces inside and it seemed like he was the only other tourist.

The driver got out, an we arranged a $12 ride to Puerto Guadal – almost all the way to the main intersection of the Carretera Austral – which supposedly had more thru-traffic. Just as I had got into the bus, a large truck pulled up to the Chileans and had opened it’s rear doors where they were apparently welcome to sit with a bunch of logs. I felt jealous of their authentic hitching experience until I realized it had started raining harder and once closed in, there would be no way to look out. Suddenly $12 in a warm, dry bus with windows seemed like a great deal.

The driver bungeed my bag to the top, I crammed in next to a guy with a beret and a thick mustache and we were on our way! It’s truly a wonderful feeling, when you’ve been waiting for a ride all day and then you get one and you’re moving, moving on to the next adventure! I think I smiled for the first half hour as I pressed my face against the glass. While cloudy, the view of the mountains and lake was still spectacular. The dinky bus, packed with 10 passengers and one very serious driver, sped along gravel roads, past valleys and farms and along the edge of lake-side precipices. ‘He’s done this before’, I assured myself. We weaved around giant boulders that had fallen into the road, and passed the remains of a horribly mangled guardrail sandwiched by some bouquets of flowers. ‘Our odds are good – if we were in Vegas, I’d bet on us.’ Sometimes even logic didn’t really cut it, but I always remember the words of my Mom when she’d move us to another country or when she was plotting her next life move:

“There’s nothing to fear, except fear itself, Douglas. You could drown in a bathtub.”

We passed some graffiti on a bridge: ‘Patagonia sin represas!’ Apparently to meet the country’s growing energy needs, the Chilean government is considering the damming of some major waterways, which would cause some environmental problems, as well as displace families and take the livelihood away from many others. As I continued to travel, I saw this phrase increasingly often – showing that it’s obvious a big point of contention.

After two hours, and seeing only two or three other cars, we arrived at our last stop, Puerto Guadal. As luck would have it, one of the other passengers ran the tiny town’s hospedaje and promised to make us a delicious dinner if me and Pierre stayed with her. Oh, no thanks, I think we’re going to try the Holiday Inn down by the boardwalk and afterwards get some chicken wings at the Hooters next to the Casino. But seriously, there was not too much happening in the town of Puerto Guadal. The main action, which had turned the heads of a few locals, was the typical street dog chasing a pickup – but in this episode it was barking at another dog, in the back. Soon other local dogs had joined in and dragged the poor mutt out of the truck and were all having a showdown in the central square. It looked ugly but soon got split up by some men with sticks. Entertainment over, we went inside. As Esmerelda showed us in our rooms I got the feeling that Pierre wanted to stay in my room. There was no one else in the place so I made sure to say:

“Separado.”

The simple room was a floral print jubilee; I counted five different styles between the two bedspreads, curtains and patchwork of wallpaper. For what it lacked in style it made up for in coziness, with thick bedspreads and pillows so after a little walk to the quiet lake I decided to take a nap before dinner. When I went downstairs to join the group for dinner the entire family, a father and mother, two sisters, two brothers and a baby, had gathered around the table and was tucking in to a giant platter of grilled lamb.

“Aaah, bienvenido gringo!” The little brother playfully said as I joined them. I had a feeling that Pierre, who was sitting there grinning, had put him up to this. He had the stereotypical snobbery that people often assign to the French. Sometimes it’s just the accent, but sometimes, like with Pierre, it’s well placed:

“Everyone knows there really is no comparison to French wine.” He said, “However, perhaps Chile comes second place.” Even if true, the way he delivered it just sounded pretentious.

The lamb was tender, and even the baby got a piece to gnaw on, which everyone thought was hilarious. I offered everyone wine from a USD$4 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that I had bought – even the cheap wine down here was pretty damn good. We talked about dams, which everyone was against – but everyone still wanted more stable, cheaper electricity. Just for fun, I asked if they had Internet, and much to my surprise they had it at the library – additionally Esmerelda was excited to tell me that in April the tiny town was going to get high-speed mobile Internet. And so the disparate villages of earth get connected; whether by fiber, by copper or by airwave the net of information is seeking out all nooks and crannies of the planet.

After dinner Pierre showed us a slideshow from his trip to Antarctica using a DVD that the tour boat had given him. It turned out that they weren’t even his pictures, but still very cool and for a moment, although perhaps it was just the wine, I didn’t find him as annoying. After spending some time reading by the wood stove, I retired to my room alone which seemed to disappoint Pierre, and fell asleep in my floral cave.

The next morning I was woken up by the delightfully rural sound of chickens outside my window. The clouds had broken and the sun had brightly lit the back yard and surrounding lush hills. I went downstairs and entered the kitchen at the exact same time as a duck entered the door opposite from the yard.

“Aaah, Tomas el pato!” The father clapped, much to the joy of the little boy. The duck flip-flopped past the wood stove, to a bowl of grains that they’d laid out for the family’s favorite farm friend. Before leaving us the previous day, the moody bus driver, had told us he was continuing to head up the coast today and we could join him. Not knowing when the next ride would be coming through, I’d agreed to join him and so had Pierre. He promptly rang the bell at 8:30am and looked at his watch impatiently as we boarded.

The local buses also function as an easy way for locals to send items to other towns so on the way out of the village we picked up some boxes of various fruits and some dried goods. As the bus picked up a few more people here and there, I was happy to see how friendly everyone was. A young boy came onto the bus and sat down next to the same old man with a beret that had been on our bus yesterday – they didn’t seem related, but obviously knew each other. I always appreciate the friendliness of small towns, everyone knows their neighbors and says ‘hello’. Rural society is more transparent which means the incidence of sociopathic behavior decreases. Obscurity seems to breed sociopaths; any system, animal or otherwise, intrinsically acts for self if it can get away with it. True altruism is a rare occurrence as it’s not typically rooted in survival or genetic propagation, and certainly takes more effort than just saying ‘who cares?’. OK, I’m sure small towns can drive you crazy too, always being publicly accountable for all your actions, but somewhere between the intimacy of village life and the anonymity of a metropolis is a land of friendly existence. I began to wonder what it would be like if people had endorsement systems, sort of like the was you do on eBay, but in real life:

‘++AAA++ friend. Will hang out again!!’ or ‘Zero Stars! Poor boyfriend. Consistently inaccurate information given. Engage at your own risk!’

I’m not advocating a completely transparent system, of course it’s important to respect privacy, but there’s got to be a sweet spot where people can have the privacy they deserve while not being able to get away with being sociopathic assholes. Forms of this have already begun to happen – slowly – in many areas, from corporate greed to political agenda. Individuals and groups that would like to take advantage of the system are having a harder time doing it, thanks mainly to the transparency and communication that technology heralds. Chile, like any other country, has a political history rife with power plays and tactics for misleading the populous through deceit and manipulation. And then there’s the US’s involvement in Chilean politics, that aimed to bring down Allende’s pseudo-Socialist government in lieu of Pinochet’s rough dictatorship, that went undisclosed for 30 years. Some people might argue that the way to profitable peace has got to cost a little bloodshed, but ever the Utopian, I believe there’s got to be a cleaner path.

Apparently in this part of Northern Patagonia has an average of 1:1, people:km/sq and the roads are so curvy they’re called caracoles (snails). The next few hours of bumpiness, was broken up into iterations of scenic views and pee breaks until we reached the even more quaint and well named Puerto Rio Tranquilo. It has all the beginnings of a tourist town in the making; a great name, a fantastic view and even some local attractions like caves and rock formations, the prize being the ‘Catedral Marmol.’ or Marble Cathedral. When the road gets paved, this place will no doubt boom – and I felt privileged to see it before it does. It had started raining again but as we got off a few guides still approached:

“Catedral Marmol?”

“Do you want to go?” Pierre asked. Traveling alone is often the best way to travel. You move swiftly and don’t have to submit to decision my committee. Sometimes you even find people that you want to travel with for a while but then, you might decide to go separate ways. Occasionally for no reason other than comfort you pick up barnacles. You gotta know how to shake them. This was my chance:

“You know, I’m sort of still sick, I’m going to find a place to stay. Or going for a walk. Or I might go to one of those restaurants or cafes.” I made sure to offer a spread of my possible whereabouts. As I walked away, down the road, I waved: “See you later!”

I weaved through town and after the usual tactic of knocking on doors and asking for habatacion found a little, warm hospedaje. I still had this lingering cold so after throwing my bags in my room, stretched out in front of the little wood furnace for some cozy reading. I figured what better place than to start futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ‘The Singularity is Near’ than in front of a fire in a rural, disconnected town in the middle of nowhere. The book is close to 500 pages. I also have a few similarly sized Lonely Planet country guides and a slew of other books with me, all in the tiny little device known as a Kindle, weighing in at somewhere under a pound. The battery is good for a week or two or reading and if at any point I need to add a new title to my library, it’s equipped with a global GSM chip able to download a book in under a minute.

Later in the afternoon, it was still raining so decided to continue reading and writing from a little cafe along the main street. Nescafe has Chile by it’s smooth, tanned balls – so far every single cafe offers the rather nasty instant powder accompanied by hot water by default; I’ve only found a few places that offer a real drip or espresso coffee. This cafe doubled as a bakery and as is quickly becoming a problem for me, I couldn’t help but sample an empanada. Empanada’s in Chile are far larger and juicier than their Argentine siblings. I must have joked about the size of Chilean empanada’s for 5 minutes with the bakery owner and her three teenage daughters:

“Tu prefieres las empanadas mas grand, o mas chico?” And I had the cafe filled with girly giggles. “Con salsa picante?” They all liked big empanadas, but the mention of hot sauce had them fanning themselves. I was proud to be able to cause some smiles even with my crappy, psuedo-Italian Spanish.

I walked through and out of town where I had a face off with a curious cow but eventually returned for a homemade dinner of salad and steak with french fries and an egg, for the reasonable price of $4. The next morning it was still raining – not really hard, but hard enough that I found the pictures of the Marble Cathedral more than sufficient and luckily entered town just as a bus was pulling up. Any guess who else was also walking up to it?

“Hola Pierre, I must have lost you yesterday. How was the Marble Cathedral?” He told me how great it was, and how fun and awesome his hostel had been and that I should have joined him; I feigned deep remorse as we boarded the bus.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“You know, I’m not sure yet,” Actually I was going north to Coyhaique, but I didn’t want to encourage him to join. “but I hear that Villa Castillo is GREAT!” Luckily there were only single seats left so I sat next to a skinny man who slept the whole time. At Villa Castillo we stopped and I asked Pierre:

“So what do you think? Are you going to stay?”

“I think I’ll go on to Coyhaique.” And my internal audience laughs and claps as the ‘applause’ sign is illuminated.

When we got off at Coyhaique things got awkward. I should have just walked away, but I just couldn’t bring myself to for some reason. Typically I dislike hurting people’s feelings, even though dragging it out often compounded the inevitable. So here’s how it went: It was raining, I walked out of the small bus station to find the cross streets and consult a Lonely Planet map. By this point Pierre had hung his bags around himself and caught up. We ended up walking in the direction of where a couple of hospedaje’s could supposedly be found. After finding one or two that said they were full, we found a nice old lady that showed us to a snug room for two.

“Separado.” I said. The senora said that was impossible because she only had one room left.

“I’d rather find my own room somewhere then – you can have this one.” I said. As I left the senora said she thought were were together and if it was just oner person, the room would be more expensive. Sheisse! Now I’ve got guilt going! If there’s two things I hate it’s unwarranted expectation and guilt trips.

“I’m going to head down the street.” Trying to figure out the best method out of this situation.

“OK, I’ll leave my bags here and join you, that way if you don’t find anything we can share a room.” Sweet baby Jesus, what the hell!?

He followed me around the block and finally I found a place that had singles for USD$18, USD$4 more than the other place.

“Well that’s more than I can afford.” He said, with his body language already trying to lead me back. I saw my chance. Again.

“You know, I’ve got some writing to do and I think that works just fine for me.” I had to stop walking, otherwise he’d keep moving. “So hey! I’m sure I’ll see you as we head north!”

The best USD$4 splurge ever.

Coyhaique is best described by Lonely Planet as ‘a cow town that kept growing’ and is now actually poised to become a big city of they agrarian industry, as well as a transportation hub. I know that sounds charming, but actually the town’s surroundings were beautiful, however it never stopped raining which made exploring the hills nearby a little muddy. I realized that I had left my super absorbent travel towel in Puerto Rio Tranquil but in searching for it found a poncho that I’d forgot I’d packed, which seemed like a pretty fair trade. I bought some dishtowels as a substitute, caught up on some emails and writing and got a grip of cash at an ATM. I travel with a few ATM and credit cards, distributed in different areas just in case I lose one or get robbed. And then whenever I need to I can dip this piece of special plastic into a wall and get out paper that lets me continue to live. Absolutely amazing! Talk about a technology not to be taken for granted? Some years back, still an amateur traveler I had entered Laos with about $20 in cash, not realizing that the nearest ATM was in the capital 1000km away. That took some creative problem solving to get out of.

I was tempted to explore the cities ‘Emo’ scene, in which a lot of darkly eye-lined and androgynous tweens meet in clubs and then go somewhere for ‘kissing parties’. Maybe a reaction to overly conservative Catholic upbringings? I decided to give the club scene a miss. Instead the highlight of Coyhaique was running into Gunther again, at the town’s center market, who was ravenously eating a juicy peach.

“Hey Gunther, you made it!”

“And so! A truck found me. It had two Chileans in the back. Very wet!” He’d managed to get some peach flesh onto his chin and I had a hard time looking anywhere else on his face. I told him about the club where the Emo’s would be in case he was interested and we parted ways.

The next day – yep still raining – I dreaded hitchhiking so decided I’d stop by the bus station and ask if there were any buses. The girl at one of the offices said there were no buses to Puyuhuapi that day. I asked her where the one out the front was going and she replied La Junta.

“Isn’t La Junta more north on the same road?” I managed to mangle together.

“Yes.” Still no connection.

“So maybe I could ask the bus driver to drop me in Puyuhuapi?”

“Maybe.” OK, thanks for the help there.

I got the last seat on the bus and couldn’t believe my luck – yet again! I sat behind a friendly señora who was making the entire bus laugh throughout the ride. As we headed north the surroundings became even more wet and tropical. This was when I read that this part of Chile gets an average of ~120ft of rain per year, so rather than a string of unlucky weather days as I had thought, this was just the norm. Craggy mountains rose suddenly around us, green outcrops clinging to their edges. Snowcapped peaks melted into slim waterfalls that poured off the rocks, sometimes right onto the road. Ferns and plants with huge leaves reached into the road like giant green fingers, relentlessly trying to claw it back into their possession. Condors were seen flying overhead while the driver avoided herds of cows on the road. I felt like a T-Rex was going to jump out at any moment and crush the tiny bus in it’s jaws. Reggaeton, the country’s favorite music, was blasting out of the radio. Occasionally we’d come across men in orange waterproof outfits, trying in vain to keep the road together as water poured from every crevice. Even when we hit a pothole and the back doors exploded open causing all our bags fell out into the mud, there was humorous camaraderie as we worked together to get them back inside, securing he doors handles inside to a handrail with a rope.

I used my iPhone to take turns trying to decipher the thick Chilean accents and listening to a pretty intense audiobook about the social structure and behavior of courtiers of the 1500s (trying to read on the Kindle surely would have led to me vomiting over the nice senora). I tried to imagine how utterly ridiculous our connected world of information and devices would have seemed to Cristopher Columbus or Sir Walter Raleigh; a white tablet that contains the text of a small library; a piece of plastic that can cause a wall to eject money; a pocket sized device that can translate languages, talk to me, record pictures and even communicate with others at great distances . And all that before blowing their Victorian minds with my netbook, a device capable of uniting them all and connecting to anyone else in the world invisibly. I certainly would have been proclaimed a sorcerer and been killed in a classically grisly way. Luckily however, things are a little bit more progressive these days, and the future we face, if indeed we can get there without destroying ourselves first, offers us an social existence based on ubiquitous communication and mutual growth, and most likely augmented by a layer of technology that helps achieve and maintain this.

The bus continued it’s bumpy sprint down the caracoles. I couldn’t help but feel lucky that I’d missed my boat and ended up in this cultural moshpit, happily moving with a crowd of strangers on a wave of the moment. I didn’t really know where I was getting off, I didn’t know where the next jarring bump was going to come from or indeed, what was going to happen next at all – but one thing suddenly became clear – I enjoyed the unexpected so decided not to head back to Argentina like I had planned, but instead to the the old, Chilean fishing island of Chiloe, home of tiny deer and mythical forest beings. Now that sounds like a good story

The Fitz Roy Mountain Range, near El Chalten, Argentina (See all the pics…)

Somewhere after the second kilometer and third mangled desert hare I began to wonder if my minimally researched, impromptu hike into Chile was a good idea. I was in the No Man’s Land between the Argentine and Chilean border checkpoints, however this wasn’t the first No Man’s Land that I’ve had to trek across. In truth, it’s not even close to being the most intense either. Hands down, that prize goes to the five mile wasteland between the Kashgar and Kyrgyzstan checkpoints, traveled only by truckers and thoughtfully sandwiched on each side by border urchins waiting to con you in a myriad of deceptive ways. And I was in a tuxedo at the time.

All of your past experiences provide vistas of perspective in the present moment. This is nothing new, in fact, in retrospect, it’s a habitual intention of mine. I admit it, I find it hard to say ‘no’ to absurd, embarrassing or sometimes even apparently dangerous ideas – just as a means to stuff this experiential envelope. Besides traveling for six months in a tuxedo, which included hitchhiking through Islamabad during the 2007 siege of the Red Mosque, this compulsive behavior has been leveraged by my caring friends in diverse and creative ways; in 2009, a pack of 20 girls and guys dressed in drag for the Pasadena Doo Dah Parade, the goal being to create an awareness for the human trafficking and sex slave business on behalf of Amnesty International. We had a loosely arranged skit (with our ‘male’ captors selling the ‘females’ to the audience to raise funds) and our group was sandwiched in between a high school marching band and a dance troupe, both of whom had obviously put great effort into practicing. The entire experience was so distinctly uncomfortable; an unpracticed routine, the wide eyed expectation of onlookers (including innumerable children), being ‘sold’ to the audience (one of whom invited me to a back room of a cafe– luckily, I was able to escape, ripping my fishnets in the process) and all while my body was clad in a gold bikini, my head was adorned in a blonde wig and my mind was in a particularly non-lucid state. I was also rather overweight at the time and had a ragged beard. The shear and intense bizarreness of this surreality is now the high-mark for my tolerance of social discomfort. Now, when anything gets ‘weird’, it has to get pretty damn ‘weird’ to usurp the title from that day at the Doo Dah Parade.

OK, so why was I not continuing on my planned path north through Argentina to Bariloche? In two words: Marie Fredriksson. Marie Fredriksson was the lead singer from the Swedish pop duo Roxette, and sang such 80′s hits as “Listen to Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love”. As soon as we left El Calafate, the driver of the plushly appointed bus exclaimed “We need some music!” and for the next 3 hours Roxette’s music videos played back to back on the multiple TVs. It was a combination of the cushioned seats, abundantly provided alfajores and the nostalgic ballads that made me think ‘so far, my trip has been a little too easy’. However, before resorting to any radical and sudden change of plan I decided that I would go to El Chalten and hike some of the famous trails that weaved around the surrounding Fitz Roy mountain range. After all, I was already on the bus headed there.

As we approached El Chalten, it was hard not to feel the cliched-since-2005 sense of “Holy crap, that’s so ‘Lord of the Rings’!” Dark and jagged, the unrelenting peaks humbled the little village below, and with Fitz Roy’s summit hidden in clouds, it was understandable why the indigenous people had feared it. Besides a few side streets that had the typical and comical mishmash of architecturally diverse houses, the town was basically centered along one street. It turns out that much of the tourist infrastructure, still being built, was slapped together in 1985 in a bid to beat Chile to the claim of the land. I was happy that while still obviously expanding from the tourist influx, El Chalten still had a strong underlying vibe of its frontier village roots. Many of the fences looks like they’d been around for quite a few winters and when I found my hostel, the Albergue Patagonia, I was happy to see that it looked like it was a converted farm house. The wind was so strong that at times all the lodgers, who congregated in the common area, would look towards the roof with just a hint of concern that it would fly off at any minute. More than a couple of times throughout my stay I feared that the windows were about to shatter inwards, hailing me with thousands of shards; such are the winds of El Chalten.

I was assigned a comfortable bunk bed which reminded me of the five years I’d spent sleeping in one at English boarding school, aged 8 onwards. I would always joke with my fellow travelers that since they were on top bunk, they better not wet the bed. They’d laugh, not knowing that I was serious; many a boy on the bottom bunk fell victim to the nocturnal incontinence of the boy on top, which always resulted in a cruel public shaming at breakfast. I was also given a little basket in the kitchen which I filled with all sorts of delights for breakfast that I’d bought from the local supermercado (which wasn’t really that super, but fine for basics; eggs, cheese, dried sausage and bread). I also finally visited an artesian confectioner where I purchased some little jars of jam and dulce de leche.

The next morning, fueled by the joy of sugary spreads, I began a hike up to Lago Torre, which offered stunning views of the surrounding mountains and a glacier. It was about 5 hours round trip and while the glacier was no Perito Moreno (I feel I might be saying that for some time, when faced with the world’s lesser glaciers) it was a scenic and simple hike. I’ve been listening to a fantastic audiobook, the unabridged version of Sam Harris’ ‘End of Faith’. It’s truly mind-blowing and contains ideas that I will no doubt explore in the coming weeks. Every now and then I’d pass a hiker coming the other way on the well worn trail and usually my chipper ‘hola’s were greeted in kind. On the way back, I stumbled upon John, an English backpacker who’d been at my last hostel in El Calafate and who was camping his way across the world. He looked quite wet.

“Hey John, how as last night?” I asked, not mentioning my cozy hostel out of sensitivity. “Were you warm enough?”

“Oh, yeah, not bad mate.” The Brits are so charmingly, stiff upper lipped sometimes. For a moment I imagined the flapping opening of his drenched tent, with socks and a hiking map floating on top of a puddle where his sleeping bag had last been seen. “A bit wet of course, but it could be worse.”

“Alright, well stay dry, old bean!” We continued our separate ways and I felt like an idiot for calling him ‘old bean’.

Every now and then, other hikers would pass by, sometimes even in groups, with not an utterance or even an acknowledgment of mutual presence! Honestly, what is wrong with some people? I know when we were young that we were all told by our parents “Don’t talk to strangers!” but like picking your nose in public and crying to get attention, that is a trait that should be left behind as you mature. Unfortunately many people seem to carry this instruction into their adult lives, existing their time away in invisible little bubbles and interacting as minimally as possible with the big, scary world outside. I always smile to myself, but secretly I want to grab them and force them to say ‘hello’ back. Can you imagine their faces, when their disengaged stares explode into primal focus upon meeting my crazed eyes: “Say hello dammit! Say hello to people!” I would shout, sealing this moment into their memory forever with a maniacal laugh. Would it be socially inappropriate? Absolutely. Would it get them to say ‘hello’ to people in the future? Maybe. Or more likely it would turn them even deeper inward and make future walks in the woods a source of great fear. I propose that the rules of responsible trekking should be carried into the world; don’t put yourself or others in danger, don’t leave a mess behind and be friendly goddamit. I kind of expect this behavior in the city – but in the middle of the mountains. Come on people.

The next day I awoke and made myself a delicious breakfast of eggs, bread with rich spreads and a double cappuccino. As is customary about an hour later I went for a relaxing poo and after a short while emerged simultaneously with the fellow from the stall next to me.

“Aah. Nothing like a morning poo.” I joyfully remarked. I used to be rather embarrassed to move my bowels in public toilets. But I distinctly remember one of my friends asserting that I should behave quite the opposite: “I take special pride in producing a loud and vicious attack on the senses, and then, after emerging, I smile proudly at anyone who looks my way.” And so, since then, even the restroom hasn’t been off limits to my social exploits.

“You are completely right. Fantastic!” He agreed, smiling broadly. And so I met Egil Aslak Aursand Hagerup – a young Norwegian man brimming with infectious positivity. He had just arrived in El Chalten and happened to be on the bed above me: “I don’t usually wet the bed.” He grinned.

The day was rainy but Egil suited up and hit the trails, while I decided to stay in the snug confines of the hostel to write. After a few hours indoors, having penned the first outline of my emerging manifesto, I decided to explore the outside, even in the poor weather. I got about 20 minutes from the hostel facing an onslaught of horizontal, piercingly cold rain when I realized that I wasn’t just cold, but I was extremely wet under my jacket.. Apparently the cheap shell I brought had lost it’s waterproofing so I lamely headed back to the hostel and made myself some hot chocolate.

Some time later I emerged from a nap, ready for some dinner and a smiling, freshly showered Egil greeted me with a small espresso cup full of whiskey.

“Try it. It is surprisingly good. It has a warm after taste of rich pete.” He waited until I began to sip, “Imagine you are a ship’s Captain, looking towards the land!” As it turns out, Egil was a fellow writer, in fact he’d been a journalist, turned political and social satirist and had the joy of words.

We decided that after the harsh day’s trekking (perhaps I had slightly over-exaggerated my attempt), we deserved a good dinner – and what better idea than parrilla, a platter of grilled meats. The rain had subsided so we ambled down the street to the restaurant and then ordered a Guilmes beer while we waited for a table; Guilmes is the Argentine version of Pabst Blue Ribbon, i.e. it’s really not very good.

As the dinner was served, featuring a thick grilled cheese slice and a giant mound of meat cuts, including the best morcilla (blood sausage) that I’d ever sampled, we left the typical traveler banter behind and energetically projected our discussion down the path of ideas, metaphors and life experiences. It was truly shocking how many things we had in common. He told my about his strategic and iterative life experiences, I told him my thoughts on vector shifts and serendipity. We talked about our favorite TED talks and how memes spread through society (in fact, an article he’d written had created a national review of Norwegian mechanic’s estimate procedures!) so I told him to pick up a copy of Seth Godin’s ‘Ideavirus’. I explained the simple teachings of Buddha and how that helped them spread. We talked about large life goals and the crucial next step of crafting a real path to achieving them over time.

“Michelangelo didn’t get stressed over a block of marble.” I said. “He’d just chip away over time. In his own words: ‘I don’t create the sculpture, I just remove the excess material.’” OK, I wasn’t sure if those were his exact words, but it got the point across.

Finally I outlined the parallel that all of my projects seemingly had with my current state, and as it evolved, so did they. Most centric to my personal progress is the continued development of Mindshare.LA. When Adam Mefford and I founded the event in 2006, it was a vessel for meeting people and having fun. It’s next iteration in 2008 was to become more reputable, both as an experience and as a brand, while continuing to attract fantastically intelligent and diverse attendees. Now looking forward, I explored my next iteration with Egil:

“I feel so surrounded by amazing people and inspiring ideas – occasionally to the point where I feel like I could drown in possibilities.” I continued, “Of course this is not something I want to escape from, rather, I simply want to learn how to negotiate it. Besides the logistical growth that my absence sparks, it’s time for Mindshare’s next iteration – and I can see how that looks, by observing my own.” The morcilla darkly glistened at the end of my fork, which I now held like an orchestra conductor’s wand. “I don’t need many more new people in my circle, of course there’s always room for more, but that is no longer my main objective. Now I need to be strategic, to leverage and be creative with the wonderful people that I’ve met in order to achieve mutualistic gain.”

“So how would Mindshare parallel this new objective?” Egil asked, obviously hoping I had an answer, or at least a satisfactory first step towards an answer.

“The community that we’ve created needs to evolve beyond a monthly get together of back-pats and ‘see you next month for another night of enlightened debauchery”s and begin to more deeply engage itself. If we can figure out a way to do this, then it could break it’s banks as just a monthly event and start to become more deeply effective.”

“I want to start a Norwegian Mindshare!” Egil exclaimed.

“I’d love to help you to.” I smiled.

The breadth of people you meet while traveling is obviously a striking cross section of the world’s privileged and progressive citizens. It’s also often, but certainly not always, a good filter for connecting a similar psychographic. Ultimately every traveler is searching for something. I suspect for many it’s an escape from the dull routine of their lives home. These young souls will likely return to a job that they don’t really like until they save enough money for their next dose of escape. Many others however are searching for answers, by exploring the world outside they hope to discover the world within. Such a goal is certainly made less nebulous when you begin to try to define where you’ve come from, and then project where you want to be, chipping away excess material until the unique sculpture of your existence reveals itself.

My last day in El Chalten was clear and bright. My bus out of town didn’t leave until 11pm so it was the perfect day to hike to the high lakes that lapped against the steep inclines of the sobering Fitz Roy mountain. Egil and I had met a cute girl from Buenos Aires that morning so convinced her to join us on the 8 hour round trip journey.

“I’m not really an adventurous type.” Miranda warned.

“It’s not so steep.” Egil said, knowing full well that it was the most arduous circuit around town.

“Yeah, we’re both pretty slow.” I added, knowing that we both occasionally liked to sprint until our lungs burned.

We milled around town for breakfast, Miranda ordered the most decadently delicious slice of pie that I’ve ever witnessed; a thick layer of chocolate formed a shell over the top of an even thicker filling of dulce de leche, all of which the crumbling crust struggled to contain. Eventually we put some snacks in out backpacks, filled out water bottles and headed up the trail. The hike was exhilarating, and took us across vast valleys, past crystal clear lakes and through verdant forests.

“You see that?” Egil asked, pointing to the tufts of lichen that hung from on the bark of many of the trees. “We call it Forest Beard! It only grows when the air is exceptionally clean.” The air was indeed crisp and refreshing and cooled us as we climbed higher. We took breaks to share snacks and take pictures, and eventually, after crossing rushing streams on creaky bridges and walking through countless old river beds, we reached the base of the final ascent – known to be the most challenging part. Miranda was a little nervous that she wouldn’t make it, but we told her it wasn’t too bad (having no idea) we’d just need some more cookie-power.

“My brother was in the Army.” Egil grinned, getting ready to bestow some Norwegian wisdom: “They told him that when he thought he’d given all he could, he still had 80% of his potential power left!” If true, that was a truly exhausting fact.

Soon after the first quarter, Miranda said she’d catch up, as Egil and I pushed on. We weren’t worried about her, it wasn’t too cold or windy and there were other hikers around. I was too breathless to talk much but muttered something about being amazed that someone had arranged large rocks into an impressive staircase at a particularly steep switchback. At that point, Egil, who was significantly more fit than me began telling me about his trip through Peru. He told me about the exactitude of the Inca structures:

“They didn’t have wheels, they didn’t have iron tools – but they brought giant boulders from many kilometers away and ground them into perfect geometric shapes by hand. Can you imagine the patience?” The facts were amazing anyway, but the energy of his delivery further emphasized it. He continued to describe the sun temples which cast perfect shadows and then finally, the sad plight of the Inca at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors. After that the conversation went south to Bolivia where he’d negotiated the salt flats and avoided piranha in the rivers of the Amazon basin. After a while, we realized that we’d lost sight of Miranda some time ago. We were about 10 minutes from the top and had been moving quite fast.

“I think the mountain has claimed her” I joked, not overly concerned.

“Lets wait for a while..” He said, more compassionately. After a few minutes we saw a little brunette head appear from behind a rocky outcrop below.

“Miranda!” We shouted in unison, while waving our hands.

“Hey guys! How much further?” She shouted back. From this distance it looked like she was smiling, but in reality it was almost certainly a grimace of pain and exhaustion.

“We’re like 10 meters from the top!” I exaggerated. “So close, it looks awesome!”

When we finally reached the top it truly was stunning. Two dark blue lakes had formed in deep crevices that the jagged, snowcapped peaks had created. The grandeur of the Fitz Roy mountain, the tip of who’s peak always remained clouded as if hiding a mythical castle or beast’s dwelling, loomed high above. The valley that we’d trekked through for the last five hours spread out below like an earthy tapestry. Had that really taken five hours? Wait five hours?

“Holy crap, what time is it?” I asked. It was 7pm.

“Yeah, I’m worried that we’re going to have to head back in darkness!” Miranda said.

“Oh damn. Guys,. I have to jet, or I’m going to miss my bus! I haven’t even packed yet!”

“OK, lets start heading back…” Miranda said – even though I know Egil, being an experienced and prepared mountain hiker, was in no rush.

“I’d rather say goodbye now than lose you on the trail, I think I’m going to have to run!” We said our goodbyes amid large boulders, in front of a grand mountain. A memorable goodbye indeed!

I shoved some remaining cookies in my mouth, put on my iPod’s pumping ‘GymFest’ playlist, tightened my shoes and braced myself for the challenge. I weaved past the lake towards the top of the steep trail. It was impossible to run, but I skipped, hopped, slid and slalomed down. I took extra care on the slippery, and now impressively dangerous, steep stairs but finally reached the bottom intact. I jogged across bridges, through old river beds, around lakes and through forests.

I avoided muddy puddles (most of the time) and scared the hell out of a few meandering hikers. I could imagine it from their perspective: a 220lb, red faced and thoroughly sweaty man, hurtling down the peaceful trail towards them. No time to explain people, I have a bus to catch! (Although please note, I still managed to puff ‘hola’s to all of them!). At times I’d even imagined I was being chased by forest beasts to spur myself on. I only allowed myself a few breaks to catch my breath and to take pictures of the afternoon sun-lit Fitz Roy range was at its clearest yet.

I was impressed! I made it down the village in 2 hours and 15 minutes. I got to my hostel around 9:15pm, and then learned that my bus wasn’t until 11:30 anyway! Hardly a close call but it had still been fun. I had a beer, peeled the socks off my feet and had the best shower of my life. I ate a leisurely dinner and headed to the bus, perfectly on time.

As the packed bus pulled away in the darkness I pulled out a 1/2 full bottle of Malbec and struck up a conversation with Johanes, a humorous German who as traveling for 6 months across Asia and South America. We were the last two people to have purchased tickets and so were stuck next to the toilets. The smell was terrible and people knocked his shoulders as they pushed by. We laughed, except he laughed slightly less; while I was getting off in the morning in Los Antiguos, a small town on the Argentina-Chile border, he was continuing to Bariloche, a further 20 hours away. The bus rattled so hard that we played a guessing game of which sleeping tourist would be the next one hit with a backpack that had dislodged from the overhead compartment. We wondered how long it’d be until the inactive TV finally shook free from its screws and created a serious litigious circumstance. Eventually the wine took hold, I said goodnight to Johanes and slept for almost the entire rest of the journey.

The next morning, I said goodbye to Johanes, who was looking far less fresh, and continued on to Los Antiguos. A few other travelers who were taking a similar path decided to head straight into Chile and invited me to join them. Instead, I decided to stay for a night and get myself a bit organized before hopping over the border. I had a good sleep at a charming hostel near the border checkpoint, changed money and had to write some serious email responses to the teams back home. I might be absent but I am still number one at putting out petty fires of miscommunication and keeping people focused.

So it took a 3 mile trek with my bags across No Man’s Land, a surprisingly friendly but somewhat confusing border experience linguistically, and a lucky hitchhike for a further 4 miles into town to get to the Chilean border town of Chile Chico, or ‘Little Chile’, cute name, right? There’s not a single other tourist, just a quiet town with colorful houses on the bright blue Lago Buenos Aires. Absolutely no one speaks English – it’s hilarious to try to negotiate things with mangled verbs and generic nouns – but what better way to learn other than full immersion? Right now I’m sitting in the living room of tiny hospedaje (budget inns, usually run by a family or a kind old lady) on a side street that I found after walking around for an hour and knocking on doors. I got my own room with fresh sheets for USD$17 a night. It’s 10:44pm and the family, consisting of 50 year old parents and a young girl of 14 are eating a hearty soup dinner in the kitchen with homemade bread. There’s a loud Spanish soap opera blaring on the TV. Our interaction is polite but minimal and as I write this I can’t help but feel like a quiet voyeur of their lives. There’s an unbelievable view of the lake, but the only place that can see it is a corridor upstairs. My design sense wonders why this seems to be the prevailing technique for most of the houses here. I guess people would rather be adjacent to the activity that the street? I spent the day writing in an empty restaurant and walking around the tiny town. I found some fantastically fresh sopa de mariscos, a mix of delicious seafood suspended in a rich broth. Tomorrow I am catching a boat at 7am to the other side of the vast lake to start the next part of the unprescribed adventure.

So far, Argentina travel had been a little TOO easy so in an effort to create some more unpredictable circumstances (i.e. something other than bus –> attraction –> bus –> attraction) I’m about to head off the grid for the next week as I head up the Carretera Austral – a lovely but desolate mountain road that winds between lakes and farmlands. Since I haven’t been able to secure a motorcycle yet, I plan to hitchhike my way north for the next few hundred miles – from there, well, I’ll see when I get there.

So in the coming days, as I stick my thumb out on dusty farm roads, it’s only fitting that I should hum a certain inspiring song I heard recently:

Listen to Your Heart!