The Andes from the Caretera Austral.
Okay, so my screen play has gone into hibernation, and there's no coaxing it out. So I will wait, knowing it's springtime will come. I will not give up on this, even though at the moment it feels like it must have died, it's so absent from my heart's grasp.
So back to sharing a few unpublished stories from my first visit to Patagonia in 2006.
Perla.
I have taken over a week to wander down from Santiago, the capitol of Chile, to Puerto Montt, the famous gateway to Patagonia. I've traveled by train and bus, stayed in a eucalyptus forest with a vet, ridden the historic silver, battered,two carriage train on a single track beside a raging river, lodged in a Tyrolean type cabin close to a volcano, and now am en route to the very far south of the spine of South America. I'm heading for the Parque National Torres del Paine. Chile is a long thin country.
Puerto Montt, Chile. March 2006.
I make the call from the bus depot. I'll guard your bag says a friendly woman.
Is that necessary my eyes ask hers.
Be very careful around here she says with intensity.
What does she know I don't know, I wonder?
“Yes!"
The deep slow hesitant voice sounds strange on the other end of the phone.
“Yes, room free, one person? Perla not here, she back soon. You come ten minutes ?"
“I’m on my way.” I reply slightly apprehensively.
My guidebook says Hostal Casa Perla has a charming garden and it’s a good meeting place. No mention of a psychopath landlord. I’m a little worried about the voice.
The taxi takes the longest possible way to get to Casa Perla which is actually just a stones throw from the bus station. Hey ho, maybe he has a wife and ten kids to feed.
The owner of the hostal, Frederick with the strange voice, opens the door and I step into another world. I’m shown my room then he beckons me into the kitchen which looks like a film set for a 1930 'immigrant' sitcom.
I watch silently as Don Fredrick positions his stiff elderly body horizontally onto a long wooden bench. Then awkwardly, rearranging his thin legs, he lights a cigarette and stares vacantly at the antique wood stove which is also the cooker. Perla will be here soon he tells me.
I examine my room or rather my library with a bed in it.
I seem to have landed in a junk shop that also sells paintings and books. Every surface is crammed with interesting objects and the walls are covered with Frederick’s stunning paintings. Later I find out that this cultured talented man, Perla’s husband, was a well known artist and an academic before he became the victim to a stroke.
The couple have hosted visitors from all around the world for the last 18 years, and the garden, as described in the guidebook, is pretty.
Perla arrives.
She is a small stocky Chilean woman of European descent with diminutive features and a turned up nose. She’s about sixty. Most of her brown hair has been shewn off. She looks German to me. I ask her. No ,no she says. My grandparents were German. I'm completely Chilean, please!
Perla loves to read and she loves music.
Too chubby to be likened to a pixie, but pixyish in her darting eyes and quick movements, she’s a kind of hyper active sprite.
I think I may have invented her! Is she really real ?
This four foot ten energy ball is a collector of art, but she’s tired of guests. She's fatigued by one-night passers by. Fed up changing endless sheets, and bored by questions about Patagonia. A wearied hostess fueled by the need to put food on her own table.
“I’m going down town in five minutes, get your bag and come with me, I’ll show you the shopping malls” she says.
Shopping malls? Do I look like a shopping mall sort of person?
Perla reminds me of a very bossy, very kindhearted Dutch friend in Spain. I'm a little bewitched.
"Come come.” she orders, and off we scoot to the top of the hill where we will catch a “collectivo."
The collective taxi's (collectivos)operate by demand. You flag one down, climb in, wedge yourself in , tell the driver where to stop, pay about 50 centimos and off you go. The taxi will carry up to five passengers and shopping. Each taxi has a number on it's roof.
When we arrive at the shopping Mall, Perla tells me to catch a number 5, or 55, or 25, or 75, home.
“Stand by that skip over there,” she says. “Wave, and one will stop”.
She disappears.
Puerto Montt is a port city, steeped in pioneer history, the gateway to Patagonia, and the home to a very active underworld, so the guidebooks warn. It is not advised to walk alone around the harbor after dark.
It’s 6.30pm, getting dark.
I am a bit freaked I’ll forget the number of the taxi and where to stand, so for the next hour while shopping and browsing I chant and mutter to myself “skip, skip 55, or, skip skip skip 5/5/5. I also have to remember the name of the crossroads where to get off, which is Cruce Trigal.
The shopping mall is vast and full of harassed mums with noisy kids. It’s on three floors.
I buy some supplies from the food store for tomorrow’s journey.
On the second floor there’s a shop full of treasures from India. It’s an Aladdin’s cave bulging with glorious things. This is retail therapy at its best, and I didn’t know I needed it.
I wonder if Perla is a tiny bit clairvoyant?
When at last I get into taxi No 55, it’s pitch dark.
I am the fifth and last passenger to squeeze in. To my horror I find myself totally tongue-tied and unable to get a single word out of my mouth. The taxi speeds off up a hill. Eventually, Trigal becomes Tigal Trisal Tiggle, nobody helps me.
Finally I must be getting close to it, because somebody says,
“Oh Trigal! Cruce Trigal!”
“Cruce Trigal” everybody in the car repeats in unison, in a bored kind of a way.
I feel extremely stupid for a moment. But really it’s all hilarious in the bigger picture of my strange and wonderful wandering exploring life.
The taxi stops and I roll out into the middle of the road. Horns hoot. Cars swerve by. Clutching my treasures from the wondrous Indian shop, and my food supplies for the next days journey, I stagger “home" to Perla.
Perla tells me she will leave breakfast for me in the kitchen as I have to be at the airport by 6am. She's not in the mood for more conversation. Breakfast will be a flask of hot water, instant coffee, with bread and home made jam.
The hostal goes to bed early. All lights seem to be out by 9pm.
I think I'm going to be sleeping in the last guest's sheets !
The bed is hard. I don't mind.
I'm happy.
I'm safe. My angels are always with me.
I'm in Chile, about to start a great love affair with the country, though I don't know this yet.
Tomorrow at dawn I'm flying 2000 miles south, to far away Punta Arenas. My mission is to find a particular mountain and a particular turquoise lake. I've been bewitched by a photograph of both, for over two years .
REAL Patagonia is now just hours away. My mountain and my turquoise lake are three days away.
I had wanted to go south slowly, by boat, it's a four day journey. But recently one of the two boats sank. My maritime dream plunged with it.
Still, I have no hurry.
Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday. ~A.A. Milne
"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe."
~Anatole France
I wish you a wonder-filled weekend.
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