Yo! I’m back, folks! Back from the brink, and by that I mean I no longer wake up wishing that this was all over but have reached a numb acceptance that it will be in the not-too-distant future and so I can drag myself through the sweat and the dirt and the fatigue for the remaining months. Trust me, it’s a big step. But the show must go on and there are always treats and remedies…
First a quick hello to Remy and family from our stop in Curacautin. I hope the wallet is being looked after now, folks : )
At the Chilean-Argentine border we were told by the police that we could not have new tourist visas unless we actually went to Argentina, a two day walk, but that we could renew our existing ones for free in any large city. I had my doubts but we went along with it. So there we were in Los Angeles, waiting to see a little chipmunk lady who was every bit the civil servant; she had that bureaucratic air of authority that the school secretary or the lady at the doctor’s surgery has. She listened to our tale and said we had to pay $100 U.S. We explained we’d been told by the border police that it would be free and she said we had to pay $100. She phoned the border police to check and then said we had to pay $100. We paid $100. Apparently paying $100 still takes two days to process but that was no bad thing because, as I later realised, we were in a city (I realised it was no bad thing, not that I was in a city. I knew that I was in a city). Los Angeles is not filled with dreams like its Californian counterpart, nor is it pretty or a stop for tourists but it is full of people going about their business and it has that perfected mix of worn out yet vibrant that this country does so fantastically well. Mostly though, after 16 days in the wilderness, it was a city. As much as I came out here to be in the middle of nowhere, and as much as nature’s works here can astound, it turns out that the hum and thrum of humanity doing its thing is also necessary for my sanity. Not a big shock seeing as I come from a pretty big one but yes, sometimes I need to be in a place what man has made. Seems I need you monkeys more than I thought : )
Still, out to the back of beyond it was to be again because the smaller the road the more fun (sic) this walk is. Tarmac is rough, it has many cars and it causes blisters. Trouble is, the smaller the road the worse our map is at recognising it. What we have, courtesy of Shell, seems to have been drawn up by Maddo the Cat and his friend Oinky the Forgetful Pig: half the roads that are actually there are not shown, making every split in the road (there are few if any signposts in Chile on the back roads) a possible two hour excursion to nowhere, and we took plenty of those; that plus many of the ‘towns’ shown on the map turn out to be nothing more than half a shed, or a donkey’s hoof, or a bale of hay etc. We were in the mazes. But even though at one point we were ten minutes away from drinking yellow puddle water due to a non-existent map river it remained a pretty cool leg because of the road itself: pine forested to the hilt and for the most part a gliding, rolling, snaking and eminently hikeable (i.e. not 1,000 metres high) series of lanes and tracks on which you could never see more than 100 feet ahead. It was part two of the healing regardless of a few miss-turns. We’d gotten lost on the Bio-Bio ‘road’ (which I should say was largely spectacular), most notably on the day we walked 20 miles under the baking sun and over plummets and climbs that make your average rollercoaster look as tame as sitting in Sainsbury’s car park, only to camp at the very same spot as the night before. THE VERY SAME! That was the day my brittle spirits shattered into a thousand pieces, stranded in the sand like a thousand baying turtles on their backs (bear with me, this analogy fulfils itself)..
The pine forests mean that we now share our natural habitat with spiders. Big, mean spiders. My first real encounter of the whole trip was a couple of weeks back: I’d woken in the night gagging for the loo and so popped outside to have a nice wee out of my willy, lazily leaving my tent undone. As I fumbled back into the tent in the darkness I felt suspect legs on my foot and flicked them away thinking it was no more than a insect but switching on the lantern just in case: Nothing to be seen until…over the crotch…one leg, two legs…no more than that as I bashed at my own nob to get it away. When I chased it into the corner and saw it for real…”Christ!” Angled front legs like the arachnids from Starship Troopers and great yawning jaws like a Predator were staring back at me. The flip-flops were drawn and they cannot be sheathed until blood is spilled. It was his. Happily though, he was not one of the chaps we nestle with now. No, now we see daily the man’s-palm-sized tarantula-style whoppers that should I find in my tent I would happily die rather than face the situation any longer. Big. When I first saw one from across the road (he that is photographed below) I was intrigued and impressed with my resolve when close; when Matt pointed out that one was just under my feet I screamed like a girl and bounded away, my nerves in tatters for the remainder of the day. I believe this is the textbook response.
What we have done though, is made our way to the sea; the real sea. I said we’d seen her before at Niebla near Valdivia but in truth that was just the mouth of a big river. Sure, we could see out but not like this: unspoilt, rugged bays and coastline with the Pacific waves simply pounding in like thunder at all hours of the day. It is wonderful. In truth she is the thing that has brought me round on the walk (you see, the sea…it came in and rescued the turtles..oh, nevermind). It’s like being in a different country and every time the road strays close it is akin being able to breathe after a bad cold. I’ve adored the mountains but I belong next to the sea. You see, I was born in the sea, the issue of two shipwrecked but randy lovers who clung unto that plank for nine months until I could be raised by the noble porpoises. I can still speak a little porpoise (eh? Clever, eh?). Our first real coastline town was Cobquecura, a place which a friend googled and said, “looked pretty desolate,” and she was right but we camped there at a smart site with a pool and hung out with a brilliant salt of the earth Chileno family who roped us in and treated us to anything they had. I’d like to think that we English would react so well to random foreigners at a campsite but I doubt it.
Two days we stayed there and each night we could hear a roaring sound from the sea. “It sounds like jet-skis,” I said, knowing that a surf comp was on about five kms away, “but sometimes like herds of cows?”
“Cows on jet skis,” Matt concluded satisfactorily, but journeying north we came across the source, a huge rock out to sea that was crammed with sea-lions, the fat bastards simply shouting as much as they can at the sky, the water, each other; pretty cool unless you live close by. We’d actually heard a chap lose it and start bellowing back at them the night before but what? What can you really do shouting at 100 sea-lions. If you spoke porpoise then maybe…Next up was a cool church made out of a massive rock and a hundred miles of mostly nice coastline but a whole new breed of super mosquitoes that are just too fast to catch and leave me with bites that feel like gunshot wounds. Nice.
Some way over 2,000 miles now folks. Pessimistic mathematicians (great fun at parties) will have worked out that our original target of 3,650 is unlikely to be reached and was likely a little ambitious for two novices. This is probably because of a few too many (well-earned) long stops in the good towns but I can’t say enough how simply knackering this walk has been so don’t be too hard. I’m going to get one of those little motorised carts when I get back. Haven’t always spilled the guts on the miserable times as it doesn’t make fun reading or writing but they do stack up. We’re now doing a full 15 miles each day to catch up and definitely hope to hit something over 3,000 miles which I hope you can all still consider A Good Effort.
We’re now in Constitucion, so named for the class of starship that the original series USS Enterprise is of. The city was built in 1968 after the first series aired and the people here generally dress in Star Trek uniforms, idly wandering the streets and re-enacting their favourite scenes from the show. I’m just off to watch a man (as Kirk) fight his Nan (as Spock) in a mock-up of the transporter room from the classic episode ‘This Side of Paradise’. You should check it out. See you there…
Hey, congratulations to John & Mel for getting married in January. Yay!
Ciao for now. Love you, byeee x x
Rob
Matt & Rob's Big Trek 