BA

Concrete jungle.

An Epic Adventure

Tucuman to Salta. Fields of sugarcane, canes strong and tall under the gravity of rain-laden clouds pushing down and trapping the heat and humidity of an overworked sun, concocting a sweetly perfumed greenhouse effect. Sugar. Lemons fallen from atop mounts of cargo, strewn about the side of the road, cracked skins heated in the sun, citrus vapors exciting the olfactoral sense. Lemonade. Three bikers riding into the belly of a tropical forest, climbing with each kilometer into a green growing denser. Fresh mint. The last hours of the day riding from Tucuman into El Indio (a national park) reaked of Mojitos. Not a bad start to an epic ride that I was promised would be nothing more than a short 4-5 day tour. Thankfully and luckily, as I was in good company, it took 11.


The team consisted of: Will, John and myself. 

We all have similar bike stories: challenge-seekers who left one world behind; friends, jobs and homes in search for the fortuitous adventure and tranquility that some of us can only find on the road. The road in common just happened to be the Carretera Austral. Trite as it may sound, travel-cycling epitomizes the well-known saying the journey is the destination and each day we arrived to a new, surprise destination.

Surprise!

The first evening´s surprise destination was a riverside campsite on private property where we were given permission to set up camp. We had a dip, a bottle of wine and a chat with an amiable Argentine who had an interesting habit of pluralizing every noun and warned us of serpents and bandits. I´ve never met a people who are so wary and distrusting of their own people. Fortunatly when they ask if I´ve had negative encounters with their fellow Argentines I get to respond: to the contrary.

Over the next few days the road lead us over two of the greatest passes we had climbed thus far, both reaching over 3,000 meters and starting from little over sea level. The first, twisting and curving like the sinuous trail of a snake in the midst of a sweating, sweat-inducing (even the bikes were sweating) tropical forest dropping us off in the quaint town of Tafi de Valle where I encountered a true sense of community.

On our way up El Indio

It had been a fun climb, up and down and always back up again surrounded by the living, breathing forest. Heading out of Tafi de Valle and into an amazing pastoral landscape, we were lucky to find church grounds at the top of a hill; a place to save our souls and set up camp.

The next day riding into a mezmerizing cacti "forest", the road promised us one enchantment after another, I was in no hurry to get no-where.


As we pedalled north, traffic dispersed and tamed down to the occasional passer-by that gave us a toot or a thumbs-up, boosting spirits to lift and push us further on our way. We traded the clamour of the cities for the whistling dragon´s whisper of the wind over the land, the disorientating squacking flocks of parrots, the cockadoodledooing roosters (South America's alarm clocks) and the now-and-again donkey´s cry. The question we posed ourselves before laying down for a night´s rest was: Which animal´s going to keep us awake tonight? Bird? Rooster? Dog? Drowning cat? Or donkey?

I guess: dog, almost everytime.

Everything changed the further north we rode. The culture warmed as we drew closer to the equator, faces deepened and darkened, creases at the corners of the eyes like a hand-held paper fan stemming out from permanently squinting eyes to keep the sun and sand out. Wrinkled, leather-skin hands that welcomed us and offered with huge generosity what little they had. An unparalled generosity and a calmness within. Maybe this had been the true destination.

Llama or guanaco, was the question posed and paid for with a candy.

In Valle de Colalao we met an old lady who ran a modest B&B who permitted us to set up camp in her front yard. We arrived at the end of the siesta hour (it´s a long one) and were sat out front at a table enjoying a snack after a long ride when the woman first appeared groogy and dishevelled, in the front door of her house. She retreated and then returned. Upon first impression she seemed temperamental but when she walked directly over to our table and landed me a kiss on the cheek offering up both hands in a friendly shake around the table, that impression was blown out of the water by the serenity she inspired in all. She embodied tranquility. As we negotiated prices she gazed off into the setting sun over the river falling quickly behind the Andes.

This was her sunset.

She didn´t care how much we paid and didn´t mind when or if we paid up. Later, when I asked to have a shower she showed me the way, turning on the hot water, she took my dusty, greasy biker hands into her own and washed them as if it were the most natural gesture in the world. The warmth of the gesture, the water and her aura filled me with a sense of being. Her calmness was contagious, something extinct in big cities, something I wish to carry with me for the rest of my life.

Red peppers drying in the sun.

Again we rode off into the next adventure, not knowing what each day had in store for us. We rode with leisure, arriving to and resting in small town plazas each early afternoon; Cafayate, Angostaco, Los Molinos, Sedantas, Cachi.

We would ride a couple of hours through beautiful desert, then stop and have a picnic, beer and a rest in a small town plaza before riding off into the late afternoon. These days following the old route 40´s wine tour, were ridden in pleasure and there was no shortage of wine, we carried a bottle at all times.

We zipped out of Cachi in a flash, one late afternoon after being held up by the repair of 2 flat tires (mine) in a hurry to make any bit of leeway on the 50 km climb we knew we had ahead of us the next day, no time to think, just ride. We did 12 km in no time at all and pitched camp in some dry marshlands outside of Payogaso after a hobo spaghetti dinner in a plaza cooked up on a portable camp stove with an audience of locals that got a kick out of those crazy gringo ways.

Our gringo ways.

We set off from Payogasto on the second more psychologically challenging climb that lead us into the wrath of the altiplano high skies. The road sliced straight as an arrow through a painted desert cutting over the altiplano. The scenery evocative of the US Southwest, of my idea of what Central Asia must look like and during one long, strenuous stretch over the plain pushing through a grey-cloud density that yielded less than 10 meters visibility and offered up punishing winds, this stretch was an allegory for my personal purgatory opening a dark door to the back of the mind that I didn´t want to explore, unchartered emotional territory.

Sometimes it takes a bike and some 2,200 kilometers to find and cleanse these spiritual dark holes that each and everyone of us carries within. I could feel the gods laughing down at my insignificance and the futility of my little life, a mere protagonist in a grander Divine Comedy, where my prior vice, pride, "I am my own hero" was being paired with its contrary virtue, modesty, "I am smaller than an ant". I was ready to take responsibility for everything and everyone and plee for forgiveness. "I am smaller than an ant", I repeated numerous times. I think it goes without saying, the ride got very cerebral. Thankfully I had a team that saw me going deep and helped to pull me out.

Here we did a quick costume change from summer to winter riding gear and burned down 3,348 kilometers, it´s cold when you´re going fast downhill!

We reached the top of mountian at the Bishop´s Pass enveloped in the frigid dampness of the storm cloud that hung like drapery over the pass and no matter how forcefully the wind blew would never blow over and dropped all of it´s wet love on the descending switchbacks that cut through the red-green, lush and inundated canyon (I believe it was a canyon-never got a good look at it!) that we slipped and slid down at maximum velocity for what seemed like hours. Riding without a mud-guard, my face and front became a canvas for which Arrow´s tires flung up clumps of mud that would land in one eye temporarily blinding me, handicapping my ability to navigate the switchbacks with already limited visibility, blinking to clear the eye, not foreseeing a hairpin corner, rounding the corner wide, swirving in and out of control, one after another, after another, after another.

After we came out of the cloud the land was red, pink and green, green, green.

If the cloud had cleared and I could have actually seen the drop-off, I might have been scared but as we worked so hard to get up I wasn´t going to let anything take away the exhilaration of that descent. We flew, and even considering that the first 48 kilometers of our day had been ascending, we completed 120 kilometers on the day of our steepest climb!

We stampeded into El Carril, only 30 some kilometers short of Salta, muddy-wet to the bone, ready to eat a circus. El Carril is way off the beaten track, not a single hostel/B&B/hotel/motel in town, so we took second best: a retirement home where they actually had a visiting circus for that evening´s entertainment!

The stinkiest place.

In Salta this team´s ride came to an end. We took a cable-car to the top of a mountain overlooking the city to contemplate the city over some beers, the road that would take my companions to Jujuy and my road, that would lead to Buenos Aires.

We were on an mutual but unspoken mission to drink the night down, it was a 3-bottles-of-beer-4-bottles-of-wine goodbye. The next morning I watched the boys pedal head on into 4 oncoming lanes of aggressive traffic, cars swirving out of their way as not to hit them as we got our last wave goodbye in. Thanks mates for a fantastic ride!

The team in Salta

Senility

Less than 100 km before the accident

The man driving the VW van that hit me at mile marker 1083 on the Panamericana, Route 7 was not fit to be behind the wheel. My world and his world collided for the next 8 hours after he so violently and metallically plucked me from my bike, strewing my belongings across a main highway and flashing my life before my eyes.

The moment happened at a speed beyond comprehension and simultaneously at flickering slow motion. The sounds of metals grinding, pulling, and snapping off my back pannier will haunt me for the rest of my life and cursed me with a temporary insomnia. In the confused emptiness between moments, slides of an old picture film, I thought my friend riding before me had been hit. How I fell to the ground with not a single scratch on my hands nor elbows and how I was plucked from my bike with my feet caged in suffering no real injury to legs nor ankles bewilders me. One moment I was on my bike and the next I was on my feet, shaking, stars dancing round my head, pondering the accident spread out before my eyes, my friend John scampering about in the sort of distressed precision only attained when adrenaline is pumping through the system collecting my belongings and insisting that I get off my feet, bike in shambles with a rain jacket that had been in my back pannier twisted up into a tight knot locking the front wheel, and the old woman who steps down from the VW van in polyester pants with the fly down in bewilderment, the old sunglassed man stumbling around the front of the van in a jittery hysteria, his wrinkled hands were shaking with the realization that his reflexes weren´t what they used to be, the severity of the implications of the accident setting in, the coming to terms with old age and senility. He could have killed me and why did his wife have her pants half down?

The ride back to Mendoza was an emotional sea for me, I felt the gravity of the fragility of life,

The police man´s father´s painting that spoke to me of the ephemeral nature of life

I felt a Mid-west storm brewing up inside, I even felt homesick. I didn´t cry when the accident happened but an hour down the road after an altercation with the old man, which about sent us off the road again, about whether or not we should go to the police to report the accident I felt emotion spill over my body from top down, a hot shower of mixed fury and sadness. I looked out over the scorched landscape from the van of this senile but merciful eldery man who pointed with his unsteady pointer finger in an instructive grandfatherly way to a vineyard and said "uvas", grapes, with a proud smile that momentarily forgot the incident that had brought our lives crashing together. For a moment I even felt a solidarity with him. An enternal floodgate ravaged with burning salty tears was on the brink of complete deliquescence, one got loose and rolled down my cheek, I tasted it as it dropped from my cheek to the corner of my lip.
Salt. The salt from a desert heat sweat mixed with the salt of a life nearly snatched away. The flavor of emotion was immense, like the ocean. Salt.
The telling signs of this man´s senility are too many to compile. We stopped two times on our route to Mendoza letting the trailing car pass succumbing to his deeply set paranoia that couldn´t shake the prospect that we were being followed. This man´s cloudy, paranoid perception of the world left much to be misunderstood. Life and it´s labyrinths were utterly befuddling to him. After having sat and waited nearly 30 minutes in the Mendoza police station to file our report, he escorted me to use the restroom at his house only a few blocks away, upon re-entering the police station he had absolutely no recollection of the office. I was able to convince him that it was the same place we had just been but he continued to infer that everything had changed, that maybe it was the same room, but that meant that the desk wasn´t here before etc, etc.

The afternoon stretched out into the darkness of the night, a dizzying circus of hospitals, clinics, police stations, his house, Mendoza difficult to navigate due to a taxi barrier blocking all the main roads in protest to the death of a taxi driver shot down by a youth earlier that evening. We were instructed to go to the Lujan de Cuyo precinct which goverened the stretch of road where the accident occurred. Arriving to Lujan de Cuyo after dark,I was famished: I had ridden 70 kilometers, been hit by a car and not eaten for hours, I crammed a chocolate bar in my mouth and finished the exhaustive process of reporting the accident wrapping up shortly before midnight. To my luck there was a kind, young police officer who invited me to stay at his house in family´s spare bed where I had a beautiful dinner on a back yard terrace and a place to rest my tired bones.

Dead tired

Thanks to all who have given and expected nothing in return.

The police officer who so kindly took me in

I am My Own Hero!

Los Andes to Mendoza. I started out an a set of 2 wheels and finished with 4. If I were a cat I´d have started out with 8 lives and finished with 7, lost my first one in a car accident in the mountains outside of Portland. Los Andes to Mendoza is a ride that I will never forget. I walked away from the first day´s ride my own hero. I don´t know if I´ve ever really been able to say that to myself: "I´m my own hero". It didn´t matter that not a single loved one on the planet knew the challenge that I was taking on that day, this one I did for myself. Arrow and I burned up that rocky cliff at the end of the day, after having already done 50 km! I arrived to the bottom of Los Caracoles around 4:30 looking up at my challenge trembling with fear and excitement. I was already exhausted, would I be able to finish the climb or should I wait? I knew waiting would mean a restless night at the bottom taunted by the neumatic hissing of the trucks and semis downshifting as to not loose control in their spiralling descent, besides I had an itch to get it over with, so I set off. I can´t count the number of cars that stopped to ask if I wanted a lift, a snack or a drink; biting my toungue I refused them all taking only their praise as I was there for the climb. I reached the peak as the sun was setting looking out over my accomplishment: a sense of complete satisfaction knowing that I never could´ve climbed that 2 months ago, I´d come a long way. I got an A+ for the day and arrived to the top asking: Who´s gonna buy me a beer!?

As is my luck in Chile, I was kindly taken in by a group of Chileans construction workers working on mountain pass tunels temporarily living in a motel at the top. I asked for permission to pitch my tent outside of the motel for protection from the awakening wind and descending clouds where the workers were staying and was invited for a sandwich and coffee at the posh ski resort hotel across the road where I was effortlessly absorbed into their warm and welcoming world. Invited to eat with the kitchen staff in the staff room, I devoured 2 dinners and quickly ran off to my tent to rest my tired bones. Less than a half an hour passed before I was retrieved from my tent by a lovely girl who insisted that I share her dorm room for the night as her roommate was away in Santiago. She kept me up late with the story of her life and I left my tent an empty shell on the frigid mountain top.

A triumphant climb

The next morning I started my day off with a hotel breakfast, again on-the-house, an array of fruits, breads and eggs to fuel my legs up the last stretch of the pass. The land was barren at best, no sign of life, dark, rugged, spikey rocks and tunels that wove in and out of the mars-like terrain plastic bottles filled with piss littered the roadside. In less than 24 hours I had gone through a green village with an Andean mountain backdrop, deserts/canyons into a lifeless dark ominous land with tempremental weather. I felt little on my bike amongst the towering giants. That was my last morning in Chile.

I no more than turned a corner, came out of a tunel that I was escorted through by a truck and it was rock and roll, sunny Argentina!!

I broke 70km/hour on my bike for the first time riding down into the sunny pink and orange mountain setting of Argentina, the side of the Andes that doesn´t get as much rain. I flew through the small town Las Cuevas where I had wanted to stop and do a hike not daring to break such a speedy descent.

Puente del Inca

After one full day of upward climb, nothing could stop these wheels now...well almost nothing, I saw 2 cyclists standing at the entrance of the national park Aconcagua, they seemed to be waiting for my arrival. Serendepity. I found friendship where it was least expected. We hit it off immediately. We had in common the Carretera Austral. I rode with John and Will the next two days into Uspallata and out the next day until I got ran over by a senial man driving a VW van. ***CRASH!!!***

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Wheels in Motion

The view from Cerro Campanario

Where to even start...I´ve lived a life and lost a life since the last entry. I´ve biked all the local Bariloche circuits, was taken in by an amazing Argentine woman living in the quaint valley town Colonia Suiza, who set me up in a cabin of my own for the price of pitching a tent because she said she respected what I was doing, included me in outdoor BBQ dinners, shared her spice cabinet, her friends and social life and asked for nothing in return.

I was warmly welcomed by these 3.

I lived it up for 3 days biking in and out each day to local lakes, never having to repeat a lake nor a ride, swimming in water so clear that a goggle mask wasn´t necessary. I opened my eyes to the underworld. I flew back into Bariloche on a silken smooth paved road at record breaking speeds begging that I get pulled over for speeding on my bike doing 68 km/hour in a 40! Vroom, vroom!

This is what I get to look at for hours!

Took off for the 7 Lakes on Route 40 from Bariloche to San Martín de los Andes starting out in Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote land, cacti and sandy inspiration, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqGhIftKrno&feature=related expecting that at any moment a roadrunner would jump out and burn aspalt before my eyes followed by the notorious, malnourished rabid Wile E. Coyote. Roadrunners are no joke here, they really exist, I run with them! It was this trip in which the bike and I really bonded. She´s got a name now: Arrow. (Name that music reference!)

115 km down, 75 km to go!

I was so filled with joy as we rolled round one of the many long and winding roads of the Lakes District, the road dipping and falling off the horizon and into the mirror surface of the lake reflecting mountains and green that I caught myself singing aloud, stretched my arms out and felt like a bird. "Me and my arrow, straighter than narrow, wherever we go, everyone knows, it´s me and my arrow". Riding into San Martín de los Andes was a dream come true: my first big ride on my own and a long nice downhill stretch into the lakeside town, the weather was perfect. A smooth landing that merited a moment at the top of the hill looking out over the lake to the town on the other side to contemplate the ride, the lake, los Andes and how this experience has changed and is changing my life.

Los Andes. Aconcagua. Los Caracoles. The next ride (apart from the little wine tour jaunt to Maipú)

was Los Andes, Chile to Mendoza, Argentina, a decision made on the spur of the moment. The attraction to this ride was magnetic and couldn´t resist the challenge. Plugging back into the backpacker travelling circuit of Mendoza I found that I no longer related and hitting the road for me meant something entirely different than it did for them. Everyone had just been bus time-warped from Santiago to Mendoza on their way to Buenos Aires or greater distances. The buzz was all about the bus: semi-cama or cama, where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been travelling. Everyone on a mission to fill their passports with stamps and squeeze all of the juicy vivacity of South America into whatever time frame their life back home permitted them. Life through a camara lens. I enjoyed their transient companionship but found myself looking for someone who could speak my language.

Bikes and wine go well together!

I sought out fellow cyclists feeling the pull of the road and the pull of Mt. Aconcagua, the 2nd highest peak in the world which rests a mere 180 km from Mendoza. The challenge was sexy. I knew I had to get closer. I wanted to get high! The morning that I was about to set off, still not knowing where to, but certain that those decisions would be made accordingly along the road (another liberty to riding on a bike: no tickets, no booking, no itinerary) but playing with the idea of climbing the pass, La Cuesta Junca, that cuts to the south of Aconcagua, a German couple rolls into the hostel with their pannier laden bikes and I immediatly feel a sense of solidarity, a connection. "Where are you guys coming from?" The first biker quesiton. "Puerto Natales" and from there the conversation goes down like the smooth Malbecs of Mendoza. Our breakfast table covered in maps, dark dry and weather-beaten fingers stemming from white sun protected palms (the biker glove tan) carefully trace out past routes, roads that take on a life when you ride them, feel them, eat their dust that builds up in your teeth. The roads like veins, the map an X-ray of the land we´ve come to know so well, stories run rampant. Their eyes are filled with sun and light. Before I know it I´ve overstayed checkout and am being reminded that it´s time to go and I haven´t even had time to get their names yet and there´s so much left to say. Sooo much left to say.
I leave in a haste and as they´ve done the pass that´s got me roped in 10 times I take their advice and instead of doing the slow gradual climb up the high mountain pass from Mendoza and flying down to Los Andes I opt for a bus to Los Andes so that I can turn around the next day and climb the dramatic 29 switchbacks covering more than 11 kms of the side of a barren rocky mountain cliff known as "Los Caracoles", the snails for it´s winding pattern which from above the ribbon of a road diminishes into the depth of the climb, the first switchback now just a thread of road, semis and buses like ants weaving back and forth up and down, a madness of dizzying movement. On the bus the day before the ride I survey the road noting the climbs, availability of water, firewood, I locate towns and mark distances. When the bus wraps around the first descending switchback and the steepness of the climb I´ll be doing the next day is revealed my heart sinks, what have I got myself into?

I took this picture the day I climbed with the bicycle.

Nearly a 2,500 meter climb in one day, that´s what I´ve got myself into! Not having known I would be back in Chile, I arrive to Los Andes with Argentine pesos, at dusk with no place to stay and a bike to reassemble! If there´s one thing I´ve learned from travelling on bike it´s to be quick, on my toes and to improvise. I get a room, I have dinner, I set off the next morning at 9:30, wheels in a constant upward motion.

There´s my little Arrow!

A la deriva

I passed my last days in Chile "como un bote a la deriva en un gran lago aparentemente tranquilo pero agitado por corrientes profundas" (Ernesto Sábato). Like a bottle without direction, at the mercy of wind and water on an ostensibly tranquil lake agitated by deeper currents, and suitingly so, I´m surrounded by lakes.



I find myself in the penumbra of an old life/yearning and a new beginning. The world passes me by on a different clock. Purpose, responsibility, obligation. Tick. Home, shelter, love. Tock. How do I continue to elude all of these equations?


A plan to ride solo: first Bariloche to San Martín de los Andes, if all goes well Mendoza to Córdoba, it is the only way to keep with the plan: to find love and happiness within, not seeking it out in others but inspiring it; self-investment, self-improvement.

Chaitén, a metaphor for what lies behind. All of Patagonia metamorphisized. Words, names of places which will never ring the same again. Puerto Natales, a beginning to an end? The beginning of a journey, a challenge with a geographical and emotional topography. Chaitén, the end of the road, the marking post of 911 kilometers. How uncanny is that, I completed my part in a duo ride with an emergency: 911. Coincidence? No. Irony? Yes. 911, it´s a call to my personal 911 call center, the operater tells me what I already know and the only thing I know how to do, which is "Hit the ground running" (I prefer the Smog version of this song).

Whoever ever stated that distance makes the heart grow fonder never lived the experience of distance. Feist whisper-sings in her sulky, heartrending voice that "distance makes the heart grow weak", estranged. Spot on. Love sores scab and scar to remind us of the burn, what could have been and wasn´t. In distance we mythologize those from which we´re separated, they become a collage of nostalgic memories and imagination. With time the colors of memory fade and the mind struggles to retrace the silhouette of the distant loved one. A sketch becomes a sandy blur, a hazy clouded sky.

This time round my partner was an upmost respected friend whose calmness and young wisdom humbled me to a self startling meekness. With it all on the line I felt defenseless. Bambi. Desamparada. I took what I could get and would´ve given much more than what was taken. Paralized in my inability to bounce back and be my strong and confident self, I did take what I could get, a gift given: the bicycle as a form of travel. New spectacles through which to see the world. A 2-wheeled liberating gift given by a brain changer.

Gracias.

The End of the Carretera Austral

Can you find the cow?

Ruta 7

Alas we´ve completed the Carretera Austral, having commenced in Villa O´Higgins and following north the more than 1,000 kilometers of pure, rugged, natural Chilean beauty our wheels have come to a halt after nearly 6 weeks on the road and a 7 hour boat ride, motion is the sound of the ocean, here in Puerto Montt, Chile. Bikes on ships

March 15th we road the last stretch of the Southern Highway into Chaitén, the end of the road in many respects. Chaitén was once a quaint village of 2,000 people marking the first northern city along the Carretera Austral, it´s now a deserted Pompay in action. May 2nd 2008 this town was ravaged by a volcanic explosion of the Volcano Chaitén situated a mere 10 kilometers outside of town, it was the first blow in more than 9,000 years. One disaster lead to another and days later the River Blanco, choked with pyroclastic material created lahars that then re-routed the river´s course redirecting it through the already devastated city of Chaitén resulting in catastrophic deluges that left deposits of ashmud of up to a meter high.

The unmanagable Rio Blanco

When we arrived March 15th after having passed the civil guard checkpoint, nearly a year after the eruption, this is exactly what we encountered, a ghost town haunted by the few unyielding and stubborn stragglers that have found purpose and definition in their fight for the right to continue inhabiting, against the Chilean governments forced evacuation, Chaitén, a town literally sitting on a smoking fuse, and where there is smoke there is fire. There were no cars going in the direction of Chaitén, only oncoming traffic, speeding trucks loaded with belongings perhaps of others. The day we rode in, kilometers before arriving we could see a dark sooty cloud mingling with the less ominous wispy storm clouds and the two of us surmised that this could be from the left over mountaintop ashfall being blow about. Worse, much worse, that thing was lit and that copper cloud was coming straight from earth´s rumbling insides! It was burping up balls of smoke and fire the whole day we were there and you can see it from the main drag of the disasterous, ash covered town. The silence upon entering Chaitén was eery, the mounds of diluvial ashmud covered streets absorb sound and in a town without electricity there are very few sources of the everyday whitenoise we are all virtually immune to. Silence. Devastation. Time to contemplate.

Home sweet home for some.

The town was without water and electricity. The few defiant that stayed behind resided precariously and depended on fuel guzzling generators to supply them with a few hours of electricity after sunset. When the generators went off at 10pm I witnessed a darkness unknown to modern cities.

First impressions: the white ash banked river whose liberal, undefined course threatened, the ocean´s horizon stretching out into a sandy white and further into the distance the light arctic blue sky faded and bleached sinking into a grey distance, the ash covered tombstones that survived the flood no longer stood proud but bowed down,

Buried twice.

the silent-stricken women burning the belongings they wouldn´t take with them nor leave behind in a sizeable front-yard bonfire the Chilean flag haphazardly draped over their chipped white painted picket fence that spoke of better days, the looters climbing into second story windows using 2x4s propped up against the house, the barred windows of the prominent civil guard trucks that were installed to ward off looting and general chaos, then there were the nuts, who stubborn as goats wouldn´t leave and had been essentially camping out amongst the rubble for 9 months.

We met Nicolas, a Canadian born citizen masquerading as a Chaitén local.

Nicloas showing Ryan the volcanic explosion that happened the morning we arrived.

He sought us out introducing himself to us in a gringo accent as a Chilean (an accent that he should work on if he wants to be at all convincing), born and raised in Chaitén and left with no other option than to fight for the only life he ever knew and loved. He told us the conspiracy therorist souped-up version of the recent history of Chaitén spinning a yarn that the government wasn´t investing in the reconstruction and clean-up of the current Chaitén site because they were hoping to depopulate the town and open negotiations with the Canadians for the exploitation of gold mining in the surrounding mountains, not taking into consideration that any sane and responsible government wouldn´t want to sink money into a town that was sitting on a smoking bomb and later have the international community scorning them for putting citizens in harms way.

Ground zero

Ummm. Turns out that Chile offered replacement compensation for all of the families who had inhabited Chaitén and I later discovered that in the last month they have also begun constuction of a "New Chaitén" a mere 10 kilometers from the current one. But for some, there´s no place like home... But home for Nicolas was Canada, why did he lie to us? The man reaked of martyr complex and seemed to have chosen Chaitén as his fight, can´t help but to draw a more extreme comparison to Adam Gadahn, the American-born al Queda Islam convert who also found his battle in another culture, in a foreign cause, in a far away land. Does the monotonous and unworked for complacency handed to those in the first world inquiet the soul that needs purpose? Does one need something to fight for to give life meaning? I´ve found time and time again on the road, Americans, Canadians, those who come from the overly materialistic world, from generic cultures to seek meaning and spirituality in the richer cultures (more definable) of the world, a growing epidemic?

Chaitén has left its place in my mind. Destruction. Life squeezed out. The ash hasn´t dispersed, my mind is clouded. It was and is the end of the road, this road at least.