The Last Two Weeks: Southern Chile
The last two weeks of my three month stint in South America were spent back on home turf, revisiting some old favorites in Southern Chile after a couple days of a Chiloe island adventure. I arrived in Puerto Varas from Bariloche, staying with a friend made on my previous trip with Dale. We shared excellent food and conversation, and I finally made it to Frutillar and got a peek in at the lakeside concert hall and some famous Frutillar strudel and cake to take home for dinner.
The reason for the jitters was an email I had been waiting for for months, an email that would determine my life for the next two years. The email, when it came earlier that day, informed me of my nomination to work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Community Organization and Economic Development in El Salvador.
El Salvador.
It never even entered my mind that Peace Corps would send me somewhere I have lived before, somewhere I know. The whole idea of Peace Corps that got me excited was gallivanting off to unknown parts of the world to live with a community to learn and to effect change, albeit at a micro scale, working to better the world. El Salvador was a finished chapter of my life. It was one of those revolutionary chapters that turns everything on its head and shapes the rest of the story, wonderfully written and of the perfect length; it wasn't one I ever thought to develop further. So when I received the nomination, I couldn't smother my initial feeling of a bit of letdown. Even Guatemala, right next door to El Salvador, is a vast exciting unknown to me. It isn't even that I profess to know everything (or even a very little bit) about El Salvador, it was merely the fact that in my admittedly limited travels, I had touched down in the country and the fluttering butterflies of a new adventure weren't there.
I hesitated.
I talked myself over all of the pros and cons of going back to El Salvador. For a start, running water in rural areas is basically nonexistent, and all water must be considered contaminated unless boiled. That and the vicious bugs are some of the unfortunate daily realities, but not too hard to adapt to, on the whole. The sense of danger (the perception of all Americans as rich paints a solid target on my identifiably gringa face, and gang violence is fairly common regardless of nationality) and the necessity of traveling with a chaperone or in groups was also something I got used to - it kept me alert, rather than frightened. It was hard during my internship to see the terrible lack of opportunities for anyone in the community, to see girls think they were worth nothing, to see boys plan their illegal journey to the United States, to see the older generation mentally and physically scarred from years of brutal civil war. Life is hard, and change is slow.
It took the night and the next day to accustom myself to the idea of a return to El Salvador, as I gradually got over my little immature spat of wanting everything to turn out exactly as I imagine it in my head, and I began considering the opportunity that had presented itself to me. Although I was looking forward to learning a new language, I can do that on my own time (and I want to learn Portuguese anyway, and none of the Peace Corps countries speaks Portuguese) and fluency will make integration, communication and efficiency a thousand times easier and faster. I have an idea of daily life in rural El Salvador, and as I became convinced that I would accept the nomination, my mind whirred (and still does) with project ideas for my community. I also have about a thousand books that I want to read before I leave, about everything from community organization to the Salvadoran Civil War to Cold War US Foreign Policy (my thesis topic, and an incredibly interesting area of study both from a historical and political perspective) to economics to Central American history. I have some connections in El Salvador, and I certainly care about the people and about bettering their lives, especially given the negative role the United States has played in Salvadoran history and economics. My biggest realization, and the reason I sent my acceptance, was that I absolutely care about those people in that country. There are communities like Guarjila all over Central America, and if I can see the seeds the Tamarindo Foundation planted in me effect even the smallest change in another community, it will all be worth it.
I couldn't keep all my whirling thoughts out of the drum circle, but whether it was my entreaty for clarity of thought and purpose thrown out into the night, or the slow ticking of time pushing everything into place in my mind, my decision was made the next day and all jitters and uncertainties banished. I dedicated my attention to my last two weeks in Chile.
I convinced a friend studying in Valparaíso for the semester to extend her Holy Week vacation from two days to ten (hey, the point of study abroad is to understand Chilean culture, after all!), and we met up in Puerto Montt on March 28. Our plan was Chiloe, Puerto Varas, Pucón, Chillán, Rancagua, Pichilemu, then home to Valpo by April 10. Given that this plan was made the night before we left for Chiloe, and primarily based on the fact that I had friends in most of those we did pretty well sticking to it. After a few excellent meals (my Chilean friend is an awesome cook, and she taught me how to make some delicious salmon), some cheesecake brownies, and a mini tour around Puerto Varas with a Chilean friend, we packed our packs, bought some supplies (peanut butter and chocolate most emphatically included), and hit the road. Rather than pay the buses, we opted for the "one finger discount" - hitchhiking.
Chiloe was our first stop and after a quick succession of short rides, we made it to the ferry, took a few pictures, and were off the other side and on the road again. From the ferry to Castro, a trucker heading down to meet up with his girlfriend and her daughter for the night ready to load up the truck with salmon in the morning, took us in one shot. Our bags reeked of fish smell as we headed into town to get a look at the purple and yellow church and the palafitos, stilt houses. Evidently I missed some spectacular food, primarily curanto al hoyo (a huge mix of seafood, meat, and potatoes cooked over hot stones) and chapaleles (4:15 on the video, a mix of crude and cooked potato and pork rinds), but we stuck to making our own food and picking wild blackberries.
Both nights in Chiloe we camped on the edge of lake Hullinco, freezing the first night after a cold supper, then warm and content after some pro fire starting skills allowed a delicious spaghetti dinner while watching the sunset the second night.
We spent the second day doing little walks in Chiloe National Park - to the beach with the cows, along boardwalks in the swamplands, up to dune lookouts to the ocean. Flora is flora is flora, and neither of us really needed to attempt the 25 kilometer hike along the coast deep into the park to a campsite with no way out except the way in to see more of the same. We asked about making a loop through the park, but evidently only the one trail is actually marked and cleared. We weren't about to try going off-trail, either; a guy got lost and was wandering around for a month in the woods and swamps eating bugs and plants until he was rescued by hikers in high season. After running into some other kids studying in Valparaíso, we headed back in the evening to our previous camping spot to pick a big cupful of blackberries to go with our peanut butter while the fire heated up.
Since the penguins had pretty much all migrated by the end of March and we both saw penguins in Patagonia, we left Chiloe without visiting any pingüineras. I'm sure we could have stayed longer and visited some islands, hiked further into the park and had some intense Chiloe local food, but we both were thinking of the dinner we could make with my friend in Puerto Varas and our attempt to spend no unnecessary money on the trip. We made it back hitching, listening to endless accounts of drivers' lives, romantic and otherwise. We did, in fact, make an awesome dinner. Conveniently, blackberries grow all over the place in Puerto Varas too, so with headlamp and tupperware I walked down the street to pick a few pounds of the juicy black fruit while my friend assembled a delicious vegetarian dinner of stuffed peppers. As the cheese melted over the peppers in the oven, I cooked up my blackberries with some honey into a blackberry sauce to serve over ice cream with coffee for dessert.
We left Pucón in the afternoon rain, heading up to Chillán and my Chilean second family. Drivers took pity on us, and we had a hilarious ride from outside of Temuco to Chillán Viejo with two guys who thought better of offering us a ride in the back of their tiny semi, instead ending up with all four of us squished in the front sharing stories and watching the rain blast the windshield for a few hours. Black, dry skies greeted us further north as we walked into town. From the time we arrived to the time we left, we were both completely stuffed. Homemade strawberry jam, endless bread, amazing lunches full of beans and potatoes and delicious spices, the ever-wonderful cheese, samples of boiled piñones and castañas, and amazing manjar-filled walnut cake kept us busy for a few days. We tried to work off a little of the food by playing with the numerous pets (the cats are twice as big as last time I saw them!) and challenging the boys to a game of keep away soccer.
I may have misjudged the time it takes to reach Pichilemu, but in the end we made it on the evening of April 7. Unfortunately my friend only got a glimpse of town before an early morning bus return to Santiago and on to Valparaíso to make her evening camping class. I stayed all day in Pichilemu, watching the waves and wishing a friend a happy wedding, since I would miss the ceremony the next day. The evening saw me back in Valparaíso. I spent a day saying goodbye to the city and friends, then caught my flight back to the United States, barely missing the intense cold spell in Colorado that resulted in a "snow day" without snow.
Now here I am, happy to be back with my friends and family. This is the first trip I was prepared to finish - I loved my time in Chile and Argentina, and I'm glad to be back home in Colorado. The three months was long enough, and I'm excited to hang with my best friends for a while and prepare for my twenty-seven month adventure in El Salvador come July.
The full moon fell on the night after my arrival, and I attended a moon ritual, giving thanks to Pachamama for the bounty offered by the earth and asking the moon to take our worries, requests and prayers. After visiting so many cathedrals in my three months in Chile and Argentina, this was a different experience, more organic and liberating. I have never really understood why churches have to be covered in gold and paintings and sculptures, blocking out sunlight with cold stones and nature with man's artistry. Not that I don't admire the grandeur of cathedrals, but I do so in the same way I might admire Versailles, with the royalty eating cake. Regardless of the fact that I am neither Catholic nor Mapuche, I felt more spiritually awake with the wind tugging at my jacket and the flames throwing ghostly shadows on the drums of the fire circle than I ever did in all the glorious cathedrals of Chile and Argentina. The night was clear and starry, the moon huge on the horizon opposite the lake, and I completely understood the idea of the earth and the moon as living gods, of the unity of souls in the great expanse of darkness under the sky. I wish I could say I felt at peace at the end of the ceremony, but although I could feel my body opening up to encompass infinity out there in the night, reality and worries came crowding back in as the fire with offerings of food and flowers to the Pachamama died down to glowing embers.
The reason for the jitters was an email I had been waiting for for months, an email that would determine my life for the next two years. The email, when it came earlier that day, informed me of my nomination to work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Community Organization and Economic Development in El Salvador.
El Salvador.
It never even entered my mind that Peace Corps would send me somewhere I have lived before, somewhere I know. The whole idea of Peace Corps that got me excited was gallivanting off to unknown parts of the world to live with a community to learn and to effect change, albeit at a micro scale, working to better the world. El Salvador was a finished chapter of my life. It was one of those revolutionary chapters that turns everything on its head and shapes the rest of the story, wonderfully written and of the perfect length; it wasn't one I ever thought to develop further. So when I received the nomination, I couldn't smother my initial feeling of a bit of letdown. Even Guatemala, right next door to El Salvador, is a vast exciting unknown to me. It isn't even that I profess to know everything (or even a very little bit) about El Salvador, it was merely the fact that in my admittedly limited travels, I had touched down in the country and the fluttering butterflies of a new adventure weren't there.
I hesitated.
I talked myself over all of the pros and cons of going back to El Salvador. For a start, running water in rural areas is basically nonexistent, and all water must be considered contaminated unless boiled. That and the vicious bugs are some of the unfortunate daily realities, but not too hard to adapt to, on the whole. The sense of danger (the perception of all Americans as rich paints a solid target on my identifiably gringa face, and gang violence is fairly common regardless of nationality) and the necessity of traveling with a chaperone or in groups was also something I got used to - it kept me alert, rather than frightened. It was hard during my internship to see the terrible lack of opportunities for anyone in the community, to see girls think they were worth nothing, to see boys plan their illegal journey to the United States, to see the older generation mentally and physically scarred from years of brutal civil war. Life is hard, and change is slow.
It took the night and the next day to accustom myself to the idea of a return to El Salvador, as I gradually got over my little immature spat of wanting everything to turn out exactly as I imagine it in my head, and I began considering the opportunity that had presented itself to me. Although I was looking forward to learning a new language, I can do that on my own time (and I want to learn Portuguese anyway, and none of the Peace Corps countries speaks Portuguese) and fluency will make integration, communication and efficiency a thousand times easier and faster. I have an idea of daily life in rural El Salvador, and as I became convinced that I would accept the nomination, my mind whirred (and still does) with project ideas for my community. I also have about a thousand books that I want to read before I leave, about everything from community organization to the Salvadoran Civil War to Cold War US Foreign Policy (my thesis topic, and an incredibly interesting area of study both from a historical and political perspective) to economics to Central American history. I have some connections in El Salvador, and I certainly care about the people and about bettering their lives, especially given the negative role the United States has played in Salvadoran history and economics. My biggest realization, and the reason I sent my acceptance, was that I absolutely care about those people in that country. There are communities like Guarjila all over Central America, and if I can see the seeds the Tamarindo Foundation planted in me effect even the smallest change in another community, it will all be worth it.
I couldn't keep all my whirling thoughts out of the drum circle, but whether it was my entreaty for clarity of thought and purpose thrown out into the night, or the slow ticking of time pushing everything into place in my mind, my decision was made the next day and all jitters and uncertainties banished. I dedicated my attention to my last two weeks in Chile.
I convinced a friend studying in Valparaíso for the semester to extend her Holy Week vacation from two days to ten (hey, the point of study abroad is to understand Chilean culture, after all!), and we met up in Puerto Montt on March 28. Our plan was Chiloe, Puerto Varas, Pucón, Chillán, Rancagua, Pichilemu, then home to Valpo by April 10. Given that this plan was made the night before we left for Chiloe, and primarily based on the fact that I had friends in most of those we did pretty well sticking to it. After a few excellent meals (my Chilean friend is an awesome cook, and she taught me how to make some delicious salmon), some cheesecake brownies, and a mini tour around Puerto Varas with a Chilean friend, we packed our packs, bought some supplies (peanut butter and chocolate most emphatically included), and hit the road. Rather than pay the buses, we opted for the "one finger discount" - hitchhiking. |
| Last delicious piece of salmon before heading off to Chiloe |
Both nights in Chiloe we camped on the edge of lake Hullinco, freezing the first night after a cold supper, then warm and content after some pro fire starting skills allowed a delicious spaghetti dinner while watching the sunset the second night.
We spent the second day doing little walks in Chiloe National Park - to the beach with the cows, along boardwalks in the swamplands, up to dune lookouts to the ocean. Flora is flora is flora, and neither of us really needed to attempt the 25 kilometer hike along the coast deep into the park to a campsite with no way out except the way in to see more of the same. We asked about making a loop through the park, but evidently only the one trail is actually marked and cleared. We weren't about to try going off-trail, either; a guy got lost and was wandering around for a month in the woods and swamps eating bugs and plants until he was rescued by hikers in high season. After running into some other kids studying in Valparaíso, we headed back in the evening to our previous camping spot to pick a big cupful of blackberries to go with our peanut butter while the fire heated up.
Since the penguins had pretty much all migrated by the end of March and we both saw penguins in Patagonia, we left Chiloe without visiting any pingüineras. I'm sure we could have stayed longer and visited some islands, hiked further into the park and had some intense Chiloe local food, but we both were thinking of the dinner we could make with my friend in Puerto Varas and our attempt to spend no unnecessary money on the trip. We made it back hitching, listening to endless accounts of drivers' lives, romantic and otherwise. We did, in fact, make an awesome dinner. Conveniently, blackberries grow all over the place in Puerto Varas too, so with headlamp and tupperware I walked down the street to pick a few pounds of the juicy black fruit while my friend assembled a delicious vegetarian dinner of stuffed peppers. As the cheese melted over the peppers in the oven, I cooked up my blackberries with some honey into a blackberry sauce to serve over ice cream with coffee for dessert.
From Puerto Varas, we hitched up to Pucón, a town that always forcibly reminds me of a ski town. Every other storefront is either an artisan shop or a tourism office. The awesome thing about Pucón is that there are endless activities - hot springs, whitewater rafting, hydrospeed, canyoning, ziplining, trekking, camping, swimming in the lake, climbing the active Volcan Villarrica...and the list goes on. Although we didn't make it to the top of the volcano because of extreme winds, the view from the snow line was incredible and we made friends with our guide, who invited us to couchsurf at his house, made a delicious asado, and gave us a deal for canyoning the next day. Canyoning is essentially hiking in wetsuits down a river, rappelling down waterfalls as they appear in the path. It's not something I would probably do again, but it was awesome to try once. The volcano, on the other hand, I want to summit some year in November when it is completely covered in snow, ready for a thirty minute chaotic sledding descent after hours of climbing upwards to peer over the smoking rim.
We left Pucón in the afternoon rain, heading up to Chillán and my Chilean second family. Drivers took pity on us, and we had a hilarious ride from outside of Temuco to Chillán Viejo with two guys who thought better of offering us a ride in the back of their tiny semi, instead ending up with all four of us squished in the front sharing stories and watching the rain blast the windshield for a few hours. Black, dry skies greeted us further north as we walked into town. From the time we arrived to the time we left, we were both completely stuffed. Homemade strawberry jam, endless bread, amazing lunches full of beans and potatoes and delicious spices, the ever-wonderful cheese, samples of boiled piñones and castañas, and amazing manjar-filled walnut cake kept us busy for a few days. We tried to work off a little of the food by playing with the numerous pets (the cats are twice as big as last time I saw them!) and challenging the boys to a game of keep away soccer.
I may have misjudged the time it takes to reach Pichilemu, but in the end we made it on the evening of April 7. Unfortunately my friend only got a glimpse of town before an early morning bus return to Santiago and on to Valparaíso to make her evening camping class. I stayed all day in Pichilemu, watching the waves and wishing a friend a happy wedding, since I would miss the ceremony the next day. The evening saw me back in Valparaíso. I spent a day saying goodbye to the city and friends, then caught my flight back to the United States, barely missing the intense cold spell in Colorado that resulted in a "snow day" without snow.
Now here I am, happy to be back with my friends and family. This is the first trip I was prepared to finish - I loved my time in Chile and Argentina, and I'm glad to be back home in Colorado. The three months was long enough, and I'm excited to hang with my best friends for a while and prepare for my twenty-seven month adventure in El Salvador come July.
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