Go to Chiloe, the Alchemist told me.
...
I remembered much later.
Picture taken in Castro, Island of Chiloe, Southern Chile on December 29, 2010
I crossed the mountains at night, said good-bye to Argentina and came to a town called Los Andes, in the central Chile. The following day I travelled 707 kilometers in seven different vehicles. To the usual question where I was going, I would answer Punta Arenas, or as south as possible, or Antarctica, it did not really matter to me as long as I was on the road.
That night I camped in the corner of one gas station in Los Angeles, and would have probably slept much longer if someone from the workers would not have knocked on my tent-door at half past seven - the boss was coming and it was better for me to leave.
I got stuck for a while trying to get a ride near Temuco – but the wait was worth it, the truck that pulled over was going all the way to Puerto Montt adding 350 kilometers to my road record. I looked at the map – the highway number 5 was passing through Puerto Montt, ending a few hundred kilometers further south on one peninsula.
“Where do you want to go in Chile?” the driver asked me.
“I was thinking to go as south as I could, but if I believe my map then I should get off at Osorno and go to Argentina instead,” I replied.
“And why is that?”
“Well, the road seems to end just a bit further from Puerto Montt – there would be no point for me going on that peninsula.”
“What peninsula?”
I pointed on the map that I had, but my driver rejected it, pulling out from one of the drawers a much better one. What I had called a peninsula was actually a good size island called Chiloe. I also saw the possibility to continue my journey on water if I managed to hitch a ride on a vehicle going there. I also saw smaller roads continuing all the way to Punta Arenas from Chaiten. To get there I would have had to travel to the southern end of the island in Quellon and find a way to cross the water. Surely it was more challenging than going to Argentina - I wanted to try. The driver wrote his name, Jaime Palma, on the cover of the map and gave it to me as a present.
MY ROAD TO CHILOE:
Start from Mendoza, Argentina on December 26,
First arrival to Castro in Chiloe, Chile on December 28, 2010
The same night I came to Castro, the capital of the island, travelling with Gonzalo, a 36 year old truck driver working for a factory that transformed fish waste into fishmeal – the smell in his truck was hard not to notice. Gonzalo had a tattoo of his ten year old son Moses written on the inner side of his arm. The guy had come to Chiloe for a month, and stayed for good. He even warned me not to receive food from the local people, especially “filled potato” and “milkao”, two traditional pastries from the region. That he spoke from personal experience for when the girl, now his wife and mother of his son, had offered him a “milkao”, he had forgotten the way back. Curiously so that same day I tried both of these – in fact it was Gonzalo himself who invited me to try the “filled potato” during our half an hour boat trip.
I personally was not intending to do much more on the island than cross it, find a boat and continue south. Still before that I needed to sleep.
I felt it had been a very long journey, but surprisingly so it looked like day outside – the sun was high up, the sky was blue. What was the time? 10 PM? Did it not get dark here at that hour? The cathedral on the main square was full of people – it was December 28th, and the Catholics were celebrating the Day of the Innocent. I waited till the end of the mass admiring the interior of the building – the fine woodwork of the coating was surely noteworthy. In fact the church looked a lot like the majestic marble churches I knew so well from Europe, only that this one was made of wood. Later I learned that the cathedral in Castro together with fifteen other churches of Chiloe was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The priest had a kind face, he asked me to wait for a moment, while he went to speak to two ladies and when returned told me to follow them. The women did not interact with me, did not ask questions, but quietly took me up the street, turned right at one point, and just before the turn climbed the stairs of a hostel called Don Miguel.
“We were sent by the church,” they told the woman who came to open the door, “do you have a room for the night?” Receiving a positive answer, they paid 7000 pesos (1 US dollar = 475 Chilean pesos, 1 Euro = 653 pesos), and left. I did not expect that, I thanked them of course, but felt like wanted to appologise, rewind and make it clearer to the priest that there would have been no need to spend anything.
Yet when a few minutes later I was shown to my room, my physical tiredness won the battle over the feeling of guilt and I felt happy to have the luxury of sleeping in a bed and not having to be worried about drying my tent in the morning. After a short rest, I went downstairs to meet my host. The lady of the house was very friendly, asked many questions, offered me a strange pastry, which I later learned to be the mysterious "milkao" that had a power to tie people to the island. She also gave me shampoo to wash my hair, did my laundry and allowed me to use Internet to reply to all of my unanswered emails – this activity took me until the early morning hours.
When I woke up, it was December 29th. My intention was to cross the island and try to get a ride on a boat from Quellon to Chaiten. The only money I had was 2000 pesos which I had found on the road that morning - I wondered if it would be enough for the ride. Was it a lot or a little?
Today it is March 6th, 2011. My location continues to be Island of Chiloe, Southern Chile. I am again in Castro.
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