The road that goes forever

[Title courtesy of Luke, who drove to Tongoy]

Day 22: Friday, 22 February 2008. I stayed in bed until almost 12pm, under instructions from Aurora & Luke. I was so sick. When I finally rose, we ate a breakfast of mote and two fruits I had not heard of before - pepino, related to tomatoes, eggplant & potatoes, and tuna (said 'toona'; it´s cactus fruit). They were so refreshing!

During a trip to the shops, I played an unexpected game of charades while attempting to describe cough lozenges to a Spanish-speaking pharmacist...

Aurora cooked a traditional Mexican chicken & rice meal for lunch. Fabulous food. We all overate. Luke says Aurora's home cooking was the first thing to get him hooked :-)

Staying with Luke & Aurora is a guilty pleasure for me. They are both super-smart PhDs (physics & ecology) who constantly posit new global theories, and they have friends who are equally intelligent in different areas. I am learning to ask questions again, which is exciting, and at the same time I feel very small.

The night ended with a DVD at Juan's house so that we could also visit the cat who thinks he's a dog, and we had much icecream and chocolate. The rest of the night was spent discussing word origins/relationships, with Luke and Aurora googling and me consulting Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue.

Day 23: Saturday, 23 February 2008. Feeling worse :-(

We were packed and sitting on our hands at home but, as soon as Aurora got the call, we leapt to our feet for the drive north to check on Aurora's latest experiment (in the Parque Nacional Fray Jorge). 'The call' related to accommodation availability. Apparently the rangers don't like you sleeping in the park.

We stopped off at Parque Arauco (that I called Ripley before on the way so I could buy the pair of hiking pants that I couldn't find days before. Here I learned how to buy clothes in Spanish and I purchased a pair of 3/4 pants.

[BTW, I described Ripley as a department store chain in a previous post. It is and it isn't. My basic observation is that the department stores here can also be their own shopping centres, like smaller versions of Centro or Westfield in Perth. For example, I walked into a Paris shopping centre in Providencia today (29/02). Very confusing. The big Chilean department stores, such as Paris and Falabella, have strengthened in the face of takeover efforts and market pressures - even expanding into the finance sector. Intriguingly, there is a Banco Ripley, Banco Falabella and Banco Paris, all linked directly to the top three dept store chains. Well, it was interesting news to me...]

In Paris, I learned that the big stores import Argentinian girls for promotional work because they are considered to be prettier than Chilean girls. True story. I noticed that the ads in shopping centres use predominantly women, and white women at that, because they are considered to be more beautiful.

I discovered another love: media lunas, which we bought to eat on the way. They were so delicious, esp. the creme de pastal. My hosts told me that these were nothing compared to the ones in Argentina...

The journey. I learned so much. Like the fact that cacti grow predominantly on north-facing slopes. And avocadoes are known as "black gold" in Chile, and grow in huge mountain-side plantations that catch run-off. And cacti are used as living fences. And the billboards heading north are focused on products rather than scantily-clad white women.

I felt like an excited kid as we drove through tunnels cut into the hillsides.

The tolls on the Pan Americana are regular and expensive. After the 4th tollgate, we came across firefighters with donation buckets. Even though it is considered prestigious work, the firefighters in Chile are voluntary. We donated some pesos.

1.5-2hrs out of Santiago, we came across women violently flailing sticks with white tassels: they were selling traditional sweets. Luke said they were not fabulous but they were an experience. I said I would pass.

Just past them, we had our first glimpse of water and the air smelled of the sea. Carrion circled overhead.

We stopped at Huentalauquen for a local specialty. No, not guinea pig (and that's more of a Peruvian thing) - empanadas fritas. I had two of these 600 Ch peso lumps of queso folded into pastry; they were like deep-fried cheese sandwiches. The cascading cheese was pale, almost white, and had a cheddar texture with a slightly sour taste. I enjoyed every fatty bite. We washed down the fat with fresh papaya juice. These papayas are special: they must be cooked before being consumed, else the juice breaks down the skin in and around your mouth. Friendly fruit.

We drove further north to the strains of traditional Cuban music.

At nightfall, and very near to our destination, we noticed women waving whole butterflied goat carcasses on stakes at passing motorists. I wondered how long the meat had been exposed to sun and flies during this hot day. I had been warned about the potential for this macabre sight which is more common after dry summers, when it is harder to maintain goat flocks.

We arrived in Tongoy just after 9pm (over 5hrs of driving), checked into Villa Patricia where we were greeted like old friends [Aurora spends 3-5 days there each month and knows the owners well] and set off to Cafe Bahia for dinner by the beach. We all ordered seafood main courses, as Tongoy is renowned for its seafood.

My seafood selection in broth arrived, I tasted it, I couldn't stomach it. The strong fishy smell hit the back of my throat and I almost gagged on impact. I passed my bowl around the table for second and third opinions. Luke thought it was dodgy, and it was enough to turn him off his meal; Aurora saw nothing wrong with it.

Aurora ate her meal, fished out the good stuff from mine, and made an attempt to eat Luke's seafood pancake. I ate bread, butter and chilli. With the empanadas still weighing on my stomach, I was satisfied with this simple meal.

Day 24: Sunday, 24 February 2008. Still sick. I couldn't believe it. Each night I went to sleep thinking that I would be all better the next day.

Our day started with a visit from the landlord. He warned us not to eat the seafood as it was making many visitors sick with a gastro-like bug. He handed us some herbs for a curative tea. Aurora wasn't really fazed by the news; I was glad that I had baulked at my last meal.

Walking around town, I was reminded of those lonely desert towns you find in American movies, with lots of red dust and secrets. There were small markets and shops dotted all over. To get good produce, we had to visit just about every place but we soon gathered up an excellent selection, including local olive oil. As well as the predictable bread, butter, cheese, tomato and avocado, we ate humitas - seasonal corn cakes that are seasoned and cooked in the corn husks. I wasn't overly impressed with them on their own, but they made an excellent spread.

The Parque Nacional Fray Jorge was about an hour out of Tongoy, and half of that was on bumpy limestone tracks. At first glance, it was dry, with cacti and scrub at the bottom of massive hills. Yet streaks of healthy forest lined the hills [there is debate as to whether this is tiger formation or fluid dynamics] and there was a temperate forest fragment at one of the peaks. This is where we were headed, to check on one of Aurora's colleague's experiments.

I became a trainee ecologist for the day, spotting a wild fox and a colourful nameless bird, and I heard a woodpecker. The trek to the forest wasn't too taxing, but it involved walking through dry and thorny scrub that cut across the narrow and sometimes steep path [as Luke said often in reference to the previous occupants of the forest, "Imagine having to eke out a living in this!"]. About an hour into the walk and very scratched bottoms of legs, Luke handed me his spare jumpers. I have some very amusing photos of me wearing a borrowed hat and jumpers tied to my legs.

Stepping into the forest fragment was like finding buried treasure; it was amazing. There was a canopy of trees and vines above us, wizened trees and fallen logs covered in moss, soft groundcover. Like the streaks of forest leading up the hill, this fragment received its moisture entirely from fog. The chamber had its own climate. We donned warmer clothes (well, except for Luke) and enjoyed the scenery for a few minutes before heading back.

I noticed the lack of insects around us and Luke & Aurora assured me that there were no snakes or spiders. I walked through several spiderwebs in the forest; I was then told there were no poisonous spiders in the park. We almost ran over a small and presumably poisonous snake on the road back to Tongoy; they had no response to that.

Day 25: Monday, 25 February 2008. After breakfast [and, yes, I was still feeling like death], we visited the beach down the road from Villa Patricia. The area was littered with what looked like huge chunks of obsidian or volcanic glass, only there was no volcano to explain it. It turns out that a copper smelt used to operate on the coast and we were surrounded by melted sand. The only clue to this was the slight green tinge to some of the black glass boulders.

Before anything else, we needed fresh provisions and it was my task to forage. Being a small town, the shopkeepers were not English-speakers, and I appreciated the importance of that little word tiene ("do you have..."). The bread and water posed no problem; I had a fun time trying to describe salt. Finally, I realised the problem was in my pronunciation ('sult' worked for me) and we were off.

We headed back to Fray Jorge, this time to check on Aurora's experiment which was in marked plots at the foot of the hill we explored yesterday. I wore jeans, so there was no need for a repeat performance from my makeshift gators.

Even though we were in the scrub, there was still so much to observe. There were animal prints all over the ground we walked on. I noticed one of the really nasty bushes branched its spikes out in star patterns, like a crown-of-thorns starfish. I was surprised to see lichen growing on trees in such a dry place. If you stood really quietly, you could hear birds twitter, small animals heave, the crackle of dry twigs. This inhospitable place was truly alive.

The places I visited were closed off to everyday visitors to the park. I felt privileged to be taken into realms ordinarily reserved for researchers and the occasional guanako (something like a llama).

We ate dinner near Pichidangui and, when we reached Santiago, it was nearly midnight. I was so glad to see my bed.