thank you..

to whoever didn’t show up, saving me from sleeping on the floor…
to goldie for the roof rack, ample storage space and 5.5l/100km…
to mike for saving those boots from someone incapable of using them…
to matt for the inspiration of ‘easing’ into things a little longer…
to matt’s ipod for assuming we wanted to listen to abba… 3 times…
to may for those delicious quinoa brownies…
to the woman in pink who figured standing in the middle of a run at the bottom of a steep slope was a good idea…
to the tree wells for keeping tom and i company…
and to the mountain for keeping that corner of powder fresh for us…

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i was so excited for this day to arrive; i was able to bring my land cruiser out of storage and back home in the driveway this evening. even though i had only been away in chile for three months, there were the couple months beforehand that i spent up at the cottage, and the month or so before the cottage that i had spent packing up all my belongings. looking back, i had actually parked the cruiser on a friend’s property last june.

…it really has been a long time…

…long enough to stimulate a dream mid-travel in chile of me bouncing up and down in the drivers seat, knees bent up at either side of the bus-sized steering wheel, shifter a full lengths reach to my right, and the reflection in the driver’s side mirror of my arm and the way it seemed to perfectly rest on the open window sill. despite it all being a dream, i remember almost recalling the smell of fuel and oil, the breeze on my clutch leg from the kick-vent, the shifter head vibrating gently back and forth, the speedometer just under a hundred kilometres per hour and the thought to myself, ‘it’s actually driving well!’

yeah… i believe that’s when i woke up in the hostel with a huge smile on my face. my cruiser wasn’t driving that well when i left it back home.

but it was a great reminder of those times when it ran great and served as my daily driver and ‘get-me-outta-town-rig’ for three years. before i had purchased her, the cruiser mechanic who brought her down from the cariboo had only done a ‘poor-man’s rebuild’. i remember him telling me he only took the motor apart as it sat in on the frame, cleaned it up, unblocked some oil passages to the head, replaced the gaskets and topped up the fluids. this seventy-seven has been running on original piston rings, and to date, it has never left me stranded.

this is the year that i give this cruiser the attention it deserves; perhaps a ‘thank you’ for it’s constant reliability.

after weeks of dodging questions from family and friends as to my exact whereabouts, i have arrived back home in canada to surprise the family for christmas.

when i first mentioned the idea to surprise the family for christmas to my fellow travellers, the look of excitement in their eyes was encouraging and supporting. i could sense something within them which appeared as if they wished they could be doing the same.

i had felt many things drawing me back home though. of course, i have missed my family and friends immensely, but it also seemed that with every little adventure i was experiencing down in chile, i’d gain a little source of inspiration to start fresh back in canada. all this inspiration that was building within me soon became overwhelming and led me on the series of buses and planes which brought me back here.

of course, it was very hard to leave chile, as i completely fell in love with that country. released is that aimless vagabond lifestyle, free of responsibility and all these new surroundings, friends and perspectives, from this point on, i had to accept as memories.

but then again, it wasn’t hard to recognize that this was my time to come home. after all, it was a wave of inspiration that threw me to the other side of the world in the first place, and choosing to surf that wave brought so many great elements into my life that i couldn’t have ever imagined.

trusting that same initial instinct, i found it comforting and exciting to make the decision to come home, as if i’m simply continuing my adventure.

no element is more confirming of my travels than the stars; looking up, i find culture shock.

up at the cottage in the cariboo, i had believed what i saw were the clearest and most populated skies. yet without the typical and condensed north american light pollution, the clear nights in chile consistently proved me wrong.

the beauty of this sky is it’s unfamiliarity and reflection; looking up, i don’t recognize the constellations and not one infinite source of illumination is directing my way. not only reassuring of my distance from home, their accompaniment in the sky also instilled comfort, as if i believed they were within a connecting view of a single someone whom i knew. and as if working together in such a sense of dense clarity, their glow supports my aimless vulnerable wander below; a compliment and positive light to the definition of a vagabond.

in total, i have spent about four weeks in this city, have made a lot of familiar faces, met some incredibly influential people, felt like i was part of a family, subjected my stomach to two chilean bbq’s, gained international skiing experience, hiked my belt size back down two notches and experienced the transformation of being the one in the hospedaje who couldn’t understand a word of spanish to being the one who people were looking to for translation.

i said it before, back when i was heading south, ‘it’s going to be hard to leave this place’, and now that i’m passing through again, i have to say it’s become even harder.

this feels like one of those photos which i would post accompanied with a recording. though, my guitar is eleven-thousand kilometres away.

…it is a daily frustration…

i have an idea, and i distrust i’ve once felt a greater influencing purpose to encourage me to literally develop it.

through intense conversation with a fellow traveller over the topic of ‘artists and their intentions’, i have realized how important it is to not only have an opinion, but give birth to that stance through solidifying words by means of original presentation. if it weren’t for that consistent pondering and deep discussion, this post would not be realized and my idea may have forever appeared to me as only a thought.

even if i weren’t to conclude this narrative until the age of eighty, i will have done my idea justice.

i recognized that when i made the decision to bus from puerto natales into parque nacional torres del paine, i was making the decision under a negative point of view.

i felt a great difference in my surroundings moving from the carretera austral to punta arenas, but an even greater change moving from punta arenas to puerto natales. i recognized that while unloading from the bus into ‘natales, i was completely surrounded by tourists. i became aware how much of a gateway this city was; everyone here was lining up for the park.

no longer were locals smiling at me. just about every person i spoke my basic level of spanish to, ignored my attempts and responded without emotion in fluent english. this change of my surroundings raised questions within myself whether this was where i wanted to be. i never held it in my mind to immerse myself in the tourism industry which so closely resembles the herding of cattle here in chile.

but, who hikes chile and dismisses what is often referred to as the premier hiking destination in all of south america? i had a burning desire to see just what this park had to offer, keeping that benchmark, the valley of paradise, in mind.

in typical fashion of my previous posts here from chile, this is where i would jump into the linear journal-like fashion of some eye opening introduction which would lead from event to event, supporting some sort of concluding perspective gained. but this park simply didn’t inspire me to take many photos or to outline words in my journal for the sake of this post.

besides the last couple hours of my hike out of the park, this park is held as just a memory of pushing myself physically to the point of developing an injury in my foot and knee and grabbing a few photos among a crowd of people who lacked the knowledge of how to say ‘hello’ in the language of the country which they were visiting.

but i was only a couple hours away from hobbling out of the park when i crossed a girl. i was focused on the trail in front of me, not exactly looking up. i remember sensing somebody up ahead and i believe i said ‘hola’, but before i could raise my head i heard, ‘didn’t i meet you back in pucon?’

it was a girl who i had briefly met and chatted with in my last hour at pucon. i had a bus to catch and, at that point, never caught her name. we had discussed my hike out from the closed park and she had told me about her experience hitchhiking up the carretera austral, which i believe had planted a seed within me to experience the same.

we caught up among the patagonian wind and rain, each of us hooded and wrapped in wool and goretex with packs hanging off our backs, boots gripping the slanted rock below us.

i attempted without success to summarize my time in the truckbed on the southern highway. it brought a smile to her face, perhaps because she knew exactly what i was talking about and how hard it is to describe, or because she recognized how instrumental she was to my adventure.

i felt so fortunate to have caught that experience, bumping into her for a second time on that trail, especially so close to my moment of parting the park. while my perspective of the park remains unchanged, katherine had made me realize how much i was inconsiderately generalizing the park, and for a second time, added purpose to another one of my moments in chile.

‘¿hables ingles?’

it was odd hearing somebody ask me for once.

in front of me stood this guy, claiming he was from denmark with an accent of a new yorker. the first thing i noticed was the configuration of his backpack. it seemed that half of his belongings were hanging from the exterior straps of a day pack; the most notable possession, a tripod.

we met at a bus stop in coihaique. turns out we both arrived the previous night and mutually felt its city-like characteristics pushing us away. we were both looking to simply head south.

in between asking passing bus drivers directions and prices, leaning against an iron fence among passing locals, we shared some experiences of our trip to date and found we had much in common. perhaps it was this realization of parallel paths that the topic came up, ‘should we just start walking and hold our thumbs out?’

without a hiccup in the developing conversation, our feet began striding side by side in a southern direction away from the hum of diesels driving the city streets. at a casual pace, we followed along the gravel roadside occasionally holding out thumbs at any truck that passed.

the vehicles that did pass were driven by very apologetic drivers, many of which gave excuses with hand gestures as if to say, ‘i’m turning just up the road’ or ‘i’m full’. most of them were. along this section of the highway, our feet were gaining more experience than our thumbs.

patagonia is very temperamental. at one point, under the clouds, the slightest gust of wind will chill you to the bone, forcing you to drop your pack and pull out a mid layer, whereas other moments you’ll find yourself drawing sweat under the strong and brief rays from the sun, forcing you to drop your pack again just to put that mid layer back in its place.

who knows how many kilometres it was, we stopped selectively throwing our thumbs out at only the trucks and began smiling at the two door kias revving past us. eventually my focus was drawn to the immediate gravel in front of my feet and i heard a prolonged ‘yes’ as a compact suv pulled over.

he was heading to valle simpson, shortly south of coihaique. nonetheless, our feet were happy and we had an opportunity to chat with a very friendly local. as he dropped us off at the bus stop at the fork in the road towards valle simpson, i didn’t even have a chance to throw my pack on; a truck pulled up and our packs were thrown in the back.

‘¿aca?’ as we pointed to the truck bed.

‘no, aqui’ as he pushed some things aside on the back seats.

both drivers were interested in knowing where we were from, what brought us here and where we were heading. they seemed proud of their surroundings, pointing out features of importance and giving brief explanations as they ignored the paintlines and the longevity of their tires.

we were dropped off at another bus stop at a fork in the road. this driver was heading to balmaceda, where a local airport resides. as we snacked on some fruit, we made the mistake of discussing our favourite dishes and cervezas we’d experienced in chile, only intensifying our thirst and hunger.

before any impatience reached us, a van turned the bend and slowed down at the appearance of two gringos sitting at the side of the highway. he was heading to villa cerro castillo, exactly where we wanted to go. in the back were others; locals with their belongings, heading south. we crammed our packs in the back and wedged our legs in any available space. we were to be driven to the end of the pavement, where the true carretera austral commences.

as we climbed the highway running through reserva nacional cerro castillo, our heads craned downwards attempting to witness the mountain tops surrounding us. the highway followed along a number of rivers complete with pristine patches of grass naturally intended for camping. tempted to ask the driver to stop in such an in-between destination, we held our breathes, anticipating the views from the town of villa cerro castillo.

as we cruised out of the valley and switchbacked down the mountain side, the landscape in front of us opened up in relatively clear weather. we were surrounded by peaks.

the van hugged a curb outside of a local restaurant that also had a small store. technically, this was our stop, but the others weren’t hopping out of the van as well.

‘should we ask where the final destination is?’

‘bahia murta.’

not knowing where it was, but knowing that it could only be south from here, we quickly ordered our plate sized sandwiches filled with beef, cheese, onions and fried eggs. wrapped in tin foil and armed with a stack of napkins, we hopped back into our cramped positions and inhaled the comida rapida.

as the pavement faded and the gravel thundered beneath us, the landscape in front of us continued to open up and everyone in the van grew silent. the ruta seven mountains were commanding everyone’s attention.

in silence, we turned off of the highway and headed down a straight road with ranches on either side. this must be bahia murta. we were driven from the highway over a river and into a small town lacking traditional stores. there was a street called ‘canada’ though.

‘if i were paying attention, i would have told the driver to stop at the turn off. it’s probably a better idea to camp near the river along the highway’.

in agreement, ‘it’s only two to four kilometres’. our feet had their chance to relax.

seven hours, two hundred or so kilometres later, ‘by the way, i never caught your name’.

‘ya, i had just realized that as well: adam’.

‘drew’.

for some reason, possibly the intensity of our adventure and our ever-continuing interest in what lay around the next corner, we had both completely skipped the introduction.

as we wandered from bahia murta back to the carretera austral, inspiration was found and our cameras were plucked from our packs. shortly after snapping photos of a straight road bisecting a green estancia populated with plump and content farm animals, a little blue nissan pulled up from behind us and we soon found ourselves sitting on top of building supplies feeling as content as those passing cattle.

we were dropped off at the end of the road with a warm goodbye. our hike south continued a number of kilometres where we stopped for a break and some water. sure enough that blue nissan that had previously helped us out, stopped once again; this time, without the building supplies in the back. with even bigger grins on our faces, we felt the comfort of the wheel wells underneath us. as we discussed how our current form of travel rewarded us with a complete experience of all the senses, the cameras came out once more to capture the blur of fence posts passing at our sides.

the truck was only travelling south a few kilometres, somewhere near el engano, if that’s even present on a map. the men who picked us up lived on a campo right alongside a river. with the light above us decreasing and the most welcoming gestures from the two men who drove us twice, we pitched our tents on the soft grass along the river and later joined the men in their house for deep fried bread and yerba mate.

adam and i agreed that the further we moved south, the friendlier and more welcoming the people were.

retiring the night with a fire between our tents, we soon woke up bright and early only to return to the house for more deep fried bread and yerba mate. the men were soon heading off to work and were kind enough to lend us their genius fishing gear and point us in the direction to fish.

after some wandering and no bites, we returned to our campsite to roll up our tents and compress our belongings. we were back on the gravel.

casually strolling along, not exactly knowing any distances or our destination for the night, we continued to hold out our thumbs at the crunching tires that rolled by. when a bus passed by us without stopping, we wondered if we should have waved instead. not a big deal. now when another bus passed by and we waved and the driver waved back, we began to question our gestures. we decided that a flat hand pushing downwards was exactly what the bus drivers wanted to see. whether they thought the thumbs wouldn’t pay or whether they had no available seats, it didn’t matter. what mattered was the minibus that stopped for us somewhere in between our campsite and rio tranquillo. it was only heading to rio tranquillo, but that seemed sufficient enough for us.

as we tucked into a small store in rio tranquillo for a sandwich, we were told that a bus heading to cochrane was stopping by in twenty minutes. perfecto. the sandwiches were inhaled and a chocolate bar that was saved for a moment of celebration was broken in half on the bus.

from what i gathered, cochrane was the last stop along the southern carretera austral for camping supplies and a relatively wide selection of food.

arriving in the pouring rain, the rain cover was stretched over the pack and the goretex slid on under an awning of a small market. we had a choice of either camping in this patagonian shower or in a dry hospedaje with outlets to charge our gadgets. a shower would also help get the smell of campfire out of the beard as well.

negotiating a price while denying some services, we were able to drop our packs and see what this local supermercado had to offer. food, fishing gear, dinnerware, outboard motors, clothing, sleeping bags and firearms. after carefully selecting our line, hooks and sinkers, we stocked up on pasta, tuna, oatmeal, raisins and of course, dark chocolate.

south of cochrane, we realized the decrease in traffic, especially in the low season. there was a little construction which drew a few trucks full of workers and there was the odd family stopping to fish off the beaches of lago esmeralda. we were lucky enough to grab a four or five kilometre hitch just outside of town south to a nearby turnoff towards an even smaller town.

from there, it was a solid hike. we found ourselves walking and walking and walking. the weather was clear and the sun was out. a slight breeze forced us to throw on a layer every once and a while, but the trek was rewarded when we reached a river that split into two and forced the road to bridge twice alongside a series of waterfalls. we were so amazed by the waterfalls that it took us a moment to lift our heads and see just what was in front of us.

i found it hard to comprehend what i saw. words such as vast and epic and grandeur had been redefined on the spot. new benchmarks had been witnessed. in the valley lying low in front of us flowed a twisting river. from the river, mountains grew up slightly on either side and layered behind those immediate mountains were the true and fathering andes. it was very clear to us that the glaciers weren’t far away.

we had both pulled out our digital cameras attempting to capture whatever it was that was dropping our jaws and silencing our tongues. i knew each time the camera made its noise, it wasn’t doing the landscape justice.

the point came where adam propped his tripod on a rock face and asked, ‘you haven’t seen my camera yet, have you?’ he wasn’t talking about his digital camera. he was talking about the couple kilos he was cradling in his arms throughout our entire journey south.

the linhof four by five was fastened to the confluence of the three balancing legs.

adam had explained his work to me the night previous at fireside. his criteria for a shot seemed very specific. i don’t think he was anticipating to use the camera along the carretera austral. nonetheless, i was excited to see it put to use. our digital cameras nonchalantly recorded dozens of perspectives in a matter of minutes. adam had spent nearly five simply setting the camera up and pointing it in the right direction. as i snapped photos of him at work with my g9, i completely missed the point where he had finalized his composition and decided to commit that one full sheet of film to the scene in front of him.

the beauty of the shot was that it was in a direction that neither of us were shooting with our digitals. i am truly excited to see what he saw. i can imagine it will be a rewarding highlight to compliment the memory of the trip.

satisfied with our break from the hike, we realized that if we were travelling on a bus or in a truck bed, the opportunity to grab that one single photo would have passed us by in the blink of an eye. i felt grateful for the turn of events that led us to this one precise moment with such a grand view.

we continued hiking along the gravel which led us down into the valley. ranches began to appear on either side of us and in the distance we saw a truck drive up to its gate. the driver stepped out to open the gate, pulled his truck forward, stepped out to close the gate and then hopped back into his hilux only to have it shoot forward into the ditch. in front of our eyes, we wondered if this man intended to hang up his toyota on some rocks, nudging its bumper against his fencepost.

as we stepped closer, he turned around and began walking away from us, presumably towards a neighbour. behind us, carabineros drove up in their toyota hilux.

with the one hilux strapped to the other and the help of a few hands pushing against the hood, the toyota made it out of the ditch with little damage. the man was incredibly lucky to have had two random people walk by and another truck with a strap show up within minutes of his little escapade; considering we had walked for hours along that road with few passing us by.

the road seemed to have a master plan for us all.

the road also intended us to be picked up shortly after we commenced from that man’s gate. a small kia kei truck almost didn’t stop. it was adam’s last second gesture to the driver that we were willing to sit in the back that prompted the driver to halt. in the matter of seconds, we were sharing a four by six foot truckbed with a generator, crate, propane tank and our packs.

the digitals began making their noises again while the sun began to set. we still had two hours to the next town, caleta tortel. as the direct sunlight faded and our radiating bodies calmed down from the trekking, the sixty to eighty kilometre wind began taking a toll on our bodies. at first, we were de-layered for the trekking with the weight on our backs and then all of a sudden we were sitting still attempting to retain any heat our bodies were generating, not to mention the metal we were sitting on was acting like a heatsink. too cramped to access our packs and re-layer, our gazes focused on the beautiful surroundings and we appreciated the fact that we were to reach caleta tortel by nightfall.

caleta tortel. arriving in a gravel parking lot, our legs fought for circulation and their balance and strength were tested when we grabbed our packs. we were in a port town with no roads. surrounding us were stilted houses connected with a network of boardwalks and stairs.

arriving to the first hospedaje, we rang the bell and negotiated a price for the night. the woman couldn’t understand how we didn’t want to pay for breakfast and how we could live off of oatmeal in our backpacks. waking up the next morning, the skies cleared and allowed for us to take photos from all the different piers and staircases.

the plan was to head south to villa o’higgins. from there, through a series of ferries and hikes and buses, it’s possible to cross over into argentina. problem was, there was no bank in caleta tortel, neither one in villa o’higgins and the atm at cochrane didn’t accept debit cards. i didn’t have enough money to continue forward. in fact, i had just enough money to get me back to coihaique.

our day was spent insuring we purchased bus tickets to get us out of town the next day and a short hike down the highway to the river where we would fish and camp for the night.

on a night like that night, we realized we were in the moment of an experience that others would die for, a night that would complete anybody’s trip, whether it be a week or three months; we were fishing along a river in patagonia with a fire between our tents and not a soul was in sight.

my memories of patagonia will always be of the mountains whose colours are controlled in the last hour of the days sun. the day could be bleak, could be grey, could be windy and certainly wet. but that last hour of sun in patagonia takes everything surrounding you and sets it alive as if rewarding you for enduring anything that it had thrown at you for the past twenty-three hours.