Punta Arenas, March 27, 2000

Hello everyone.

Again, thanks for all your encouraging personal eMails. Again, apologies for replying only in this impersonal, mass-produced fashion.

We are now in Punta Arenas, Chile, which is the southernmost mainland city in the world (there´s still some towns on the islands south of here, but that´s island, not mainland). The summer officially ended last week, but it hasn´t been getting too cold yet, thankfully. It hurts to think that I´ll have to buy a new poncho, though, and pay a good $60 for it where I could have gotten a new one for five bucks in Ecuador.

Tomorrow we plan on heading further South to Tierra del Fuego, and do some hiking there. It´s supposed to be very rough but also very rewarding.
We had some interesting experiences since my last eMail out of Perito Moreno. I ended it with a statement about it being midnight and us not knowing where we would be spending the night. To tell the truth, before we went to the eMail place we had been looking around town for a place to lay out our sleeping bags, and a local had seen us and asked us if we wanted to stay at his place. It all seemed somewhat creepy at that moment, since he seemed very excited to have us there and very insistent that we stay with him. It was sort of funny the way he was showing us the dinner that he had just cooked, the hot shower and bathroom and floor space and mattresses, as if he were selling us something. At the same time he insisted that he would not charge us. We told him we´d think about it and went off to eMail. Along the way we stopped at the Supermarket next to his house and asked the people who worked there whether this man was safe or not. They said that he was a little crazy, but completely harmless. Anyway, after eMailing we went by his place again, but everything was dark so we decided not to bother him. We found a gas station and went to sleep behind it. It started raining in the middle of the night, and we had to set up the tent.

In the morning we went into town for a few things, then tried to hitch hike out of there. Until then I had only HEARD of hitch hikers getting stuck in a town for several days. But when we had been on the side of the road for almost nine hours, we got heartily sick of the deal. It was long dark already, and we had been exposed to the Patagonian wind all day. It was not particularly cold, but very strong, and after hours and hours and hours of having it blast in your face, you start to shiver. We decided we´d go back and visit this "crazy guy" from the night before, and see what he was up to. Maybe, we said, if we get a good vibe we may take him up on his invitation this time.

He was glad to see us and immediately welcomed us in. He gave us a dinner like none we´ve eaten yet since we´ve been on the road, with roasted lamb, fruits and vegetables out of his own garden, and bread and sweet baked goods and English mint tea (likewise from his own garden) and potatoes. It had been quite a while since we had last eaten our fill (we live mostly on bread and cookies while on the road). Then he cleaned up and would not allow us to help him. It seemed that he considered it a personal affront when we offered. He set up two mattresses in his living room (his whole house was actually just one room), and gave us some warm blankets. He still stayed up for a while reciting some of his poetry to me. He has written quite a lot of it, and memorized, it seems, most of it. I was impressed with the quality of the work of someone who, we had been led to believe, was somewhat crazy. His poetry seemed well-observed and sardonical, mostly in the political protest vein.

In the morning he had mate (tea) and invited me to join him while Bryan was still dozing away. I heard some more of his poems, and we talked a little about this and that. Then Bryan got up, and we packed our things and left. We still offered to help our host, but he was proud of the Gaucho self-sufficiency and hospitality, and seemed to think that these traits would be watered down if he accepted anything from us.

This incident got me thinking a lot about the sort of world we are living in, though. It seems that society is functioning so much on the principle of reciprocity that one immediately gets suspicious if one is offered something for free. We start to question motives, and usually rightly so, because most things that sound too good to be true are really too good to be true. But when we are given something we cannot pay back, we almost feel that we are using or abusing the person who has done us a good turn. It is of course a fine line between leeching and accepting with gratitude and nothing more palpable. But I have received much much hospitality all through my life, and so much of it from many of you that I feel like I must make it up in some way. It is interesting that good, like bad, is often taken out on undeserving parties. Like someone kicking the innocent dog after being reprimanded by the boss, someone may give something to the street beggar after receiving a favour. This means that I will probably have a house of my own someday, with a guest room and a full pantry, and repay the goodness I have received on people who aren´t really the ones I owe it to. Sometimes we feel that the world is a closed system, and I think it is in that way. God seems to require that we pay the good that we owe Him (whom we cannot pay) to those around us (whom we do not really owe it to as such).

When we went back to the highway, we got picked up within about fifteen minutes. This was the same man that had given us a ride two days earlier. He was on a business trip through this part of Argentina, and he had to stop in several towns yet. Whenever he did, he left us by the side of the road to find other rides, but when he drove by again a few hours later we were still there, and he picked us up and took us on. Eventually we found someone who was driving a truck all the way to the Atlantic. That sounded good to us, since Argentina´s main North-South highway runs along there. So it came that we camped that night right on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean.

The next day we spent indoors at a gas station (we were getting tired of standing in the Patagonian wind), asking people who stopped there whether they could give us rides. It turned out to be several hours before we found two Chilean truckers who took us along for a stretch. We tried again where they dropped us off, but to no avail. Hitch hiking in Argentina is extremely slow, in my experience. Part of it is that, like North America, Argentine trucking companies have these silly little laws about their drivers not being allowed to pick anyone up. Notice how in the movies, when someone is reduced to hitch hiking, they usually get a ride from a trucker? Try hitch hiking in North America some day and then come back and tell me with a straight face that Hollywood reflects reality. In the older movies there might have been more accuracy. But even more present-day movies (i.e. "The Game" or "City of Angels", etc.) show it like that. In my experience the percentage of rides you will get from truckers in North America is less than 1%.

Anyway, we spent the night under the stars again, and once again it rained on us around 4 am. Man, judging by how dry the land looks in the Argentine Patagonia, one wouldn´t think that one would get rained on so often.
The next day we had to wait several hours until we found someone (not a trucker) who took us to the next town. There we hung out at a gas station again, watching MTV and getting really depressed at what sort of music is successful these days. I mean, top 40 has always been on the banal side of things, but a lot of this was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. After several hours of that, (not much traffic and no rides) we were finally ready to take the bus. On my way to the bus terminal (I was going alone to inquire about routes and schedules), I saw two trucks with Chilean license plates outside of a restaurant. I walked in and located the drivers and asked where they were headed. It turned out they were going to Punta Arenas. After some conversation, they agreed to take us along. Hooray.

So here we are. It is interesting because, apart from the German backpacker mentioned in the previous eMail, we have met very few other tourists on this trip. That has been really nice, because even when I am a tourist I don´t usually like tourists. But here in Punta Arenas it´s just full of tourists, even though the season is officially over. We are staying at a pretty cheap hostal (it´s very cold down here, and we´re not wanting to stay in our tent more than we have to) and meeting people from Belgium, England, Scotland, Australia (of course), Denmark and the United States. A lot of them have just come from the hikes that we are wanting to do soon, so it´s encouraging to talk with them about their experiences.

Well, that´s all I can think to write right now. Our time in Tierra del Fuego should not take much more than a week, and after that we will be coming through Punta Arenas again. I don´t know how the internet connections on the island are, so I may not write again til the first week of April.

Marco

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