Santiago, April 15, 2000

Hello all.

Well, I´m back in Santiago now. The bus ride to Osorno was about thirty-four hours, and from there I hitch hiked shorter stretches to where I had addresses of people from our HCJB archives.

It was interesting because at the end of the first evening I had arrived in Pitrufquen, where I had an address of such people. They lived far out in the boonies, though, and didn´t have telephone or anything like that. When I had found their house it was nearly dark. It turned out that they were an elderly couple, both probably over 80. They were very friendly and hospitable and happy that someone from HCJB was finally under their roof, even though they have stopped listening to and corresponding with HCJB several years ago.

The next day was a lot weirder though. I got to Temuco, where the next such address was, and called the number I had been given. He, too, must have been an older entry in the database, because he was not really in touch with HCJB any more. But he insisted that we should get together, and he wanted to know more about me, and he took me home with his family and invited me to stay for the next two days. After that they were going on vacation, but if I wanted I could still stay at their place, and "take care of it while they were gone." Man, on the one hand this is the sort of experience I have always hoped for in my travels (if nothing else, it makes a good story to tell), but when it actually happened it was pretty uncomfortable. They were very friendly, laid-back people though, which made things easier.

After that episode I hitch hiked pretty straight to Santiago. Even though it is only about 600 km, it took me a good 22 hours to get there. This has been one of my longest uninterrupted hitch hikes. There were only three times I did more than 24 hours in one uninterrupted stretch were: 1. a 35-hour hitch hike from Regina, Saskatchewan, to Thessalon, Ontario. 2. a 24-hour hitch from Silandro, Italy, to Hannover, Germany, and 3. A single 26-hour ride from Copiapo to Santiago, here in Chile on my way down. But No. 3 hardly counts, since we spent the night in the truck when the truck driver went to sleep, instead of hitching on like the true hard-core would. But at any rate, I was tired as anything when I got to Santiago, and it was raining and hailing. I found refuge in a supermarket, and they had a bench near the exit. I intended to just sit down for a while, but I ended up just going to sleep. I was eventually wakened and kicked out.

Some of you have asked me if it doesn´t get lonesome travelling alone, and whether Bryan and I split up peacefully. Very peacefully. We had different interests to follow, and figured each would be better off alone. I think that there are very great advantages to travelling alone. It´s almost like you get the experience in a much more real and undiluted way. And of course, when you hitch hike you usually have better chances alone than when you´re with someone else.

Of course, travelling with a friend has its definite advantages. You have someone to watch your backpack while you go to the washroom, you have someone to talk to in the long boring hours of roadside standing, and someone just generally to help you out. And of course, you have a witness. The things that happen to you when you are alone just sort of exist in your own memory, and no matter how well you can relate the story, your account will always be flatter than the actual event. Like, I just have to say the words "Psycho woman in Lima" to Bryan, and he starts to laugh because he remembers this woman we met in Peru. But if I tried to describe her to someone who hasn´t met her, it would not seem all that funny.

There are a lot of things that I thought about these last few days, about vagabonds and other career opportunities, about how much I´m eating and thinking about food when on the road, about cool games and contests you can have while hitch hiking. I think I´ll write a few of them in a future eMail, right now I´m still a little out of things. Like this mail here; sort of an irrelevant sprawl.

Marco

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