PATAGONIA 6 - "SEE, IT'S EASY"

Terra Australis Language School; I still had 6 days of instruction paid for but some things won’t wait. Juan told me I could come back anytime and pick up wherever I may be with my Spanish. I streamlined my belongings and left a full suitcase with them. This time the bus ride stayed on the highway. It wasn’t an InterState but it was good, rolling along at 80 km/hr without interruption. Temuco is a small city, 600 km south of Santiago. It’s where most of the Mapuche Indians live; not in the city of course but in the rural, hill country around Temuco, at the foot of the Andes. They are remnants of a great people who, like other indigenous groups around the world, scrape out a meager existence, clinging to an “old way”. Their reputation as warriors was well deserved, defeating Spanish assaults again and again. They were the only New World tribe not to fall to Spain. They lost their lands to German immigrants in the 1800’s who came with plow shears instead of guns and the Mapuche thought them harmless. 

The market area was under a big, open air structure that sheltered all the buyers and sellers from the rain, and it rains a lot. Mapuche art was there in abundance, wonderfully crafted and very expensive. Warriors have evolved into wood carvers, silver smiths and weavers but they don’t come to town. Their women, artists also, do all the transporting, set up and sales. Buying Mapuche art, there are no good deals. Everything is expensive and they, unlike Latino peddlers will not negotiate. 

The next day as I was going from stall to stall, looking for something I couldn’t do without, I noticed a little man pushing a cart, collecting cardboard. In Santiago, in the evening, men of all ages appeared, peddling bicycles, pulling modified trailers to carry cardboard. Merchants and vendors set their throwaway cardboard out before closing and the scavengers worked all night collecting it. In the early hours of morning they would be loaded beyond belief, headed for a recycler. The guy in Temuco did the same thing except he worked by day and pushed a 3’ x 6’, flat bed cart. As vendors emptied containers, he picked them up. He spoke to me, “Excuse me please.” trying to navigate the narrow isles. I remarked about his English, then spent several minutes talking. He was cool. I tried to use Spanish first and find someone who spoke English as a last resort. He assured me in some pretty good English, Spanish is easy. I think he was showing off. He held up one finger and said, “dedo”. Then he opened all his fingers and tapped his palm, “mano”. He touched above his elbow, “brazo”, then his forehead, “cabeza” and in English, “See, it’s easy.” He gave me some tips on which vendadores to buy from and the best hostel. I changed from where I was to the place he recommended and he was right. 

The next morning I caught a bus to Valdivia, an even smaller city, on the coast, famous for sea food and its fresh fish market. Pulling into town, traffic came to a standstill as a protest march closed off the road. Singing, chanting, beating drums and waving banners, the crowd moved at a slow pace. I learned later they were a coalition of poor people (los pobres) who thought they were being exploited. They behaved very well, no mischief, nothing destructive. As they passed our bus I understood; following them were dozens of black suited police on motorcycles with small machine guns on their backs. They not only guaranteed the protesters their rights but also cast an intimidating presence on them. 

I found a hostel near the fish market that looked like a huge, old, two story  house. The inn keeper said all the rooms were taken but called me back. A woman had rented a room for the week but had been gone for several days; he didn’t think she would be back. He showed me the room; it had been a living room once upon a time, with a large, stone fireplace and a bay window. On the floor in the middle of the room was a full sized mattress with a sheet and a pillow. He said he would change the sheet. I thought, ’This is really weird.” My instinct was to pass on it, keep looking. Then I thought, ‘What the heck. This is supposed to be an adventure.’ I told him I would come back later but walking away, looking back, it gave off vibrations like the Bates Motel in Hitchcock’s movie, Psycho. Another hostel down the street was more to my liking. I chose the dorm room with three sets of double bunks and a single. I was the only one there. It cost the equivalent of 4$ a night without heat or 6$ with a heater. It had been raining off and on and it was damp but it wasn’t cold so I held on to the 2$ and choose, without heat. Threw my stuff on a bottom bunk near the door and I headed down to the river and the fish market. 

Rain set in and my pancho came out. Like in Temuco, the open air, covered structure allowed business to go on in the rain. It was much smaller but then the only commodity was sea food. The environment was exactly what one would imagine only embellished 1000%. The smell, the noise, men with blood stains on their aprons and big knives; I thought of horror movies again. The river ran right up behind the market and fishing boats came in the night to off-load for the next day. Gulls swooped and hovered, cormorants perched anyplace there was a foothold, all competing for scraps thrown away into the river; no need for a garbage barrel. On the concrete piers, seals sat like they do at Sea World, waiting for someone to throw them a fish. I had the urge to buy a fish but didn’t hadn’t seen the kitchen situation at the hostel and didn’t want to carry it around the rest of the evening. Under the cover of a sheet metal lean-to I had two pieces of fried fish and half an avocado. That was my supper. The next morning I would be bound for Puerto Varas, farther south, the gateway to the Lakes District.