My Life as a Chilean Serf

So, it turns out that all my pre departure jitters were just that--jitters. Life as a Chilean serf is in fact so superbueno, so incredibly vacan (as they say here) that I am not sure it is even worth my time to try to record it in words. It is only day two here on the Reserva, but I never, ever want to leave. And I am not using contractions because I cannot find the apostrophe on this dang foreign keyboard.

After four or five or I do not know how many days of grueling travel by plane, bus, ferry, and small ridiculously rickety motorboat, Aubrey and I finally arrived in a place so very isolated that it takes things ten days to get here from the nearest large town. There are no roads. There are no trails. You can only get around by boat. This is Aisen, northern Patagonia, possibly one of the most remote places in Chile. We are located on a beautiful fjord complete with a labyrinth of islets, a snowy volcano in the background, and thousands of square miles of primeval looking temperate rainforest full of strange birds, pumas, and ever-croaking frogs. The bay is full of dolphins and fish. Mist lingers like smoke over the steep cliffs. Every nature writing cliche in the book could be used here to describe the place, but I think it is better if I just stop here and tell you about what I did today.

This is a privately owned reserve which is currently almost totally undeveloped, but which is being developed a tiny tiny bit to encourage scientific expeditions, a little ecotourism, etc. The idea is for the place to be totally self sustaining eventually, which is why there is a little farm here and which is why they want volunteers to come and work and share ideas. It makes sense for it to be self sustaining, because it is ridiculously expensive and complicated to bring materials in. They already have quite a good little system of solar energy and heating, beautifully constructed wooden houses, a big garden, and various outbuildings.

Todays schedule went a little bit like this:
7:00 Awaken in the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. The frogs are already calling out in the garden. Go downstairs and make breakfast (Chilean breakfast basically means coffee and bread).
8:00 Clean house a bit
8:30--12:00 Weed the garden. Sounds boring, but actually quite meditative. Includes a break for maté, and a break to learn how to smoke pork meat in the smokehouse. Yup.
12--2:00 Lunch. Chilean lunch is this prolonged affair, the biggest meal of the day, which is a little strange for me, but it sure is delicious. Plus I have always thought that you should be allowed to sit around and digest your food after eating in the middle of the day.
2:00--3:00 More weeding. We are prepping it for planting stuff. It is spring here, after all.
3:00--4:30 Aubstyle and I played frisbee on the beach, which is actually a little bit more like a tidal flat. Insert beautiful nature description here. It was pretty much the best beach frisbee I have ever played. The dogs had never seen a frisbee before, so they were very excited.
4:30--5:30 Walk over to where the animals are kept (crossing a river and a lovely little grassland and marsh on the way) and feed the pigs, get the chickens into the coop for the night, and gather the eggs. Watch the wild ducks flush out of the bushes and across the river in pairs. Felipe also showed us the nearby swamp.
5:30--7:00 Aubstyle and I went SEA KAYAKING in the fjord. Yes. They have two kayaks here, which I did not know before I arrived. Maybe the best surprise ever. I definitely cannot communicate in words the immense happiness that consumed me while I paddled through the fjord. It has been a really long time since I kayaked, and the fact that I get to do it here, every day if I want, is unbelievable.
7--8 Chillax
8:00 Dinner, or if you prefer, 'onces.' That is what they call it here. Not a whole lot of fuss--leftovers and the ubiquitous bread. Good thing I like bread.

That brings us up to now. Four hours of weeding a day in trade for a kayak session in Patagonia and the opportunity to learn all this stuff? Pretty good tradeoff, if you ask me. We really lucked out. This place could have been the pits. Instead, it is mostly heaven. Oh yeah, and today I also learned how to make yogurt. We are probably going to build a composting toilet and solar oven in the next couple of weeks, besides doing all the garden stuff and waiting for a cow to arrive by boat. I think I have died and gone to heaven. I have not yet even told you about our compatriot Thomas, a French guy, or our bosses Marciela and Felipe.

OK, no more writing in English, or my swiftly-improving Spanish is going to start going all muzzy.

About to fly south for the winter (with cold feet)

We depart Thursday. Here is a calculation of my total travel time from Portland, OR to my destination (Reserva Añihue in far northern Patagonia):

AIRPLANE
Portland--Ft Lauderdale (8 hours)
Ft Lauderdale--Bogota (6 hours)
Bogota--Santiago (8 hours)

BUS
Santiago--Castro (16 hours, !?!!!)
Castro--Quellón (2 hours)

BOAT
Quellón--Raul Marín Balmaceda (12 hours)

CAR
Raul Marín Balmaceda--Reserva Añihue (40 minutes)

Total anticipated travel time: 53 hours. Yes. That is 2 days, 5 hours.

I'm not quite sure at this point why we decided to haul ass to Patagonia right away, but we did. At this point, I'm not quite sure of a lot of things. Like, how do I pack for three months' worth of traveling in one measly backpack? Is it true that you need a return ticket (proof of exit) in order to enter the country in the first place? Where the hell am I going? What if they enslave us at the Reserva and make us scrub the floors or something? How am I going to finish up my job interviews while I am in a place with no telephone? Why did I decide to leave the warm safety of my neighborhood coffee shop and depart for a cold, wet region much the same as my own cold, wet home state? I also remembered suddenly that my Spanish is terrible, more terrible than I like to make it out to be.

This is the usual pre-departure jitters. I know that as soon as I get on the plane, I'll suddenly feel resigned and calm about these crazy decisions. At least I have Aubstyle to suffer alongside me.

t minus twenty-four days

This is not a dispatch from a long and skinny nation. It is a pre-departure ramble from a nation with significant girth both in latitude and longitude.

Having found the cheapest ticket possible--via some bartering of manual labor for my dad's frequent flier miles to Fort Lauderdale, my jump-off point--I've officially begun preparations for the Southern Hemisphere. Got a big old rush of adrenaline today when I told Expedia.com to book me a flight. I depart PDX on October 2nd, depart Fort Lauderdale for Santiago on Oct 3rd, arrive in the wee hours on October 4th.

I've got a feeling that preparations may not amount to much, this time around--after Costa Rica, I'm ready to survive with minimal luggage and minimal worrying. So as not to travel for travel's sake, I've trendily planned to WWOOF and to work for a Patagonian conservation nonprofit. What I'm really concerned about is making sure I don't end up on a farm where I'm doing slave labor and not learning anything or practicing my Spanish. More research and contacting farms is on my to-do list. Also on my to-do list:

probably I should learn some Southern constellations (and learn the song "Southern Cross")
do field guides of Chilean flora and fauna exist?
shall I purchase some Neruda poetry or other Chilean literature? must ask Ben what he recommends.
Can I go to Pumalin or is the whole "huge volcanic eruption" thing really that big of a deal?

A one-way ticket is extremely exciting. Life is open-ended in general these days, so it seems representative. Of course, I'll be back by January 12th, barring refusal by both the jobs I applied for. But where I'll be coming from is a mystery. How much I'll have to pay for the return ticket is also a mystery....I might get price-gouged if I have to come back in early January. Thinking of all the places I could go in Chile alone is pretty overwhelming, let alone thinking about adding in a bit of Argentina or Peru. Should I spread myself thin over most of the country or explore a few regions in-depth? With three months, I can do a lot--¡ojala!

Y también necesito repasar como conjugar verbos en el subjuntivo (de presente, futuro, etc.). Me preocupo un poco sobre el lenguaje muy idiomático de Chile. Gracias a Benja, ya sé unas palabras y expresiones idiomáticos del país, como "pololo" para "novio" y "po" para "pués" y unas más. El pronunciación será el problemo más serio, creo, por lo menos en el inicio. Ya puedo leer y escribir muy bien, y hablar más o menos bien--pero escuchar y comprender es lo más difícil siempre. Mi objectivo es hablar, leer, escribir, y soñar lo más posible en español. I'm really looking forward to engaging my brain again in a different language--I wanted to write than in Spanish but I couldn't remember the verb for "look forward to" and I don't have my dictionary handy. All right--time to start carrying it around with me everywhere.

¡Buenas noches!