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.