Between Extremes

by Brian Keenan

  It feels good to be moving south; it will be a relief to have more green in the scenery. A ridge of mountains ahead offers a new horizon as today we will go far.

  Chapter Six

  NOTES FROM A TRAVEL DIARY

  La Serena

  Name is suggestive of peace and relaxation after our desert trials: place to charge batteries.

  Arrived Hotel Francisco de Aguirre to curious looks from reception staff. Waited patiently while they discussed some problem with the reservations. Manager was called and examined his booking lists. First he looked at us, then at his staff, then at our passports, then back to us and once more at his staff. Spontaneously they all burst out laughing. John and I looked at each other in confusion. Soon all was revealed: ‘Please excuse us, señors, we have given you the bridal suite!’

  The Club Social in La Serena is a strange gaff. You come up a couple of flights of stairs to a large room with an extremely high ceiling. There is a profound air of antiquity in the main restaurant, from the quaint and rickety furniture to the old couple eating silently a few tables away. The waiter too is past his prime but is enthusiastic and, with patience and the phrase book, helps us to work out the menu.

  While waiting for our meal we become intrigued with the goings on in a room adjacent to the restaurant. Some youngish men bustled up and disappeared in there. The waiter took in drinks, squeezing sideways through the door and making every effort to keep it as closed as possible. There has been shouting.

  ‘A drama group?’ I wonder.

  ‘Maybe, certainly sounds a bit excitable for Rotarians, but why the secrecy? Ah! A card school!’

  Our ponderings are interrupted by the arrival of the food which, oddly, seems to come from the baños damas, the ladies. Anyway it is good, as is the wine. When the immediate needs of hunger and thirst are assuaged, our attention returns to the gathering next door. The waiter has been slinking in and out with more and more booze and the shouting is getting louder.

  ‘A bit rowdy for cards, isn’t it – maybe politicos?’

  ‘That’s it,’ says Brian conspiratorially. ‘They’re Nazis! The Boys from Brazil on a busman’s holiday to the coast.’

  La Serena, one of the oldest cities in the country, is full of colonial and mock-colonial mansions. There is quite a touristy air here but it is pleasant just wandering around or stopping at La Recova market for a beer while looking over the stalls in the square as jazzy Latin music blares out from a record store. It is a colourful place selling all manner of handicrafts, clothes and food; men mingle with the crowd offering olives and other morsels to taste before buying. A man with a beribboned llama touts for photographs.

  I spot some trousers in a department store sale. They have leg pockets and, still obsessed with being the perfect travelling man, I must buy them. It is less than simple. Once you have made your choice you then have to queue with a ticket, pay the money and pick up the goods – in a sealed bag – from another desk. I am surprised I do not have to show my passport.

  A group of gypsy women beg aggressively in the square, the Plaza de Armas. Their faces and clothes seem to have come from another age and strike me as being Asian rather than American. Their insistence undermines the peaceful atmosphere created by trees, flowers, bandstand and sculpture. The town seems to be a centre for the arts. There are a number of galleries and exhibitions and placards advertising the imminent annual literary festival. So maybe culture is not entirely dead in Chile.

  La Serena

  Bookstalls everywhere, but cannot find a translation of Gabriela Mistral’s work anywhere. We will be visiting her birthplace in a week or so – must check with master planner McCarthy!

  Town coming down with churches. Every religious order has one here. Found death mask of Gabriela Mistral in church of San Francisco. She was some kind of lay sister in the order of St Francis: looks very stern – a mother superior in waiting!

  Don Quixote bought new trousers today (millions of pockets) . . . and I suspect some silver paint for his lance! What was the fiasco in post office in Iquique all about? Looking forward to our Kerouac-esque run down the mythical Pan American Highway.

  I feel a need to have things organized. Once the basic decisions, where we are going and how, are made and the basic details, tickets, etc. are sorted out then I relax and lose much of the tension. All this is fine on a simple trip but here, where weeks of logistics stretch out ahead, I realize that as I try to take in the immediate experience I am also reading up on the next place, thinking about the journey there and onward again.

  I sense that Brian is getting pretty fed up with me having my nose endlessly in a guidebook and forever trying to decide what we should go and see next. At lunch today I suggested the town’s archaeological museum. He was not really interested.

  ‘Oh John, we’ve seen a few already, this will be more of the same. You can’t go looking too hard for interesting stuff, sometimes you just have to wait till it comes to you.’

  We are agreed that a trip to one of the area’s famed astronomical observatories is a good idea. My guidebook says you need to phone a couple of days beforehand but when I ask the friendly lady at reception in our hotel to help get us into El Tololo observatory she offers little hope, telling me that bookings have to be made three months in advance. Apart from getting livid with the guidebook – and it is fairly unrewarding ranting at a small and now battered volume – there seems little we can do. I present the lady with our letter from the Chilean Embassy in London and she promises to make every effort on our behalf.

  Top of our agenda is hiring a car – we plan to meander down to Santiago under our own steam. I drag himself off into town with some names and addresses culled from the South American Handbook. This is an excellent publication, so much so that every traveller we meet has one. However, it seems that the La Serena section has not been revised for a while. A restaurant in the neighbouring port of Coquimbo proved illusory and now the first car hire company has moved. An old fellow eagerly gives me elaborate directions to the new address and I reckon I have a general idea of what he is saying. Brian is getting restless, I know, but he does not complain. Near where I think we are heading, Brian spots a Turista office sign and goes in.

  With a few phrases of Spanish and English, the young woman behind the desk understands what we are about and starts phoning round for us. I had just wanted an address. Anyway she finally recommends that we go to the Gala hire company. Just before we depart, I realize that the travel company was on the first floor. Our kind lady was working in an estate agent’s.

  Eventually we get a vehicle sorted out. It is a largish pick-up truck. Brian has arranged this so, feeling negative, I have my doubts – there is no boot so where will we keep our bags safely? Secretly I think it might be fun.

  Despite the best efforts of our friend at reception, the observatory says we cannot visit. A major disappointment.

  There is a big do on at the hotel tonight. Many guests are being entertained in a marquee on the terrace. The cabaret man plays ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’. At which point I decide it is time for bed.

  La Serena

  Both feeling frustrated. Truth is, we’re not getting what we’re looking for – whatever that is! It’s hardly inspiring and makes for poor communication. Neither of us has the answer to the other’s frustration!

  Am spending too much time with my nose in Neruda. John buried in guidebooks. Have a strong impression John does not like Neruda, so can’t talk about that either. Three days here too long.

  Rang Audrey. Everything OK with pregnancy. I am feeling homesick and guilty and I don’t know why!

  We get the truck and Brian starts driving it alarmingly to Vicuña. I am not the best passenger and cannot stop myself from shouting, ‘For God’s sake, Bri, don’t do it!’ as he races past another dawdling car.

  Normally he doesn’t go over 50 m.p.h., yet here he is thrashing a strange vehicle on uneven roads. To take my mind off imminent crashes I look out at the coun
tryside. The Elqui valley is magnificent: very lush in parts, just dusty in others. Above there are scrub- and cactus-covered hillsides. I try to make a few notes about the views but find it is impossible. Brian hunches over the wheel, right on the tail of a long truck. Suddenly he guns the engine and we overtake and I involuntarily brace myself with legs and arms but manage to keep quiet, grit my teeth and decide that note-taking with white knuckles will not be very productive.

  At Vicuña we visit the Gabriela Mistral museum. Although she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, no-one seems to have translated her work.

  Vicuña

  After long drive, badly disappointed. Mistral museum small, and informative if you speak Spanish. Black and white photos; Gabriela looks very masculine with broad shoulders (she seems to have smoked as much as McCarthy) and wears severe suits. There is more man than woman here! Father deserted her as a child, close relationship with mother. Her restored room would make a wonderful painting. I am depressed I cannot take photos and that even here there are no translations.

  Vicuña is a sad little town. I can imagine her writing here even if I can’t read it!

  Inland is all barren hills and cactus but the coastline is dotted with teeming resorts. Most of the local population escapes to the beach, it seems. We are in a little town called Tongoy. It reminds me of Whitby – seaside and working port. There must be more than a hundred bright yellow, 20-foot-long fishing boats. In the late afternoon light, a couple of fishermen stand as they row to their moorings.

  As the sun goes down over the bay there is much noise; the laughter and squeals of happy family holidays. This place has a warm atmosphere: odd then that I should feel a chill about me. Paradise triste or something. But it has been good, driving and feeling that we are making our own way. Grudgingly I have to acknowledge that Brian’s vehicle is ideal.

  Tongoy

  Long long drive. Stupendous coastline and packed beaches. Caught a debilitating cold. Gets worse by the hour. Everyone looks at me as I cough, rasping out of the pit of my chest.

  Monotony of constant travel is getting to us. It wearies you in a way that you are not really conscious of. Good dinner: fish market restaurant full of life. I am barking like a seal and not the best of company.

  Exploring below our little hotel I discover feverish activity in the deepening gloom of dusk as the fish market closes. Deep in the shadows one stallholder hacks and chops at chunks of fish – and finger, I shouldn’t wonder. Fish are stacked away in coolboxes as kids nip among trestle tables under awnings. Just along the quay a painted saintly statue looks rather forlornly out to sea while a few people sit fishing. As I follow the saint’s gaze out across the blue-black bay I notice a small buoy a hundred yards away. Then it turns to reveal the great gobbling beak of a pelican.

  We walk down the dusty track to a beach where there are many fish restaurants and a shoal of waiters gather round and try to reel us in. The restaurants are largely indistinguishable so we just take pot luck.

  I have had a bit of a cold for a couple of days and Brian is very tired too so we sit pretty much in silence, though it is companionable. It is a bustling place; across a rough cement path from us huge fish hang ready for the men working away cutting them up. The food is good and we are entertained by a guy with an accordion who wanders through the tables yodelling songs. It seems awfully out of tune to us but some of the family groups appear to love him. Brian looks across at me. There is an impish gleam in his eye.

  ‘Do you think that if I tell him about the bridal suite in La Serena, he might play a tune for us?’

  Tongoy

  Another night in Tongoy, I don’t know why. There is really no reason to stay on. Some wonderful old wooden houses apparently built by ships’ carpenters a century ago.

  My snoring is keeping John awake. Says he would prefer the accordion player in the room. Do my best but can’t stop – what can I do, cut my nose off? Even Neruda is boring me now.

  In the morning we head south again. The day is bright and sunny and we are both feeling much restored after a good rest. Brian, though, is still coughing badly. But his driving is more as I know it from back home. We progress in a calm and sedate manner, only bumping off the edge of the tarmac occasionally – when something to the left or right particularly draws his attention.

  A winding dust road leads us to the Fray Jorge National Park. The hillsides are covered with cacti, some with brilliant red flowers. A couple of the few houses use the plants as fences – living barbed wire. Under an electricity pylon a young goatherd shelters from the fiercer power of the sun while tending his flock. The road becomes bumpy and we judder as if using one of those electronic cellulite-reducing belts that were in vogue a few years ago. Just before we reach the park, we see the heavy clouds that hang permanently over the coastal range here as if beyond them lies the promise of a strange Shangri-La after the long and dusty ride.

  The rocky road steepens as we near the treeline, wheels skidding and spinning. The temperature drops and the vegetation becomes a little denser. Although there are many plants and small stunted trees, the overall effect is of grey, not green. Clouds stream in from the sea – visible at times a way off and far below.

  There isn’t much colour up here: one tiny purple flower and a plant with bright red blooms, the quintral. The colours are especially vivid against the grey of dead tree stumps and the sky. At one point as we walk through a small wood on a raised wooden pathway I am reminded of walking through pine woods in the Swiss Alps on family holidays.

  It is strange driving back to the red dust of the desert lands later, the cool and damp of the park becoming a pleasant memory like the last cold beer. We stop to buy a couple of cactus fruit, prickly pears, from two little boys in the road. They do not seem sure about taking the money I proffer, but their big sister comes up and puts them right about the procedure with daft gringos. Two foxes appear brazenly on the track, presumably hanging out for leftovers. They look mangy and bedraggled.

  Road to Los Vilos

  Held up today by two bandits with bushy tails!

  Don Quixote paid king’s ransom for a few prickly pears that grow wild in the scrubland. Pan Amer. H’way – roadside stalls selling cheese, bread and what looks like the corpses of dead lizards.

  John is darting in and out of traffic like a demented roadrunner in a Disney cartoon – Me – Beep, beep – Whoosh!!!

  Beaches like refugee camps. Roadside villages choked with dust. Can’t raise enthusiasm for that Kerouacesque experience.

  Mad mule bolted blindly on the highway from the scrubland. Careered along a stretch of h’way oblivious of the oncoming traffic. Mule killer McCarthy roared on heedlessly!!

  Entering the town of Ovalle we pass the usual shanties lining the hillsides. There are many tourist campsites on the beaches but here, inland, is an encampment of larger, gypsy tents, with a little child wandering naked among them.

  The Club Commercial is about the only place open on a Sunday. There are a few families eating in the big hall where, as usual, a television is on – this time showing tennis which no-one watches. We eat lomo a lo pobre (meat of the poor) – which, given it consists of a whacking great steak with onions, chips and fried eggs, seems a definite misnomer.

  At times we wander off on side roads, drifting through small towns, stopping to eat or have a look, then we take another chunk out of the distance left to Santiago by cruising down the Pan American Highway. I like driving the pick-up, zooming along at a good clip and taking in the sights. Getting used to the ways of Chilean traffic – the ancient little tractors and horse carts and the huge modern trucks – gives one a sense of fitting into the local scene.

  The landscape varies as much as ever: areas of green and then more desert, plenty of scrub and cacti. At times the many still forms of these plants ranged over wide hillsides make me think of people waiting, expectant of some revelation.

  The roads heading inland are lined with orchards, vineyards, wheat and corn
fields. The snow-capped Andes and their brown lower slopes dominate the distant view while in the foreground one gets an odd vista when looking up the tunnel-like avenues between the vines. It is as if there is a green underworld of soft pastel light and then, ‘above ground’, sharper lines and harsh earth.

  Every now and then, as we lap up the miles on the Pan American, we come across little centres of roadside marketing. Sometimes people come out from little stalls holding cheese and fruit aloft to the passing vehicles. A few miles further on and people appear from tiny wooden sentry boxes waving goat carcasses before going back inside as the last in a stream of cars passes. Further south still and the roadsides flutter with men and women in white coats and hats waving madly at the traffic, selling what look like sweet snacks. Sometimes in the middle of nowhere there is a lone shack with a guy selling watermelons.

  On the hard shoulder people move in ancient carts, on motorcycles, on horseback and then there are men in smart suits and sunglasses on foot who look completely out of place.

  We are more talkative and actually looking at maps and guidebooks together. I find myself lightening up and cracking a few weak jokes which Brian acknowledges with a tolerant chuckle. Although we have not talked at any length about our mutual irritations we are both aware of them. As in earlier times we have thought about them, mulled them over and I suspect that, like me, Bri has acknowledged some of my concerns while re-evaluating his. We have, in our own ways, reached a compromise. Without having to spell it out we both sense that a bridge has been crossed and the air is clear again. Mostly he dozes when I am driving – he still has a bad cough but says he is in much better shape and always does his share at the wheel. A couple of days ago I would have been secretly raging at his erratic driving but now I feel far safer with him. Whether this is because now I am happy asking him to slow down or simply because we have not hit anything, despite my elaborate wincing and wailing, I am not sure.