by David Yeadon
“Yes, that’s the thing—consensus. All together. About all kinds of things—about the things we grow, about government plans, about new schools. All kinds.”
“What happens if a meeting can’t reach consensus?”
“Well—if it happens very often, then the community will divide. A new village will be built and those who do not agree will live in the new place and have their own meetings.”
“So everything happens at a village level.”
“Very much, yes, but a few times every year we have congresses of all the villages. That is where my father is now. He has gone with some others to the islands where many of my people live, and they will discuss things that are important for everyone.”
“It all sounds very organized and very serious,” I said.
“Well, yes, I think it is. But we have many times of fun too. Many celebrations when people give gifts and have big hearts. If a son completes his education or marries or has a child—his family will have a big party and give away many things. We like to be generous. We do not like people who do not share what they have. That is not the Cuna way.”
“And the government allows you to live in this way—the way you choose?”
“Yes. They must. Since 1938 we have always had our own lands, the Comarca de San Blas, and since 1953 we have been allowed to run things—most things—by ourselves. That is why we can do things like protect our islands from hotels and other things, and keep our forests by working with people from other countries.”
“We talked a little last evening about the project you have for preserving the forest.”
“Well—for us it is very important. This is our home and no one really understands how valuable the forests are. There are lots of scientists all over the world trying to understand how the forests live. Maybe in the future we can have a balance between people and land, but first we must know how the forest lives and what is dangerous for it.”
“You sound as if you love this land very much.”
“How I cannot? It is my home and it is very beautiful—and very special for all of us.”
“Well—if you’re the next chief, the forest will be safe.”
“Aha! Maybe I would like to be chief one day. I have taken much time to learn the rituals and the chants—but, we are a democracy and even though I am the son of a chief, they may decide to have another person. That is the way it works with us.”
“I wish you the best of luck.”
“That is very nice for you to say to me. But whatever happens I am happy to be here. Being Cuna is very good!”
“I can see that!” I said, and our sudden laughter scared a couple of baby peccaries rooting in the scrub nearby and sent them scurrying across the dry earth in flurries of dust.
The following day I packed and was ready to leave when the chief’s son approached me again.
“I am sending a guide with you. There is no need to pay him. When you reach the Atrato River you must find someone in a piragua and he will take you maybe to Turbo.” He laughed. “Although I don’t know why you want to go to Turbo!”
“It’s the only way out once I cross the mountains into Colombia.”
“And you want to go out?”
“Not really. It’s so beautiful here.”
“You know you can stay if you wish.”
God—how many times have I been told this by people in quiet and peaceful places, all around the world. And I always feel the same way—torn between the flow of the journey itself and the temptation to stay and become a part of such places for a longer period of time.
I always remember something the notorious explorer-writer Richard Burton wrote: “If we stop moving and try to explain everything, we truly die; if we pause, if we take our gaze off the shimmering horizon for an instant, if we abandon the path in order to reflect or to plot our silly course, we go into exile.”
The impatient, impulsive Burton believed in movement for movement’s sake and some of his travel journals reflect a distinct lack of reflection. I know the temptations—the weighty momentum of the journey itself—but I also know the joys of staying awhile. And even if I don’t stay, in my heart I always promise to return after searching out the next lost world.
And, who knows, when all my wanderings are over, maybe I’ll return to this little village deep in the Panamanian rain forest.
It’s just that “maybe” that concerns me….
The next two days were hard going, climbing ever upward into the Darien ranges. At the highest point they reach over six thousand feet, but my guide insisted, in a Spanish dialect I could barely understand, that we were taking “the lower way.” Only it didn’t feel like that. The track, barely distinguishable among the riot of ferns, palms, and vines, wriggled like an inebriated snake up the endless muddy slopes. His panga was a useful instrument for clearing scrub in the thickest places, but we still had to somersault over enormous moss-covered trunks that had fallen across the track, and crawl in rotting slime up the steepest inclines.
Somewhere along the way we entered Colombia and paused in a small clearing at the top of the ranges to celebrate the views from our “peak in Darien.” Unfortunately, low clouds hid the view of the Pacific sixty miles or so to the west, but I could vaguely make out the Atlantic coast twenty miles to the east.
Between the coast and our aerie lay more jungle, which eventually merged into the vastness of Colombia’s enormous and little-explored swamplands. There was no sign of human habitation anywhere. The liquid landscape of this region would be an ideal candidate for “lost world” journeys—a mysterious green wilderness, through which silver-flecked streams wriggled into flat hazy infinities.
Maybe I’d do some exploring there after a little R and R in Turbo. (Another one of those damned maybes.)
The descent was almost as bad as the climb. Not quite so strenuous but leaving both of us like swamp creatures as we skidded and slid down through the tangle of vegetation, searching for a tributary of the Atrato that would carry me safely by piragua to the coast.
On the third day after leaving Paya we eventually found a stream, full and navigable following an overnight rainstorm that had battered my tent into a soggy, matted mess by morning.
My guide left me sitting on a pile of newly exposed roots by the water’s edge and went upstream to see if he could find someone willing to take me to Turbo.
Three hours passed which I had hoped to spend musing on my journey but was so plagued by mosquitoes and other biting bichos that I ended up wrapping myself in my wet tent and dozing in the sticky heat.
Luck was with me, though. My Cuna guide returned in a piragua with a man who looked far too old for paddling and poling. We said our farewells and I gave my guide the gift of a knife he’d admired when he watched me cut the fruit we’d been eating for the last few days.
Once we reached the Atrato the journey became relaxing. The old man was on his way to trade in Turbo (more odd bundles wrapped in banana fronds and tied with hemp) and we eased down the river through the northern swampy fringes, out into the vast delta, and across the shimmering Gulf of Urabá.
Turbo was as bad as I’d been warned. Its Wild West flavor had none of the charm of the old gold-mining towns of the United States. It was a seedy, forlorn place full of street gamblers and cheap-beer saloons and slouching campesinos who had come to this terminal point of the Pan American Highway in search of something they couldn’t seem to find and didn’t know what to do next. I celebrated the end of the journey by drinking my first cold beers in almost ten days, but they didn’t raise my spirits much. The place had an end-of-the-earth feel and I quickly set about making arrangements to travel by ship to Colón.
I couldn’t forget the invitation of the chief’s son in Paya—“You know you can stay if you wish.” Why the hell didn’t I stay in his tranquil village eating plantains and sketching the Cuna, at least for a while? Why all this constant movement? A glut of good-byes and not nearly enough “Thank you—I’ll stay.”
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br /> I’ll work it all out one day. Maybe….
6. THE CHILEAN FJORDS
Killer Waves, Williwaws, and Other Wonders
I’m definitely not a sailor. Never have been, and by the look of present circumstances, never will be. I might not even be me much longer. Rarely have I felt so utterly vulnerable—helpless—at the questionable mercy of unfamiliar elements, dependent upon the skill and endurance of someone I hardly know. Oh—and facing the voids of self-doubt as my little backup security bungee ropes snap one by one, leaving me tumbling headlong into utter unpredictability—and terror. I don’t even know why I’m here….
An almighty crash!
What the hell was that?
The boat seemed to somersault in the heaving spray. We must have caught a side wave again. Much bigger than any of the others. Water poured over the rail like a miniature Niagara. I was hanging on with both hands, but I could feel my grip weakening.
Why doesn’t the thing bob back up like boats are supposed to? I’m looking into the waves now—I mean into them. They’re directly below me. They shouldn’t be there. If I lose my hold I’ll just tumble down into the maw of the maelstrom. And that’ll be it—one second—less than a second—and it’ll all be over and finished. No more heaving like a cork in a cataract, no more of this bone-jarring roller-coastering…. I’d be at peace. Drifting gently down, far beneath the churning waves. Drifting into silence. A lovely, benevolent, eternal silence….
It’s almost tempting. I’m sick of all this clutching and crashing and grabbing and churning. Is it wrong to ask for a little respite? I mean, how much more is this poor battered body of mine supposed to take? Dammit, it’s summertime down here. It’s not supposed to be like this. No one had warned me….
There are far easier ways of exploring the curled southern extremities of Chile. They’ve even built a new road through the Andes all the way down to the Patagonian and Tierra del Fuego peaks. A nice safe one-lane graded highway on the other side of the mountains, where skies are occasionally blue and winds only bend trees a little, not whole landscapes. There are even towns that boast 310 days of sunshine a year. The Chilean coast, on the other hand, is lucky to get 40! It would have been a beautiful quiescent journey—just me and the condors and the mountains and the vast Argentinean pampas to the east. I would have actually been able to see something. These impenetrable fogs and notorious “williwaw” winds and days of nothing but sodden grayness would have been as unlikely as glaciers in the Grand Canyon.
I could have slept on solid, unmoving earth or even in little roadside inns, eating the good stolid beef ’n’ beef breakfasts and dinners of this rolling cattle country. I could have had days of quiet meditation and relaxation—sketching a little, catching up on my travel notes, and polishing my soul. Generally mellowing out and bestowing a few modest indulgences upon my weary body and mind.
And lots more “could haves” too.
Only I didn’t.
I didn’t do any of that. Instead, like a jolly gigolo, I allowed myself to be seduced by the idea of new experiences, new conquests, new adrenaline stimulants—the new aphrodisiac of a sea journey. On a boat. A small boat. Skimming across a purple ocean. Exploring the most magnificent (and undiscovered) fjord coast in the world. Forget the Norwegian fjords. The fjords of Chile are twice, three times the size. The whole Andean range rising up from jungle-clad bays and clefts to soaring snowbound peaks necklaced with glaciers that sparkle and wink under huge blue skies…. Oh—I’d done my homework. I knew that this part of Chile, only six hundred miles west from the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica, was a region notorious for its climatic idiosyncracies. Month after month of storms and gales from Cape Horn. All the way up the nine hundred miles to Puerto Montt. But I also knew—well, at least I’d been told by people who knew—that November was summertime here in these southern latitudes. A time of tranquility and restoration. A period ideal for easy exploration.
“Nobody’s written about this area,” I’d been told. “It’s one of the earth’s last real undiscovered regions,” I’d been assured. “You’ll be one of the first.”
I should have known better. The lure of “You’ll be one of the first” is always guaranteed to hook this particular fish. Brighter than an Apte Tarpan fly, as deadly as a Jock Scott or a Royal Wulff, the lure of those words always hides a barbed hook and I’ve had those barbs stuck deep in my psyche before as I’ve grappled in the soaring tepuis of the Gran Sabana of Venezuela, the treacherous terrains of Scotland’s Torridon, the fickle terrors of the Sahara. And all because of that damned phrase “You’ll be one of the first.”
You’d think I’d have learned to be a wise fish by now. Keeping to the deeper places. Ignoring the clever illusive flashes of bright lures….
Another crash!
Just as we were coming up to horizontal. And here we go again. Another Niagara. Another eye-to-eye meeting with that horrible green-gray morass of seething ocean directly below me.
I’m really fed up with this now. Honestly—I’m not kidding. I’ve had it. Sailing is for suicidal nuts. Men aren’t meant to sail. The snide, grinning dock hands at Puerto Montt had known it would be like this. All that nudging and nodding—they knew what it would be like. They may have even tried to warn me in their cocky supercilious way—but I wasn’t listening. I was off on another adventure. I only heard that damn phrase “You’ll be one of the first” and everything else was mere maunginess and mean-spirited pessimism…. I was deaf to defeatism. Hell—I may even have sniggered at them—laughing inside at the landbound. Poor unimaginative buggers—living their dull safe lives among the cranes and capstans and old warehouses. Never knowing the thrill of discovery. Never even catching a glimpse of the towering fjords.
I wish I was back with them now. They were the wise ones. I was the jackass. Just another arrogant ignoramus off to his doom among the unnamed islands and whirlpooling channels of this topographical tumult. This time I’d gone too far. There’d be no lucky hand of fate to lift me lovingly out of this seething mess….
It had all begun so calmly in Puerto Montt, where I’d come to satisfy a nagging curiosity about this strange remote region at the bottom end of the world that nobody seemed to know anything about.
As usual I’d made no prior arrangements, trusting to luck that there would be boats of some kind easing their way down the coast, through the narrow channels, across the notorious Gulf of Peñas and on down the Strait of Magellan to Punta Arenas.
I’d be following the historical wake of Ferdinand Magellan, who sliced through these seas for the first time in 1520 aboard his caravel Trinidad, or Sir Francis Drake, who, sailing his famous Golden Hind, discovered a safe if choppy route between cliffs and storms. Or even the poor Captain Sarmiento de Gamboa, who established some of the first communities in these southern extremities of Chile and later saw them desolated by isolation and starvation. Ah—what a journey. What a dream!
Of course I expected to hang around the docks and cafés of Puerto Montt for a few days looking for a lift. After the noise and swelter of Santiago, seven hundred miles to the north, this quiet Bavarian-flavored, end-of-the-line port town founded by German immigrants in the 1850s is a pleasant place for dallying. In this capital of Chile’s famous Lake Region I envisaged a couple of trips into the mountains playing tourist, but luck suddenly appeared abruptly on day two in the form of Peter Swales, an Australian sailor who, in his words, was attempting “a half-assed ’round the world thing with lots of holdovers!”
“Is Puerto Montt a holdover?” I asked him.
“Not from what I’ve seen. Don’t think there’s much point hanging about. Too quiet.”
“So where are you heading next?”
“South—down the coast. See the fjords. Have a look at the Magellan. They say that’s beaut sailing down there!”
Well—time to go for it, I thought.
“Do you need a deckhand? I gather it gets a bit rough.”
He looked at me and I l
ooked at him. He was a wiry, short man of around forty with sun-frizzled hair, a deep tan, and unusually large brown eyes. He seemed honest and direct, like most Australians I’ve met on my travels.
“Who you pitchin’ for—yourself?”
“Sure. Who else?”
“Sailed before?”
“Not much.”
“Get seasick?”
“I expect so.”
“D’you know what a halyard is?”
“No idea.”
“Can you cook?”
“I’m a great cook.”
“Got some spare cash to share costs?”
“Not much.”
A brief pause, then a quick laugh from Peter and an extended hand, deep brown and laced with rope burns.
“Six in the morning we leave. You can sleep in the boat tonight if you want. I’m not going to get a girl in this place, anyway. ’Least, not for free.”
And that was that.
At six the following morning, as Peter had said, we left the harbor in his small boat, Christine, and began our nine-hundred-mile journey south through one of the wildest lost worlds in the Southern Hemisphere.
Just looking at a map of the world makes you curious about this ragtag coastline at the southern end of Chile. There are islands, hundreds of them, and deep gashes into the Andean spine (much deeper than those Norwegian fjord incisions). It’s been called “a topographical hysteria” and “the wettest place on the planet,” but on that first morning, as we drifted through light mists out of Puerto Montt, the thrill of new discoveries overwhelmed any sense of foreboding.
Unfortunately, the mists stayed with us most of that first day and well into the second, but at least the wind was “tame,” hardly twenty knots according to Peter but quite frisky enough for me.
