Senor Nice: Straight Life From Wales to South America

by Howard Marks

  ‘That’s him,’ said a voice, high-pitched and rough like an old record.

  ‘That’s the one who licked a toad, who licked one of us. We’ll charge him now. How shall we find him?’

  ‘Guilty,’ croaked another. ‘We find him guilty.’

  I had disappeared off the radar screen. Mobile phones, computers and global positioning systems could no longer see me. I was alone in the middle of nowhere beneath exploding volcanoes, battling ancient cavemen and giant lizards with fake horns glued to their heads. I called on those forces within my being to realign and submit, to let go of all my compelling fears and just exist. I realised I had been cleaned and purified in the savage lands with which the future has not connected and which refuse to accept the outside world. These plains of Patagonia had not been left behind; they had just wanted no part of whatever else was around. I was now part of them.

  Familiar feelings began to pour into my stomach. Pangs of hunger and waves of tiredness fought with flashes of memories. I was coming down. The DMT trip was ending. I was no longer in the house; I was in a line of people of all nationalities queuing for tickets. I looked for Che. He was nowhere to be seen. Someone asked me for 200 pesos. I pulled the money out of my pocket and was given a ticket. I got on a boat, sat in a row of seats and gazed out of the window. I had never been so far away from home.

  The icebergs were getting larger and more menacing. Some looked like ancient Greek ruins, tossed haphazardly into the depths by some third-millennium Atlantis catastrophe. Others resembled the giant disembodied faces of Mount Rushmore, their enormous eyes gazing sternly at us as we floated under their noses. The boat’s engines coughed harshly and died. In ghostly silence we drifted helplessly towards an unending chaotic mountain range of pure ice. One of the giant heads gave a cruel look and crumbled into the water, creating huge waves with the sound of a hundred simultaneous thunderstorms. Some of the passengers started shouting in various incomprehensible languages and rushed in panic to the side of the boat. Confused and scared, I joined the panicking throng and pushed my way to where I presumed the lifeboats were being lowered. An ugly craggy black rock jutted over the boat’s deck. Perched on the rock was the biggest bird I had ever seen or imagined, a giant vulture with a massive pink head and a bloodthirsty smile. I assumed it was God. This had to be the end. I prayed to the bird of prey and let the crowd carry me to my fate. We all have to die sometime, some way.

  Bird of prey

  Bird of prey

  Flying high

  Flying high

  Am I going to die

  Bird of prey

  Bird of prey

  Flying high

  Flying high

  Take me on your flight

  ‘Just my bloody luck. Would you believe it? The batteries of the bloody camera have packed up. Now of all times. I told Bethan to buy new ones yesterday. She forgot, of course. Typical.’

  ‘Gareth! Where did you come from? Where am I?’

  ‘Oh you recognise me now, do you? Thank God for that. The doctor said you might be delirious for a bit longer. He wasn’t kidding. You’ve been talking complete nonsense. Nasty thing, mind, snakebite. I got bitten by one in Italy once.’

  ‘What doctor, Gareth?’

  ‘Your buddy, the one who’s the image of Che Guevara. Nice bloke, I thought. Didn’t say much.’

  ‘Do you know him, then?’

  ‘Well no. You both came into the bar together. I’d never seen him before.’

  ‘Which bar?’

  ‘I can’t remember what it’s called. I only went in for a piss while the others were visiting the ranch next door. As I was leaving, I saw the two of you at the bar. You looked terrible.’ This made some sense.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be getting off this boat, Gareth?’

  ‘Off the boat? I think we would be wise to wait until it docks, another half an hour, I think.’

  ‘But didn’t they just call abandon ship?’

  ‘You’re still a bit delirious, I think, Howard. Let’s go and sit outside on the deck.’

  ‘Sure. But why was everyone rushing to the side?’

  ‘Doing the same as I was – taking pictures of that bloody condor. And then the bloody camera batteries gave out.’

  The giant otherworld vulture which I had thought was a Fatboy Slim remix of God was the rare Andean condor, the world’s heaviest flying bird with a wingspan of ten feet and a lifespan of up to seventy-five years. It spends most of its time riding thermals in the company of jets and fighting with vultures and eagles over the carcasses of sea lions. A condor was perched at the mouth of a small cave in the face of a rocky bank, which explained the stampede.

  ‘Where are we, Gareth?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear a word of what the guide was saying before my camera went kaput? We’re cruising on Lago Argentino, Howard, going through the National Glacier Park. Next question.’

  ‘Are we anywhere near Calafate?’

  ‘Of course. That’s very close to where we got on the boat, and it’s where we’ll get off.’

  ‘Where’s my doctor friend?’

  ‘No idea; he didn’t get on the boat. But he gave me his card to give you. Here it is. Bloody hell! He really is Che Guevara. Well, well, well. I thought he’d been killed in Bolivia or somewhere ages ago. I must be mixing him up with someone else. I suppose it could be his son.’

  ‘He’s not Che Guevara, Gareth; he’s just got the same name. He idolises him, and tries to look like him.’

  ‘I’ve got you. It’s a bit like one of our neighbours in Blackwood. He changed his name to Elvis Presley. He didn’t look like Elvis, though, no matter how much he tried.’

  We went up on deck and sat down. I watched the luminous blue glacier slip back up the valley from where it had come. The DMT was flashing back. The glacier sparkled, twitched, glowed and squirmed like a segmented blue worm with a black centipede’s head. Thick mandibles chomped on swollen blood vessels. It looked dangerous but seemed otherwise occupied.

  ‘Are you all right, Howard?’ asked Gareth. ‘You were looking a bit better; now you seem a bit odd again.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ve just had a funny old day.’

  ‘What have you been up to? I was wondering.’

  ‘I’ve been with that doctor on his rounds. He doesn’t half use some strange medicines – stuff from all different types of animals and plants. I tried some just for a laugh, and I’ve been feeling weird since. I wasn’t really bitten by a snake.’

  ‘What did you take?’

  ‘Something from a toad.’

  ‘Well, that’s odd. My Auntie Ceridwen used to keep toads,’ said Gareth.

  ‘Was she a doctor too?’

  ‘Hell, no. She was a bloody witch, a real one. She used to feed her cats from spare nipples that she had in her armpits. There aren’t many witches left these days.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘I doubt it very much. She disappeared without trace over ten years ago, and she was pretty old then. She might be still alive, but everyone assumes she’s dead. Ilfant, her son, my cousin, has inherited her house and all her stuff. In fact, as you’ll know being a Welsh speaker, ilfant is the Welsh for toad. Shows how much she thought of toads. Not that she treated them very well, mind. She mangled them to bits, took lumps out of their heads and cut off their tongues. She would even clean the handle of her broomstick by rubbing the poor buggers up and down it. Ilfant told me that he once found her using it like a vibrator. She wasn’t married, of course.’

  ‘I’ve read about witches doing that,’ I said. ‘The pus from the toad’s skin used to get them high, and they would think they were flying.’

  ‘Well, I never knew that, Howard. You learn something new every day. It makes sense, though. I always thought the idea of them actually hurtling through the sky on brushes was a bit far-fetched. She used to feed the toads with flies’ wings and special tiny mushrooms she called bwyd yr ilfant.’

  ‘That’s Welsh for toad foo
d,’ I said. ‘Maybe they were toadstools.’

  ‘That’s a point, a very good point. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  We were silent for a few minutes, then Gareth said, ‘Let’s have a drink at the bar here on the boat. They’ve got local brandy with glacier ice. I’ve not tried it, but it might clear that toad shit out of your system.’

  I hadn’t seen Gareth since the meeting at the bar in Trelew. ‘So, how’s your holiday going? Are you still with the Saga group?’

  ‘Yes, quite a few of them are on the boat. Bethan isn’t here; she’s gone to see those bloody penguins she’s been on about since before we left home. I thought I would rather go on a boat trip round the glaciers and take some pictures. I had enough of wildlife yesterday. We went to a sea lion colony. Bloody huge they are – sixteen foot and four tons, according to the guide. They go out to sea and gorge as much as they can and then come back to lie on the beach and fart all day. It smelt worse than that sewage place near Kenfig Hill where me and Bethan used to pick dewberries. I got some good photos, mind. And I took some great ones today until the bloody camera gave up the ghost.’

  ‘Is it the camera or the batteries?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Well I can’t be sure, I suppose. I think it’s the batteries. I bloody hope so; otherwise, I’ve lost all my photos. You’re thinking of the one I took in Trelew, aren’t you? I’m sure it’s the batteries. Don’t worry. I’ll get some as soon as we’re off this boat.’

  Just as the sun was setting over the pale blue lake, the boat docked at somewhere named Puerto Bandera. It looked familiar.

  ‘Is this where I got on, Gareth?’

  ‘Of course. And that’s the bar where we ran into each other,’ answered Gareth, pointing out a wooden building in the distance. A sign, ‘Estancia Alicia’, pointed in the same direction. I began to feel normal.

  ‘Shall we meet later?’

  ‘I would love to, believe me, but I have to have dinner, all-inclusive, with the rest of the old codgers at the hotel, and I promised Bethan we’d have a quiet night in tonight. She feels cheated if we stop at a posh hotel and don’t feel the benefit of it. We could meet tomorrow morning, if you like. I’ll come over to yours. Hotel La Loma, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s it. See you tomorrow, Gareth. Not too early.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I can see the toad has taken the bollocks out of you. You have a lie-in. I’ll probably have a bit of one myself.’

  Gareth caught the Saga bus. I took a taxi to the hotel and lay on my bed to dream about witches, babies’ cauls and naval heroes.

  *

  There was a note waiting for me at reception when I went down in the morning for breakfast:

  Dear Howard.

  I came over, but you were obviously fast asleep. That toad shit seems a lot more effective than Horlicks. I couldn’t have stayed anyway: Bethan is poorly. It’s nothing serious, just a bit of tummy trouble. She didn’t stop eating last night. Either that or she caught bird flu from the bloody penguins. But I ought to stay with her and get the doctor. (I hope he’s not called Che Guevara.) I bought some batteries, and the camera is as right as rain. Good luck with your mission, and get in touch when you are back home.

  All the best.

  Gareth.

  PS You won’t believe this but there’s even a Welsh tea café right here in the main street of Calafate. So they’re expanding well beyond Gaiman. They might get to Wales soon.

  Later that day, I caught the two-hour flight from Calafate to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. It was snowing. I took the courtesy bus to the Las Hayas Resort Hotel, checked in, left my bags at reception for the staff to take to my room, and took a seat in the restaurant. I was starving, and my hunger had been severely inflamed by my in-flight reading. Ushuaia’s culinary delights included the Antarctic king crab – also called the centolla or spider crab. One of those and a bottle of Malbec from Bodega Escorihuela would be a sensible way to begin a visit to the end of the world.

  Tierra del Fuego was discovered in 1520 by Fernão de Magalhães – known in English as Ferdinand Magellan – a Portuguese navigator engaged by the Spanish crown to find a route to the East Indies by sailing west from Spain. After crossing the Atlantic and heading south, Magellan found a narrow seaway cutting through the southern tip of the South American land mass and the Pacific Ocean at its western end. Smoke and fire, presumably made by the indigenous Indians, rose from the island south of the strait as Magellan sailed through. He named it Tierra del Fuego – Land of Fire. At the bottom of Tierra del Fuego, on the shore of the Beagle Channel, lies Ushuaia, repeatedly referred to in all the tourist leaflets, thereby reducing the isolation they are trying to promote, as the southernmost town in the world. South of the Beagle Channel, which also joins the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, lie hundreds of largely uninhabited and variously sized and shaped islands petering out at Cape Horn. Sea and ice alone form the physical landscape between there and the South Pole.

  I went to my room. Innumerable large snowflakes blotted out most of the view in the dark night, but I could see from the slow-moving ships’ lights that I was close to the sea. I overlooked the Beagle Channel, named after the ship that had carried the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, to his discoveries during the 1830s. Ushuaia makes the most of its connection with Charles Darwin, and a copy of his book The Voyage of the Beagle lay on my desk next to the Gideons’ Bible and hotel services folder. I had read it years ago while studying the history of science as an Oxford postgraduate but forgotten most of it. Skimming through the conclusion, I read the following:

  In calling up the images of the past, the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes: yet these plains are pronounced by all most wretched and useless. They are characterised only by negative possessions; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm possession of the memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and the more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression. I can scarcely analyse these feelings: but it must be partly due to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely practicable, and hence unknown: they bear the stamp of having thus lasted for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time.

  A blinding dawn suddenly blazed through the windows. I got up to shut the curtains and saw a backdrop from Dungeons and Dragons. The morning sun blazed from the clear blue sky behind the Martial Mountains as they surveyed what was clearly their domain, like white-capped, chocolate-faced giant wizards poring over a magical potion. They were huge and magnificent, and a bit too close for comfort.

  Lounging around the hotel reading local newspapers and magazines, I read that George Bush had been here fishing at a $1,000-a-night lodge, and CNN’s Ted Turner had just bought a ranch. I also found out that Ushuaia had been built by those incarcerated nearby at what was once Argentina’s biggest penal colony. The prisoners, mainly anarchists sent down from the north, built the steep criss-crossed streets of houses and bridges, and a fifteen-mile railway track. I consulted the telephone directories. There was no one called McCarty or even Williams.

  I had woken up wanting to eat more Antarctic king crab. The hotel’s Martial Restaurant did not open until the evening, but the staff recommended Volver, reputedly the best crab restaurant in the world and open from eleven o’clock. The snow had stopped, and I took a taxi to the main street, San Martín, a non-stop parade of shops stuffed with world’s end souvenirs, penguin paraphernalia, duty-free whisky and cigarettes. Volver was an old-fashioned restaurant at the water’s edge. Inside, shelves carrying hundreds of old photographs and piles of bric-a-brac jutted out from walls covered with yellowed newspapers. The menu offered crab pâté, crab salad, crab soup, crab pasta, crab goulash and crab. I ordered crab. Soon afterwards, Ernesto, who told me he had served his apprentice
ship as a waiter in Bournemouth, brought to the table a plate on which a crab, its spindly legs spanning over a yard from tip to tip, was lying on its back. The meat was delicious.

  I gazed at the photographs. There were no obvious portraits of a Patrick McCarty. While browsing though some bits and pieces I noticed some empty boxes labelled ‘Fabrica Centolla, Puerto Williams’. I was on to something.

  ‘Ernesto, where is Puerto Williams?’

  ‘About twenty kilometres away, sir, on the island of Navarino just south of Ushuaia.’

  ‘But I thought Ushuaia was the southernmost place in the world.’

  ‘It is if you ignore Chile, sir, which Argentinians always do.’

  Stupidly, I hadn’t realised that Tierra del Fuego, like much of what was originally known as Patagonia, is divided between Chile and Argentina. The Beagle Channel forms a large part of the border. Puerto Williams, just across the channel, was in Chile.

  I walked to the harbour, where tour operators were offering trips down the Beagle Channel. Two featured Puerto Williams as a stop. One, on a luxury liner, was leaving tomorrow for a week-long cruise through the Chilean fjords and then calling at Puerto Williams on the way back. Another, on a catamaran, went there via a sea lion colony and came back the same day through rocky outcrops housing colonies of cormorants. It was leaving in just over an hour. There were ten other passengers, half of whom were American yachties, returning from a duty-free shopping trip in Ushuaia to boats moored in Puerto Williams and chattering animatedly about prices in voices louder than the catamaran engines.

  We rocked and rolled for an hour through choppy sea, passed some thick-necked sea lions shooting out clouds of hot breath at delighted sea lionesses basking on a wreck-strewn beach, and pulled into Puerto Williams. Chilean police boarded and examined our passports.

  In misty rain, I walked past huge steel freight containers functioning as offices and stores, and rows of old-style wooden bungalows topped with brightly painted corrugated iron roofs with smoking chimney pipes. A pile of firewood, a flagpole and a dog kennel stood outside each one. Four youths, each holding a lead, were taking their king crabs for a walk. Apart from a small but closed anthropological museum dedicated to the long-extinct Yamana Indians, there was nothing to suggest that Puerto Williams had existed for longer than a few decades. Maybe the Chileans had recently built it just to boast they had the southernmost town in the world. It couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with either my great-great-grandfather or a nineteenth-century Chilean naval hero.