25feb06
first night on the carretera austral. the ferry from la arena to puelche could not have carried more than 10 cars and it was a reminder that we were once again heading off the beaten track. the pacific waters looked icy fresh and the occasional gust of wind carried a biting, antartic chill. we put on our fleeces and stood with watery eyes looking out over the ship’s bow to sea. we were reaching world’s end - the end of the panamerican highway which we’d joined almost a year back in LA, land’s end just 750 miles north of antartica, and for us the end of the big enchilada. but it could be the south was the best. island cliff faces jutted out of the sea, the evening sun hidden way beyond the thick grey clouds and as we powered ahead through the waves, i had a bird’s eye vision of us reduced to pin pricks on a near stationary little boat somewhere off the western coast of the huge south american continent; heading further into the overwhelming and desolate south.
the ferry arrived in puelche, the ramp was lowered onto the road and we set off for the hour long dirt road trip to hornopiren. the route passed by the occasional house, built in typical style of wooden slats and steel sheet roofs. i imagined many of these houses were built with the hands of their existing occupants, or at least by their settling ancestors who came here in the 19th century, wiping out the Tehuelche nomadic hunter-gatherers and the canoe-faring Alcalufe peoples who inhabited the region before. a number of homes were surrounded by fields and one was being worked by a farmer and his two oxen, not a typical sight in today’s modern and industrial chile. children and parents’ stares locked on to our car as we passed by; we watched their faces fade into clouds of dust through our rear view mirrors. the ferry here only runs during the summer months of january and february so foreigners are uncommon.
we arrived at hornopiren, a rustic fishing village set in a harbour of dark waters, and in theory mountains and volcanoes too, but tonight they were obscured by the heavy grey clouds. the route to a guidebook recommended hotel was blocked off, so we backtracked and found another. e-j went in to enquire and i turned the engine off. the voices of the children playing on the swings a few blocks away was crystal clear, sounds echoing in the valley. rain began to sprinkle the windscreen, smoke rose from chimmeneys in the metal roofs and e-j ran back. our 40 dollar wood panelled cosy room was in a building which used to be part of the hospital opposite, but during the short tourist season it was temporarily converted into a hotel. the lady in charge was also a midwife at the hospital and she knew most of the 3000 villagers by name. she explained the drunks staggering about in the main square were not poor or unemployed, they were locals dealing with boredom.
on this trip we had been to remote places already; the tiny hillside villages of chiapas, the mountain mining towns of middle peru, accessible only through hours of dangerous gravel canyon roads, the monkey sanctuary on the pacific border of costa rica and panama. but there was something qualitatively different about this remoteness. here you knew you were traveling towards a cul-de-sac on a strip of land – the almighty andes barring one side and the endless pacific waters blocking the other. the further you edged your way down this thin window ledge, the fewer options of escape were available. and when you got to the end, you were indeed the furthest south possible without jumping on a russian ice breaker. at 42 degrees we were still level with new zealand’s southern island so plenty way to go, and hornopiren was just a diluted sampler of the remoteness that lay in store, but already the sensation of being about to fall off the end of the world was there and humbling. big mountains, big islands, big ocean - and tiny little us in our sweet little car.
