It’s late as I sit typing in my bunk. The wind snarls outside, alternately cursing and begging to be let in. I think I hear the whinnies of the cows I spotted in the lower hold this morning - packed like biscuits in their crates, soiled noses pressed against cold. metal walls.

My parents joined me for a short vacation down to Torres del Paine Park in Patagonia. We left Puerto Natales this morning early on Evangelistas, a freight-passenger ferry, which will take us north through the fjords to Chiloe. Leaving the port in a sky thick with neblina (mist), we passed through the gate of a great arco iris – rainbow (Makes me miss Palau).

After 8 months of living in miniature, this landscape smacks of grandeur. Sitting overlooking the Cuernos de Paine (Horns of Paine) on Easter morning, an Italian man with black dreadlocks and yellow eyes snapped our family photo. “You’d think God finished with the world and threw the leftovers here,” he said, sweeping the landscape with his free hand. Wild guanacos, cousins of the llama, graze among scraggly trees that populate the vast golden steppe. Pines rise from the waters edge to twisted cliffs strung with glaciers. My mother laughed as he continued, “And so came Patagonia.”


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I’m beginning to fall in love with Neruda’s Chile: the “long petal of sea and wine and snow.”

Chiloé
I began writing to Renato Cardenas over a year ago. A friend of a friend put me in contact with him, and after a few email exchanges the island historian invited me to stay in his home. He was my first point of contact; Chiloé, the first island I was sure I would visit. Last May I was poring over books he’d written on Chilote language and mythology, summoning the island of mist from my campus apartment.

“Eres un misterio,” he said over the phone two weeks ago, laughing when I told him for the fourth time this year I’d be late in arriving. This time I was waiting for my luggage. I finally did arrive, wilting under a mountain of equipaje.

Castro is a sprawling city. A town really. One that falls away from the central plaza in a maze of low-lying shingled houses washed in bright pastel hues. Here, no building can eclipse the height of the catedral. A similar rule of thumb still exists on some islands in the Maldives and Pacific, only the point of reference, or reverence, is the coconut palm. It’s cramped and hazy, but I like Castro. Still seems pueblito.

Across from el cenmeterio, tucked behind a stand of snarling pines on Pablo Neruda Street, three black dogs share a crate on a wooden porch. Renato greets me at the end of the overgrown drive upon arrival. He is a thin man. Emerging from beneath a black beret, long, silvering hair reaches his shoulders. He does not look his age, however. His eyes dart about with a vivacity that seems insurmountable.

Inside, the light is cold but the kitchen is warm. We toast with glasses of honey-colored chicha, Chiloe’s locally made hard apple cider. Lorna, his young girlfriend, dishes out ceviche in blue clay bowls.

An old friend of Renato’s is giving a reading of a book he’s published at the city library down on the shore. Fishnets are draped over the windows, and as we settle into our seats, a man with dimples begins to pluck the strings of his guitar.

After the reading a long line of us make our way down the hill and along the port to a tiny home with yellow windows that bloom in the dark. The tiny home is a tiny restaurant called Ven a Mi. A woman with dark eyes and eyebrows pinned up in perpetual surprise grasps her stomach as she invites us in. The room is red. The tables are too, and the bikini of the slinky girl on a calendar. More chica, locally made and served up in plastic Coca Cola bottles is passed around. I end up with a pasa de uva bobbing in my glass, swollen with alcohol. Empanadas de pino appear on a plate. Steaming centers dribble over our fingers and onto red tables.

“La vida es una eternidad que dura cinco minutos.”

The lyrics belong to Victor Jara, the Chilean poet/songwriter assasinated in the opening days of the ‘73 Junta. “Life is an eternity that lasts five minutes!” Renato translates through the din. The peal rings out over strumming guitar on the third floor of a bar near the center of Castro. It’s nearly 4 a.m. but the young Chileans at the table next to us have clamored for an encore, rocking back and forth as they sing the words Renato and his friends intoned over 30 years ago. Some time after midnight Renato’s friend Jose informs me that several of the Chilotes gathered to drink chicha spent time in prisoner of war camps during the Pinochet dictatorship, Renato among them. “Socialistas!” he cries out, raising his glass. “Or is it socios listos?” asks Renato, winking at me (A socio is a colleague, listo means ready).
It is still dark when we get home, I climb into bed exhausted, happy.

Calen
The following afternoon we take a small bus to Calen, where Renato was born. Calen is a tiny village on the Eastern coast of Chiloe, overlooking some 40 islands in the archipelago. On a clear day the Andes rise through the clouds. Renato lets me choose my room. It’s in the turret, four panels of windows. A few of the panes still possess that liquid quality of old glass. They make the flotantes of the salmoneras swim.

Lorna and her sister and Renatos friend Sergio, a musician, join us for the weekend. We walk the beaches and make jam from ciruelas, plums, growing the yard. By Tuesday the house is empty but for me.

It’s the first time I’ve lived alone. But it´s not as I imagined. Martin el Pescador, the black lab with stubby legs that arrived on the doorstop one day with a bag of mussels, follows me around the village. The teachers at the school have invited me to teach the young children a song. Esmerlina on the hill plucks fresh lettuce and basil from her garden and nextdoor Don Checho, nearly 90, invites me over to inspect his horse. “Mi auto,” “My car,” he laughs.

The fishermen bring me merluza and sierra longer than my arm. So much I’m not sure what to do with it. One day Cesar and Jeanette pass by the porch with their young daughter Kiara, just as I´m wondering how I´m going to cook the fish I´ve been given. They invite me to dinner.

Quenac
As luck would have it, Renato invited me to join a theatre project he and a few socios (colleagues) are just beginning on the outer island of Quenac. You can see Quenac from the porch in Calen, a tiny sliver of milky green swimming somewhere beyond the island of Lin Lin and before the Cordillera.

Moros y Cristianos is an old play, of Spanish origin. It used to be performed by the residents of Quenac in teatro al campo (field theatre), but hasn’t seen action since 1956. Together with the librarian Ana Rosa of Achao and Sergio Hernandez, an actor/director from Santiago, Renato is working in concert with the islanders to revive the production. Their first task is a piece of Radio Theatre, and Renato invited me along to help with recording. In two days we had 30 islanders show up for casting. We’ll return in May to go into production...

The curtains are drawn. I could be on a sleeper train, or in a bunk bed in a low-ceilinged apartment. But the whirring of engines and the hollow rasping of the sea begs otherwise. We’ve now past Isla Esperanza, and are due to hit the Gulf of Sorrows (Golfo de Penas) in a few hours. I´ll write more about our stay in Quenac, shortly. For now, sleep!