TravelStream™ news feed for member ecotripping on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/ecotripping en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 01 May 2008 23:38:45 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1209697680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1209697680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1209697680/tpod.html Thu, 01 May 2008 23:38:45 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Porto Alegre, Brazil

You can look at the photos. I suggest slideshow mode
http://joshuamarcus.smugmug.com/gallery/4597752_rpHkJ

And now some Neruda poems:

First One::

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

The Infinite One

Do you see these hands? They have measured
the earth, they have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when the move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest or fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.

One of my favorites is "Let The Woodcutter Awaken." It's about North America and it's really long, so I'll copy just a few passages.

West of the Colorado River
there's a place that I love.
I hasten there with everything that transpires
in me pulsing, with all
that I was, that I am, that I uphold.
There are some high red rocks, the wild
air of a thousand hands
made them edified structures.
The blind scarlet rose from the abyss
and these rocks became copper, fire and strength.
America spread out like a buffalo skin,
galloping through the light and clear night,
toward the starry heights,
I drink your cup of green dew
Yes, through acrid Arizona and knotty Wisconsin
to Milwaukee raised against the wind and the snow
or in the flaming swamps of West Palm,
near the pines of Tacoma, the thick
odor of steel in your forests,
I walked mother earth,
blue leaves, waterfall of stones,
hurricanes that shook like all the music,
rivers that prayed like monasteries,
ducks and apples, lands and waters
infinite quietude so that the wheat blossoms.

And another part:

But if you arm your hordes, North America,
to destroy that pure frontier
and bring the butcher from Chicago
to govern the music and the order that we love,
we'll rise from the stones and the air to bite you:
we'll rise from the last window to pour fire on you:
we'll rise from the deepest waves to sting you with spines:
we'll rise from the furrow so that the seed will pound you like a Colombian fist,
we'll rise to deny you bread adn water,
we'll rise to burn you in hell.

So do not set foot, solider,
on sweet France, because we'll be there
so that the verdant vineyards will yield vinegar
and humble girls will show you the spot
where German blood is fresh.
Do not ascend Spain's dry sierras
because every stone will be transformed into fire,
and the brave will fight there for a thousand years:
do not stray amid the olive groves because you'll
never return to Oklahoma, and do not enter
Greece, because even the blood that you're shedding today
will rise from the earth to arrest you.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203695400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203695400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203695400/tpod.html Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:41:18 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Lilpela, Chile

When I first conceived of this journey, the last thing I expected was to do it riding a rented van. I romantically thought that like Neruda, I would ride horseback. He describes his experience:

"The sky overhead can't be seen. Below, leaves have been falling for centuries, forming a layer of humus the hoof of the mounts sink down into...It was all the dazzling and secretive work of nature and at the same time a growing threat of cold, snow, and pursuit. It all came into play: solitude, danger, silence, and the urgency of my mission".

They passed through primeval forest including Rauli trees, "the diameter of a horse." His companions marked them with machetes to use as "breadcrumbs" for the way back. They have to cross a river:

"Soon my horse was almost completely covered by the water, I began to plunge up and down without support, my feet fighting desperately while the horse struggled to keep its head above water." Neruda thought he was going to drown, but the "seasoned countryfolk" assured they had their lassos ready, though one admitted that the river had once swept his father away.

Me and the van-group stop to see the tranquil but deep water of the Curringue. Then we drive over it.
Neruda and company rest the first night at the Chihuío hot springs. The volcanic waters "cleansed off the heaviness of our long ride." In a crude structure men with bull horns for cups lay around a bonfire among stacks of cheese and meat, which they shared with the new arrivals. They sang songs of love and faraway places and Neruda transfixed them with stories of his childhood in this nature. "We left on our horses, singing, with a new air filling our lungs, a breath that drove us on to the great highway of the world waiting for me."

Today, about five dollars gets me into the Chihuío hot springs along with a bunch of families. Cabins made from half decaying Coihue lumber house private baths. An older couple begs me to take a photo of them soaking into hyper-plump raisins. The main attraction is a shallow pool heated by the springs and moderated with cold blasts from a stream-fed hose. Bickering mothers, fathers, and children pull chilly pranks on each other while keeping themselves from burning.

The grass still grows where he told stories and slept. Improvised plumbing slathering the hillside collects the streams of fire. I stumble into one and scald my foot. Just in case that wasn't enough, underground bubbling and gurgling confirms I'm in the land of geyserdom.

A bit up the road from Chihuío the van halts when we enter private property. It takes Ramón an hour and a half to negotiate with the owner, though I think an hour of that is just getting to her secret lair on horseback. She lets us on but two border police have to escort us. Ramón tells me she is somehow connected to Britain's largest advertising firm and bought these 14,000 acres (almost 3 times larger than the biggest U.S. Ski resort) in 2000. I never thought an individual could own a entire mountain range, let alone one named Devil's Fangs. Their bald snow-ringed peaks bite into the sky. We walk through the valley along a wide path torn by the giant claw of past logging. All the land until Argentina is hers. Although she keeps it unused, little if any of Neruda's "primitive nature's great cathedral" still stands. Ramón saysit was clear-cut fifty years ago. He points out Rauli trees whose dimensions have shrunken from horses to squirrels. I ask him rhetorically whether its better to kill a million trees or one man.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203603720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203603720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203603720/tpod.html Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:48:00 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Futrono, Chile

An inquiry at a supermarket in Futrono reveals Ramón Quichiyao´s school is only a couple of blocks away. Inside a large hallway in the school building, a few people point to his house on one side of it. A woman opens up and when I say who I am, her eyes light up with expectation. Rebeca is Ramón wife. She is about to leave for the event, so we drop our stuff and go with her to municipal room that looks to be a converted gym. It´s huge ceilings dwarf the compact leader of tonight´s program. He´s nearly 60 and wearing glasses low on his nose. His pants and sports jacket droop down on him and for a moment it´s hard to believe he´s the mountain man I rushed down here for. Yet, there is a youthful determination built into the wrinkles in his face.
Ramón has made himself the worldwide expert on Neruda´s flee. He has been researching it since the 1980´s and has led treks across the route a few occasions. He is Mapuche Indian. These lands are his people´s lands and he knows these mountains because they are is backyard. Tonight he organized an municipal event so he could talk about Neruda and his own experience, invite some poets to share their work, and show a clip of a documentary recreating the escape. This is all a kick-off to the party he is leading into the mountains tomorrow. I originally heard about him from the poet Floridor Perez, who joined Ramón years ago on one of these treks. When I emailed him, Ramón invited me to this. When I arrived in Chile, I had no idea how I would get across the mountains. Now Ramón was presumably my answer.
He calls these events and even entitled a book, "A route through the wilderness, a way to freedom." The mayor gives a brief talk, young musicians play inspirational music, and some of Chile´s finer poets, including Sergio Mansilla perform. I admit that I had difficulty paying close attention throughout. Listening to poetry is hard for me and when it´s not in English and spoken with a slurring Chilean accent it becomes harder. On top of that, I was exhausted, very hungry, and somewhat embarrassed about my disheveled appearance. Nevertheless Ramón mentioned me in his speech the 30 or so people attending as the North American Journalist and I tipped by Brazilian jungle battalion hat to them. Afterwards, we had a reception of wine and hors d'oeuvres. I scarfed down everything that didn´t have meat and quickly became tipsy. I stopped caring about my appearance and chatted up Ramón and others.
The plan was to take a van the next morning, hike a few miles, camp, and then go the rest of the way to the border the following day. He said going into Argentina was impossible because he had not been authorized to so. In 2010 he hoped to gain that permission from the officials of each country. Although I hadn´t even bought food for the trek yet and was drunk and tired, I figured I do the trek with them, and then when they turned back at the border, I´d scoot across it and find my way to San Martin de Los Andes, where Neruda ended up.
That night, Rebeca and Ramón were kind enough to feed us more bread and we chatted until around 3AM. Miles and I slept on their living room floor for a few hours.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1206683100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1206683100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1206683100/tpod.html Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:29:56 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Futrono, Chile

At this point, whether we were hitching or bussing out of Temuco was ambiguous since we had to be in Futrono by night time. I didn't feel like going back to outskirts of town to the terminal and waiting for some bus, especially because they're was nothing direct to Futrono. Instead we waited downtown. I would have got on a bus to Osorno if it would have dropped us off on the highway at the exit for Futrono, but none ever came. We took a 20 minutes bus to Gorbea that left us by the exit ramp. From there we had walk 2 km to the entrance ramp to catch traffic going south, as there were no buses. I waited on the side of the highway while Miles on the ramp. Hitching on the highway loses much of the luster as cars and trucks blow by with little probability of stopping, the asphalt is hot and the friction of the speeding vehicles rips into your ears, not to mention the landscape is drab. But I'd done it years ago in northern Chile so I expected we'd find a ride. Miles thought I was crazy for doing this since we had a destination we were expected to reach tonight. I promised him we'd make it by sundown although I had no idea because I had no control over getting rides.
Eventually, a couple of guys in small truck threw us in the closed container on the back. It was rusty, dusty, and full of bags of salt. We laid on the bags, coughing, looking out of few holes where light burst in. We had no idea what we were passing so we discussed Martin Heidegger. Half an hour later, they dropped us off at another town. We waited at the entrance ramp, but not a single vehicle passed after an hour. We hoped it was like the other town and walked 3 km up the highway and found an entrance ramp. Miles was tired, hot, and sick of it. I agreed if a bus stopped, we'd take it (we had tried to flag down buses while walking, but the drivers ignored us.) We waited at the bottom of the ramp, before it turned 270 degrees. A giant truck passed us. It got on the highway but pulled over. The driver got out and waved us in. We scrambled up the bank and hopped on. He was going all the way to Chiloe a pastoral island south of Puerto Montt, many hours away. I was tempted but knew we had to make to Futrono. He spoke in fairly good English (that he claimed he learned in a week) to Miles. He was carrying fish food for fish farms. He dropped us off outside the hamlet of Reumén. We waited more for the 45km ride to Futrono. A local showed up and said the bus would be coming in 15 minutes. It did and it was completely full, but we squeezed on and stood up.
In Futrono I had set up a meeting with a local school teacher named Ramón Quichiyao. He was leading a group of poets and writers along Neruda's route beginning the next morning. He invited me and Miles and invited us to a gathering tonight where he would talk, poets would recite, a movie would be shown, and wine would be served. It started at 9PM. We arrived at sunset at 8:40. I had to find him and the gathering, never mind that we were exhausted, filthy, and smelly (no showers for a few days and no clothes washing in Chile).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1206129780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1206129780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1206129780/tpod.html Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:29:21 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Temuco, Chile

Still in factory dominated Constitución looking for lodging. We walked a block and I walked into a family restaurant that looked like one of those Chinese restaurants without the least attempt at decoration and asked the waitress about a place to stay. A patron overheard and said when he was done in 5 minute he´d show us. 5 minutes later he came outside. A few buildings down, we walked into a long gravel driveway/road surrounded by mechanic shacks (Miles told me later he thought we might get robbed) At the end we arrived at small pension run by a family for wayward folk and other passer-byers. For 5 bucks each, we got a room full of bunkbeds to ourselves. We bought some food a market made it in the family´s kitchen. I chatted with them (they had lost a son in a motorcycle accident and a daughter lived in Denmark). Though both parents were friendly, this time it was the father that didn´t want us to leave. After they fed us a prolific breakfast (especially Miles, since he eats ham), we had to go and hiked about 2 miles up the hill, and took a bus out of town to where it stopped, made a K turn and went back. Here in the middle of nowhere people´s generosity would be more likely to pump blood from their hearts to their foot to allow them to brake for us.
We got a ride in an empty big truck that would soon be full of wood headed back Constitución (the driver makes roundtrips daily) to Chanco, a town not quite a phantom, but lack of activity has been slowly erasing it away. We walked to the end, but when a bus passed that went to the next town, we took it. From there we caught an hour bus-ride to Parral, where Neruda was born. I would have liked to explore it, see if there is anything about him there (I don´t there is) but it was Wednesday and I needed to be 350 miles further south by Thursday evening. We caught a 4 hour bus down the Panamericana to Temuco, capital city of the Araucaria region and place of Neruda´s childhood. We got there late at night and had to take a cab even though we didn´t know where we were going. I wanted to stay near a railroad museum named after Neruda. Two other passengers shared the cab with us. I asked a woman in the front about cheap places. Not much doing near the museum so we went downtown. She instructed the cabbie where to go and he left us in front of a dilapidated mansion and drove off.
A gentle man belonged in the present day world even less than I do was hosing something and let us in. At first I couldn´t believe this was lodging but he said there was a room available for 5 bucks. We walked up narrow steps with such a large lip protruding my toes kept banging against and I thought I´d fall backward. Even though our bedroom was adjacent to the bathroom you had to walk down the main hallway through a doorway into an adjacent claustrophobic hallway to what felt like an attic. Anyway, I could go on describing the house, but I´ll just say that when the water stopped working (inbetween wetting my toothbruth and cleaning it off) it freaked Miles out so much we slept with a light on. Earlier we had considered blocking off the doorway with a dresser in case the mansion´s occupants turned into vampires. In the middle of the night, the light bothered me, but for Miles sake, instead of shutting it off, I moved to his side of the bed on the floor. Maybe in the incandescent bulb was our savior, but we woke intact and rested in the morning.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203459060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203459060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203459060/tpod.html Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:04:06 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Constitución, Chile

In traveling through places without guidebook or for where a guidebook doesn't exist, forces you to communicate with the local populace. For a somewhat timid person like me, this is a good thing. In Pichilemu, we were looking for camping so I stopped by a kiosk with a woman selling souvenirs and jewelry. My question turned into a chat and after about 10 minutes she invited us to stay with her. Middle aged women seem drawn to me (it happens again later on in the trip). They miss or don't have their sons and somehow they sense or believe that I can relate to them. She drove us to her home in a car that I'm amazed still works and showed us a shack in the back. Inside there were two mattresses and a bathroom (all we needed). When she found out we were only staying one night and leaving the next morning, she was devastated. I felt like I was abandoning my mother, but the next day we pushed on.

We took a local bus out of Pichilemu to Bucalemu to a part of the coast where the paved road ends. We waited for a while on one side of a bridge and finally our first ride of the day picked us up around 2PM. Two guys bringing back ingredients for bread to their small town on the coast. A quick ride in a pickup truck took us to a fork, one way paved back toward the highway, the other way a dirt road through the hills toward the south). A crew was beginning construction to pave the road but in the meantime they were watering the road to keep the dust down. The water truck drove us a bunch of kilometers while spilling his cargo in constant increments like a Zamboni for the dirt. We passed a salt flat and the adjoining town sold nothing but the stuff. He left us off among barren fields, but luckily a family in a pickup let hop on back and took us to another fork. Straight went to a small town on the coast called Llico and up a steep hill took us south. Another pickup truck took us over the hill through forest and near lake.

At this point we arrived to a somewhat posh resort area around Lake Vichquén (only dirt roads still which caked us). Tourists ignored us, but local workers gave us very short rides. One said the head of Subaru had a house hear. At another fork we could have taken the longer but more traveled route through Lincantén but instead opted for the shorter, more beautiful, more desolate ride to the coast. One of our best rides took us over the hill and in somewhat a repeat of Pichelmu we descended to the coast in spectacular fashion. We stopped off in Lloca for some fresh bred but the truck took to a crossroads outside the hamlet of Lora. We waited going south. Trucks full of wood and lumber passed us. One stopped to let someone off, but when I asked for a ride he said company policy prohibits it. A construction worker waited with us. The first wood truck stopped and let him on. Finally a giant tanker stopped for us. A small meek man drove it while smoking. He took us to Constitución. At first I thought we would sleep in the forest on the outskirts of the small city, but before I realized it he was taken us down the hill toward downtown. He let us off at the bottom. Huge lumber and paper industry loomed over us and blew their thick flumes of effluvia into the sky and onto the city and its people. I'd never heard of his town till about an hour ago, no guidebook mentioned it, and I was fascinated. Now we just had a find to place to sleep. It looked like there was hill where maybe we could crash among some trees, but we decided that probably wasn't the best idea. I walked into a restaurant to ask see what they knew...

Note the included map. The upper left is Lloca, the middle left is Constitución. It´s a tourist map, so the roads we took are not included.
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Pichilemu, Chile

We set up our minimal sleeping stuff and ate in the moonlight that percolated through the forest, though traffic rumbled only 50 yards away, a steady stream of brakelights like mutant fireflies. We heard dogs in the distance, but the rustling of the pine trees eventually smothered their barking.. Still we slept with one eye open in the Pacific chilled air.

The next morning we had no problem catching a bus to downtown San Antonio where we ate a breakfast of bread in the central square among snoring drunks and shop owners opening the gates to their stores. A bus took through the port town across the estuary of the Maipu river, here used as industrial feedstock, but whose source lies a 20,000 feet above the ocean, crashing through the deepest canyons in world. As we walked into the countryside, Miles's bag strap snapped. He tried to sew it back on but his thread wouldn't hold. A taxi took us back into town to a tailor. Her needle couldn´t make it through the plastic without snapping.. We walked more and after several inquiries found a man in a shack filled with shoes. His chubby, stained face seemed to never leave the hovel, Inhaling the chemicals for breakfast lunch and dinner. In a matter of minutes with some glue and a sewing machine cranked by his feet he reattached the strap. We returned to the countryside and after unsuccessfully waiting for an hour, a passerby suggested we wait further up a crossroads. We did an a short while later, a late teenager in a Suzuki picked us up. He came from a well off family and either offered or wanted "weed" (his word, not mine) from us, but we couldn't satisfy his request.


He dropped us at another fork, and from there we got a ride from a guy selling drugstore products. Ibruprofen, cough medicine, and bandages were strewn about even more than even a hypochondriac slob would permit. We crouched in the back of the van and I accidentally sat on some sunscreen, which splattered about. I cleaned It up by applying It to my arms. In a village Rapel, we bathed in the epononymous river and chatted with Chilean youth who shared their concoction of boxed wine and sugar drunk out of honeydew husk. From there, a water delivery truck driver drove us. Everyday he delivers water to a small hamlet on the coast. By the time we go to Litueche, late afternoon had arrived as did thoughts of taking a passing bus. Instead, I made Miles hike out of town across from some government housing. There a minivan picked us up. It was taking road construction workers home. They played the cheesiest of 80's pop music and left us off about 25 miles from Pichilemu, supposedly a festive town with the best surfing in Chile. During the day, a particular garbage truck had passed us a couple of times. I saw it plodding down the road a third time and I didn't expect it to stop, but it did. We hopped in. He had seen us throughout the day and finally decided, what the hell. It smelled like garbage, but probably not much more offensive then we did, so the odor was not overwhelming, and anyway it was completely appropriate. The truck couldn't do more than 25 mph on a straightaway though down the hill we got up to 40, and it felt like a bucking bronco out of control. The guy, around our age, claimed It was easy to drive I thought about asking him to teach me, but decided against It.

The countryside around Pichelemu is reminiscent of the lost coast of Mendocino Country, verdant curvaceous hillsides, descending inevitably and gracefully into the deep blue. Doing this in a garbage truck made for one of the most spectacular entrances into a place I've ever experienced. Nothing like metallic beast and crushing parts, trash, natural beauty, and novelty to flood the senses and spirit. I was only able to snap a picture of the truck turning off after we disembarked. It's a very ordinary but very personal photo.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1204764480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1204764480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1204764480/tpod.html Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:06:36 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Valparaíso, Chile

"I went to the window: Valparaíso opened a
thousand
trembling eyelids, the nocturnal
sea air entered my mouth,
the lights from the hills, the tremor
of the maritime moon on the water,
darkness like a monarchy
adorned with green diamonds,
all the new repose that life
offered me.¨

"Window of the hills! Valparaíso,
cold tin,
shattered in cry after cry of popular stones!
Behold with me from my hideaway
the gray seaport trimmed with boats
slightly shifting lunar water,
immobile depositories of iron.

"I love, Valparaíso, everything you enfold,
and everything you irriadiate, seabride,
even beyond your mute nimbus."

From the poem, "The Fugitive" one of the poems of Canto General, by Pablo Neruda.

I'm going to let these verses to most of the talking, but here's a little info. Neruda spent time here with a sailor family during his hiding. He was confined to a small room in one of the city's poorer neighborhoods. The sailors worked on banana boats and the plan was to sneak him onto a boat heading for Guayaquil, Ecuador. There was even a suit tailored for Neruda in the style of "Gone With The Wind" so that when he stepped off into the steaming port city, he would appear to be a distinguished gentleman while smoking a guitar. The plan was scrapped and Neruda, but the poet fell in love with city and vowed by have a house their someday. He followed through and today that house is a museum.

Valparaíso is the geographical equivalent of San Francisco, but more dramatic. The city is a series of hills (cerros) that rise up out of The Pacific like a great earthen tidal wave. The highwire buildings and houses ride every nook and cranny of the wave. The only flat part is right along the bay. Neruda's house seem be located precisely in the middle of the ring of hills, halfway up one of them. The panoramas is offers can only be approximated the accompanied photo. He shared the residence with a friend, and he and his 3rd wife, Matilde Urrutia occupied the upper 3 stories. A few things that struck me. Numerous colonial maps of the Western Hemisphere, the ones made by cartographers charting the coasts by ship, so distortions are inevitable (though many are remarkable for their accuracy) and places like the Amazon are illustrated with great mythic creatures. In the library there is a portrait of his favorite American poet, Walt Whitman. His carpenter once asked him if that was his father and Neruda replied affirmatively. Overall the house feels like a ship, made from wood, with narrow corridors and passengers, curvaceous, and serpentine, a microcosm of Valparaíso.

I wondered the garden beneath the house and then was finally kicked out at 8PM by employees eager to go home. To watch the crepuscule, I wandered down Avenida Alemania, just a couple of blocks above the house. Engineers have carved the road into the side of the mountains so it curves nonstop but is incredibly flat. I can't think of another street like it any other city. At one point I was on side of a gorge. On the other, a series of 100-year-old earthquake tattered blue, red, and yellow structures careened on the edge like boats about to tumble down a cascade. Beyond, the last bits of sunlight streaked across the urban coastal range.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203642600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203642600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203642600/tpod.html Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:05:36 -0400 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Valparaíso, Chile

Hitchiking out of cities is an endeavor. There are innumerable places to wait, convincing typically skeptical city folks to stop, making sure that those that do stop are trustworthy. Valparaíso's labyrinthine human and physical geography complicated things further. It is a port city and despite the spectacular setting, the circumspect creatures that the transportation of good often breeds are found throughout the city. We had to go south to Isla Negra, so I figured we go to the south, wait on the fringe of the city along the coastal road. A bus started taking us, but suddenly veered around back toward the center so we got off. I asked a traffic cop. She said go back to the terminal (on the north end of town in a sketchy district). We walked along the coastal road. No one looked slightly interested in picking us up. I asked another cop and got the same answer. I asked an aged busboy at a restaurant along the ocean. He said go to Camino Polvero, literally means Cloud of Dust Road. Two buses took us there, to the southeast limit of the city, a desert and bus depot, next to a highway. I asked women merchants. They said go back to the bus terminal. You can't get to Isla Negra (where Neruda has another house) from here. I found out we were about 8 kilometers from the road there. A man told me it's very dangerous to hitch. We were near a prison. I had no map, no way of clarifying or verifying any of the information being given to me. Although local information is often accurate, I've found that most people's knowledge consist of the few square blocks of where they live and work, if that.

We took a bus all the way to the terminal, back down the hill, north, completely the wrong direction. Instead of getting off at the terminal, I let the bus drop us off at the last gas station before the road went into the canyon that took it out of town. I talked to the attendant and bought a map while my traveler partner Miles stuck his thumb out. Before I got change back, we had a ride. A young couple from Santiago. They took us half an hour east until the crossroads at Casablanca. Without waiting a minute, a firefighter picked us up. He smoked and showed Miles how to block the disgusting photo of rotted teeth blanketing the cigarette pack. I looked at the map. The only way to get to Isla Negra was what we did, go back to the interior. There was no way south along the coast as the road ended. Half an hour later we were back on the coast. After sitting on beach traffic he dropped us off at Isla Negra.

Neruda's most beloved residence overlooks the craggy Pacific coastline, reminiscent of the Monterey Peninsula, California. This is where he was living before he went into hiding and is the principal place where he wrote. It is several buildings full of objects he collected all over the world. Hundreds of blown glass figures; bottles, heads, boots, fish. There's a narwhal tusk, anchors, an entire room devoted to mastheads, another one to seashells, wagon and ship's wheels. A stuffed sheep poked its head out from his bed's headboard. More items blizzarded the house's interior. A telescope gifted to him by the French government, driftwood turned into a desk, collections of butterflies and beetles, a closet full of his wife's shoes, a closet full of suits, masks, including his Nobel Prize tux. A wooden horse that he took from a museum of his childhood that burned town. Outside, there's a boat never sailed. He was too afraid the waves and current. Instead he hosted guests in it and sipped cocktails. Whereas the Valparaíso house's structure is nautical, Isla Negra embodies the maritime environment that ensconces it. He's buried here. His tomb is covered in white pebbles with a few patches of grass the resemble sea anemones.




At 9 that evening we found ourselves on a bus heading for San Antonio, an industrial unsafe city. I saw a forest, though it was private property. I walked to the front of the bus, asked the driver to stop. We got out with our bags, crossed the barbwire fence with intention of spending the night under the trees and stars...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203088560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203088560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ecotripping/2/1203088560/tpod.html Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:19:08 -0500 Pablo Neruda Clandestino-Down the heart of Chile and across the Andes

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Santiago, Chile

Hernán Loyola and Bernardo Reyes do not like each other. Their commonality and conflict stem from Pablo Neruda. I spent a few hours with each of them during consecutive days in Santiago. Both of them have been obsessed with Neruda, for very different ways.

In the early 1950's, Loyola was working on a thesis at the University of Chile. After a night of revelry he stumbled across an equally inebriated professor. In his candid state, the professor told the young Loyla that his thesis was on a writer that had been studied by hundreds of other people. Instead, he should study Pablo Neruda, who had just returned from 3 years in exile (after the clandestine and Andean crossing that I am investigating) and had published his magnum opus Canto General. The impressionable Loyola heeded the advice and has probably devoted more his work toward Neruda than any other scholar. His magnum opus is collecting and editing the six volume Complete Works of Neruda.

Whereas Loyla's Nerudian life was choosen in a quick definitive moment, Reyes has carried it around since before his was born. I say carried because for him it is in many ways a burden. He is the grandson of Neruda's older half-brother Rodolfo, and as far as a know the closest living relative. Augosto Pinochet's regime changed both of these men's lives. Loyola is an intellectual communist and had to flee and ended up in Italy, where is still spends half the year. Reyes was in his early twenties and had no such affiliations except for his relationship with Neruda. The right-wing Chilean government made life hard for young Bernardo (his great uncle was stalwart communist), hindering his ability to find work, etc. He wondered way he was receiving such treatment and began investigating Neruda's life (Neruda's given last name is Reyes). He has produced two main published works, Portrait of a family, detailing the pre and early life of his great uncle, and more recently a book about Neruda's only child, a daughter who died at 8. He his some priceless Neruda relics, photographs, possessions etc. but the Neruda foundation has all the rights to the written works.

Given their backgrounds the charges levied against one another are not surprising. Loyola claims that Reyes is not rigorous enough in his research and documentation and is self-centered. Reyes believes that Loyola tries to take all the Neruda glory for himself, proclaiming himself as the only true authority. I'm in no position to judge their accusations, but it's not too difficult to understand their positions. From Loyola's perspective, after devoting half a century to studying Neruda, someone 30 years his junior disputes basic facts upon which you've rested your work upon (what exactly they are I don't know). Since Bernardo is exploring his own family history and hence himself, it's easy to see him as self-absorbed, seeking out information with a bias. On the other hand, Loyola has made much of living off the life and work of Reyes's famous relative, a leech perhaps, and one will defend their livelihood with great fervency if someone else comes and threatens that. It's a game of king of the hill.

As a final note, both human beings were very warm and welcoming to me. Hernán took me out to lunch, while Bernardo hosted me at his apartment. Both see the episode of Neruda's like I am investigating as one of the most interesting and important and both are glad I will be the English language ambassador for it.
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