Rapa Nui Redux

I go to Easter Island without my pith helmet. Without illusions that I will crack its wacky mysteries. I do want to see the sights (those really big heads!) But what I am really craving is to be far from everything, which should be easy with two–thousand uninterrupted miles of ocean in all directions.

I am obliged to do it on the cheap. I pounced on a half-price winter fare (US$566) and booked camping in at the island’s only campground with provisions in tow. Tropical winter should be the rough equivalent of Patagonian summer. Right?

The first day, wind and sideways rain trashes five tents, sending campers to bunk on the shelter’s floor tiles. I dream in tune with buffeting gusts and waves crashing—we are right on the coast. My Black Diamond bivvy (more on this peculiar creature later) stands firm. I take it as a sign.

On the second day, the sun comes out.

A group from the campground wave me into their already-full jeep rental. The crew hails from China, the US, Germany and Italy. We take the coastal route, stopping at moais, the giant heads carved from volcanic stone, with the sea sloshing behind them. We end at Anakena, a beach so Pacific perfect that we successfully goad a new friend to swim with us in her underwear. The tour groups gape. The locals glance, but only for a second. What else can you do when life is this good?

Because Rapa Nui is so remote, it’s an expensive place. Dinner or lunch out averages $20 US dollars. So instead we eat in, sharing bottles of gas station wine and pasta. Or eat seafood empanadas ($3) at food shacks. Instead of taking tours, I take long walks, hiking to the island summit, volcanoes and caves.

A museum exhibit explains how the moai made their destinations. Some theories have them carted with pulleys and ropes over logs. But their backs are not damaged, only their bottoms. This matches popular folk tales that claim, “they walked to their destinations.” And so do I.

The encounters are the kind that make travel. Total strangers confess their life stories: a Chilean woman who came here without a penny in the throes of a mid-life crisis, foreigners who stayed for (what else) love, a native who returned after decades on Long Island, who could strip the island of its modern landmarks (school, light post, post office), giving me the invisible tour of what used to be.

My theory (because everyone must have theories on Easter Island) is that, far enough from everything, people drop their outer shell.

Yet RapaNui are not convinced by tourism. Or archaeology. Why would they be? Their treasures are carted abroad. Few personally benefit having their homeland usurped as a national park (and before that Chile leased their native lands as a sheep ranch and confined the RapaNui to Hanga Roa by force). Without their ancestral land, many rely on expensive imports that even tourists can barely afford.

On Saturday night, tourists and locals alike pile into the Topa Tangi pub, to sweat and dance like the savages we wish we were. After the cultural ballet ($20 for tourists), grass-skirted dancers join grandmothers and German tourists grinding to Polynesian pop and rap. At 3am the party moves to a shabbier dance hall whose name in Rapa Nui means ‘tall grass’ (the local equivalent of the back seat). Polynesian reputations need no introduction.

Cut to my bivvy, aka, Tombtent, in turns cozy and in turns maddingly claustrophobic.

In a week I am absorbed into the fabric of island life, as much as I can be. Locals tell me how much they dislike the tourists, while offering me avocados and passion fruit from their gardens. I can kind of agree: of course I am here to gawk, while to explore the island is the equivalent of raiding their attics to paw their family heirlooms. I can't see that going over big at home.

On my last night, a family makes me roasted fish and sweet potatoes, grilled and eaten with our hands over the coals. My host tutors me to lick my fingers loudly, as they do. "She doesn't have to," his cousin says. "She's not from here."

So I do it anyways.

How travel prepares us for The Crisis

Honestly, not many people seem to care about the plight of vacationers in these times. Why should they? Even the word smacks of arrogance. Who are these people whose single purpose is leisure?

Though I became a travel writer, I did not grow up vacationing. My family spent vacations visiting my mother’s family in rural Quebec. We never stayed in hotels but occasionally ate out at the kinds of places that also served pancakes for dinner.

Yet I became a traveler and a travel proponent. And I’d like to say that travel prepared me for today’s crisis.

Travel can go beyond vacationing. Yes, it can teach you to live skinnier. Becoming a traveler meant the usual—dining on crusty bread and cheese, rickety buses, moments of extreme penury and mild discomfort exchanged for raw experience. And then, a moment of insight, chatting with child buskers who cleverly tackled the impossible task of hustling religious trinkets to atheists and convincing tourists to shine their (unfortunately nylon) shoes.

But beyond what happened to me, your average American used to a full cupboard at home, there was what was happening to them.

I returned to Buenos Aires, a city I’d taught in, in the middle of their Crisis. The discord and desperation were palpable. My memories were of cinemas that served champagne.

But people kept going about their lives. The cafes were full. True—beverages were deftly nursed—but there were the Argentines, rain or shine, communing with one another. As if it were indispensable. I found El Salvador similarly pluckish. For every headline of gang wars, I witnessed numbers of grandmothers who donned a pressed floral dress every Sunday in the pursuit of anonymous goodness.

When The Crisis spread like a virus a few months ago, an Argentine friend commented, “You Americans talk like the world is over. But we have been through this many times. So maybe it’s easier.”

Seeing how people around the world function through dysfunction can teach and sustain us. Don’t get me wrong—I can’t tell you that goodness lies in poverty. The fact that money can provide solutions, well, that’s obvious. But in the absence of it, how do we go about our lives? That’s something worth figuring out.

Roadtripping Atacama

Your lips fissure first.

Over 600 miles long, the Atacama is the driest desert in the world. It disorients and dizzies poor gringos, rising from sea level to 22,000 ft peaks (somewhere in between was me, wondering if the nausea came from altitude, Peruvian "bottled" water or the seafood special).

I got my friend Bjorn to travel part of it with me. Bjorn is an engineer/scientist, but that didn't help when roadsigns declared "Geology" (minus specifics) next to skyscraping mountains of sand and rock. Or when we had a 6.0 earthquake in Tarapaca (although we both chose top bunks).

Scientists compared soil samples from the Atacama and found them similar to those on Mars. Lifeless. To back up the connection, a sign on Ruta 11 indicates "UFO landing site." Lots was funny here. On km 43 the "magnetic zone" pulls your car backward if you stop. It's on an apparent downhill.

This is a land of conspiracies.

That makes for giddy good road tripping. The Atacama's treasures are not fast apparent, like in deserts everywhere, they take scouting. We found oases. Cactus blooms and borganvilla. In Puconchile, a lush putting nine walled by giant sandtraps, we found Ecotruly, a domed Hare Krishna compound that welcomes visitors for vegetarian feasts (a bargain at $6 US). If you're not up for religious conversion, enjoy the theme park, which includes a giant wooden anaconda which will swallow you whole (but also do you the favor of spitting you out, whole).

That's not to say this is a theme-park destination. On the contrary. I'd say 95% of the Atacama is the land before time.

Only ten families still live in the altiplano village of Parinacota, at 15,700 feet. Silver used to travel this route in burro loads from the mines in Potosi to the Pacific. Commerce now centers around opening the church (one guy has the key) and serving tourists coca tea to mitigate the effects of altitude.

White adobe with a thatched roof, the church at Parinacota is worth beholding. There's a story of a table that roamed on its own (now secured by a rope to the wall). But better are the wall paintings that show the stations of the cross as interpreted by Aymara villagers long ago: they depict the crucifixion as done by the only villains they could possibly imagine--the Spaniards.

Hostel Takeover

When Santiago's main newspaper, El Mercurio, called me, I assumed they were selling subscriptions. But no, they wanted to know about hostels.

No Chilean I can remember has ever expressed interest in hostels. Then came that word "crisis" whispered round the globe.

Luckily, backpackers know the concept of creative underspending. First point-today's hostels are not yesterday's sticky chicken coops sprinkled with dirty laundry. In fact, they've gone slick, with high design, sociability and sustainability. Is there a major chain hotel in Chile that recycles? Serves real coffee and second cups? Separates organic waste? Draws hand lettered maps to the bars with live music? Maybe it's logical that, as the baby-face of the industry, hostels should be trend setters. Let's just hope the rest follow.

If you're looking for your next digs in Chile, the article may be a good start.

Body by Torres

6 days, 101 kilometers
You have to believe in your own willpower. And cute nicknames. At least that's how Christian did it.

A self-described "office boy," my friend actually works within Torres del Paine National Park, chained to a desk and a radio. So he sprang straight out of his swivel chair to join us on the circuit. The object? Weight loss. He said he was tired of being the solo guanaco macho .

(guanacos, a camelid common to this latitude, travel in female packs, choosing one male to safeguard them. The unluckies get cast out together, like B-league fraternities)...

At the trailhead he pulled out his backpack--a 35 liter pack. I shook my head and looked to the 90 liter bag in the back of his Toyota truck, recently dented by the butt of a mare (he wouldn't say what he had done).

I handed him 7 days worth of rations, half my tent and a fuel canister. We heaved our packs on. Though it was nearly 4pm, we had about six more hours of daylight. The trail was nearly flat but the wind bullied us back. We ate caramels for morale and kept on. At Camp Seron we popped a bottle of bubbly I had lugged up to toast the inauguration (or the end of the worst administration in US history). Half the pleasure was lightening my load.

I won't kid you. The trekking is not that difficult but wearing a 40 pound pack IS. We weren't a couple, but I tried some psychology, applying a cute nickname to keep tempers cool. "Almost there, honeybunch!" And so forth.

I don't think it is just the exercise. Life on the trail has the power to transform us.

We trod on, snacking on what I remembered to set aside (sometimes just peanuts, from the economy pack) and wondering where the good stuff was. We emptied streams of freshwater and hoped rain would refill them.

Our biggest day took us from Camp Perros over the Gardner Pass and to Camp Grey--a total of 22 kilometers, with wind, ladders and an elevation change that would read like a heart attack on an EKG. At camp, Honeybunch bought us all cans of beer, which served as an appetizer. Next I did the near forbidden. After all those kilometers, I prepared two packets of ramen noodles. I gave one to Honeybunch.

It was the look on his face.

"Hey," I said. "Didn't we have real sausage with the couscous? And bacon in the fettucini that time?"

I think he moaned. I discussed how ramen was a rite of passage to young Americans that we occasionally returned to with fondness. At least I do. But the look held.

At the end of the trek, he unpacked to return my gear, handing me a ten pound grocery bag of food. So here were those cookies, caramels, the chocolate covered....Not only had I forgotten about this stuff, I had started rationing.

"What are you doing with all this?"

"I thought you wanted me to carry it."

So as my pack got lighter every day, Christian's had not. This was the work of the culture gap: Chilenos are foremost gentlemen. Christian lost seven pounds on The Circuit. And kept on hiking, losing 31lbs total. Trekking can be arduous, trekking partners the cruelest of all. It worked for Honeybunch.

It made me wonder about the mare, though.

A Week on the Paine Grande Circuit

Trekking the Paine Grande circuit in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine with Cristian Morales, Meg Simone and Dave Eiermann. Thanks to Trauko for the potent homebaked bread--fuel for the march. And we marched. We crossed miles of daisies, rivers and ladders, almost never seeing the stars since the sun set so late. In the middle, a champagne toast. Mother nature, save for some really big mosquitos in Dickson, you spoiled us again.

The Southernmost Hike in the World

(Antarcticans will take issue)

At this latitude the landscape whinges gray for days, a whitish welcome of sharp winds, hail and disappearing trail lines. It's just to tease. If you love mountains, Dientes de Navarino, the world's southernmost hike, is a must-know. The 53-km circuit winds through Austral beech forest, peat bogs and teacup lagoons, but mostly takes place in a theater of rock above tree line.