Heading south

We were descending into another world, as our bus steadily made its way down a mountain pass. From high up on a ridge, a canopy of green stretched out before us. We had left behind a dry savannah-like plateau and were now entering the temperate rainforests of Patagonia.

Beside me sat a German girl who’d climbed aboard the small 32-seater bus in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, with nothing but forest for miles. From the window of the bus I had watched as the bus driver helped her stow her large backpack in the luggage compartment beneath the bus. She had on an almost oversized rain jacket and what looked like trail-running gear. A beanie was wound tightly around her head. When she stepped into the bus, the sweet scent of rain hit me, briefly overriding the musty smell that hung in the airless interior of the bus.

Inside the passengers were a mix of locals, people with serious-looking faces, frowns and furrows in their brows. Up front were a couple, speaking, or almost whispering, Spanish with one another, while in front a large elderly lady was trying her hand at knitting  while squashed into these patchy material seats which were jammed too close to get your legs in comfortably if you were anything taller than five foot, as I was.

The German girl told me her name was Carolina – pronounced Caro-lee-na – and that she’d just come from the small settlement of Caleta Tortel where she had been staying for three days with two friends. They wanted to head back north, but she was keen to keep moving south, which is why she’d parted ways with them, she’d told me. Caleta Tortel, she said, is a magical place. I opened my guidebook to take a look and she pointed at the wooden houses on stilts and wooden walkways that lined the grey blue of the Baker River and began talking excitedly about her time there. Everyone had been so friendly, she remarked, and the three friends had spent their days hiking, taking boat trips and catching fish which they later fried over an open fire.

As I listened to her regale her tales of her last few days, it began to grow darker as we headed deeper into the thick coniferous forest. All around us the greenness seemed to be closing in on us, as if these ancient Jurassic-looking plants would swallow us whole. It was still early morning, but it felt like dusk was already approaching. And then it began to rain and huge sheets of water fell all around us, blocking out the vegetation and practically everything else that was more than a foot away from the windows.

The German girl said it was a pity that her friends had decided not to join her. They really would have enjoyed this, she said, eluding to the endless greenery. She said by the time she woke this morning they’d already left to get a bus north. Apparently one was heading down from the next town to the north, Cochrane. It regularly heads to Caleta Tortel before doubling back to Cochrane, where our bus had set off from a few hours earlier. I thought of the simple ramshackle hostel in Cochrane I’d left earlier that day. There was a heatwave on the go and in the room I’d picked, there was no window facing outwards, just one that opened onto an inside passageway that took residents to the toilets and bathroom. And so I’d almost baked in there, until the room finally cooled off late that night. I wondered now whether her two friends would stay in the same hostel I’d been in and whether they would visit the nearby nature reserve on foot, to admire the turquoise blue of the Cochrane River, the cleanest river in all of Chile, or so my guidebook claimed.

I was thinking all this to myself, but the German girl, Carolina, all she kept going on about was how soon the bus would get to Villa O’ Higgins. She seemed to be in some kind of rush to cross the border to Argentina.

“It says here that the ferry to Candelario leaves at 3pm but that they are sometimes delayed,” she said, pointing this out in my guidebook, that she had taken to reading.

“Well, I suppose you will only know when you get there,” I piped up.

“Yes, but what time is the bus supposed to arrive in Villa O’Higgins. I was told that it’s about a four-hour ride from the Tortel turn-off.”

“Who told you that?”

“The woman at the hospede we were staying. She gave me the information about the bus passing to Villa O’Higgins and said it would be about four hours from there.”

“Well then we might just make it. But it says here in the guidebook that it depends on the weather. If it’s bad the ferry doesn’t leave. Probably because of waves or something,” I said.

She looked nervous and began chewing her nails. “That’s great,” she scowled. “You can never tell with the weather around here. One minute the sun is out and then the next the wind comes up and rain comes pouring down.”

Outside the thick green had given way to a grey sky. We’d broken through the forest. All around us sharp peaks rose up, with ice and glaciers clinging to their rocky summits. Wherever you looked waterfalls were rushing down the mountainside. The driver piped up something in Spanish and brought the bus steadily to a stop beside the road.

“What’s happening?” said a nervous Carolina.

“I’m not sure. Maybe a problem, with the bus,” I said.

We watched as the driver climbed out. The door of the passenger compartment swung open and we were hit by an icy cold. The bus began to empty, as our fellow passengers dug out cigarette boxes and funnelled for sandwiches and cooldrinks in the plastic packets they had left in the overhead compartments.

“Veinte minutos,” we heard the driver shout. Several male figures shuffled into the scrub alongside the road. And we watched as they stood with their backs to us next to some of the taller bushes.

“Pipee break,” we heard someone exclaim, followed by laughter. It was the driver. He’d come up behind us without us noticing. “You were coming from Caleta Tortel?” he asked Carolina. Her beanie was pulled so low that all you seemed to see were her big nervous looking eyes. She shook her head.

“You hear about the two missing tourists?” he asked, in broken English.

“What?” she exclaimed. “Where?”

“In Tortel. It was just now on the radio. I thought maybe you heard, because you were just there.”

“What did they say?” asked Carolina.

“That these two Germans, a couple, had been missing since yesterday, out in the forest around Tortel. You’re German, didn’t you know them?”

“That is shocking. No, I did not.”

“Such a shame. Every year this happens. Tourists, they go for a walk and get lost. They always find them. But these visitors should really be more careful,” he said.

We looked out at the greyness. I had my hands buried deep in my coat. But I could still feel the cold numbing my fingers. Clouds were descending from the snowy peaks above us. An icy wind had already begun whipping at our backs.

“Bad weather is coming,” said the driver. “We must get to ‘O Higgins soon.” He turned and we heard the crunching sound that gravel makes as he strode away towards the bus. We heard him call out and slowly turned and shuffled back, waiting until the figures passed us and filed one by one into the bus and to their seats. The engine was already running when we followed behind everyone. We were the last ones in when the door closed. Then the bus jolted forward and were on our way again.

There was still a worried expression on the German’s face, as if she were considering something, working something over in her mind. And then without a word she sprung up from the seat and went forward to where the driver was. Heads turned to see who was passing. She stood, with her back slightly bent forward, under a sign that announced one was not permitted to communicate with the driver when the bus was in motion. Without turning to face her, the driver began waving his one free hand about. I heard him respond in broken English. Then she turned and ducking so as not to hit the roof, made her way back to her seat next to me.

“He said we are another two hours from ‘O Higgins,” she said as she sat down. “I told him I need to catch the ferry today. I don’t think he is in any hurry.

“Why should he be?” I asked.

“These people should keep a schedule. It’s a bus company after all,” she said.

“Look if you get there and it’s too late to catch the ferry, just come stay at the hostel. I’m sure there’s space. If not, you can always just camp.

“My first priority is to get to Candelario. I will camp there.”

“Sure, but what does it matter. I’m sure there’s plenty of space to camp at O’Higgins. Just take your time.”

She gave me a look that said “what did I know about anything”.

As she began nodding off, I opened my guidebook again. The border with Argentina was just a few hundred metres from Candelario, which lay at the end of a long slither of a lake. From there one could walk into Argentina, to another lake and take the ferry across to a minibus that took you to El Chaltén. I thought about it myself. Villa O’Higgins was the end of the road. I could either turn around and head north along the way I’d come, or head south and take the ferry and hike into Argentina. The more I thought about it, the more I began to believe that this could be fate, that I was meant to join Carolina and head south.  

I turned to look at the figure next to me. Her head had dropped to one side and her eyes were closed. She was seemingly asleep from what I could tell. So were many of the other passengers. My mind returned to those two friends of hers, who had parted ways with her, and then the missing couple. Was it just a strange co-incidence? Tortel isn’t a very big place. Surely she must’ve met them, perhaps she and her friends had even passed them during a hike, watching them resting on a rock or on some logs as they strode off at a marching pace towards the endpoint of their walk, a peak or log cabin. Perhaps they had greeted them, smiling, without knowing that they would later get lost out there. But they would surely turn up later, back at Tortel and someone, a local resident, a logger or fisherman would radio Cochrane and tell them they had been found. That the search was off. Isn’t that how it always ends?

A light rain began to fall and I began to wonder if this was the beginning of the bad weather the bus driver had mentioned. The grey outside began to darken and the driver almost seemed to slow down. Surely we were almost there. I checked the clock on my cellphone. It was still not 2pm yet. I reached for my backpack from the overhead compartment and from a plastic packet inside my backpack, I took out a cold empanada I had bought back in a café near my hostel in Cochrane.

I scanned the world outside the bus. Grey craggy mountains rose on either side of us. The trees, when there were any, were all bent to one side, their branches twisted as if reaching out for something in the sky. There was no wildlife around, no animals or birds. Perhaps it was too cold for any to be outside. Every so often when the bus turned a corner, a long stretch of gravel became visible before us. We seemed to be moving deeper into the mountains. 

It was as we came around the corner that I caught sight of something in the middle of the road. As we came closer I could make out two pickup trucks that blocked the road. Two figures stood next to the trucks and just before them was one of those roadworks signs used to indicate a road closure. I saw the one figure put his hand up and could feel the bus breaking heavily. So much so, that it jolted Carolina awake. She had an anxious look. With bleary eyes she tried to make out what was happening.

“What’s going on?” she muttered to me.

“Looks like a road block, like it could be the police,” I told her.

She looked worried, almost unsure of something.

“What’s wrong, I asked her?”

She didn’t answer, instead she was still more concerned about getting to the ferry than anything else. “What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s about 2pm,” I said, as the screen on my cellphone lit up.

“Why are we stopping?” she wanted to know.

We heard the sound of decompressed air as the door swung open and then the sound of heavy boots as a uniformed policeman stepped onto the bus. The policeman exclaimed something in Spanish, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The passengers ahead of us stood up, took their hand luggage and began to file out of the bus. Everyone shuffled outside and lined up on the gravel alongside the bus.

“What’s going on?” asked Carolina.

“I have no idea,” I said, as we joined the line outside the bus.

The one policeman approached us. “Turistas,” he said. “Español? Inglés?”)

“English,” I heard Carolina respond.

“Please, passport,” he said.

I pulled out my passport and waved it in my hand before the policeman. I turned to see if Carolina had done the same. I saw the red cover of the German passport, in her hand. The officer took both passports from us.

“And where are you going? What is your final destination?”

“Argentina,” I heard Carolina say.

I nodded and repeated “Argentina” too. From the corner of my eye I could see the surprised look on Carolina’s face.

“And where are you coming from?” asked the policeman.

“From Cochrane,” I said.

“Tortel,” said Carolina.

“Tortel? said the policeman. “Really? You have heard about the missing couple from Tortel?”

“Yes,” answered Carolina. “We heard about it earlier today, from the bus driver.”

“They are searching all over. Sometimes these people are not lost. Sometimes they just run away. So we have to check, to see that they are not running away in a bus. But they are not on this bus. Who knows where they are,” he sighed. Then the policeman’s arm shot up and he shouted something in Spanish. He motioned for us to get back on the bus and then he and his colleague climbed into their pickup trucks and moved them out of the way so that the bus could pass.

Carolina motioned to the bus driver. “How much further until O’Higgins?”

“We are almost there,” he said and pointed to a gap in the mountains a little distance away. “You see over there? That’s where we are going. That’s where O’Higgins is.” He then looked at his wristwatch and then back at Carolina. “In fact, I think you will just make it to the ferry office in time. The weather still looks good.” He smiled, a rough, dark smile and Carolina pursed her lips.

There was the sound of gravel crunching under foot as we all shuffled one by one into the bus. When we were back in our seats and the bus pulled off past the two pickup trucks Carolina turned to me.

“That was close,” she said.

“What was close?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing. I mean we could have been delayed much longer. The driver says we are almost there and that we’ll make it to the ferry office in time.” She smiled, a taut smile. “So, you are going to Argentina, right? How about this afternoon?” She laughed. But I didn’t laugh back.

As we drove on the sky began to grow gloomy. The rain that had been just a light drizzle began to fall heavily now. I looked up to see the peaks of the mountains that we were just entering. Dark clouds were forming.

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