2 Things: Solo travel is not glamorous & you can find people that feel like home everywhere.
As I sat in the grass next to my tent at Rio Caleta Gonzalo Campsite at the edge of Pumalín National Park and ate my dinner of canned tuna and peanut butter sandwiches, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself and at the events of the previous 24 hours. This moment and this day starkly contrasted the serendipitous happenings of days prior.
From booking the wrong ferry and struggling to map out a new plan to waking up soaking wet because my tent could not withstand the heavy dew, to attempting to walk to a trail that turned out to be way further than I expected on foot, to showing up to a one-horse town with nothing but a few slices of bread, a can of tuna, and some peanut butter to sustain me for 24+ hours, to having the worst yeast infection ever whilst camping in my non-water proof tent that I spent way too much money on. If I were experiencing this with someone, we would be cackling at how insane we have been, so this is what I did at that moment.
I am learning that travel is never a steady plane. It is the highest highs and the lowest lows. My mother can tell you about answering the phone to me unable to speak three words without sobbing and telling her I am “so alone” one day to “It’s so amazing here I love everything and everyone,” the next.
The last few days have been a prime example of this. I left Pucón with dread. When I arrived in Chiloé, I immediately judged it. This place is not what I expected. Why did I come here. This isn’t where I want to be. I would have done the same for any place I went. We always let our internal world dictate how we perceive the external world, how can we not? As the days passed and I explored the island, the people I met, the little corners of the world I wandered through, hidden roads, and unexpected sweetness began to open me again. I had shut myself off to the world because I didn’t want to leave something behind, because I was afraid that if I moved forward, I would forget. I experience this all of the time, a sort of future nostalgia.
On my way to Cucao on the bus from Castro, I met an older man named Nano. He had whispy, white eyebrows and kind blue eyes. We began speaking about my travels, about our lives, about the vibrant Island of Chiloé, and his home on the sea. Of course, when I say speaking here it is relative. My Spanish is improving SLOWLY. He told me his daughter lived near the national park I would be visiting and that, if I wanted, I could come visit them and have some tea later on. I took down the contact of his daughter on WhatsApp and left Nano waving at me and saying “Hasta Pronto.”
Later, when I went to contact his daughter, Angela, the contact had not saved. Using the photo that Angela had sent to Nano’s phone of her home that I had taken a photo of (Nano had handed me his phone to text with Angela on the bus ride) I attempted to find them. I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to hear their stories. I asked Nano if I could take his photo and he told me “when I see you later.” I very much so wanted to find them.
This led me on a journey of wandering through the quiet town on the outskirts of Cucao with a few dirt roads intermingling towards the sea and quaint cabañas of all colors speckling the hillsides. Cows grazed freely amongst the tall plants flowering yellow. Bright green parrots with crimson tails moved in packs from tree to tree. The smell of a distant barbecue and a coastal floral scent filled the air. The beach stretched to the horizon with layers of green hills overlapping around it. I had not found Nano and Angela, but meeting him on the bus led me to rediscover the magic of getting lost. I thought about how It is impossible to be lost when you don’t know where you are going in the first place. When I stopped looking, I found exactly what I needed. Chiloé taught me this daily over four days.
Anytime that loneliness began to creep back in, another person appeared who wanted to connect. When I sat in La Patroncita Restaurant alone at a table near the window waiting to try Curanto (the famous dish of Chiloé) a round faced little girl in a pink hat and a Snoopy shirt plopped down in the chair across from me. She talked faster than any Chilean I have met thus far and I understood maybe 30% of what she was saying to me. My Spanish is worse than a seven year old’s… “Soy Florencia.” She began telling me everything about her day. Her mom worked en the cocina I was eating at. When I told her I was from America she gasped, “En serio??? Conoce Billy Eilish? Me encanta Billy Eilish.” I learned that her favorite food is McDonald’s, she loves all things Disney, and she LOVES Billy Eilish most of all. I found this funny. There I was trying to experience another culture, and there she was, telling me all the things she knew about mine. Of course, this was quite sad. Disney + McDonalds= America, right? I would say it’s a pretty reasonable equation. When I left, she gave me a big hug and said, "If you are here tomorrow, you should come back.” I told her I would try, but I did not return.
I met Nano on the bus the day after that and then there was Mario and Tara, a couple from Santiago who sat next to me at a restaurant in Delcahue, a port city in Chiloé just north of Castro. Mario carried a huge fly swatter with him everywhere. There are MASSIVE horseflies that frequent trails in South Central Chile. He wore a black Mercedes cap. Tara had a shining gold tooth that twinkled when she smiled. She kept turning to me and pointing to things on her plate, “Este es mal. NO ME GUSTA. Te gusta???.” I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring with them. When it was time for me to catch a bus, they walked me to my bus station and waited with me to board. Tara referred to me as “La Gringa Linda. The nice foreigner.” Usually, “gringo,” has a negative tone to it, but in Chile, it is sometimes used as a friendly jab.
As I left Chiloé on the bus, I thought about how wildly different my experience became once I opened myself up to a place and stopped comparing it to another.
After two long bus rides, I arrived in a tiny coastal town called Hornopirén. I had not made previous arrangements for sleeping that night, and I had acquired a tent in Chiloé to give me a cheaper, more spur-of-the-moment option for the “plan as little as possible” mentality I have on this journey. The bus plopped us in the center of the town’s Plaza de Armas. Vendors lined the middle walkway with their handicrafts splayed on wooden tables. The breeze carried the salty scent of the sea and the massive granite peaks towered into a deep blue sky-signaling the beginning of “the Patagonia circuit.”
I found a campsite on a map and began walking towards it. Five minutes into the walk Donna pulled up in her tiny red car wearing a Yankees ball cap, a tie-die t-shirt, and a wide smile. In the passenger seat sat Pedro, a young man from Concepción traveling Patagonia. They were on a beer run. She asked if I happened to be looking for a site called “Camping Hornopirén.” When I said yes, she said “Perfecto. Podemos llevarte!” Not having to walk more with a backpack is always a reason to agree to a ride (only if it is safe…).
The site was a sprawling green front yard on Donna’s property right on the beach. The ocean sparkled in the evening sun, the colors of the mountains and the tree tops vivified with that illuminating golden light.
“When you set up your tent, come to the main house just over there. We got oysters today on our kayaks. We made Curanto.”
I wandered over to the main house, a red cabana-style home with a hammock hanging on the deck, and the curtains swaying in the windows. In the sideyard, a group of five others sat around a hole in the ground as the embers smoked the muscles and oysters resting atop a metal grate. Pedro offered me a beer, Donna served me a plate of muscles, with a bowl of soup (made from white wine), and a lemon on the side and showed me how to eat the oyster properly. Oscar, her partner, took my plate momentarily and placed a slab of pork, sausage, and potatoes from a sizzling pot next to the oysters. I met Pedro’s girlfriend, Valentina, and Sebastian, a traveler from Santiago. Together we slurped up oysters, listened to music, and looked out at the fading sun falling into the sea. I knew in that moment that this would stay with me for years to come as all the small, profound moments stay vivid in our memories. This would be the moment I held onto as I ate that tuna and swatted at moscas outside of my little yellow tent in Caleta Gonzalo listening to the raging laughter from a neighboring campsite’s fiesta.
