IN PATAGONIA A GUY CAME TO ME AND
ASKED.
I
was eating a sandwich in the main square of Punta Arenas when a
Chilean guy (Nico) walked up to me and asked me where I bought it.
I was taking him there while he began explaining he was a photographer
who needed a help to bring his stuff trekking through the Punta
Arenas National Park, in return I could have slept in his tend since
I didn't have it. I thought few minutes and I accepted. I bought
a sleeping bag and some food, then we began hitch-hiking
to reach the National Park entry. It took two days to do a 300 km
of unpaved road by jeep in the middle of nowhere, with most of the
lifts staying in the back part of
the jeeps. I liked it despite of the vibrations. It was wonderful
when, from an endless flat country, I began seeing the huge mountains
raising up. We commenced walking in the park. It was wonderful,
the mountains, the lakes, the glaciar and
the situation. We walked for a week together and we got perfectly
along, we enjoyed and we met other travellers. Then we had to split
since I had to come back while he carried on travelling northward.
I was sad because he had been the best travel mate I've ever had.
Life is strange, in fact we kept in touch by e-mail, and two years
later we met in Swiss. Then he decided to leave for a
9 month travel from Swiss to India and dropped by my house in Milan
for some days.
This
friendship is the richest memory of my travel in Chile. |
| I TURNED IN A MIME TO RIETRIEVE MY BACKBAG
On the way to the Torres del
Paine National Park I slept in Puerto Natales at a military barrack where my just met
travelmate had some friends. Given I knew I'd have come back from the Park passing through
the same way, I dumped most of my stuffs there, so that I'd have trekked lighter. My
chilean friend spoke with the military to store my stuffs, but when I came back I was
alone since he went on trekking looking for a friend of him. Obviously none at the
barracks reminded about me and, overall, about the fact I had left my luggage there same
days before; moreover nobody spoke english and I didn't manage to express in spanish.
These men hadn't even understood what I wanted. So I had to mime all the story, but I had
to do it very well if I wanted to have my stuffs back. It took 20 minutes to mime me and
my friend coming at the barrack, sleeping, leaving the back bag, trekking, separating and
just me coming back. It turned out tough to mime that we separate because he was looking
for another friend of him in the Park and then I prosecute with an american couple till
there. I was sweating while ten people (chief included) where observing me seriously
trying to figure out what hell an italian wanted from a military barrack in the middle of
nowhere in Patagonia. At the end one of them understood, disappeared and popped up later
with my stuffs.
It had been tough but, as usual
:-), I managed!
|
