21 Nov 2000
From Puerto Montt, you can take a ship that maneuvering among cliffs and glaciers,
will bring you to the very south of the continent. But we learn that it costs
a few hundred dollars, so we opt to take the ferry to the nearby island of Chiloe.
We arrive at a little town at its southern end where, once a week, there’s
a ferry to the mainland. We’re lucky that tomorrow is the ferry day. We walk around
the town with its traditional wooden houses and fishing boats along the shore.
To get some shelter from the blowing wind, we enter a little church along the
way. There is a service just starting, and we sit down and listen to the small
group of people sing enthusiastically. One of the most devoted singers is an elderly
lady. It is this old woman, with her husband, who comes up to us after the service,
and simply tells us to follow her back to her home.
In the evening we sit by a hot stove and listen to the story of her life. She
was born on another island and had seventeen brothers and sisters. She was only
lucky enough to go to school for one year, during which she learned how to read
and count. When she was ten, her mother fell ill, so she had to stop school to
look after her mother and the rest of her brothers and sisters. Married at twenty,
she had fourteen children herself. She and her carpenter husband built this little
church and tell us they are content with their lives. We are happy to be here,
sharing the evening with these simple, sincere people, as we listen to the old
woman recite a poem she learned by heart at school, over sixty-five years ago.
23 Nov 2000
A Japanese couple we met yesterday on the ferry picked us up, and it’s now the
second day now that we’re traveling with them along the Carretera Austral – the
Southern Highway. It isn’t much of a highway, really, more of an unpaved narrow
path. But it’s a path with great views, winding through unspoiled landscapes of
snow-covered mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, waterfalls and lakes. Susumu and
Masako, our Japanese drivers, are a retired couple who have been driving around
the world for about five years
