Into Thick Air (25 page)

No larger than twelve by twenty-five feet, Piwonka was a glittering cave of what can be had with just a little cash. Duck under the Big Wheels and soccer balls hanging from the ceiling and negotiate the ten bikes on the floor and behold the dazzling selection of Hi-Output Key Chain Lasers and Ninja Crossbows. There's sensible fare, too, like the 3-D Last Supper Clock and actual telephones and plastic flowers. Close inspection showed that many trade names had mutated during the long Pacific voyage. Rugrats were Ragrats, and Barbie was Barbara. A few made-in-Chile products struggled for brand identity, but they'll have to do better than Never Ending Toilet Paper.

Chile refills the ships after unloading their Piwonka fare. At the commercial harbor sat a great pyramid of wood chips destined for Asia. A queue of new Mercedes tanker trucks were one by one fitted with fat yellow corrugated hoses that ran out to a ship. Pumps whirred and the trucks squirted thousands of rainbow trout smolts into the ship's holding tank.

An agreeable man in nice loafers, Mr. Alberto Navarrete of Ventisqueros S.A., orchestrated the operation while smoking unfiltered Camels and answering his chirping cell phone and my questions. The freshwater youngsters, he said, were heading for adolescence in a cage submerged in a nearby sea channel. He gestured south, to the thousand miles of largely
uninhabited Pacific coast between Puerto Montt and Cape Horn, a place fractured and flooded into an archipelago of fjords and islands flailed by incessant rain and blizzards. The trout won't mind. They will live in floating cages and be fed, like most industrialized livestock, with a spray of food pellets. A year of gluttony follows. The little trout swell from four ounces to fourteen pounds and then it's over: netted, beheaded, gutted, filleted, and bound for the United States or Japan.

It was a brilliant system, but disturbing, too. The food pellets were made from fish once considered not worth pursuing. Now the stinkfish and bottom suckers of the oceans would no longer be left alone—they, too, would be pursued and caught in the great nets, dried and ground up and fed to these shining tasty trout.

The weather disagreed with me. I would be aiming east, over the Andes, and I waited two days for the clouds to lift. When a morning broke clear, I packed my bags and pedaled through a city intoxicated by the sun. Couples smooched on the wharf. Young men went shirtless and goosebumpy. Men in suits whistled as they walked past Piwonka and Nueva Piwonka Numero Dos.

I stopped in Piwonka to say
adios
. A woman had just bought the 3-D Last Supper Clock.

It's beautiful
, said the deeply satisfied customer.

And it was only four dollars. I shared her happiness, but for different reasons. No wind, no rain, no worries.

 

THE GERMANS WERE HERE. Every guidebook makes mention of the brave Europeans who settled southern Chile, yet none admits that the Germans are hardly evident today. Where are the Germans? I ask a fisherman wearing a ratty sweater that may actually be an old net. He stops painting his little boat a giddy green and says, “Not here in Puerto Montt. You need to go to the country, toward Puerto Varas.”

That's fine, because Puerto Varas is on my way to the Andes. I turn from the sea and pedal inland, toward the ice volcanoes that float above the thick marine air. It's a switchbacking climb out of Puerto Montt, past yipping mutts and black taxis and kids booting soccer balls. A light plane drones overhead, towing a banner promising,
Ray-O-Vac is
the
battery
. When I pass the last house and hit the old dirt road to Puerto Varas, I smile and stop and scribble in my notebook: I'm on my way to the Atlantic, pedaling across Patagonia.

I bump along, cookpot banging in a pannier. Rocks pinched under my tires go zinging off at slingshot speed into the ex-forest of tree stumps. Some of the stumps are ten feet across, and very likely the remains of a tree called
alerce
. It's the southern hemisphere equivalent of the redwood.
Both
alerce
and redwood are evergreen conifers, both live ridiculously long and grow to fantastic heights, and both are worshipped by naturalists and loggers. Chile declared the
alerce
the national tree in 1976, after realizing that only 15 percent of the original forests remained. Cutting was strictly prohibited unless the tree was already dead or burnt. The loophole was promptly exploited: burn or girdle a tree, wait until it dies, then haul out the chainsaws. So it went for almost three decades, until Chile finally banned all harvesting of the
alerce
.

But these
alerce
were cut long ago (the wood does not rot), perhaps by the missing Germans. They came to Patagonia at the urging of Chilean immigration offices that were set up in Europe after 1850. Chile, officially and freshly independent as of 1811, wanted someone to settle the land and build a nation. A new nation, that is. Around a million people called the Mapuche already lived in the south, but the government did not consider them a model for future development, despite their obvious vigor. In 1541, the Spanish explorer Lopez Vaz regarded the Mapuche as “the most valiant and furious people in all America.” The Incas, in contrast, were dandies in feathered plumes. And just as the Mapuche had repelled the Incas, they roughed up the conquistadors. The first Spanish governor, Pedro de Valdivia, was not merely humiliated in defeat; the Mapuche gouged out his thumping heart and made lunch of it.

The Mapuche had a thing for raw freedom, and for three centuries the Spaniards failed in Patagonia. Their foes were brilliant guerrilla fighters, having practiced on themselves for several thousand years. They had no urge to write; oratory skills were so esteemed that history never died. They disciplined naughty kids with a dose of the hallucinogenic and occasionally lethal blossoms of
floripondio
, great drooping trumpets colored lemon and red.

Yet the Mapuche were not indestructible. Ground down by three hundred years of war, they were further weakened with booze brought by the Europeans. The new Chilean government saw its chance to displace the Mapuche with someone willing to live under the flag of Chile—otherwise, Argentina might claim all of Patagonia. The Chilean army did its work, and the Germans came. (Some Swiss, Dutch, and Italians did too.)

The Germans cleared and claimed their homesteads and presumably founded the “German Club” restaurant I find along the main street in Puerto Varas. Unfortunately, it is closed. There's not a German in sight.

Onward, along the shores of Lago Llanquihue, under gathering clouds. The road is paved and busy with people on their way to fun, towing Jet Skis and dirt bikes to and from vacation homes and hotels with names like Enchanted Lake and Hidden Cove. Between windrows of cypress and eucalyptus (another immigrant) are gray gothic farmhouses, huge homes with ornate gables and creaking wind vanes in a breeze that is beginning to worry me. In very green pastures the beasts of Patagonia slobber and chomp and train their indifferent eyes on the solo cyclist. Dairy cows, I presume; one farm has an old sign proclaiming,
We use a Girton Milk Tank
. There are indecipherable German signs, too:
Ist gesund und schmeckt gut!

Volcan Osorno, 8,600 feet high, disappears and reappears behind fast clouds. It's huge and pointy and perfectly buried in snow down to 4,000 feet. When it begins to rain I'm relieved to see a sign for yet another German Club.

This one is open and looks vaguely Bavarian, although I've never been to Bavaria. In the parking lot is a BMW. The staff, however, is definitely Chilean. I order a bowl of asparagus soup and ask my black-tie waiter Carlos if any Germans are about.

“There are none. This is a restaurant with German food.”

Where can I find them?

“I would look in Puerto Varas.”

I was there, and didn't see any. What do they look like?

“They are big and have blond hair.”

And they can be found in this region?

“One was here very recently.”

Do you know where he or she lives?

“Not here—he was a tourist.”

I visit the bathroom, and it's clear that Germans were here. The place is suitable for surgery, blindingly lit by miniature spotlights. And there's a Siemens hand dryer tagged,
Made in Germany
.

The rain quits but the clouds won't. The yellow lupines along the road
are a fair substitute for the sun. I pass an encouraging sign:
Lots for Sale, Call F. Gunther
. A growl of thunder keeps me moving. I spy a little sign that says
Kucher
, pointing to a lovely old two-story home. Out front there's one of my favorite species, a silver-crested porch sitter—a female in a peach cardigan.

Hello, I say—What's a
kucher
?

“It's a pastry, of dough and fruit and baked in an oven. Like a tart. It's German.”

And are you German?

“Three generations back. Now I'm Chilean, of course.”

Of course. I want to know more; she wants to feed me
kucher
. There is no greater stimulant to the mothering urge than the sight of a skinny bicyclist. The
kucher
is wonderful. Raspberry, and baked in a wood-burning stove.

Her name is Magaly Brimtrup Birke. She still speaks German, as does her husband, Orlando, as did her predecessors in the late 1800s. She gestures toward the perfect pastures and the moo cows and says, “This was all a forest then.”

Some trees survived, including a surreal araucaria in the front yard. This is a conifer whose repeating form, branching like a snowflake, gives it the look of a pagoda tapering to a point fifty feet high. The leaves are like pine needles except wider and creased into inch-long daggers. It's the oddest tree—and, says Magaly, it used to be the most important tree. The Mapuche ate the seeds. “They lived off those trees.”

The Chilean government gave title to thousands of square miles of Mapuche lands to the settlers, lands that, a century later, they hoped to recover with the election of Salvador Allende. The landowners hoped otherwise. With the reign of Pinochet, land reform died—along with anyone who stood up for the people who ate the seeds of the araucaria. Magaly says, “It was a lot of work to cut down all those trees.” She's still working. Chickens, ducks, and a stupendous garden with two hothouses for tomatoes. Is she tempted to sell out to holiday subdivisions?

“No. We like the tranquility, and we're doing fine by renting some cabins we built by the beach.”

One more thing, please: what do you call the plant with the trumpet-shaped, hanging yellow and red flowers?

“
Floripondio
,” says Magaly. “But why are you writing this down?”

I'm writing a story. I think it's about Chile and Germans.

“And you didn't visit the German museum in Frutillar? Shame.”

I promise to visit next time, with my wife, who speaks German simply because she likes German. Magaly is touched, and that's good for another hunk of
kucher
for the road. It goes well with the ChocMan XL candy bar, Cristal beer, and empanada meat pie I pick up in the next town. Beyond, the road climbs past cliffs of volcanic rock, homogeneous and smooth, a frozen wave of ash. Lago Llanquihue falls behind as the road turns to gravel and parallels the Petrohue River feeding the lake.

The valley tightens. Nobody lives here. The river plunges over ledges of polished stone. There is absolutely no way to cross without a bridge, and there is no bridge. The only way is to follow the river, into the Andes.

 

IF MY WIFE is right on these matters, the patter of rain on my tent this morning is wonderful for my skin, plumping it with moisture. But the humidity is terrible for my map, turning it into a limp rag that tears in my hands. In truth I hardly need it. From my camp, there is only one way over the Andes to Argentina, the Paso de Pérez Rosales. The road over the pass is mapped as a lonely noodle, twenty miles long, connecting a lake in Chile with a lake in Argentina. It does not connect to any other road. Only ferries cross the lakes, and they carry not cars but only people, who are shuttled in minibuses over the pass, twice a day. The rest of the time the pass will be mine.

I refuse to emerge from the tent until the trills and sliding whistles of birds signal that my chance has come. Outside, shags of moss hang from branches and upholster the earth. In the drab cold I don't expect to see a big green and red Tarzan parrot—but there it goes, squawking as it flaps toward the glacial gloom of Volcán Osorno.

The gravel road to the lake has been wiped out and rebuilt in two places, the victim of landslides off Osorno. When Charles Darwin poked around Chile in 1832, the volcano was “spouting volumes of smoke.” It's quiet today,
vaguely opalescent in the watery light, but it's plain to see that Osorno created the lake at road's end. It dammed the river with a steaming torrent of ash. The river rose into a lake and topped the dam and chewed it away until Osorno blew again and made the dam higher still.

In the contest between eruption and erosion, the volcano appears to be winning: the lake, Todos los Santos, is over a thousand feet deep. It's also twenty miles long and narrowly tucked between mountains so steep it's no wonder that the ferry
Esmeralda
is the only way to the other side. The tourists on deck are fairly chipper considering the curtains of rain sweeping the lake for two hours. Between announcements in Spanish, English, and German, the ubiquitous
Four Seasons
plays over the sound system, but everyone is hoping for just one season, the dry season. The tours begin in Puerto Montt, which is fairly wallpapered with posters advertising this route, posters picturing frozen volcanoes and mossy forests under a cloudless sky.