I needed several days to recover from the wild adventure in Neltume. I arrived back in Valdivia with only 2 or 3 days left in the Airbnb I had rented, and a feeling of despondency crept over me. My time in Valdivia thus far had been something of a drag. What had I accomplished here?
I knew there were interesting people and cases nearby, but I couldn’t seem to make anything of it. Beleaguered by flaky communication with the nearby NGOs, I resigned myself to assume that the only good things to come out of my time in Validivia were my visit to Neltume and the relationship I had made with the family I had been living with.
I had greatly enjoyed living with this host family in Valdivia. The house I lived in was old, at least from the 1960s, with several additions haphazardly tacked on. My room was in a strange DIY guest house that was connected to the original house by a walled patio with a tin roof. I shared conversations with the woman who ran the house while her husband, younger brother, son and granddaughter and several pets circulated around the house, often chasing one another. I would tell her about my project and the places I had visited and those I planned to visit and she would tell me about growing up in the same house under the oppression of the dictatorship. One such story that I’ll never forget was one of the rules her father had for her and her sisters. “Never sleep on the side of the house that faces the street” she told me, “Otherwise the bullets will hit you while sleep.”
I might’ve laughed or gasped when she told me this - how do you respond to such a story? It is the kind of childhood lesson that is so absurd you know someone couldn’t have made it up. She also told me about the day that the country voted NO against Pinochet in 1988. She said that she couldn’t believe it, that no one could, and that the streets were filled with people dancing and laughing after so many years of silence. She described it as the most joyful day of her life. I can only imagine how that must have felt.
However, one frustration she shared with me was that many people in Chile today don’t understand how bad it was. Many people see Pinochet as something like a hero, someone who was necessary to bring stability to the country’s economic woes. She found this abhorrent, reminding me of the countless people disappeared and murdered during the 17-year dictatorship. These conversations over dinner will likely be my favorite memory from Valdivia, and so when my time was coming to an end, I resigned myself to thinking they were the only thing I would really remember from Valdivia.
But I was wrong! A day before leaving, I met with Eric Hurtado, a representative from the privately owned Oncol Park just outside of Valdivia. What makes Oncol Park interesting is that it is run by what might be the largest forestry company in the world, Arauco, and like many other forestry companies, it has a terrible reputation. However, I was surprised by the candidness of our conversation and to hear that some of the park’s community outreach programs were genuinely better than many approaches I’ve seen in far more environmentally and socially conscious NGOs. He welcomed a visit from me, but since I was already to leave the following day, I told him I’d stop by if I returned.
Then, on Sunday morning, 10 minutes before I am about to get on a bus to head to Puerto Varas, I receive a text from this guy named Dr. David Tecklin. “Hey Sam, do you want to meet for lunch around 1?” Exasperated but excited, I drop my bags and told him that I’d love to meet. I had waited several days hoping I’d get the chance to meet David, and it just happened that he was free to meet on my last day in Valdivia. Dr. Tecklin knows a ton about conservation in Chile. He’s worked with WWF as Chile’s representative establishing protected coastal reserves, Pew Charitable Trust’s Principal Officer for South America in various land and marine programs and he acts as a researcher for the Universidad Austral de Chile, based in Valdivia. On top of all of those things, he is a former Watson Fellow! It was a pleasure to have lunch with him and to talk about conservation in Chile and hear about his experiences with the Watson.
Just before meeting with David, I received an email from another researcher who had published work on Huilo Huilo. To my surprise that researcher, Dr. Benedikt Hora, happens to be a professor at the same Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. So before my lunch with Dr. Tecklin, I enjoyed a very encouraging chat with Dr. Hora. He told me that if I were to return to Valdivia, he would be happy to accompany me to Oncol Park and some of the other interesting places in the area.
Then, as I was walking back from my lunch with Dr. Tecklin, I received confirmation to work with an NGO in Argentina’s Patagonia later in February/March! The last morning in Valdivia turned out to be the most productive of all, and I will keep in touch with the contacts I made at the university. So after a long day of last minute meetings, I hopped on a bus around 5, and headed south to Puerto Varas.
As soon as I arrived in Puerto Varas, I knew it was going to be a far different place than any other I had visited. This feeling came not from how it looked, but from the weather. As the bus pulled to a stop, rain drops began hitting the windows. I felt a childish excitement. This was only the second time I had seen rain in Chile, the other time being on New Year’s Day. Chile has been in a serious drought for many years so rain often comes as a surprise, especially in the arid northern half of the country.
However, the childish excitement I felt quickly disappeared as the sprinkling rain turned into a heavier downpour. I got off the bus thinking I would get my rain jacket and backpack covering out of my suitcase, but by the time it was handed to me, the rain was coming down fast enough to make opening my bag a bad idea. Instead I opted to run as fast as I could, lugging my 80-pound suitcase over broken side walks and gravel in the general direction of my Airbnb. I walked into the Airbnb, my hair dripping with rain, and the woman who ran the house said, “Welcome to Puerto Varas, where everything happens under the rain!”
Despite a damp first impression, Puerto Varas quickly became one of my favorite stops. The city is one of Chile’s premiere tourist towns, situated on the shores of Lake Llanquihue, with a glittering view of the Osorno Volcano. The city’s central plaza is close to the water, with cafes and restaurants designed to mimic an idyllic German town. As the host said, it went on to rain 4 out of the 5 days I was in town, but this didn’t stop me from admiring the carefully manicured destination. I was enjoying the city so much that one day I decided to go for a run in search of views from above. I began climbing the hills at a steady pace, and only 4 minutes into my run, I thought I had found a nice spot. As I went to peer over the valley, I slipped on loose gravel and glass on a slight decline and fell in the street. I groaned, feeling a really sharp pain in my leg. I started to pick myself up and then noticed these small ball-shaped pieces of glass all around me. “Ahh crap” I thought as I looked down at my leg to see two deep holes perforating my badly skinned knee. Immediately, I suspected some of the glass had disappeared inside the now bleeding holes on my leg. “Come on…” I complained as I began trudging down the hill back to the Airbnb. By the time I got into the shower my leg was covered in blood. I cleaned it, rinsing away the blood and grime, scrubbing it with soap and cutting away the flailing loose skin with kitchen scissors. A small piece of glass came out of my leg, but despite my best efforts, the deeper holes were still filled with debris. After a quick Facetime call showing off my newest battle scar, and being berated by certain medical professionals (you know who you are) for suggesting I dig the glass out myself with tweezers, I decided a trip to the hospital to remove the glass and grime would be best. So after a long night in the ER, I limped back to the airbnb around 1 am with 9 new stitches in my knee and a piece of glass as thick as two stacked quarters as a souvenir.
The following morning, I endured several interminable bus rides into the countryside to visit a privately protected area called Katalapi park. I had skimmed the website of the park, but I didn’t really know much about it. I had been connected with the administration from someone I had met earlier in Santiago, and to be completely honest the only reason I went was because I have had so little luck with organizations, that if I didn’t go to this one then I couldn’t keep complaining about what a hard time I’ve been having! The bus left me on the side of the highway, and I stumbled down a street called “the street of the chocolatier”. After a kilometer and a half of dirt roads I came to the gated entrance of Katalapi park. I looked down at my jeans and could see blood seeping through the denim around my knee. “Well, at least I’m trying.” I thought.
To my surprise the visit turned out to be an extraordinary success. Katalapi Park is unofficially the go-to training grounds for environmental activists, organizers and educators throughout Chile. Important NGOs were founded and historic environmental meetings discussed in the 28-acre reserve nestled between verdant mountains. I had a wonderful conversation with the founder of the park, a plant physiologist and environmental educator, and I had the opportunity to hear all about private reserve management, the classes they teach and how they handled conflicts with neighbors. After several hours of conversation and a lovely walk through the park, I began the long walk back to the highway with several new ideas and names to follow up on.
My last day in Puerto Varas came much faster than I expected, but the day began with a gift from above. For the first time, the skies were clear and I could see the strikingly beautiful Osorno Volcano on the other side of Lake Llanquihue. I spent the day hobbling around the city taking photos and flying the drone dangerously far over the expansive lake. Having finally seen the snowcapped peak, I decided it was time to start moving again, and so the next morning I embarked on the multi-bus journey that would bring me back to the wild countryside of Neltume.
