AN OLD LOVE
Those were other times. Times when virtual friendships were made true and were remained for decades by the strange habit of writing letters. At that time, around 1995, my Chilean virtual friend (or penpal, as we used to call), María Teresa Adriasola [1] suggested that a couple friends of her - the poet, Marina Gerhold, and the actor, Óscar Sepúlveda [2] –, that were backpacking through Latin America, to look me up when in Rio de Janeiro. And they made it. While Oscar and Marina were in Rio they stayed at my house, in Estacio neighborhood, that I shared with Dilma, my partner at the time.
A few days later, Marina and Oscar went back to their journey, inviting us for a return visit, as soon as they returned from the tour in our continent, which should take place about nine months later. The couple lived in Bariloche, along the Nahuel Huapi Lake, one of the most emblematic towns in the region known as Andean Lakes. I have already passed through there, when I went to Chile to personally meet my penpals María Teresa and Marta Cid (which whom, by the way, I still keep in touch particularly thanks to Facebook!)
And it was done. We were, if I’m not mistaken, in the year of 1995. As soon as the couple notified us about their return, we decided to pack up and spend a few days in Bariloche. In those times, this city was, above all, a status sign. The airfare, the hotel rates and other leisure items were too expensive. After all, it was a place that the South Americans tourists were used (and still are) to go looking for snowy weather and snow sports, as a cheaper alternative than Aspen, in USA, Sierra Nevada, in Spain or the Swiss Alps. However, for me and Dilma, professors and postgraduate students, it was still an expensive alternative - except for the small detail that we now had a couple of friends willing to repay the kindness of us having hosted them in Rio de Janeiro.
My first trip to Chile had been more than an adventure, but in some ways it had been similar. The big difference was in the transportation, its route and duration. Poor, but determined, I went from Rio to Santiago by bus with a company named Pluma [3], in a route that I imagined that should cross the border between Argentina and Chile in the Paso Libertadores region through the tunnel known as Las Cuevas-Caracoles (or Cristo Redentor Tunnel). However, due to the heavy snowfalls that occur in the winter months - I traveled in August - the trip increased about fifteen hours. Counting from Uruguaiana, in Rio Grande do Sul, the trip increased from approximately twenty-three hours to thirty-eight hours. In kilometers, still counting only from Uruguaiana, it increased from about 1,725 to 3,300! I don't remember if I already had this information, but I imagine that probably not, otherwise I would have chosen a different date. This meant that I left Rio de Janeiro around 1 pm on a Wednesday and arrived in Santiago around the same time on a Sunday!
Me, with pasamontañas mask and guerrilla pose beside the heroic Pluma bus at the Paso Fronterizo Internacional Cardenal Antonio Samoré, on the Chile-Argentina border
Despite the extreme tiredness, the square buttocks, the cold feet (it was the first time I had faced temperatures close to zero and had seen snow), the trip was a delight. To the point that I even thought that on the way there were more interesting and enchanting destinations than the Chilean capital itself. If, then, we take into account the gloomy atmosphere in Santiago, much of it due to the truculence of General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship, in some respects the snowy landscape I faced inside that bus (which must have had no more than fifteen passengers, if my memory serves me right)...
The important thing about that 1987 experience was that it carried over to the 1995 experience the feeling that that region must be one of the most beautiful on the planet, that it deserved to be known as soon as possible. For this and other reasons, Oscar and Marina's invitation-retreat was a must.
Discounting the "divine light" of the analog camera, that's me in Bariloche, with Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Andes Cardillera in the background.
And everything in Bariloche was much more than Dilma and I expected. Although we had traveled in the summer, it was our first real contact with snow - even if only a little bit, high up in Cerro Catedral, one of the city's postcards, from where you can see a stunning landscape. Besides the hospitality and warmth, Marina and Óscar offered us typical regional food, especially at Luis' house, Óscar's brother; they introduced us to the charming Nahuel Huapi Lake, just a few steps away from home; the stunning landscape of the LlaoLlao region (in "argentine", pronounced XaoXao); the Tronador Hill…
Dilma, Luis Sepúlveda (Óscar's brother) and Marina Gerhold on the banks of the Nahuel Huapi close to home
As if this were not enough, Marina and Óscar, travelers by nature and vocation, had a scheduled trip, if I am not mistaken, to Temuco in Chile. As a result of this trip, they invited us to go with them on part of the journey, we separated in the city of Osorno, 250 km south of their destination, while we went to Puerto Montt, 107 km south of Osorno. A fundamental detail was that they, foreseeing that they would be back after us, left the house key with us!
From Puerto Montt we still went to Chiloé - actually, a brief contact with the small town of Ancud, located on the Isla Grande de Chiloé, with 8,384 km², the largest of an archipelago composed of about 40 islands. After this bonus tour, we returned in a small plane to Bariloche, from where the spectacle was flying over some of the many volcanoes in the region, some of them active.
Calbuco (left) and Osorno (right) volcanoes seen from the old twin-engine plane that took us back from Puerto Montt to Bariloche
The years went by, the marriage with Dilma turned into a friendship that lasts until today. As time went by, my quality of life improved and I had the opportunity to travel more, inside and outside of Brazil. As I said in the previous post, this has always been one of my greatest passions, to which I was learning to direct my energies and savings. But every time I returned from a trip it was inevitable for me to think that, like, "alright, ok, the trip was wonderful, but there is no place more beautiful than the Andean Lakes region".
In the next moment, self-critically, I wondered: "Could this impression have something to do with the kind and hospitable way Óscar and Marina[4] treated us? Or with the fact that I was happy, at that time, with Dilma's company? Or because it was the first time I had more prolonged contact with natural environments so vast and apparently so little touched by humans?" The feeling was that the only way to resolve this doubt was to make another trip to the region. But this is another story…
Translated by Laura Vieira
[1] My friend María Teresa Adriasola, in fact, is much better known and respected in Chile and also outside the country by the literary pseudonym Elvira Hernández. Currently, Elvira Hernández holds, among others, the 2017 La Chascona Poetry Festival Award for the body of work, the 2018 Jorge Teillier National Poetry Prize, the 2018 Pablo Neruda Iberoamerican Poetry Prize, and the 2018 Círculo de Críticos de Arte de Chile Award, Poetry Category for her book Pájaros desde mi ventana.
[2] Óscar unfortunately died young, of cancer, a few years after our second meeting. His work is recorded in the films Hasta la victoria siempre, by Juan Carlos Desanzo (1997), Hijo del río, by Ciro Cappellari (1995), and La nave de los locos, by Ricardo Wullicher (1995).
[3] This line no longer exists today, as other international lines of the company, such as Rio-Buenos Aires, Rio-Montevideo and Rio-Asunción.
[4] Some time later, Marina and Óscar separated and he went to live in Buenos Aires, where he had a daughter from a previous relationship. For some time Dilma and I still kept in touch by letter with Marina Gerhold (no international phone calls at that time, no way!). It was she who told us about Oscar's death. After that, for reasons unknown to us, the letters became scarcer, until we lost contact, unfortunately.