From Chile to Argentina Part III: New Terrain and Rain

DAY 4: Flor de Valle to Huachalepun

The senora at Flor de Valle greeted me before the girls woke up with a round metal tub full of 30 fresh, steaming rolls. Aldo and I drank a cup of coffee while he told me about his long friendship with “the husband of the woman who makes the bread” and how it was because of that acquaintance that Mathias uses this campsite. I laid out a breakfast of bread, jelly, cheese, ham, and butter which the girls ate ravenously then quickly packed up their things (by Day Four they have a routine) and helped Aldo saddle horses. By 10:30 we were off, retracing twenty minutes of the trail to the lake before veering left and following a six-feet wide 4x4 road for most of the day.

It seemed we’d been riding deeper and deeper into the mountains for three days, further and further from any kind of town, but sprawling, cow-riddled farms appeared intermittently at every point of our trek. Slanting woods houses with one yapping dog out front; fences made of untreated wood verticals strung together with barbed wire; a few lonely horses; and the odd piece of farm equipment were the views of our ride. The ride wasn’t steep or boggy; we merely followed the path which in turn followed the curves of a shallow, rocky-bedded river. It was an overcast day and fog hung low in the trees giving everything a chilled, ominous feeling. The trees at this altitude are all covered in a mint green, delicate, sponge-like moss that hangs from the branches and trunks alike. It thrives in high altitude areas and is not picky about the species of its host tree. The locals call it barba de pino, or beard of the pine, and it was so gentle and beautiful and softened the feel of the forest.

The day afforded us magnificent views of Sollipulli and I snapped pictures of Aldo pointing at the crests with his goofy smiling, reminiscing about being on top. Shortly before lunch we passed under a black cloud and quickly put on ponchos. Luckily the shower lasted only minutes and we soon arrived to our lunch spot near a lonely hut next to the river. Unexpectedly, the owner was home but welcomed us to lunch in his field. No sooner had I laid out bread, salami and cheese, but a police truck and three mounted police officers came tumbling out of the mountains. There were five all together and had been up on a rural section of the Argentine border. They were all supremely friendly and cracked jokes while asking if they could take some pictures and film for official reports. The girls were equally impressed with them and we passed a long lunch talking with them and posing for pictures- the blond cowgirls and the official, upstanding officers. The man in charge assured me that whatever I needed, even if it was just a ride through town to grab a beer, he was eager to serve me and could be found in the nearest town where he’s Chief of Police. Aldo said it was a historic day: he’d never before met officers in the mountains.

Before arriving to our campsite, we stopped off at another farm where Aldo knew a horse was for sale. Mathias had charged him with buying it if it was good, so Aldo talked with the farmer, took a look at the horse and a half hour later handed over roughly six hundred dollars in exchange for the horse. I led Monona, a small creamed-coffee colored mare, the rest of the way to our campsite. We slept high in the mountains in a field next to a rarely-used hut and listened to the sounds of gentle rain on our tents which promised a wet ride to Icalma.

DAY 5: Huachalepun to Icalma

            It rained all day. The clouds sunk low in the trees and we rode through the wet gray fog and saw hardly anything. It rained gently through the morning, and we stopped for lunch next to a warm volcanic lake that the girls had had high hopes of swimming their horses in. Instead, Aldo built a roaring fire and we drank tea and thawed our hands while wind shook showers of water from the trees. The fire helped raise their spirits, but the warmth soon drained out of us once we got back in the saddle and continued trudging through the rain. I led the pack horse, Pepe, who walks slowly and I had to tug him along all day. It was a miserable day and the rain turned to a full downpour by 4:30 when we emerged from the mountains onto the dirt road leading to Icalma. We spent three more hours shuffling down the road, our bodies stiff, my hands swollen, cracked and aching, my shoulder burning from pulling Pepe, and my butt and inner thighs fatigued and saddle sore. Once you’re wet and riding there’s little hope of warming up, and we grew colder and colder.

            By the time we limped into camp at 7:30, we’d spent nine hours in the rain and everyone seemed about to cry. Mathias met us in Icalma with an asado feast and fortunately he’d put a huge tent over one of the picnic tables. It was small help. Our campsite was flooded, the wind howled and the rain continued to bucket down. We sat outside through all of it, the girls shivered together while I hurried to prepare dinner. We all ate quickly and went to bed as soon as possible to put an end to the ugliest of days and praying for a sunny morning.

DAY 6: Argentina!

When I rose at 5:00 a.m. to prepare breakfast it was pitch black and still raining. I woke the girls at 6:00, lied to them that it wasn’t so bad outside, and we ate, saddled and were off by 8:00. By the time we got on the horses the skies began to clear, and though it was still bitingly cold as we headed off toward the border, we saw the sun for the first time.  Icalma is a tiny border town and we passed through customs easily. From there we rode for two hours, first up through more green typical Chilean forest, eventually emerging onto the scrubby flats of the Argentine pampas. The sun grew stronger as we rode, banishing a bit of the ice morning chill and we were so thrilled to be clear of the rain that we charged into the day with high spirits.

I’ve run out of time and have to leave for an 11-day trek… unfortunately the last stories from the border will have to wait. For now I’ll say it was a dream to be up there with nothing obscuring the views, to gallop across the flats, and to the straddle the border!

From Chile to Argentina Part II: Into the Mountains

            My six-day trek, which extended to nine days for the riders who met their new guides and horses at the border and continued into Argentina, followed a general Northeast course away from Pucon toward the border town of Icalma. But the truth is that we frequently traveled away from Icalma and wound every direction around the mountains, into the forests and out, tracing a rather squiggly path on the map. Our route varied in condition and geography as we rose high and dipped low, entered the dense bamboo stands and emerged onto wide dirt roads, and eventually left the rainforests completely and encountered the Argentine pampas. The views surpassed all others I’ve seen in Chile, and everything reached an exciting pinnacle on the last day when we found ourselves high on the pampas, without a tree in sight, looking out over the lake district and the snow-tinged mountains beyond.

            Here, I’ll try to give a rough outline of the first half of the trip, and the rest will follow in Part III.

DAY I: Antilco to Geoppinger

            Our trek got off to a chaotic start as two of the riders missed their bus from Santiago and arrived two hours late to Pucón this morning. By noon we’d finally rounded up all four riders, Laura, Anna, Johanna and Nora, and fed them breakfast. By one o’clock they’d met their horses, put on chaps, gotten in the saddle and we were out the driveway to test the horses and riders. Tornado is one of our crazier horses; he prances and twirls, tosses his head and froths at the mouth with anxiety and excitement. He’s usually only used to guide but Laura was a very experienced rider so we decided to give her Tornado (after a switch with Anna). His presence agitated my horse Moro and together the two of them worked themselves into a sweaty frenzy, trying to compete for top guide horse status. When I stayed behind the others to close gates Moro pawed the ground and snorted, charged forward when I slackened the reins even slightly, and side stepped feverishly trying to break free.  After three hours of fighting with Moro in the broiling sun, I was covered in his and my sweat and was frustrated and exhausted enough to give up on him forever.

            While the girls lunched with Mathias, I led all the horses to the truck and rode with the driver, Don Hernan to Laguna Geoppinger where we spent the first night before heading out the next morning. The horses ride side by side, perpendicular to the road, in the bed of the huge truck and most are not happy about it. They struggle as the truck jostles along the pot-holed dirt roads and our ride through the peaceful, rural countryside was accompanied by the deafening growl and chug of the trucks straining motor and the gunshot thud of horse hooves kicking the side of the truck.  After an hour and a half, we reached the final mile and a half ascent to Laguna Geoppinger. It’s a steep, steep road that the truck can’t handle with seven or more horses. But we only had six, so Hernan shifted down to first and began to climb. We drove up and up, slower and slower until 100 feet into the ascent, the truck stopped. So we inched our way back down, hanging onto the side of the crumbling mountain road with the whole Huife valley spreading out in magnificent clarity beneath us, and tried again. We had no luck so we backed down again and took the last two horses out of the truck. The horses traveled with their saddles on, so I jumped on one (Rebelde) using only his halter and a rope as reins, led the other (Pepe), and followed the truck’s smoke as it roared and rolled its way successfully up to our campsite. It was a short moment, but I was stunned to find myself alone in the Chilean countryside, on the side of a nondescript hill, looking out over a sprawling valley and the rippled forests on all sides.

            We had a hot but enjoyable evening at the lake. Aldo, our other guide, lives nearby so he met us there and was ready to help me roast chicken legs in a disc over the fire. They came out oily but delicious and the four girls, still wet from a dip in the lake, marveled over the quantity of food and what a beautiful start to the trip it was. Aldo rode home to spend the night in his own bed, and we five stayed up late watching heavy gray clouds creep across the sky. At twilight rain looked certain, but then an eerie, diabolical red glow began to spread across the bottom of the clouds and it seemed to be a promising sign. Soon thunder tumbled through our valley and lightening fringed the sky but, aside from a few momentary drops, the rain never came. It was an intriguing night, of dry thunder, lightning over the water and scarlet rain clouds. And, at 2:00 a.m. I unzipped my tent to go to the bathroom and was literally knocked back by the brilliance of the stars which had emerged into a black, cloudless sky.

Day 2: Geoppinger to Isolde

            I rose early and made a fire before Aldo made it back from his house, then packed away my tent, prepared breakfast, and collected bread from the local farmer’s wife. The first day is always slow because the riders haven’t established a morning cleanup routine. Still, with me doing all the organizing and Aldo saddling the horses, we were cleaned up and off by 11:00. The first half of the day followed relatively flat easy trails down a dirt road further into Huife and the girls were excited and bubbling with energy and self-confidence. We passed Aldo’s house where he stopped to give his wife and daughter a kiss before rejoining us, and then stopped for lunch in a shady area of a field before legitimately heading into the mountains.

The next three hours carried us through dripping, green rainforest with Araucaria, manio, and arrayan trees so tall you had to tilt your head all the way backwards to see the canopy. Between snow melt and rain the mountain paths are persistently boggy and the horses plunge and slip their way up the paths, straining with every step. The last time I rode through, we went torturously slowly with the highly nervous English woman. I was surprised and relieved to find that we practically sped through the same sections with these four riders. None of them had been trekking before, and two had hardly ever been on a horse before, but besides a few wide-eyed “wows!” they never flinched. They kept their balance as the horse jumped two foot high tree trunks and rocked side to side in the mud, they dodged snapping bamboo and low-hanging branches and called for help only when they needed bathroom breaks. In this manner we moved quickly for four hours through rainforest and bamboo until we reached our campsite for the night, a clearing in the woods near Isolde lake.

After Aldo and Anna whooped and hollered and galloped around to chase a herd of cows from the clearing, we set up tents and put the horses within the small pasture made of mammoth, five feet in diameter tree trunks. The girls, who in the course of twenty-four hours had become comfortable, close friends, went off to explore the forest on foot while Aldo cut and cleaned bamboo to make a spit for the asado, and I prepared mashed potatoes and asparagus soup. With another cloudless night, we lay out counting shooting stars (I saw two ferociously bright ones) and listened to Aldo’s real life ghost stories from his solo ventures through these mountains.

Day 3: Isolde to Flor de Valle

After a granola and milk breakfast, we headed out of our clearing, back into the bamboo and toward Laguna Isolde where we stopped for a ten-minute walk along the beach before continuing our trek. The purity of the colors and the stillness of the water make mountain lakes an arresting sight. Only the green forests divide the light, crystal blue of lake and sky, and at Isolde, the view northward provides the first snowy glimpse of the volcano Sollipulli.

One more hour of downhill bamboo crashing brought us out of the mountain to the road. Instead of turning left toward Rio Blanco, we went right toward an area called Flor de Valle and from that moment, every inch of the way was new to me. The rest of the day’s ride was easy in that we followed the dirt road for four hours all the way to our campsite. But the few passing cars stirred up clouds of dust and I’ve never ridden in such heat. My shoulders and the back of my neck broiled and I could sense the four girls wilting behind me with each passing mile. I often had to ask Aldo to slow down, because his horse kept a fast walking pace that forced the girls to miserably trot in his wake to keep up. We wound up and down and around on the dirt road, past farms, local schools, and a cement mine. For most of the afternoon we rode alongside the length of Sollipulli and I listened to Aldo recount just how romantic it was to go off in search of a trail and find it, and how stunning it was to be on top.

Towards 4:00 we crossed a full river and the horses strained towards it, relieved to cool their legs and drink deeply. When we arrived to our campsite in the pasture of a local farmer shortly after, we were all dehydrated and exhausted from the heat. In spite of it, we quickly unloaded and put up our tents, then mounted again and headed off on a three-hour side trip to another pristine hidden mountain lake. The granddaughter and grandniece of the farmer decided to come with us to the lake and they rode together on the same horses, barely speaking but smiling sweetly throughout the ride. It was a painful hour’s climb for me- I struggled to find a comfortable position in the saddle and was sore and sticky. The lake did wonders to revive us all- although only Johanna braved the thick weeds and swam far out to the middle of the lake. I’m from the ocean- still water and lake plants freak me out so I just dunked my head and watched the dirt run off my body in black rivulets before going back to the shore and letting them enjoy their swim.

We returned to camp with newfound energy and I made soup, pasta and salsa for dinner. Aldo left us to drink mate with the farmer and his family we girls talked about the traveling we’d each done and exchanged suggestions and tips. The horses nickered and grazed, trotting around inches from our tents as we finished our wine and pisco and then finally, crawled into our tents and slept.

From Chile to Argentina Part I: Hacia Los Andes with Aldo

“The day shall not be up so soon as I to meet the fair adventure of tomorrow.”

                -King John V.5

            January and half of February have hurtled by and now I have exactly four months left here. Although, on days like Sunday, when I rode out of the green Chilean rainforests, climbed the mountains toward the scrubby Argentine pampas and stood on the border between the two countries, I find myself wishing this summer were unending. My days at Antilco are peaceful and contenting, saturated with the sincerity of this rural mountain lifestyle.  My days trekking churn with excitement- both the stunning views and the extremity of the conditions and my responsibilities keep me pumped full of adrenaline. Throughout it all, and especially after the last few days, I float in some nebulous realm above reality and never fully believe I’m not dreaming. There is so much to tell about the Chile Argentina trek-I don’t know how to begin. I’ll start with the people, because they too were fascinating and describing them seems easier than tackling the Herculean task of capturing the majesty of the Andes in words.

            On Tuesday morning I met the four riders with whom I spent the next five days traveling toward Argentina. Anna and Laura are German, Johanna and Nora are two friends from Switzerland, and they are all under thirty years old. In a matter of minutes they formed an intimate quartet and with their youth and German language in common they passed nights around the fire giggling and wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. They took shots of pisco, shared shampoo, and paddled around Laguna Geppingue together in a rowboat while lightening from a dry thunderstorm feathered the sky. On Day Five when they jumped off their horses for an emergency bathroom break and didn’t bother to check whether anyone could see them pee, they marveled at how quickly they’d bonded. Although they tittered about boys and dresses, they were strong and courageous riders, and because they rarely hesitated we kept a fast pace and moved easily through the boggy, dense forests.

            I hovered on the edge of their group and entered it occasionally, but my role as guide and lack of German kept us from becoming a quintet. Instead, I found an amazing companion in my co-guide, Aldo. Aldo is what Chileans would call a masterful converser. He is tall and sturdily built, wears comically thick glasses and likes to prove that he is the ultimate gentleman by always helping riders get up, offering to fetch water and eating last. Unlike Luis, whose topics of conversations range from mares to geldings and not much further, Aldo recounts experiences from his youth, years working in Argentina, life as a farmer, horse adventures, and interactions with international travelers all in long, minutely detailed stories. But Aldo doesn’t only tell, he asks. He is curious and interested in learning from others and as many tales as I solicited from him, he asked just as many of me. We spent one morning discussing the cultural differences between Chile and the US, and in the afternoon switched to the reality of the Mapuche’s situation in southern Chile. He knows at least one tidbit of information about every farm we passed, and if the farmer happened to be outside he stopped to talk for a short while to, as he put it, “strengthen the friendship.”

            It is a deeply rural area and often the distance between farms is several hours on horseback. This natural isolation encourages sincere friendliness among farmers; they see each other so rarely that they make sure to take advantage of contact when it comes. I found them to be happy, smiley people, proud of their goods and lifestyle and eager to share. When we’re not camping in a clearing in the middle of the woods, we spend the night in the back pasture of someone’s farm and from the farmers’ wives we order bread. When the senoras bring the rolls out in the morning, they show me the bag or bowl full and pull back the cloth they’ve wrapped them in to make sure I’ve seen how fresh and steaming hot they are. They’ve come straight from the oven and the women want to be sure I know it. Similarly, we spent time with another farmer, a diminutive man over sixty years old with dark, weathered skin and few teeth. Aldo had heard he had a decent mare and Mathias told him to buy it, if it was good. After Aldo decided to buy it, and the farmer led the beige colored horse with dark mane and tail over to us, he looked me deep in the eye and said “Take care of my mare. She’s a wonderful horse, responsive and smooth. You don’t even need a bit. He’s paying a great price or else I would never sell her. Take care of my mare.” I’m not sure whether it’s a factor of my being a gringa foreigner, but the people I’ve met have been easy to smile, willing to share, and eager to demonstrate the value of their possessions and efforts.

            Although Aldo introduced me to locals and explained the criss-crossing family trees of the farmers, he talked most of all about the mountains. He and Luis recently returned from a trail-clearing and trail-finding trip. They cut open some narrow sections of trail, but more importantly searched for an elusive path across the summit of the volcano Sollipulli (so-yee-poo-yee) which sits in the middle of the terrain we ride through. They talked to local farmers, made educated guess, and began to climb toward the sandy, snow-capped peaks. To their own disbelief, they were successful. Not only did they find a traversable trail leading to the summit, they also crossed the upper ridge, found untouched hot springs, and circled the crater. For five days, as we rode around the base of the volcano, Aldo frequently looked up at the black sand and white snow on its crests and said, “Imagine! I was up there!” He turned to me once and, with a grin across his face and the views he saw from the top still locked in his head, said “I tell you it was a dream- the adventure of my life.” For the people who live here, the views that leave me speechless are commonplace. Whatever it was that Aldo and Luis saw, it must have been extraordinary beyond belief to leave them speechless.

            In all, I enjoyed riding and guiding with Aldo tremendously. I found it harder to prove myself a capable guide because he is exhaustively helpful, but we found a natural, easy rhythm to working together. He made fires in the morning and at night while I prepared meals; he saddled horses while I packed away food and gear and organized tents and sleeping bags; we rode up front together on wide roads, and I fell to the back when we entered difficult mountain trails. I relayed messages from the girls and translated some of his stories for them. Together we put shoes on the horses when they lost them and helped the riders navigate steep cliffs, or slippery rocky twists and turns. And on Day five, when we awoke to fog and clouds that sunk lower all day, we did everything we could to keep the girls’ spirits up as the mist turned to a gentle shower, and later to heavy rain until eventually, nine hours after we set out in the morning, we arrived to our flooded campsite through sheets of the coldest, heaviest rain I’ve ever felt. Managing the miserable elements that day was our greatest challenge.

            Aldo kept me laughing through it all, with his jolly, goofy manner and his exaggerated compliments and endless enthusiasm. I felt at ease with the girls, and except for our horror day of rain, we marveled together at the beauty of the trip. With the help of Aldo I met many people along the way, and the small adventures we had with them were just as exciting as the views we saw and terrain we covered. This trek was more than mountains; via Aldo, it was social and an intimate glimpse into the people within the mountains.

            …More to follow on the trek itself, and the previous entry has a link to all my photos…

Photos: Daily Life at Antilco

Just a few pictures from January of daily life,

riding, and fun around Antilco

Carmen (Tornado), Me (Chocolate), and Monica (Moreno)

before the big race between the three fastest horses.

Tornado easily took home the title, with Chocolate in a

respectable second, and Moreno meters and meters behind.

Carmen at the Mapuche fair in Quelhue where we ate

mote con huesillos (the drink) and cheese empanadas.

A traditional ruka and field hockey game in Quelhue

Carmen, Luis, and the horses in the far pasture

Me, on Chocolate, Daffy, and the horses

Monica (on Rebelde) and Carmen (on Polca)

bringing horses back to the pasture after a ride.

**Posts about my Chile-Argentina ride will follow soon, but if you want a sneak peak at the unbelievable pictures, go to: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=Willa.Johann&target=ALBUM&id=5573529979204482977&authkey=Gv1sRgCKTb79-z36qPPQ&feat=email

Argentina Bound

I leave Tuesday for a six-day Andes crossing ride into Argentina. Once we reach the border on Saturday, I will return to Antilco with the horses and gear but my riders continue on with an Argentine guide and new horses for three more days through western Argentina. Because livestock cannot be transported across the border, we accomplish the two-country ride by partnering with Don Hernan, and Argentine rancher. I’ve never done this ride before, but Carmen’s and Monica’s pictures have given me a glimpse of the countryside to come and I can’t wait. The majority of the trails are unknown to me, and instead of Luis, another cowboy named Aldo will come as the guide. It’s back to learning as I go and improvising, but my riders are four young German girls, so I’m hoping they’ll be flexible and good humored about it all.

In the morning we’ll greet them for breakfast then do the half-day circuit to make sure horses and riders match, and eventually, like the Rio Blanco Ride, we’ll trailer the horses to Laguna Geppingue and eat a huge chicken dinner before heading out early the next morning. I’m thrilled to finally get out into territory I’ve never seen and to physically cross the Andes. They are magnificent and awe inspiring, and there is something excitingly primitive about tackling them on horseback.

I’ll be back in a week, with a full update, but before I leave, I wanted to put down a few lingering thoughts that never found a place in the other entries:

BROOM: There is a scrubby bush called Broom which is invasive in this area, but thrives in the arid volcanic sand and has taken over the river sides around Pucón. It doesn’t grow much more than seven or eight feet high but its thin green stems spray out like a miniature weeping willow, giving it width. In springtime it explodes with showers of incredible, buttery yellow flowers which obscure any sign of the plant beneath. They grow close together and our paths are narrow which makes riding in November and December seem like we’re brushing through clouds of tangible sunshine. Two years ago, I looked forward to the riverside stretch the best; I’d ride ahead and disappear into a sea of yellow.

By January the petals are gone and fuzzy, white, oblong seed pods hang in their place. By now, they’ve turned black and are hard and dry. When we brush between or beneath the sprawling branches the pods rattle and add a simple jangling soundtrack to the river’s churning. When I ride past, I like to snap the pods from their stem (a habit that does nothing to slow the invasive species’ spread). In a brilliant evolutionary development aimed at self-preservation, the pods forcefully burst open and empty their seeds when detached from the stem. It’s a surprise to feel idly pulled pods explode in your hand, but our rides are filled with the rattling and crackling of the broom plants striving for biological immortality, and I love the sound.

GAP YEARS: Today I rode with two mid-twenties Australian guys who have been in Pucón for two weeks learning Spanish at Karin’s language school. One spent the fall in the states finishing his law degree at Tulane, so he understood something of the difference between American’s university educations and the rest of the world. What he found incomprehensible is the USA’s complete lack of a gap year tradition. American students are expected to finish high school, go to college, and immediately enter the grind, while Australians take as a given that they’ll spend about a year, before or after University, traveling or working abroad and seeing a bit of the world. Their ability to take this time off has nothing to do with financial liberty, but rather with cultural liberty. In the U.S. activities are expected to directly contribute to a career and future gain. On the other hand, there is an innate prioritization of personal development in Australian culture, and getting worldly perspective by traveling is accepted as a positive. It is a broad cultural difference, but for Australia’s youth, it’s a freeing one, and I envy them and the cultural support they have to go adventuring.  

·         Karin, Mara, and Remo are back from Santiago and the house is again filled with food and noise, and stories about their adventures at Fantasyland (an amusement park) and the art museums. I’m thrilled they’re back. My time with Mara and Remo will lessen soon as I’m gone through February trekking and they go back to school March 1.

·         The raspberries and cherries are completely gone, but some early plums are deep purple and ripe. There is a tree outside my room of bite size, spherical, yellow plums which I eat by the dozens and can’t stay away from. Most delicious are the blackberries. I’ve only found a few ripe, black ones among the thorns, but the trails are lined with vines and in a few more weeks I’ll feast during every ride.

Now, I’m off into the mountains, to cross the Andes on horseback, and (hopefully) will return in six days. Luego!

Apparent Perfection and the Art of the Line

I had a perfect ride today. I was taught to avoid absolutes, but today’s ride genuinely was completely perfect. I hopped the barbed wire fence into the pasture and the sight of the volcano stopped me in my tracks. It’s a quarter mile walk down the road to the pasture where the horses graze (we rotate them between several) and once you’re within it there’s a clear view of the valley, and the snow-capped cone of Villarica rises beyond. Today, only the wispy grey smoke that signals the volcano’s inner life interrupted the sky’s blue. It was not only a cloudless day but a piercingly clear one as well, and it was as though I could see every fold and contour of the mountains in front and to the left of Villarica.

The pasture is speckled with large, leafy hardwoods which provide ample shade, and some low scrubby, leafy green bushes, which make excellent post-ride scratching tools for the horses. It is a pasture of mostly green low grass and clover, but huge swaths of long, beige grains stretch throughout and when the wind blows, the whole pasture ripples and waves. I walked with our two collies, Pontus and Ninuka and our terrier mutt, Daffy, who wrestled each other and circled the horses ineffectually. They have no herding skills. Together, we scared up two bandurias, or red-footed ibises, and a flock of tiuque, and they took off clumsily into the air, cawing as they rose.

It was from this idyllic beginning that the day continued perfectly. I caught the horses easily, fed them, saddled all nine in eighteen minutes flat, cleaned the area and even had time to collect fallen apples from a few trees before Mathias arrived back from Pucón in the van. He brought six young, enthusiastic riders, three Germans, two Swiss and an Australian, who handled their horses well and were thoroughly thrilled with every moment of the ride. We all rode in tank tops, paused for a juice break in a rocky sheep pasture, galloped across the black volcanic sand flat and stood on the shore of the Trancura river watching rafters pass by. As we galloped the last quarter mile to Antilco they beamed and whooped and hollered, and I tucked my reins under my thigh, then flung my arms out wide and let Moro run. We rode down the driveway with huge smiles split across our faces, and even though I’ve done that ride seventy some-odd times, I had as much fun as they did.

At one tranquil moment halfway through the ride, the Australian girl turned to me and said, “This job certainly gives you an awful lot of time to think, doesn’t it!” The answer is yes. There are long stretches when Moro just goes, on his own, free of my direction. He knows the way; he knows when to slow and wait and when to swing himself sideways against a gate so I can lock it shut. He is a mean, complicated horse and knowing him has given me my first true understanding of a love-hate relationship, but he is an excellent leader. So, sometimes I let him guide and leave myself to think and daydream. And I realized that all the free time alone with my thoughts is perhaps why today was such a perfect day.

Hidden within my apparently simple tasks, like “catching the horses,” there are infinite tiny steps I take, and hundreds of little tricks and rules I’ve learned and discovered that make it all go smoothly. This job stays interesting from day to day, not only because I meet new people every day, but also because I work with sixteen horses who are as different from one another as any random selection of sixteen people would be. And maybe it’s all that time to think that helps me learn about them better, understand how they cooperate, and put all the tiny puzzle pieces together to make the day run perfectly.

For example, when I went to catch the horses, I knew I’d need Moro, Pepe, Hidalgo, Treintayocho, Inca, Polca, Esperanza, Pehuen and Rebelde, so I stuffed two handfuls of oats into my pockets because Pepe has a tendency to run away. Pepe is a head shy horse who spooks easily, unless he’s with a mare named Regalona. The two horses are inseparable and Pepe follows her blindly, which makes catching Pepe and Regalona easy but proves difficult when you try separating them.

After I’d secured Pepe, I got Pehuen, Esperanza, Hidalgo and Inca, four horses who, in all the months I’ve known them, have never once retreated from a human with a rope in their hand. Pehuen is still young and foolish and sometimes comes running to see what treats you might have hidden behind the rope. Catching the first few easily is important because it keeps the rest of the horses calm. If one horse starts to run, the others may catch on to the idea and soon you’re in a vast pasture chasing horses and there’s no hope. With five horses already calmly tied to one another in a long chain, Moro, Hidalgo, and Rebelde came easily and I turned to face Treintayocho. It’s anyone’s guess from day to day whether she’ll shy away or let you throw a rope around her neck. Today I was lucky and she too decided to give me a day off from horse chasing.

Once a horse has a rope around its neck, it generally won’t run. To them, the rope is a stamp of defeat and even though they are still theoretically free, it doesn’t occur to them to try a last minute escape. Once the ropes are on, it comes down to the art of the line. Poets speak of the art of line in their quest to make each line of poetry perfectly composed and have integrity. My task is easier in that I simply need to tie the nine horses together in a chain in a sequence that will allow them to walk the quarter mile back to the barn fluidly. I put Moro up front because he walks faster than the rest and snarls the chain when he’s in back. Hidlago went in front of Treintayocho because she one of the few horses he won’t kick and because she hates being anywhere near the front.

Behind her came Pehuen, followed by Inca, followed by Pepe, followed at last by Polca because she’s a slow walker and a fighter. When she’s at the end of the line, her damage is minimal.  I hid Esperanza toward the front because she and Pehuen are compulsive eaters and they encourage each other. It’s better to keep them separated. Rebelde is a well-behaved horse who can slip into most places in the line, but he keeps a fast pace and doesn’t aggravate Moro too much, so put him second today.

And, because today was a perfect day, the line I constructed worked wonderfully. All nine walked without hesitation, without stopping to eat or kick, and went smoothly all the way to Antilco. And with Moro in front, they continued down the road even when I retreated to the back of the line to close the gate. Every day it’s a new puzzle with new pieces; the addition of even one horse may mean a completely different strategy. The goal though, is always to get them walking and keep them walking. With even the shortest holdup they reach to eat, they step on their ropes, they get tangled, their personal space is threatened and soon they’re all kicking and headed in opposite directions. It comes down to the art of the line. The art of the line and flow. Because there is nothing so frustrating as trying to reason with a group of nine fighting horses who are tied to one another.

Search, Find, and Improvise

The house is empty, the sky is gray, and except for the rain on the roof, Antilco is quiet. Karin, Mara and Remo are away in Santiago for a week, visiting family, and Carmen and Monica both left on Monday. Jogi, Mathias’ German friend who comes to stay for two months every summer, is gone for several days kayaking, and the rain continues to pour for the second day in a row. Yesterday morning Ale and I led eight Swedish riders through the clouds and fog and downpour for a frigid half-day ride. My fingertips turned purple within minutes and didn’t regain circulation until I was in front of the fire four hours later. Today however, the tourists have stayed in their hostels and Mathias and I are alone at Antilco. Two weeks ago, we often sat down to dinner as a group of nine, and with the kids on summer vacation, the house bustled all day. This peacefulness came suddenly.

With no ride to prepare, I cleaned and folded the ponchos from yesterday’s rain ride; laid out ten pairs of wet leather half-chaps to dry in front of the stove; packed away sleeping bags which had been drying; and built up four  tents, recently back from a trek, inside the house so they could dry. Most of the post-trek work consists of drying gear, and rain complicates that work. By noon I’d dried and fixed everything I could think of. So I made myself a cup of tea and decided to tackle Mathias’ latest project: saddle bag production.

The Chilean counterpart to Americans’ consumerism is resourceful and improvisational problem-solving.  When the plastic strap on a horse brush breaks in an American stable, it’s discarded and a new one is purchased. Here, a strong piece of leather is found, cut to size, and nailed to either side of the brush to create a new handle. Instead of replacing broken things, Chileans find a way to fix them. The flexible plastic buckets we use to feed the horses often split down the sides so we mend them with wire sewed in crude, Frankenstein stitches. Metal tools are decades old, and by now are on their 5^th or 6^th replacement handle, made of bamboo which grows in the forests, or whittled out of wood. When the unconditioned leather on headstalls wears through, we cut another small piece of leather and reinforce the weak part, using glue and thick thread to strengthen the joint. Most bridles are at least five years old and have an equal number of the tiny leather reinforcements.

The strict “fix what you already have” work style is strong in this area because it’s rural and populated by many poor farmers who have no other option. But it’s become instinct for the general Chilean as well. Even Mathias, a proud German who takes every opportunity to deride Chileans’ habits and inefficient work ethic, appreciates and admires their ability to solve problems using only what they have. When something breaks, Americans ask, “Where can I get a new one?” while Chileans wonder, “How can I fix this.”

Sebastian, the worldly, charismatic seventy-one year old who works year-round at Antilco, has mastered the art of improvisation when it comes to farm repairs.  He is constantly thinking of new ways to fix, reinforce, or mend existing structures, and often ponders a break silently for a moment, says “jyah!,” goes scurrying into a shed for the perfect piece of wire, or leather, or wood, and comes back with an ingenious idea to fix it.  Together, Sebastian and Mathias, who for years made a career of understanding how things work as a mechanic in Germany, have all the buildings, saddles, gates, fences and tools patched up and running beautifully. Sometimes, Antilco seems like one giant piece of art.

So, back to the saddle bags. Saddle bags are made of leather and are a symmetrical construction; a broad piece of leather spans the horse’s back and one bag hangs at either side of the horse behind the riders’ legs. They must be tough because treks are rough. They’re dragged through dense bamboo thickets where the paths are barely wide enough for the horses, and scraped dozens of times a day up against trees and boulders. Leather tears, buckles snap off and there is much repair work to be done when a trek returns. Confronted with this problem, and always wanting to make his business and gear presentable and top quality for his clients, Mathias took the Chilean quality of resourcefulness to a new level and decided to make his own saddle bags.

For weeks, rolls of leather have filled the small room next to his office, along with plastic bags full of metal rivets and buckles. In his free hours at night Mathias has been drawing patterns for different pieces and experimenting with cutting methods and size. Two weeks ago, after his first foray into Chilean eBay, the eighty-year old leather sewing machine arrived. When he found it didn’t operate properly, Mathias predictably spent a week deconstructing it to understand how it works so he could fix it. He became a man obsessed, and built a cardboard model of the inner mechanical workings and muttered “maldita maquina” while studying it.

Eventually he cracked the system and now completely reveres the 1931 Singer for its sturdiness and longevity. Using his now tested and approved patterns, he’s cut piles of straps, buckles, flaps, siding and panels and marked how they all fit together. When I asked how the machine worked, he gave me a cursory introduction and left me with a pile of straps. The straps, which will be used to close the bags, are made of two identical pieces of leather glued together which needed to be stitched for extra security. For six hours I plunged into saddle bag production, rotating the wheel by hand because the motor runs too fast, and feeding the leather slowly past the needle to maintain straight lines.

            Throughout the day I moved on to more complicated sections, and by 7:00 I had halfway finished a new saddle bag and it looks beautiful. I suppose I’m learning the age-old lesson about what pride there is in making something by hand. But I am proud of it. I spent the day in and out of the barn, searching for the perfect rivet and hammering it together, gluing leather then bringing it back to the house to stitch it. It could have been tedious, but as the rain pounded on the tin roof and Mathias and I appreciated that neither of us were out trekking, I was strangely intrigued by and invested in the whole project.

Chileans see broken things as a puzzle. Every hole, snap, break, tear is a miniature riddle and it’s just a matter of finding the right material or tool that will fix it. I find this outlook makes the work more challenging in a wonderful way and fills my day with puzzles to solve.