The edge of Patagonia

by Diego Chacano (Chile)

I didn't expect to find Chile

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We were left in a small village of the austral highway, Chile. Before the driver dropped us there, he told us an alluvium had destroyed half of the place. And it was true, we stopped in the middle of a open place, a hole in the immense forest where there was not trees, just dirt covering all the surface irregularly. It was a vast space of nothingness, and everything that continued from there seemed to not be close to heal. Before the small village, there were a lot of bulldozers in the dirt, working. I asked the driver if they were trying to reconstruct, but he replied that they were looking for some missing dead bodies. Half of the houses were uninhabitable, and seemed about to fall. The alluvium had passed over everything, the dirt had become a deadly and powerful liquid taking everything in his path. We looked the houses and walked towards the dirt road that was supposed to take us to our destination. Other backpackers were there waiting for vehicles. One of them saw and approached. His cheeks were red and his face covered in dirt stuck due to perspiration. He told us that they had been stuck there for three days. The guy looked done, and he asked us to wait until someone take them before trying ourselves. A single car passed and it didn't take anybody. We went to buy some things and started to worry about the possibility of having to spend the night in there. There were no campings. The group of backpackers told us they were staying in an abandoned house, but it was not close. When the night came they went out and we took their positions for a while, waiting with the mosquitoes that appeared. They attacked our legs and forehead, but we had nowhere to go. Finally a woman saw us and proposed us to spend the night in his backyard. We slept there, with no light and without charge in our cellphones. We talked about our lifes in the darkness, trusting each other our more secret stories. We woke up early the other day, and that made all the difference. We were the first ones arriving there. Someone took us in the morning and we abandoned that place for good. After half an hour we recovered the forest, the trees and the abundance of life. We were happy for leaving that place.