Never A Straight Line: Travels through Chile and Bolivia

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Prologue

I have a problem. I like to travel and when I travel I like to write.

Actually, I need to write, as back home in England there are those who cannot join me, although sometimes it is won’t rather than can’t. Mind you, I do visit some pretty peculiar places. Mostly, the life of a traveller, a travel writer in particular, is solitary. No one wants to accompany you when all they see is the top of a writer’s head. Face down, expression furrowed, pen scribbling, keyboard tapping, generally uncommunicative. Writers, at least this writer, can be as antisocial as they get.

So, I have reached an arrangement, maybe I best call it a deal. I wander the planet, on occasion others come with me, but mostly they remain surrounded by the comforts of home. To stay in touch, I write, daily, regularly, 1000 words about this and that, and everything unconnected; events I have encountered, or which have hit me unexpectedly. It is how I report in and involve others in my adventures. It is not a travelogue, not a list of tedious destinations and even ghastlier hotels. I write about events, people, animals maybe, excitements, hazards, and things that actually happen. Is that not why most of us travel anyway, simply to see how we might react?

Should you wish to follow my path, you will find me difficult to track. Travelling the way I do, things are so often around the corner, around another corner, back a bit, left a bit, right on occasion, beyond and out of sight. Somehow my journeys are always an adventure.

My traveller’s life, and I have wandered since I was tiny, has been by foot, or car, or air, perhaps bicycle, and on occasion even by boat. It has never been a straight line from the very first day I started. How I would hate things to be so simple.

So why Chile, or for that matter Bolivia? Easy. I was there, they were there, I had a meeting there, and I had heard that far up north was a part of Chile, the 15th Region, that had yet to become tourist-impregnated, and certainly not by fellow Europeans. Plenty went to Patagonia, cohorts to Easter Island, nearly two million annually to San Pedro de Atacama, but Arica, Chile’s most northerly city, was comparatively ignored. That was all it needed, a sense of the original, the idea that I was on the road less travelled.

So, meeting over, it was off with the exclusive suit, on with the dirt-rag fashion, and out with notebook and pencil. My plan? To travel overland from Arica in Chile, through Bolivia, to Chile once more, and San Pedro de Atacama, a 25-day journey. I would finish where most others thought to start. And as I travelled, I wrote, daily, 1000 words or longer, to keep those who could not join me up to date.

In the pages that follow are many stories, plenty of which I wager are unique. They are how I keep in touch with the folk back home and when read together tell what I trust is a fascinating story. I challenge you to follow me if you can. These lands will not disappoint you. Nor will the people they contain.

But remember, Never A Straight Line is what they call me, Never A Straight Line is how it is done.

DAY 1

The British Airways Dreamliner

Location: Somewhere over Cayenne, French Guiana

They call it a Dreamliner, do they? Well you could have fooled me. I know it is big, I know it is light and I know it flies extraordinarily high. But believe me, sleep did not come easy on my 14-hour, British Airways flight to Chile.

I tried, honest I did, but all that happened was my head began to loll, my tongue flopped sideways and I started to attract bemused looks from passengers nearby. The bloke beside me, somewhere in his early forties, balding, with his remaining hair cut stubbly short, probably was in Dreamland. Mouth open, head back, BA headphones in place and snoring, he was well away. And oh, boy did he snore. No one was falling asleep near Mr Stubbly.

I think I dozed off at one point, but rapidly dreamt I was being attacked by an alien with forked tail, horns and halitosis - an alien who breathed out flame - and awoke after barely ten minutes, panicking because I had lost my glasses. I have reached that era when nothing much is feasible without them. I patted my pockets - nothing. I shook my glasses case - nothing. I searched my seat - nothing. I looked in the diddy-little-drawer by my feet - nothing. I had to be creative.

My only hope was a steward. There seemed to be plenty of those. The guys definitely outnumbered the gals on this occasion. An airplane, a Dreamliner especially, is full of many tiny crannies that can hide anything, from a mobile telephone, to a pen, to a calculator, to a camera, and to glasses, perhaps? An authoritarian voice had already announced earlier in the flight that if anyone lost a mobile down the side of their seat, they were not, not, not - there could have been four nots rather than three - to do anything other than remain stationary, barely breath, and summon help immediately. It was one of those orders that, as the ex-soldier within me, I knew I should rigidly obey. So, a steward it would have to be for my delinquent glasses. I could not have been the only traveller to have lost his specs.

It was early morning and pitch black outside. At least I think it was dark as the Dreamliner has a funny button just beneath each window. It does not believe in window blinds. They have disappeared. It does believe in magic glass that, at the touch of a button, the window is rendered see-through, or see-not-at-all. I had not mastered the magic button, so there was a fair bet that I had made a mess of it and pressed the wrong bit.

Dark outside or daylight, it was definitely black within. I made an acrobatic leap over the extended legs of Mr Stubbly and walked slowly up to a young steward who was clearly finding tasks to ease the hours away. His back was turned towards me, he had no idea I was there, and his mind was on the mission he had set himself. For some reason, he was lining up Mars Bars in perfect rows on one of the galley worktops, making sure that each was precisely matched with its neighbour. Maybe British Airways teaches them that. When it all gets too boring, line up Mars Bars. It is the next best thing to Ayurvedic yoga.

Now barely a foot away, I reached out and touched the steward’s shoulder gently with my hand.

What? Who? He turned, almost guiltily, then saw only me, a solitary passenger. Just tidying up, sir. Just tidying up, he continued, vague authority now in his tone. I could see he felt he had been caught in the act of doing something illogical. It is, after all, hard to explain a row of 30 perfectly aligned Mars Bars, not one out of place or position. The steward had clearly decided to bluff. Just tidying seemed the perfect excuse.

False excuses made, and safe in the knowledge I did not look the sort to challenge him, he gave me an interrogator’s stare, and added, Anything I can do, sir?

My glasses, I said in a half whisper, reading specs, steel rimmed, cheap. I’ve lost them.

For a moment, I thought the steward stepped slightly back. Was that astonishment I detected? It was certainly surprise. Then once again he leaned towards me, forehead tightly furrowed, his gaze manifestly perplexed. I held my ground. Up close and personal was perhaps the steward’s way.

Glasses, sir? Your glasses? he said, confusion for certain in his tone.

Yes, glasses, I reinforced.

B-but, he started to splutter. Then he tried again. The second time was no better.

B-but…

"B-but what? I asked. I was becoming irritated. My question had been simple. I needed help tracking down my specs.

B-but you’re wearing them, observed the steward sympathetically. There. Right at the end of your nose. He pointed towards me as he spoke and I could see him trying hard not to burst.

Suddenly life started to move in slow motion. Sheepishly, I allowed my hand to drift up my cheekbone somewhere close to my right eye. It did not take long. The upwards drift was stopped abruptly by the frame of my reading glasses.

Dammit! I thought, I’ve got the bloody things on.

Unlike the steward, there was no way I could bluff my way clear. I rolled my eyes, smiled, threw my head backwards and gave a lunatic forefinger jab to my forehead. A senior moment, I muttered, turned assertively on my heel and took the few strides back towards my seat.

I half vaulted over Mr Stubbly and landed with a crash in my place. Fidgeting into a more comfortable position, I retrieved my seat belt. It had somehow got caught between armrest and Dreamliner fuselage. Aircraft seatbelts have independent minds, that much is clear to a regular traveller. You want them round you, they have no wish to co-operate. The result? You end up in trouble. Ping! goes the seatbelt-on sign and then the swearing begins as you hunt for the buckle that has gone walkabout.

Back in my place, seatbelt retrieved and glasses where they had been since take-off, I looked up at the steward. He, too, had turned, his back was once again all I could see, although this time there was something extra. His head shook slowly this way and that, I guessed through confusion or frustration. He had returned to his task of Mars Bar rearrangement. The one far right was being particularly troublesome. For some reason, the aircraft vibration prevented it from remaining still and it kept falling to the floor.

The thing simply refused to stay parallel.

DAY 2

Pedro the Sniffer Dog

Location: Santiago, Chile

Never look down when a dog is making love, especially when your leg is the target. This, after all, was Chile. My brain was asleep, my jet-lagged body somewhere different, as I had exited the Dreamliner and followed Spanish signs and half-shouted instructions from ground staff through a complex web of airport corridors.

What is it about leaving aircraft? Each time I do I feel obliged to walk at speed, chasing my fellow passengers in a desperate search to be first. But first where? Heaven knows, as an entire passenger manifest will be brought up short by Immigration within moments. Immigrations worldwide exist solely to test a traveller’s patience, and that is before you report lost luggage.

My arrival at Santiago’s Benítez Airport, officially Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport, say that three times fast, had me on autopilot. I had no idea what to say or do, for that matter where to go, I just followed others like a lemming. So, when I felt the rhythmic thud of something warm and soft against my right shinbone, for a moment it almost felt normal. Then I