Gringo-in' to Taltal

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
--C.S. Lewis

There is plenty of reason to assume a person who leaves a good job, good friends, and a happy life at home to go thousands of miles away into a foreign country to live with strangers and teach (especially if, like me, you aren't a teacher) might be a bit on the crazy side. There were certainly times prior to arriving to Chile that I stopped in my tracks and said aloud "what have I gone and done?" Thankfully though, the very day I arrived in Santiago, I was greeted by a host of other people who, if I was crazy, were just as mad, or even more so. Then we split and went our separate ways all over the country and there was a new sadness (though Facebook, Skype, and email have gone a long way to alleviating that feeling).

The 21st of May in Chile is a national holiday (for the battle of Iquique I mentioned in the last post) and as such we volunteers had a blessed long weekend and a group of us decided it was time for a mini-reunion. Through a series of circumstances that I cannot fully explain, and if I could I'm sure they wouldn't prove of interest, it was decided that a mass of us in the North and Central areas of the country would converge on the tiny seaside hamlet of Taltal, where Mike the surfer along with Vanessa (who is a very talented singer) are stationed. Ryan and I agreed to travel south from Calama, via Antofagasta, to be a part of Gringo Fest 2010. Heather Tang, whose blog I mentioned, would be traveling a ridiculous 15 hours north by bus to join as well. The other characters in this seeming farce were Peter, who is the native of Slovakia I would have mentioned a while back, along with Alex, who pretty much lives with Peter in Coquimbo where they teach, and finally Matt, our lone (and quite tall) volunteer in Antofagasta City. Most everyone was in Taltal by Friday afternoon, but Ryan and I were not able to arrive until around seven o'clock due to the bus situation from Calama and a minor planning snafu. Thus he and I spent a very interesting evening with some of my family at my aunt's house (my aunt is a big fan of rum, or ron as they say here.)

On the bus ride to Taltal, Ryan and I had to change buses in Antofagasta. We de-bused to grub (overpriced bus station cafeteria food) and resupply on snacks. When we got on our next bus, Ryan sat down next to me with a Coke Zero and a bag of Pizza Doritos in hand. He looked up at the TV which was about to play a dubbed version of Hitch and mused,
"I've got a coke, doritos, and a movie. I feel like I'm at a middle school birthday party."

Thus, by Friday evening, eight gringo volunteers had assembled at Mike's house where Ryan and I partook of the copious amounts of meat left over from that afternoon's asado, which we had sadly missed. Mike's host dad, Alejandro, had cooked enough for a small army and drank enough for a small navy so by the time Ryan and I met him he was the jolliest, most welcoming, most meat-giving Chilean you could imagine. He immediately pointed out that Ryan and I didn't look like gringos. When asked what he thought we looked like he pointed at me and said, "Pakistani!" He himself is very dark and in the family portrait that hangs on the living room wall he is sporting a beard and long hair which he pointed to and said, "Osama bin Laden!" He also thought Matt looked like Clark Kent and that Alex was Peter Parker.

Taltal is a wonderful seaside hamlet that looks as though the ocean vomited it forth at the foot of the mountains to give the desert a little color. The nearby beaches have good waves, and that weekend, in honor of the holiday, there was a body board competition. Saturday afternoon, Alejandro drove a few of us up there to take a look. A few people on a grand stand, a few in the water. When a break was coming someone on shore would honk a car horn. The entire scene was a tranquil reminder that the smallest excuse to seek diversion can become a milestone event in a town of 10, 000 people. Later that afternoon, Vanessa led us on a hike up into the hills southwest of town where we got great views of the sunset. Along the way we spotted sea lions prowling in the surf (so far I've seen lobos in coastal place I've been.) We hiked back in the dark, and on the way we passed a small pet shop that a few of us entered. They had a small selection of fish and rodents which caused Ryan to reminisce, saying "I had a hamster once. His name was Marley and he looked like a cow." Peter, upon hearing this forcefully inquired,
"How can hamster look like cow!?"

The people of the town were extremely friendly, and none more so then the host families of Mike and Venessa. We were fed, housed, and constantly entertained with the utmost hospitality. Everyone we met was happy to see us (except for a few local roustabouts wandering around the plaza.) At one point, we were walking to meet Vanessa and Peter for the hike, and as we went we tossed around a tennis ball Mike had brought. We stopped at the house I, Ryan, and Alex were staying at to change shoes and while there a man from next store who had seen us throwing the ball came out holding an iron pipe. He hoisted it above his head like a baseball bat and pantomimed a swing. Before long, an impromptu game of stick ball had developed. The man kept walking away and returning with bigger objects to use as a bat and we all took turns pitching and hitting.

Friday night we had been introduced to some local friends of Mike and Vanessa who invited us to a birthday party for another Taltalian on Saturday night. The friends, Pato and Camilu, were as friendly as you can imagine and seemed genuinely excited that a mob of Gringos had invaded their home town. Ryan, Matt, and I had yet to purchase return fare to Antofagasta for Sunday, and prior to leaving for the party we discovered that there were only two buses out the next morning; one at 5:30 and one at 9:00. Knowing that Chilean parties start late and go on until the break of dawn (literally) we decided to take a nap, go to the party, and just leave on the first bus.

The party proved itself to be a truly Chilean experience with all eight of us Gringos, six of whom were strangers in town, being invited into what was essentially and intimate birthday gathering. The party went as parties go, with lots of food, drink, and eventually dancing. Sometime around the ungodly hour of five o'clock in the morning the Gringo portion of the party, along with Pato and Camilu (and some other Taltalians whose names I cannot recall) decided to go to the disco. I opted out, but was drug along anyway because of Vanessa pleading a very convincing case that I would be leaving in a few hours and this was the last time all of us had together.

We had visited the disco on Friday and there had been maybe five people inside, but on Saturday it was packed to the walls. I immediately lost everybody and ended up chatting with someone I think was one of Mike's students. He spoke halfway decent English and he more-or-less would not leave me alone. At one point, shortly before they closed the place down, I tried to get out the front door to breath some fresh air (by this time the level of cigarette smoke in the place was at LA smog proportions). As I approached the exit I found myself caught up in a seething mass of humanity. It was like being in a vortex of Chilean youths, sucking me towards the center of the maelstrom where there was apparently a fight occurring. I was utterly confused and about to be trampled when suddenly someone grabbed my hand and pulled me backwards and into freedom. I turned to see Camilu, who had somehow divined my predicament with her Chilean extrasensory perception (CESP) and come to my rescue. The fight was soon broken up and we were able to esca--I mean, leave.

Everyone returned to the party house, but as I was not in any mood for dancing or drinking or eating tuna sandwiches (I hear this happened, I didn't witness the sandwiches myself) I, along with Alex, made our way back to Mike's house. On the road back, we were waylaid by a contingent of teenage girls who had, I'm sure, been laying in ambush for the first Gringo males that would come by. I was already familiar with this sort of compromising attention due to my experiences teaching high school, but never the less we were convinced to come hang out on the beach and talk about inane subjects in English as the girls tried in vain to convince us that they were actually in college in Antofagasta and just home for the weekend. The clock was ticking, and I had a bus to catch, so I pretty much, quite literally, ran away. Alex tarried, no doubt to noblely hold the line while I retreated.

Suffice to say, we did not make the 5:30 bus. We all ended up reconvening at Mike's house to eat some bread, drink some water, and then bid our farewells. By nine, Ryan, Matt and I were passed out on a northbound bus. That night, after having enjoyed the day with Matt, lunching with his family, visiting the mall, etc., we were sitting in the bus station waiting to go home when Ryan summed everything up with,

"Well, it's back to Calama, where I'm a nobody."