The Accidental Camping Trip

About half an hour by micro from Valparaiso is the community of Laguna Verde. Over the last few wildly irresponsible days--in honor of Chile's Fiestas Patrias, on which there will be more in another post--someone floated the idea of heading there en masse to go camping on the beach. As one should never count on plans made under the influence or past 3am, I thought nothing of this, until my hazy hungover head heard my phone beeping yesterday around 2pm. Text message: vamos, 3pm. Alright then.

I spoke to a couple of people and two of us came up with the plan to go, hang out for awhile, and head back that evening in order to be in town for a few birthday drinks with another friend. The weather was warm and sunny so when I met him we were both wearing sandals and sleeveless shirts, carrying daypacks. We hit the supermarket for a mountain of fruit, a bit of bread, and cheese.

On a side note, we also bought a product which is called Lemon Stones. It can be found in the beer aisle. It is sort of like O'Douls at home, in that it only contains 2.5% alcohol (O'Douls for the heavy non-drinker, I suppose). It is not like O'Douls, however, in that it tastes like lemon and not like beer. And so it was that I found myself going to Laguna Verde, where there is no lagoon and the water isn't green, toting a cerveza that neither tastes like cerveza nor contains alcohol. Appropriate.

The group as a whole numbered about 15. You can imagine 15 people at a supermarket: I believe the expression is "herding cats." So four of us decided to go ahead and meet up with the others on the beach.

We arrived at the end of the line, as instructed. Although we were barely outside Valparaiso, we had come to another world. Small houses appeared intermittently on a dirt road which ran through a dark green forest. The people wore cowboy hats, drove pick-ups, and looked at us as if we were aliens (I think that may have been my fault, as usual, due to my combined deficiency in melanin and espanol). We asked a little boy, about 8 years old, how to get to the beach. He told us that he lived by the beach and that his 'commute' to the micro every day was about an hour each way. The type of kid who sees no difference between himself and anyone else in the world, he sidled up to one of the chilenos and the two of them were tossing around "waeon" and "poh" in no time. He offered me water and then laughed at himself and said, "Of course! She doesn't understand!" I asserted that yes, I did in fact understand, but he looked very unconvinced.

Eventually the boy's father drove by heading the opposite direction, and so we lost our mini-guide. And so we kept walking. And walking. And walking.

This was the point when I realized that all was not as it should be. I was now nearly an hour on foot into the countryside, without much confidence in my ability to return on my own, and the sun was sinking at an accelerated rate. I began to bother my co-day-tripper about heading back, but he was of the opinion that we absolutely could not walk for an hour only to return without seeing the beach. I was unconvinced, but at this point my curiousity kicked in and I decided to follow along, although I was relatively certain that I would be passing a very cold night in my bare feet.

We had been walking for nearly another hour when a car drove by and we decided to ask for a second opinion. Absolutely not, they said. Turn around, this road doesn't go the beach. We had begun to do just that when a trio of ATV riders passed us for the third time and we flagged them down. No, the road doesn't go to the beach, but you can't turn back. The light was already taking on tones of soft fading yellow as it sped towards what we could only hope was the nearby sea. A path was pointed out to the chilenos as I wrung my hands, vowing that never again in an English-speaking country would I fail to appreciate my ability to ask anyone anything at any time, and understand their response.

The troupe was rather down at this point, and we headed off into a set of fields, ducking barbed wire fences and climbing thin embankments, cursing and moaning in our own languages. The setting was a large, green gorge, dotted with wildflowers and cacti. The wildflowers, though, were closing their buds for the night and as we walked along the steep sides of the ravine the sense of urgency was rather pronounced. Finally, the beach opened up in front of us.






We made it down to the beach just as the rest of our crew, who had left significantly later than we had, arrived from a path on the other side of the gorge. As I ate my cheese sandwich while lying prostrate on the sand, I attempted to maintain optimism. Perhaps the other group had come via a clear and easy to follow road, and we could head back in an hour or two as planned.


We straggled over to the group, who had gathered around a quickly assembled fire, and I asked for news of the road.


"You can't go back in the dark," my friend said. "Sit down and stop thinking about it right now because there's no way."


And what can you do? I did.

At this point I was already freezing, but somehow I managed to inspire charity amongst those better prepared than myself. While my formerly fellow-day-tripper, now co-strandee, made all the noise about our plight, I was being carefully wrapped up in other people's sweaters and sleeping bags without doing much more than staring dolefully at the fire. A picture is worth a thousand words, I suppose. In any event I huddled up with friends under a mountain of sleeping bags around the fire.

The provisions that the large group had chosen were interesting, to say the least. They came equipped with: one jug of fresh water, 6 or 7 packets of pasta, a two packets of tomato sauce, a tin of Nescafe, aji, salt, pepper (all three in full size jars), and 3 bottles of rum, 5 bottles of Coke for mixing, two boxes of wine, and two liters of beer.

This amount of alcohol is not as crazy as it might sound, given the size of the group; however, given the particular prioritizing scheme of the shopping trip there had been very little room left amongst the backpacks for items such as, oh, water. One fallout of this was that someone suggested cooking the pasta in sea water. And the pasta sauce as well. It was, in a word, inedible, but now we've learned our lesson about salt water pasta. I declined my plate and lay in the sand looking at the Milky Way in a perfectly clear line from one side of our valley to the other.

Meanwhile, a group of the guys had discovered a cave where we could be out of the wind and thus a bit warmer. So all throughout the pasta debacle they were harnessing their inner caveman, literally, dragging tremendous logs across the sand behind me. The light of flame began to grow from between the rocks and I watched a friend do a strange celebratory dance. I was simultaneously reminded of pagan ritual and little boys building a fort. Thanks to their work, we abandoned the wind and gathered in the cave.

The cave opened above us, letting out smoke and showing the stars.

The guitar-players took turns playing and we sang along as we could. It was an interesting activity. Our group was mixed: several chilenos, a couple from Argentina, several French Canadian foreign exchange students, an Italian, and myself and a few other gringas. As such, as the guitar went around, different voices came out to go along. I was able to sing along to just about every English speaking Canadian song by a woman, not surprisingly, but the Spanish songs that had the group clapping left me in the dark. It was warm though, sharing a fire and drinks and music. It was an excellent campfire, in short, as they're meant to be, with everyone feeling warm towards the world and each other. We grouped under blankets, heads on shoulders and bodies huddled in for warmth.

Slowly people began to fall asleep, myself included. I woke up to my feet being moved from their spot which was dangerously close to the fire, and the entire circle speaking to me in Spanish. Befuddled, sleepy, I grabbed my borrowed sleeping bag and went off to spend a terribly intermittent and cold night of sleep next to Elisa in a tiny tent.

I woke up before anyone else had emerged, around 6am, too cold to continue lying in the tent. I went outside and sat in the sand and watched as the sun came into the valley by the same route that I had taken the night before.

Some dogs had gotten into our food in the night, so I spent some time gathering up bits and pieces of what was left (it should be noted that my bread and cheese fell victim to these dogs). Later, when the others woke up, we fed the dogs what was left of the salty pasta and I got myself soaked washing the pots out in the water. Later some of the group decided to take a swim but I decided one dunking was enough. I lay on the sand, enjoying the warm sun, feeling my toes come back to life, and listening to the conversation that I could only sometimes follow.

Around midday three of us decided to head out. Being from the ill-fated party of the night before, we didn't know the correct road. Perhaps out of remorse for having deprived us of breakfast, the dogs decided to show us the way. They took us through several crossroads and path changes, barking whenever we went the wrong direction, looking back at us periodically over their shoulders, until they delivered us safely to the micro.

All in all, sometimes accidents turn out better than plans, despite cold toes.