Day 2: Deep into the Andes

AM: Our night at Dona Pola was just fine. The weather changed rather drastically overnight, from hot and sunny to cool and cloudy. The clouds have broken up a bit since we awoke, but it's still cool. Breakfast here was better than expected: bread, ham, cheese, a dish of eggs, yogurt, cereal, coffee and tea. Considering the average Chilean breakfast is a piece of bread and tea or coffee, this made my morning. I always wind up grumpy here from lack of enough breakfast food.

Right now we are stopped along the side of the road next to a poll marked "9" because it's the one place in town where you can find a cell phone signal.

Nick has to make some phone calls for the farm, so we're camped out here for a while. Attractive place, right?

PM: Once again, trying to cross into Argentina was a giant failure for me. We took a very long dirt road into the Alto Bio-Bio. The deeper we went, the more it was like going back in time. The population ceased to be Hispanic and became entirely Native American-- Pehuenche (Peh-wen-chay) to be exact. Most people traveled here by foot or by horse. We encountered only a few cars the whole time into the forest. I thought the trip would be more searching for a volcano, but we couldn't see it most of the time. However, the experience of seeing a native population set outside of the modern world was worth the sacrifice of the volcano.

At one point, we actually stumbled upon a group of Pehuenche people gathered in what looked at first like a festival. As we drove slowly by, we realized that in fact we were witnessing a religious ceremony, possibly a rain dance. They approached our car and spoke to Nick's uncle, and we only stayed a minute. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos as they asked us not to take any and we obliged. But the ceremony looked and sounded exactly how you might expect. Around a fire, there were men in elaborate costumes and headdresses dancing to accompany a beating drum along with the occasional blast of a horn. There was chanting and a group gathered around the edges. We felt that we were intruding in this intimate ceremony, so we drove on, but it was thrilling to stumble upon a completely authentic and foreign atmosphere.