A group of backpackers were on a multi-day hike through the wilderness with some local guides. They woke up in their campsite one morning after a long, tough day of hiking at a good clip the day before. They quickly prepared their things to get an early start on the day. As they approached their guides to let them know they were ready, to their surprise, they found their guides sitting quietly and relaxing. When they asked what was wrong, the guides said, “We walked fast yesterday. We’re waiting for our souls to catch up. If we continue on now, we will have left our souls behind and we will have to come back to fetch them later.”
My last full day in Bariloche, I crossed the stream one last time and said my goodbyes to the forest and that majestic lake that always brought me a sense of tranquility.
With friends, we harvested those bright red fruits of the Rosa Mosqueta, and that night we drank Rosa Mosqueta tea and ate apple crisp from apples Tomás harvested off a nearby tree. Walking back to my cabin, I said my farewell to the night sky (specifically to the southern cross which is only visible in the southern hemisphere).
Jess, my sitemate in Peace Corps, had told me that story of “waiting for your soul to catch up” before leaving a place so that you don’t leave your soul behind. It was going to be a long wait since my soul was still off frolicking in the hills. And when it did return, it would be quite a challenge to convince it to come along with me. But I was trying, as I said my “Goodnight Moon” style farewells.
In these time of uncertainty, when international travel is not expected to be readily available for months, and as each country hunkers down and manages the pandemic according to its own reality, I had made the tough decision to leave this comfortable paradise to be close to family and to see if I could be more helpful from the US. It was a decision that had been coming up again and again for the last month, and I had always decided to stay. Until now.
I had had 24 hours to decide and one full day to prepare to leave on the 23-hour van ride that would take me and some other Americans in Bariloche to Buenos Aires to catch a repatriation flight.
Before sunrise the next morning, a nice guy in a van came to pick me up. I said goodbye to Tomás, leaving my tent and my well-traveled yoga mat, along with a promise to return.
– – – – –
I arrived at the strangely quiet and empty bus terminal where there was a 15-passenger van parked. There were four people standing around outside conversing and three women inside the van, along with 3 young kids. The drivers explained that were waiting for a doctor to come take our temperatures and give us the necessary paperwork* that would allow us to leave the city and travel the 24 hours across multiple provinces to the capital.
I was grateful for the wait because it gave me a little more time to say my farewell to Bariloche, and I stared into the hills with teary eyes. What had started as a small and brilliant point of light beaming from the crest of the hill, was beginning to transform into a complete disc rising out of the hills.
I thought about how many farewells I had said in the last few months and how many times I had stepped into the exciting and scary unknown of the next adventure.
Often I had left a place sooner than I would have liked. Often I had left behind friends that had become my community, giving me a sense of home and family. The fact that I do a lot of leaving doesn’t make the leaving easier. I always feel sad and nostalgic to leave people and places that I have connected with on a deep level. Tears shed are inspired by an indescribable sense of gratitude as much as by a sadness for parting with something beautiful.
As the sun broke free from the hills and shone in its full brilliance, beginning its solo journey across the sky, I accepted this unexpected detour in my journey, just as I had accepted countless other unexpected detours, every one of which had led me to some incredible and unique experience. **
– – – – –
I climbed into the van a little overwhelmed with all my emotions, thinking about those loved ones that I was headed towards and those that I was headed away from, and the place – the lake, the stream, the forest, the waterfalls, the hills – that I had briefly called home.
The others in the van were also pretty quiet and lost in their own thoughts. A mom and her 3 kids. A tall guy with his girlfriend and an older woman. Another guy who had said goodbye to his girlfriend, leaving her behind as he climbed into the van. An older woman traveling alone. And me.
Tomás had told me to enjoy the landscapes on the ride, especially “valle encantado” (enchanted valley) and “dedo de dios” (god’s finger), and he was right.
The whole day we traveled alongside a river, and the landscapes transformed from rocky cliffs that make rock climbers salivate, to rolling hills offset from the river, to lakes, and even plains. Katherine (the mother of the three kids who had spent the last year traveling through the continental US with her family) commented that it kind of felt like we were traveling through the US, especially Nevada and Utah.
Miles, the 7-year-old, had that special way of commenting frankly about things, and a few hours into the ride, he said, “I wanna go out in the field and run around!” We all laughed because that was exactly how we all felt.
Fairly soon after that, the whole van started to become friends and share stories. Interestingly, just about everyone had been staying with an Argentine family.
It quickly became apparent that I was not the only person sad about having decided to make this journey. Almost everyone was questioning if it had been the right decision for them. Everyone was sad about having left a wonderful place and wonderful people behind. We all found solace in knowing that the others understood the complicated emotions we were going through and the crazy back-and-forth that we had gone through in the last few days.
The young guy was a nurse who had come to Argentina to do alpine climbing, and along the way he had found a community where he felt at home, had fallen in love, and was thinking of starting a life there with his girlfriend. But with the possibility of not being able to return to the US for many months, he had made the tough decision to go back to tie up loose ends. He had wonderful stories of the people he had met and was especially impacted by what a deep connection he had felt talking to people, even strangers, noting how people looked you in the eye and weren’t afraid to be vulnerable and connect, that people were really in touch with their emotions.
Katherine (the woman with the three kids) is a pediatrician and former Air Force. With her husband and kids, they had spent the last year traveling through the US in a camper van. They had recently decided to move to Bariloche to live for at least a few months here. Her husband traveled regularly back to the US for work, and in March he had gotten stranded there, unable to return to Argentina. Finally, she had had to make the decision to pack up everything and head back to the US since it was uncertain when he’d be able to come back to Argentina.
The tall guy with his girlfriend was a rafting guide from Colorado and had been working for a few months in the Patagonia during their high season. His girlfriend, a librarian, had come down with her mom (an artist), to visit and explore the Patagonia together. Unfortunately, that trip got interrupted by the quarantine, but they had found a good place to stay. With their host family, they had made all kinds of homemade foods and baked goods from fruits and vegetables they had harvested themselves.
The older woman who was traveling alone explained that she had regularly made the trip between the US and Argentina for decades because her husband is Argentine. This time she was heading back to the US without him. They had come to visit his father, but because of the quarantine, his father’s caretakers had gone back to be with family, so he staying to take care of him. Since her home and work (she volunteers at the Missouri Botanic gardens, which ironically does work in Oxapampa) were back in the States, she had decided to head back alone. She commented to us ironically that she had been a flight attendant on Eastern Airlines, the same airline (well same name anyway) that would take us all back to the US.
– – – – –
As we entered the city of Buenos Aires, 23 hours after boarding the van, we stopped at one last gas station, a chain called “Full”. Ironically, 2 months ago when I had crossed the border into Argentina on foot, I had been greeted by a Full gas station; a funny thing to mark my entrance and exit to the country.
Our flight wasn’t until the next day, so we had 24 hours to rest and prepare. Katherine and the kids adopted me into their family and we spent the day at a comfortable little place called “Bernie’s”, right near the airport. Despite its location, during the whole 24 hours, I only heard one play fly in – at about 11pm – a plane with Argentines returning from the US, and the same plane that would be taking us back the next day. And the only airplane that flew into that international airport that day.
What could have been some of the toughest days turned out to be some of the most fun, thanks to being surrounded by great people.
With Katherine and her kids, we played games and joked around. Surrounded by our van support crew, we were able to make light of the situation and enjoy each other’s company.
On the plane, I met another traveler who had been traveling for more than a year and mostly sleeping in her tent. She had learned to build mud, adobe, and super adobe houses and had traveled to different sites helping people build their houses.
As I have found over and over again in my journeys, being surrounding by the right people can make the toughest situations not only bearable, but truly positive, memorable experiences.
And so, (completely coincidentally) exactly four years (to the date) after leaving the US to fly to Peru to begin this South American adventure as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was now returning to the US.
Famous Footnotes:
*Since Argentina was under a mandatory quarantine, travel was not allowed except for a few specific circumstances, like delivering food products or catching an international flight – but even then documentation approved by the government was needed.
**That was the first of many times I would have to repeat that acceptance process. Sometimes someone has a magical experience where some great internal struggle is resolved and they never have to face it again. More often, that first magical moment of resolve is only the first, because the same challenge surfaces again later, once, twice, tens, or sometimes hundreds of times. But the memory of that first magical moment of resolve can help us overcome the subsequent struggles.
As you climb, every now and then you are rewarded with indescribable views of the lakes below.
Oscar also introduced me to the card game “escoba” (“broom”), which uses a Spanish deck of cards similar to the traditional poker deck… but completely different. It does not include the 8, 9 and 10 cards, so the jack is worth 8 (though it is marked with a “10”), there’s a horse worth 9 (though it is marked with an “11”), and the king is worth 10 (though it is marked with a “12”). To score points, you then have to make hands that add up to 15, remembering that some cards aren’t actually worth their face value. In conclusion, it is really confusing and challenging (but fun).
