Travels in a Thin Country by Sara Wheeler

Author:Sara Wheeler [Wheeler, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56076-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

The cabin overlooked the Claro river, and I was woken by two children and a large dog splashing around in it. I decided to go for a walk, and found Alfredo lurking on the bridge. We set off together, and after a few miles climbed down to the waterfall called Siete Tazas (Seven Bowls) where the river ran into a stack of seven rock basins in a narrow gorge, and three miles further downstream Alfredo took my hand and led me to a shelf above a bigger waterfall where the river plunged a hundred and fifty feet and trees were growing out of the cliff wall.

The clouds dissolved. I no longer felt homesick for the hacienda, or indeed for anywhere else. We passed a small farm with a white flag flapping from the gate. ‘Bread,’ said Alfredo, pointing at the flag, and he went in, returning with a large blackened loaf under his arm. There were parrots in the tallest branches of the trees, and with his mouth full of warm fragments of bread Alfredo told me stories, festooned with graphic detail, about the pumas he had seen in the forest during his highly eventful childhood. The park was called Parque Inglés – English Park – by a nameless observer who visited the area in September when the grass was so green and smooth and the trees so luxurious and abundant that the traveller thought he was in England. Alfredo was a great talker. I learnt that he owned a restaurant on the main square of Molina; he even told me the turnover and profits of the business, confident that I would be impressed by his financial status. Would I like to settle in Molina?

‘Er, well, I …’

‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to make any quick decisions.’

That was a relief.

‘We can talk it over this evening.’

When I got back to the cabin I sat with a beer and wrote out the numbers one to thirty on a piece of paper, to plan the month ahead. The only commitment I had was the rendezvous with the two friends from home in a couple of weeks. It was intended as a holiday together; a staging-post for me. Apart from that, the plan was simply to pick my way south, but as I crossed off the days and wrote little pencil labels of where I might spend them I realized how much ground I had to cover before my Antarctic goal. I had to go.

As there was no bus, I was forced to hitch. Alfredo wouldn’t leave me. I waited for two hours on the edge of a makeshift volleyball pitch where twenty people were playing in bare feet. A van emerged from a thicket just as Alfredo went to buy ice-creams, so I never got to say goodbye. But I thought perhaps it was best.

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