The Time Travel

It’s freezing cold, very windy and dark when I finally step out of the machine in Punta Arenas at 6PM local time. Behind me I have just left the Scandinavian summer and a 32 hour journey from the first flight in Copenhagen. During this time I have had plenty of time to observe and not least reflect upon partly the past 7 months spent in Denmark and partly on my future that is laying ahead of me in Puerto Natales. I suppose you can say it’s a life-changing journey I have started, that brings me rapidly from my past to my future. A sort of Time Travelling:

In Copenhagen a Dane boards a plane. In Madrid she gets out now as a European citizen.  Just another westerner amongst other weterners. People here are in a hurry and are obviously very used to it. They are taking their part in the machinery seriously and keep the wheels of an international community turning. They hardly sense the presence of other people as they hurry by, properly on their way home after a meeting in a European capital or another big Spanish city. From here she goes to Santiago de Chile, the capital of one of South Americas most well-organized and internationalized countries, so the difference shouldn’t be too noticeable between 2 great and important capital cities with a distance of 13 ½ hours as the plane flies crossing the Atlantic and the South American continent including the Andes Mountain range. But it is. You see Santiago is hit by the winter vacation fever and filled with enthusiastic middle class families on their way somewhere in beautiful Chile. The tempo is very different and when I tell you that the international airport is very small and quickly overviewed and add that it has not been refurbished since the 80’ies, still holding the original look, I have made a journey back in time to a time when Denmark and Europe wasn’t in such a hurry. Maybe some odd 20 years ago when I was about 15 years old and soon would be leaving high school. Back then when we didn’t even lock the front door and no one had cell phones or computers.

I wait for 6 hours here listening to and enjoying the Chilean language spoken once again. That recognizable Spanish dialect expressed in a way that reflects the Chilean easy going way of life. I don’t need any distraction here. I just sit and observe.

And then finally I land in Punta Arenas in the extreme south of the continent. I am completely battered from the long journey in time. My husband awaits me here ready to take me back to Puerto Natales. Back to the future.

So here I am just one week in. I have picked up my permanent residency in Chile just before it expired! And I have formally opened DEFY Patagonia as a local tour operator in Puerto Natales to the national tax office. So while I wait to be summoned to the official signing ceremony of the Capital Semilla I am working in the motor home with Luis preparing the essentials before we head off to the outskirts of the city to live on our own piece of land. This is what makes me most excited at the moment. We had 5 days alone in the house before the rest of the family returned from a week of vacation. When I think about it I don’t think we have ever truly just been the 2 of us. It was incredible and what a delight to be able to do precisely what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it. I once had it this way so I know what I have renounced. But since then I have learned to co-exist and respect a sacred symbiosis of a Chilean family.

I leave you with a couple of photos of the “casita” of how it looked Tuesday when I arrived. Luis has cladded the outside plywood with metal plates, some new some re-used from the former roof. Inside we are currently putting up the brown look-alike-wooding Masonite plates over a layer of worn polystyrene-plates Luis is fileting. The upgrade of the “casita” is made mainly of re-use, left-overs from local construction sites and materials we pick up at the beach. Mostly because we at the same time are cleaning up some of the rubbish people through carelessly about, but also because our construction budget is very limited. To us it makes a lot of sense to do it this way. Little by little we are building our own empire with great respect and understanding of our environment.