A year ago I turned 66 in El Salvador with a tropical storm coming ashore. This year I’m sitting on the shore of a lake surrounded by mountains in southern Chile. I find retirement to my liking.
I am fond of Thanksgiving and shall be sorry to not be home for it again this year but being born on Halloween requires one to acrept everybody will plan to dress up for the day. I used to go to work in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts and say I was a Key West tourist. Even here Halloween has its adherents.
“My earnings from my work are buried here.”
She reversed the usual trick or treat program and surprised me by giving a delicious marshmallow to the birthday boy.
This is a lovely spot to have a birthday. A local pizza was as good as I’ve had anywhere and a bottle of Chilean champagne washed it down. And the chocolate cake. A good day.
And thank you for the birthday wishes. I was indeed born on Halloween almost exactly on the Greenwich meridian in Rose Hill Cottage Hospital in Dorking in England. My mother was Italian and I grew up bilingual which influences my Spanish.
The lake front walk.
The two brothers who appear to own the campground. The one with the cane met us yesterday after we entered the empty lot with no one in it and we took a space before he hobbled out to let us know he has prostate cancer and was napping when we arrived. We murmured our sympathy not a little taken aback. That was a fairly robust introduction and all we had to offer in return was Layne’s modest little skin cancer, dismissed with a change of subject by our host.
His brother told us they have another brother who married Up North and lives in the US but keeps a house down here for vacations. You can see why.
A cold breeze blows off the lake as the sun warms the land and its bracing.
Chile’s Lake District.
A new world to explore.
I don’t doubt in summer, January to March, it’s packed.
“Look after the water” and you’ll notice there is no trash.
No camping and no camp fires. That’s why we pay $20 a night for hot showers clean toilets and electricity… and because we are rule followers. The fine for transgressors is between one half and five times the minimum monthly wage. That’s normal Latin American practice for setting fines, a multiplication of the minimum wage.
In a straight line it’s 1600 miles to get to the bottom of the continent. We don’t drive straight lines so it will be further. Probably much further even though it feels close.
And as Webb Chiles noted to me it requires crossing the Straits of Magellan. Doubtless a rough ferry ride to come.
Mountains and lakes.
I think the nod to an indigenous tongue is Mapuche, long since practically exterminated and now revered in the modern style of tipping the hat to those who came before.
The town of Coñaripe:
Home sweet home.
Not a bad place to spend a birthday.
Homes for rent too if you don’t have your own home on wheels. Not a bad escape from winter Up North.
