Stories from the road: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Chile

Chile has changed immensely over the years, but one thing remains a constant: the warmth and humanity of the people. This trio of stories - from Bradt Guides Founder Hilary Bradt MBE,  Pura Aventura founder Thomas Power and Pura Aventura traveller Renate Harrison - demonstrate that chance encounters on the road can be the most memorable moments of any trip.

By Hilary Bradt MBE, Bradt Guides founder

George and I were studying our map of South America’s Cono Sur region, spread out on the bed of our Bolivian hostel along with the newspapers announcing the coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende. We had planned to cross the Andes from Argentina to Santiago and then make our way south down the Pan-American Highway through Chile. Now the country was in turmoil, people were being killed, and it was surely no place for hitchhikers. But there was no equivalent road on the eastern side of the Andes. We would have to risk it and take a train or bus south as quickly as possible. 

Six weeks later, our arrival in Santiago was startling. We had expected tight-faced citizens scurrying about their business under the iron hand of new dictator Pinochet. But, as we emerged from the bus station, we were approached by Chileans eager to tell us of their joy that the Allende years had come to an end. In theory at least, Allende had been democratically elected to reverse years of inequality and repression: South America’s first socialist president. The experiment had been a disaster. “We are so happy that Allende has gone!” they told us. “We have had a terrible year; shortages, uncertainty, misery.”

Yet a friend of a friend told us how quickly it had gone sour. “I voted for Allende” she said. “I knew that reform was needed. But I never expected this!” Although this message was reinforced almost every day, the reality on the streets was far more complicated. One evening after curfew in Santiago we heard gunfire from our hotel and saw police or soldiers surround a prostrate body.

As we hitched south we met other people keen to tell us their experiences. A vet told us that farm productivity dropped by 90% – yes, 90% – during the Allende years, but the failure of Allende’s agrarian reform was best explained by Alberto. He picked us up hitchhiking and invited us to stay on his newly reclaimed farm. He had been a landowner with a productive farm which had been confiscated. “Agrarian reform sounds a noble objective but the trouble was that the gangs that implemented it were mostly urban students who knew nothing about agriculture.” He told us that when he got his farm back he found three tractors rusting in the fields. When each developed an engine fault the new owners didn’t know how to fix it. What saddened him most, though, was the fate of his seven thoroughbred horses. “They slaughtered them for meat” he said.

Most of Alberto’s farm workers remained loyal to him and refused to take over the land. They told the new owners “Our patron will return and we will wait for him”. This subservience was deeply ingrained. One evening Alberto was away, so we invited the workers to eat with us. It was a disaster. They were paralysed with embarrassment and anxiety. Sadly, the gap between land-owning class and servant cannot quickly be eliminated.

What lesson did we learn from Chile in 1973? That the experience of the people from all walks of life who live in a place is more relevant than the reports from journalists with their own agenda. That hitchhiking is the best way of hearing a variety of tales – though only people wealthy enough to own cars pick up hitchhikers – and if people are oppressed they are going to be wary of speaking to foreigners. So our experience was one-sided and of course the regime under Pinochet became ever more brutal. Socialism sounds so wonderful on paper. So it did during Allende’s election campaign and more recently during the reforms of Venezuela’s Chávez. All travellers who love Latin America in all its diversity must wish that it worked more successfully in reality.

By Thomas Power, Pura Aventura founder

There were 3,000km between me and Santiago de Chile. From here the plan was to catch a flight back to the UK and reluctantly get on with my life, get on the career ladder. But did I really want to do it? Even in 1995 a hundred dollars didn’t give me many choices but I reckoned I had two. Option 1: buy a one-way flight to Santiago and be back in the UK by mid-February. Yawn. Option 2: hitchhike from Punta Arenas, via a bit of Argentina, back into Chile to travel the recently opened Carretera Austral highway as far as the Lake District and onwards to the capital. Adventure.

There are certain decisions which end up defining the rest of your life: this one changed everything for me. Lift one, a friendly couple sharing sandwiches on their way home into Argentina. Lift two, dropped off at a police checkpoint only to be approached by a very large, moustachioed policeman wearing improbably dark glasses. A measured, disdainful look up and down this grubby backpacker who had appeared on his patch.

“Where are you from?” Another fork in the road. Post-Falklands, being British wasn’t exactly something to be shouted about. Still, lying to this man-mountain seemed even less wise than having been born in London. So I came clean. “Mmm…” arms behind his back, a comically long, slow scan of the desolate emptiness that is Argentina’s coastal Patagonia. And silence. A long silence.

“Y las Malvinas?” – there was no mistaking the question embedded: “what do you have to say about the Falklands?” This was the part of Argentina from where most of the young soldiers and sailors were conscripted for the war, where the human cost was at its highest. “A tragedy” felt true and incontrovertible. A nod of agreement, a lorry driver flagged down and ordered to take me as far as I wanted, a handshake and off I went.

It took me another month to get to Santiago, all but a day of which was spent on the Carretera Austral. I didn’t have the means to feed myself very well, but I was allowed to sleep in a man’s shed on a particularly cold and wet night in Coyhaique. I was taken in by the police in Guadal, and not in a locked-up sort of way. I was adopted by a group of young Argentinians sheltering under a bridge for two days. I travelled with a couple of Chilean artist friends who introduced themselves on the wet roadside in Puyuhuapi “My name is handsome. And this, is handsomer.”

I was taken in by a family on Chiloé because I looked like a brother who had been killed in the Pinochet years. In Puerto Montt a young man shared a morning of work with me, loading lorries for a pittance. He took me home to meet his family, living in the most humble of houses. Dirt floor, smoking stove and wooden walls falling this way and that. They welcomed me in, they fed me and they found me a lift all the way to Santiago that night. I left with a backpack full of damp, dirty clothes and a debt of gratitude which I carry with me to this day.

By Renate Harrison, Pura Aventura traveller

It was mid-November 2018. Spring was blooming along the Carretera Austral. But we had other things on our mind. We’d spent two days with Pato and Rosario in the coastal rainforests of Queulat National Park, pursued by torrential rain. It soaked our clothes, but we tried not to let it dampen our spirits. This was Patagonia – we didn’t come here for a suntan.

Today was time to move on, to continue south. Twenty minutes into the journey, traffic (or what passes for traffic on this road) came to an abrupt halt. Two buses were stuck up ahead. On closer inspection we saw that it was a landslide that had blocked the road. The only road.

While we discussed what to do, we were approached by a typical gaucho, blanket draped round his shoulders. In machine-gun Spanish he asked us if we were going to Coyhaique. Yes, we said and pointed to the landslide. He responded by pointing out the 4x4 sign on our car. With much waving of hands, he guided us over the obstacle.

While we stopped to assess the damage all the shrubbery had done to the hire car, our gaucho friend appeared again, this time with his luggage. He now wanted a lift as recompense. As I cleared the backseat to make room for him, Dave was approached by another local. He pulled something out of his pocket, which turned out to be a police badge. There was a pregnant woman in the bus who needed to get to hospital.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. We cleared some more space. Then it turned out that the policeman, far from a concerned official, was actually her husband. We cleared yet more space. We now had a full car for the two-hour trip.

More than any picture-perfect postcard, it is this sort of unplanned experience that perfectly sums up life in Patagonia.