Flavours Of South America

Bang.

My heavy head bounced off the window, the impact jolting me out of my half-sleep. I began to think our driver was playing pothole bingo with the unsealed highway. My neck had given up long ago, and I groaned myself into an upright position. I burrowed for my glasses beneath the layers of clothes, feeble protection from the desert chill pressing in through the bus’ thin metal skin.

There wasn’t a spare seat between the four rundown coaches shooting through the emptiness, full of Santiago students and two wide-eyed Australians. We must’ve looked like a line of silver tracer bullets against the barren landscape of Chile’s north, a cloud of dust and smoke lingering in our wake. Shots in the dark bound for a dusty town off the tourist trail. We were coming in hot with shovels, blueprints and picks.

Light was leaking over the horizon, the inky sky like a black ball-gown dipped in dark blue paint. The coastline and the grey Pacific froth were far behind us, as we flew by huge rocky outcrops scattered like cast dice in the sand, the southernmost fragments of the great Andean mountain range.

I rub my face like a magic lamp to try and clear my thoughts, but all I got was a headache.

I had to ask myself: how did I get here?

There was the earthquake, I remember that much. The far north of Chile had been stunned and the country put on guard by the 8.2 magnitude quake. The media had cycled through shaky footage of falling buildings and tidal wave warnings. Thousands along the coastline left their homes in fear of history repeating.

I had been in the country just a couple of months and barely spoke Spanish, but I was moved in a way that transcended language. Rarely is the traveler given a chance to show their appreciation and return the generousity of an adopted culture. I wanted to be involved.

So here I was. Lost somewhere between night and day, a foreign face in a fleet of volunteers heading to the affected region to build emergency housing.

I could hear the laughing and singing again. Countless new faces surrounded me, curious, happy to exchange language lessons for stories of kangaroos and echidnas.

Then, before my tired eyes, the blue paint rose like a creeping tide, slashed by bold strokes of purple, crimson and orange that mixed on the canvas, made luminous by yellow rays.

The day exploded into existence. I watched the sun rise in a rush, like it hadn’t slept. Like it couldn’t wait any longer.

I was ready to get off this bus.