Adventure 232

He gripped me in brotherhood and chucked my
pack over the tailgate. I climbed in and raised a
thumb. Nelson punched it for Maipo.
San Jose de Maipo in Provincia de Cordillera
is Cabernet country, where the “roads” twist
like vines and “driving” is aerobic. For sixty-six
invigorating kilometers, Nelson roared ahead
with reckless abandon. On the sixty-seventh,
he crushed the brake like beer can and I laid
eyes on my fate, the grand-daddy of Chilean ski
culture and industry; Lagunillas.
Centro de Esqui Lagunillas is the country’s
pioneer ski area. Its low altitude and roots
attitude paradoxically pin it down and prop it
up. Big June snow meant an early start to the
season and a dire need for staff. In me, Nelson
saw cheap labor plus nothing to lose, and he
was right.
Promise of income accompanied by
accommodation had already edged-out concern
for creature comforts or inalienable human
rights. But where, I could not help but wonder,
was that accommodation? Save for a series of
60 yr-old wooden platter lifts and a few sagging
shanties, the base appeared to be featureless.
I would have asked, but Nelson had the answer
in the form of a shovel planted at my feet.
“La Francesca,” he said, directing a reverent
gaze uphill.
A building nested a few hundred meters higher
on the southern face. I hadn’t noticed because
only its roof peeked above the snowpack.
Nelson was carving a trail towards it and
indicating, irritably, that I lend a hand. Cold
but sweating, we excavated around clapboard
walls, Plexiglas windows and doors too small
for their frame. Inside, abandoned armies of
crumpled wrappers, unwashed dishes and
rotting food covered every surface. A mouse
dropping carpet sullied an otherwise bare
concrete floor. Heat was by wood fire, water
needed boiling, and electricity ran only when
lifts did. La Francesca, my fortress of solitude.
Back at the carpark I learned there was a
ski school and equipment rental among the
sagging shacks. It was by working there that
I would earn my luxurious accommodation.
Approaching the shop required awkward hops
through high, white dunes, and once there
Nelson forced its door with his shoulder. Inside,
and strewn everywhere, laid a disarray of
skis. In mismatched pairs old or new, large or
small, the floor was a felled forest of yellowed
planks. This plus the La Francesca had to be
rock bottom, surely, but the boot room proved
otherwise.
36//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#232