Mora-ns

When we left you last, we said we were going to be volunteering on an organic blackberry (aka mora) farm for two weeks. We´re back and because there was not a time warp, we clearly dipped out early.

The first leg of the journey to the farm (and it was a journey), was a bus ride south from Santiago to Molina. Actually, we took the metro all over Santiago trying to find the right bus terminal. Our directions said it would take 30 minutes. 3 and half hours later, we arrived in Molina with just enough time to make the last bus to Maitenes. While our directions did not mention we had to change bus terminals (and the second hardly counts as a terminal), we bumbled through the town until we found someone who had heard of Maitenes and could confirm the town existed, but was not able to provide directions. Through a stroke of dumb luck, we walked into the bus just as it was preparing to leave. Hooray! We ate a sausage salad we had made earlier in the morning and enjoyed our ride through beautiful wine country of the Andean foothills.

When we got to the end of the line and were the last people left on the bus, we realized we had missed our stop. The bus driver, who was turning the bus around, was kind enough to tell us when to get off the second time around. We jumped off at the Maitenes school, but found no one waiting there, as had been planned. Wandering unsuccesfully around the town took only about a minute before we realized we were rather screwed and asked a nice old lady if she knew where our farm was. In another stroke of dumb luck, as we were beginning on the trek to the farm, she saw the farm truck coming in the distance and told us to wait at the school again. Whew.

The farm is 40 hectares of diverse crops which are united by their insufficient water supply. Thus, it is a dusty farm and showers are rare. Fortunately, there is a river just one sweaty mile away and you usually smell much better after bathing in the river, at least for the first half of the return trip. We woke up most days at 7:30 before diving into our 8 a.m. carb underload. Just white bread and jam. We choked down awful pate (spam in a tube) some days so our stomachs would stop growling for a little bit before we started work. Once we started working, the adrenaline of black berry picking sated our hunger. Actually, it is really boring and that was a total lie. Stew satiated his constant hunger by picking the most berries but delivering the fewest. Editor´s note: More than 2 kilos of blackberries per day is harmful to the digestive tract.

The blackberries were haphazardly planted, overgrown, thorny, and poorly organized which certainly made the picking more difficult. Also, the sun will burn anyone not wearing a rice paddy hat into a crunchy critter. The only things in shorter supply than water, were instructions and diretions. We made up our own style of berry picking (free styling, if you will) as we wandered through the fields. This was fun for the first hour after which we started playing word games. After thousands of games, we will no longer be playing word games and are discussing this blog entry using hand signals.

Lunch break was a welcome respite at 1 p.m., even if it was a little underwhelming in nutritional value. You know what regenerates tired muscles? rice potatoes and carrots. Wait, not at all. This became our main impetus for leaving: acquire a decent meal and feel full. The afternoons were free but so hot that any activity above sleeping or swimming was impossible. Also, we were swarmed with massive horse flies almost all the time. One amazing chicken, Dandy, would eat them off of you but poor Dandy was incapable of overwhelming the droves of winged horses.

After the break, we returned to the fields for more work which was, unsurprisingly, very similar to that of the mornings. The unwelcome addition of more flies was the only real change. Some days, we would work on other tasks like: digging holes for an unfinished outhouse, watering the garden, cutting flowers, raking hay, watering the ground (¿WTF?), feeding pigs, burying piglets, collecting plums and making juice out of them, and this sort of thing. Mostly, the time was spent in the blackberry fields. We learned little and felt like...morans.

Our boss was something of an alcoholic but not the fun kind. He would get drunk and mean but not share any of his seemingly endless stock of awful wine. He also was the only person we´ve met capable of finding bad chilean wine. How do we know how it tasted? Stew sliced his hand open on a poorly put up roof (how high should we make this roof of very sharp metal? How about 4 feet, that´s safe right?) and while Tori was carefully wrapping Stew´s hand in gauze and medical tape, the farmer consoled him with wine. Hell, it´s better than nothing. His injury prevented him from finishing his much needed pet project of an outhouse (the other one has about a foot of use left) and all he succeeded in completing was a 6.5 foot deep hole.

Our last night there, Stew helped take the blackberries to town to sell. All the berries are sold to the same family that owns a small store. Every local comes here every other night with their harvests. After selling berries, the men all gather around the store and drink until the store runs out of beer. Picture 5 old drunk chileans and some of their children recruited to help carry berries sitting in a dirt road. As we tried to leave, our boss backed up to try to turn around, but apparently did not see the bridge he was trying to turn on, thus dropping one wheel over the edge of the bridge. Stew had to climb into the river and, with the help of the one remaining 70 year old farmer, lift the car high enough that the other wheels could get traction and pull the car forward. Thank God we left the next day. This guy was crazy.

Yesterday, we woke up at the farm and got ready to leave. We packed our tent, filled out water bottles, and hit the dusty trail. We couldn´t wait to get on the road again, but first we had to walk through a neighbor´s field, cross a stream over two downed trees, climb a hill through an apple orchard, and hop three barbedwire fences. Then we were at the dirt road and just a kilometer away from the gravel road. We hitched a ride down to a Saint´s shrine where we waited for an hour until our next ride came and took us 2 hours down another dirt road to a town called Cumpeo. Here, we ate a much anticipated meal.

Since this blog is more about food than travel, here you go:
Cazuela de Vacuno is a hearty beefy stew of beef. It also has corn, squash, potatoes, cilantro, and rice. Our meal was served with a cucumber, onion, and tomatoe salad dressed with salt, lime, and oil. We got bread which we barely noticed as we inhaled it whilst sitting down. (side note, we left the farm in such a hurry we didn´t eat breakfast and only had some cookies and candy bars for the various hike) Dessert was sliced cantaloupe. Stew ordered a ¨cerveza grande¨and was surprised when the bartender gave him a look of disbelief. It was, after all, two in the afternoon. Apparently, in this restaurant, a large beer is two liters. There have been more unfortunate misunderstandings.

Next we took a collectivo taxi to a town an hour away, then a bus to Santiago 3 hours away (shorter this time), then got on an unexpectedly cushy, airconditioned, leather seated, bathroom working, bus to Valparaiso. Now we are here and digs are better than at the farm. It is a beautiful city, reminiscent of San Francisco. There are many impressive murals in public places (some sanctioned, some freestyled), interesting local theatre productions, beautiful fountains and statues, colorful buildings, and an all around strong art community that lends the city a bohemian vibe.

Interested in seeing some pictures from our adventure? Tori´s mom has posted an album of our pictures from the first half of our journey! Enjoy: http://picasaweb.google.com/EllenKirsh/ToriAndStewPics#