Trafkura, chile...mountains and more....

Hello Friends!

So Ive made it to the organic farm in Trafkura. It is wonderful here! I cant begin to tell you all of how beautiful it is here! The farm here is organic and also offers ecotourism activities. Which includes trekking, horseriding, camping...etc. They also run the quaint cottage hostel down in Melipeuco which is 20km away. Trafkura is nothing but a mountain side farm community. The elevation is around 800 meters which is roughly about 2,700 feet. The Argentina border is only 30km away. There are many Manpuche and Pewenche Indians that live in the community here. The community here is really small and is pretty rural. Nothing is convienient. I have to hitchhike the 20km into Melipueco for the phone or internet because the bus only comes in each direction once per day! That is 7am to Melipueco and then back towards Trafkura at 4:20pm only. There just isnt a great need for the bus here because it is that empty of people.
Chile is split into 13 regions and I am currently in the ninth region. Here is an excerpt from the Trafkura Expedition site to more accurately explain where the farm is:
Our Refuge is located in the 108 kilometer of the International Route Temuco - Paso Icalma, on the highlands of the Tracura Valley, a hillside sector of the Andes Mountains in Melipeuco District, of the Araucania, in the Ninth Region.
The area reminds me of being in BC, Canada or inthe Mt. Shasta area of northern California. There are trees everywhere and is home to many Araucaria Trees or (Monkey puzzle tree) which can live up to 1000 years old and looks like a really really tall umbrella or toadstool mushroom. It is also a major emblem to the Pewenche indians.
So the weather here is perfectly pleasant. It is the end of summer and fall is coming but the cold has not quite come yet. The farm currently has no ecotourism guests, so I get to stay in a nice little log cabin with a German girl that I mafe friends with in Melipueco. The farm is eco friendly. The river waters are used for the showers...and the showers can have hot water if you build a fire under the metal water tank. The banos are outhouses which uses a method of separating your piss from your poop (for lack of a better word). The person doing their business would have to try to pee into a funnel-like section of the toilet opening and poo into another. I know this sounds weird but it really isnt unpleasant at all because after your business is done, you throw this dry wood shavings into the solid wastes and it dries everything out. Nothing smells at all! It is really the best outhouse that I have used! The farm ,also,has no kitchen. All foods are cooked over an open campfire. Right now it is only me, the German girl ( named Julia), Rene (a Chileno and permanent resident), and some other Chileno that is sometimes there. We all cook together as a family. And we always share on the farm. Right now, I literally have very little money. So, Rene supplies me and Julia (who is in way more poorer than me) with fresh vegetables and some flour for making bread. We cooked a really amzing vegetable stew yesterday using carrots, beets, potatoes, corn, onions, garlic, and some rice. Julia made two different batches of bread. One had tomatoes, basil, and garlic in it and the other had wild blackberries (which we picked on a hike). Blackberries grow everywhere in the area (which is why it reminds me of the mountainous regions of BC, Canada.). So, I met Julia in the Melipeuco hostel on my first day of arriving in the town. She was crying and I felt bad for her and found out that she had literally just parted ways (break-up) with her Chilean boyfriend of a year and had no money in her pockets to even get out of the country and back to Germany. (Shes been on the road for the past year.) I gave her a hug because she was so sad and seemed lonely. We became friends and decided to try our luck together at hitchhiking the rest of the way to the Trafkura area. We got some directions to the farm in Trafkura from Ignacio at the hostel. Julia speaks really good spanish so I was stoked. We hung out at a tiny dirt road interesection for maybe 15 mintues and (lucky, lucky, lucky!!!) we got a ride all the way (20km) to Trafkura in the bed of a truck. We then had to hike up a mountain trail for 2 more km to the actual farm. Our packs were ridiculously heavy. I even offered to carry Julias side bag because her pack was 3 times heavier and she was not doing well with the hike up. We went up maybe 1.5km and got way confused. We came up to a crossroads of sorts on the trail. We then decied to leave our heavy packs on the trail and go searching for this farmhouse by foot . we took one path and in went to two burial shrines and then to a wooden shack with hen and chickens everywhere and a couple of farm dogs. We decided to ask these neighbors if they knew where our farm is. We headed onto their property hesitantly (at least, I did) and this really old chilean man (75yrs) walks straight to us with mate cup and straw in hand, and invites us to immediately come in his little shack to have tea with him and some conversation. In Chile, as I have found out, it is rude to just ask for anything directly , even if it is just for directions. You always have to make small talk and hang out and if you are offered to share mate with them, you HAVE TO say yes and drink out of their mate cup and straw or else it is considered very rude and ungrateful. We talk a bit and we find out this this old man is currently living in the shack alone because his only son is currently in Argentina trying to make money. The old man is deaf in the left ear and has mild Alzheimers and is constantly shaky. He lives very simply in the mountains and is right now my hero. Julia and I then finally got to the question of asking where our farm is. He did not know. Bummer. We thank him for the Mate and conversation and head out. On our way out of the property, a hippyish Chileano (Pato) was wheelburrowing his 2year old up the trail. We ask him for directions and bingo! He knew this place as he was good friends with Rene on the farm and he was our neighbor. (Pato is maybe mid to late 20s and lives in a tiny cabin with his Argentinean girlfriend and their 2 yr old child.) Pato leads us to the farm and we are greeted by Rene who has just made an amazing rice lunch in the communal log cabin. This communal cabin is wonderful. It has a open fire pit in the middle of the place and has an open portal in the roof for the smoke to escape. There is no carpet or wood floors, just earth. There is also art and crafts which decorate the place from the Manpuche and Pewenche tribes. There is also many artworks from past visiting activists that work for human rights for the indigenous in south America. There are lots of zapitistas supporters here and such. Julia actually travelled up to Chile after living and working in Mexico for many months and doing activism for indigenous rights. She is full of great info on this subject. Anyway, the farm is great. I have been here for 3 days now and I have been learning to farm. Yesterday, I spent a few hours killing weeds out of a plot and churned the earth for replanting. In the late afternoon, Rene and Julia requested that I lead a yoga session for them. I agreed. So, we did yoga with a mountian view for 2 hours before the sunset. This is such a blessing. It really is.
So Nobody on the farm speaks a lick of english. So, Julia is always trying to translate things and I am always feeling silly with my spanish. The truth is, I have such a hard time understanding the spanish of Chileans! They speak so fast! And have so many slang words that only they use. Like, "cachai" or "-po". Anyway, it all sounds like a super fast conglomerate orgy langua-soup. So, okay, this was really a long post and I have to leave now before it get too late to hitch hike back. Anyhow, I just want you all to know that the constellations here are different then what I know of in the northern hemispehere but they are just as (If not more) beautiful...
ps, I put up some pics of costa Rica in my Costa Rica posts from January. Check them out!
much love.
ciao.