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January 6, 2025 – Years ago, my mother had read a phrase somewhere that had particularly struck her. No one can stop those who travel on foot. I remember that we had prepared many rectangular pieces of paper, and we had written a letter on each one with different colours, then hung them with clothespins on the wall of the spiral staircase of the house where I grew up.
That phrase came back to me now while I am in Villa O’Higgins, a perfect cul de sac where the roads that go south end.
Once one arrives here, one can only do two things: turn back or board a ferry that takes one to a place that amazes me even though it has a name on the map, 21 km from the border with Argentina. On this boat, you only travel on foot or by bike; on board, they give you a fantastic welcome coffee to ease the endless hours of walking ahead, and when you get off, you get the feeling that someone somewhere is giggling: you wanted the bike? Now pedal.
Most people see not having a car, including many who have given me a lift (and also by me when hitchhiking goes wrong and I only think about how to get to the following car dealership), as a limiting factor. You can’t go where you want when you want. We’ll talk another time about the fact that there are also positives because this is one of the few cases where having a car is a limiting factor, and you keep walking.
As soon as I set foot on the disembarkation pier, it started to drizzle. Nothing astonishing, it was ideally announced by the weather forecast, but the ferry is not an exact science; it left today, and then who knows. I hope it is a transitory cloud and start walking with my two companions in misfortune: we are among the first to arrive at the Chilean border station, just a kilometre away. Here, the biggest problem is unwrapping the passport from the multiple layers of plastic with which I have tried to protect it from the rain, then a printout, and off we go, backpack on our shoulders, still 19 Km to go.
Each one is tight in its hood, and I have a lot of time to think over the next six hours. One of the first things that comes to mind, feeling the ballast pressing down on my collarbones and pelvis, is that I carry all the things I need to live, potentially forever. I don’t think five of these backpacks would be enough to hold all my clothes at home, but now everything I need to get by is fitting into them. Besides the skis, those are overweight, and I don’t think I can survive without them.
I hate the rain. After half an hour, I have water dripping all over me, and I feel like an idiot for getting myself into yet another situation that I would call tiring, to say the least. I don’t have much choice but to keep walking, and I hope that the guy I paid to carry my backpack after the first 5 kilometres doesn’t leave it underwater. At a certain point, I lose a little sense of space, and I think that maybe I have already passed the backpack and will have to go back and get it, adding kilometres to kilometres. When I see it wrapped in a couple of bags under the sign that says ‘Argentine Republic’ a sense of relief spreads everywhere between my chest and stomach, the only ones who are not happy are my shoulders.
In Europe, we are not used to thinking of borders as obstacles to be overcome; we are welcome more or less wherever we go. I remember as if it were now the time I was on a cross-border train and had the unpleasant feeling that the identity card with which I travel all over Europe was worth much more than the passport of the coloured guys in the next carriage, whom the police were letting off.
I pass this border between Chile and Argentina on foot like a bandit, crossing a forest flooded with water. The rain is so fine you can’t even hear it fall. And I feel that the border exists, that I am crossing an invisible but powerful line between two countries. The policeman doesn’t flinch when a drop of water falls on the desk where he is fiddling with the stamps. He asks my date of birth to confirm that it is me, and I play it down by asking if he is of Italian descent (like almost all Argentinians, it seems).
We spent the night in a shack outside the control station after a 14-hour hike in the rain and cold. When I woke up, I felt like my bones were on fire! It took us another day to walk the 12 kilometres to the road, which was paved and had cars. It takes time and stamina; sometimes, it’s a bit of a slog, but when you get to the village and put your backpack down after this adventure, you feel invincible. You feel like nothing can stop you from travelling on foot.
