Rio Mayo

RIO MAYO

The airstrip was on the treeless level beside the dirt road which came
up through the valley rim and wandered off eastwards. It was much
colder there than at Esquel, the wind blowing in frigid gusts which
snatched dust from every movement and sent it away in the low
sunlight.

The LADE Twin Otter had come to rest amid thin grass tufts where,
without a word, the pilot had taken my pack from the stowage and
dropped it in the dirt before lighting a cigarette and moving towards
the shack. There were no other passengers. I picked up the pack and
began to walk into town.

Rio Mayo was a piece of Patagonia. It was a place of a thousand
people, a ragged-edged grid of low buildings and irrigated greenery
tucked into that shallow valley which was carved into the desert by the
meandering river of the same name.

I walked steadily as should a stranger in town, the pack riding well,
the gravel crunching beneath the boots. Past broken-fenced plots I
went, where dwellings hid among poplars and willows in gardens gone
wild like irrigated status symbols in an arid place. The sun, with a
hint of warmth down where the wind blew less strongly, threw long, hard
shadows across the empty street in the last hour of daylight.

There was only one hotel, a green-painted rambling structure set back
slightly with several doors facing the street and a Crush Orange sign
over the entrance.

Inside was a big and gloomy saloon, a barn of a room of dark timber
and corners where neither daylight nor the single light bulb made much
impression. It had the smell of wood smoke and the faint strains of
music from an unseen radio. To the left was a serving counter with
shelves of liquor bottles behind it and a glass cabinet upon it in
which a plate with a solitary bread roll lay in a pool of light from
the window. To the right, some display cupboards, designed to be placed
against a wall, had been stood in a line to cut down the space in an
attempt at cosiness. In between, there were tables at which perhaps a
dozen men sat playing cards, smoking, drinking mate tea and beer. They
watched my entrance with pausing semi-interest, leaning on elbows,
blowing smoke, chewing slowly.

I did the practised unloading - slipping the left arm, swinging the
pack onto the right thigh and catching it with the left hand -
demonstrating self-containment and they knew it. I leaned the pack
against the wall near the door. Behind the counter, a large middle aged
and moustached man wiped a glass and eyed me, waiting disapprovingly to
hear my business. When you lived in a small town and the country was in
crisis and there was nothing much to do except sit in the bar and wait
to see what happened, gringos with enough hard currency to drift around
at will were an irritation.

I moved to the counter.

"You have a room?"

The barman nodded, still wiping and looking but saying nothing.

"You have food too?"

"Rolls. Ham and cheese." The ubiquitous ham and cheese. But they would
do.

"Then the room first please."

But then the barman didn't hurry. He continued to wipe glasses, his
signet ring clinking on each one. An overweight policeman sat there on
a stool, resting on his elbows, blowing smoke, his stomach in his lap,
his ironed blue shirt stretched around his corpulence. The two of them
resumed conversation, ignoring me for a minute or more before the
barman finally took a key from a hook and threw it onto the counter.
"Number one, outside."

It was the end door facing the street, a small square room with green
paint and a bed, a wooden chair, two small windows and a padlocked
latch. I left the pack, relocked the door with my own padlock and went
back.

"Is there a bus to Aisen tomorrow?"

"Wednesday."

The barman presented the roll. The policeman blew more smoke and
turned a little.

"There might be a truck" he said in a voice roughened by tobacco. "A
few go that way. Ask when you see one."

"Thank you."

I took the roll and a beer to an empty table. The man resumed the
drying, the ring still clinking.

Suddenly, a card player jumped up, clattering his chair, and rushed
out to a pick-up which roared off down the street. In two minutes he
was back, skidding to a halt outside, showering the door with gravel.
He burst in, threw money onto the table with a flourish and sat down
again. The barman wiped glasses. The policeman blew smoke.

The radio went from music to news then and they all listened. It was
more about the Government; Isabel Peron made president under the
Constitution after the death of her husband, Juan, had been under
pressure for weeks. But my Spanish wasn't quick enough for the detail.
I finished the roll and the beer and went to the room as the night's
chill began to penetrate.

In the morning, there was breakfast of bread and coffee slammed onto
the counter without a word. It passed an hour while the sun thawed the
day. A truck outside stood facing west towards Chile but the driver,
thirtyish, moustached, heavily built and dressed in three sweaters of
different patterns and states of repair, said he didn't want
passengers. Probably gringo passengers.

Okay. I would wait a day more for the bus.

I walked out to the west of the town in cold sunshine and a stiff
wind, crossing the river where the banked-up road persuaded it to stick
to one line and pass under a simple concrete bridge. I followed the
road up the steep cut in the far escarpment and then left it to walk
along the rim to where I sat for a while near the edge like a fly on a
table. Back on the far side, the town lay like a green patch which
might have been swept down on the spring melt from the ice cap and left
there for a season. But on this side, hardly anything grew. The sun
warmed one side of me while the wind chilled the other and formed
minute dunes behind small stones which protruded from the surface.
There was nothing to bind the soil; it was making its way slowly across
Patagonia stopping only at rivers, like the first settlers.

Back in town, in the LADE office which was a small shop with a desk,
two chairs, an oil heater and much condensation on the window, the man
gave me a glass of mate tea and showed a new timetable. One line went
from Comodoro Rivadavia to the Malvinas - the Falklands. I pointed to
it.

"Ah problems" he said with an apologetic shrug. "You are British and
you must go to Buenos Aires to get a permit." Buenos Aires was a
thousand miles north. It would have to wait.

The bus for Puerto Aisen was coming through at five in the morning. I
woke at four, and at four-thirty, walked to the cafe where the bus
would stop. The town was dried and frozen, the nagging wind piling on
the chill factor and pushing the willows and poplars by the light of a
few dim street lamps.

By the yellow light of the cafe's oil lamp, an old man sat in an
overcoat, warming his hands at an open stove in the middle of the room.
The room was small and spartan with curtained windows on three sides
and tables spread back from the stove as if scattered the night before.
The man hardly looked up as the glass door rattled and my boots boomed
on the floorboards.

"Buenas dias" I said.

A gringo accent first thing in the morning; he ignored it for a few
seconds. But then
he grunted and half turned, elbows on knees, to watch the unloading
before stirring himself and reaching for the coffee pot.

"Coffee?"

"Thank you. The bus for Aisen is coming?"

"I think so." A note of resignation, of irony.

He poured the coffee.

"What time?"

The man shrugged and said nothing. The pot lid clanked; the coffee
trickled. So I said nothing more. I took a chair and sat a few feet
away, close enough to feel the fire, far enough to be polite. We stared
into the flames and waited.

The bus came with a hiss of air brakes and the first light of day. A
dozen people shuffled in, chilled, bleary, clad in coats and anoraks,
their footfalls resounding through the flimsy structure. They moved
stiffly to the fire and stood around it, staring blankly, hands
outstretched. Already thawed and warm, I sat back while the old man
handed out coffee. No one spoke. There was just the shuffling of feet
and the clanking of the pot lid.

The driver came in last, taking a coffee and blowing and slurping it.
I moved across.

"What time are we going?"

The man viewed me with mild surprise and took another sip; then he
turned away. They were all preoccupied, still no one speaking.

A passenger's radio, playing martial music, switched to announcements
and they gathered and listened. Again my Spanish wasn't quick enough.
But the driver came back then.
"The military have removed the President. We have a change of
Government and the borders are closed." He said it without emotion and
blew his coffee. Then he shrugged and moved away again.

So the Generals had done it.

A few looked at me then, their eyes turned upwards as they bent to
warm their hands. My presence was an aggravation; a stranger at a
disgrace in the family.

Soon the driver came back a third time.

"We are not going to Aisen" he said. "I don't know where
the bus is going yet. If you have a bed to go to, it is best if you do
so."

The room was still unlocked. I got two hours sleep.

When the LADE office opened, the man offered more mate but no
alternatives. There would be no flights for a week or more, he said.
Outside, the policeman rode by on horseback, a rifle in the scabbard,
his pistol on his belt, showing authority to those he lived and drank
with every day. He looked uncomfortable. But there was not much chance
of civil disorder in Rio Mayo. In a town like that, so far from
anywhere, let alone the seat of Government, people could only hope that
the generals got it right.

Later, the bus driver saw me in the street and shouted across.

"The bus is going back to Comodoro. There is plenty of room. Be ready
at eleven."
Comodoro Rivadavia was on the east coast. I hadn't been there. It
would do.