Just as Marea’s family arrived, we confirmed the final details of our next volunteer experience. In fact, I wrote the final “Yes! We’ll see you then” as they walked in the door, and we were excited to tell them all about it.
We’d be helping on a quince farm, we explained, whatever that was. This prompted a bit of research on the asian fruit and the sweet cheese/paste/jam stuff it makes. We all began to spread to word: we were going to a quince farm and soon we’d be quince masters. Fun!
Almost as far south as Antarctica, you can safely call Patagonia a remote location. In recent years, tourism has taken hold in a handful of locations like Torres del Paine National Park, El Chalten, and the adventure tourism capital of Pucon, where you recently heard about the nearby volcanic eruption.
Roads have been built, a few paved, and bus routes and flights have grown in number. It’s all gotten a lot easier to maneuver as a tourist/traveler but as a Workaway volunteer we had our work cut out for us when traveling to our next job in the town of La Junta in Chilean Patagonia.
We didn’t know where to start. We couldn’t even find this place on a map! Even the host warned potential volunteers that they are located in one of the most remote parts of Chile and travel is difficult with buses and ferries that leave once or twice a week. They boast the life motto:
“If you’re in a hurry, you’re wasting your time.”
The directions we got to our first Workaway volunteering job in Peru were as follows:
“From Nazca, find the local van that goes toward Challa, tell the driver to drop you at kilometer 601, walk downhill for 30 minutes, knock on the brown door and ask for Alvaro.”
For non-Spanish speakers in a large, strange country, this seemed somewhat vague and daunting.
The Traveling Blues 