We woke up in the morning in Coyhaique still a bit exhausted from the crazy snow road, but we had some breakfast and spent some time planning the remaining 3 days of our adventure. After the near disaster with the ferry schedule in Chile Chico, we were a bit more cautious when planning our route. We had been told that Chiloé island was a must-see, so we decided to go see for ourselves. We realized that we did need to take a ferry from Chaitén to Quellón, the southern tip of the island of Chiloé, and luckily there was a ferry scheduled to depart the next morning at 9:30 am. So we packed up and set out on our 430km (268 miles) day of driving.
We had finally made it to Chile Chico and had crossed the border before they closed so we could make the ferry on time in the morning, everything seemed like it was going to work out perfectly. Since we had been so lucky thus far we decided to chance it again and skip the ferry to drive the scenic route around Lago Gral Carrera instead. In our defense, the ferry was going to take 2 hours and 45 minutes plus another hour and a half of driving and the scenic route around the lake was only 381 km (236 miles) so we figured it would end up being about the same amount of time even though the map said it would take 8 hours. Yet again we were wrong.
After our first night of wind and foxes, we woke up to an incredible view of Torres Del Paines but unfortunately our luck with the weather would come to a quick end. We made some breakfast and coffee then packed up the camper and got on the road. The day was grey and windy but we got some good glimpses of the mountains as the clouds rolled in and out. We decided to drive the Y-290 and Y-150 which create a loop of the park, since it was July we saw basically no one all day. It was strange and amazing to feel like we had all of the national park to ourselves. We spent some time at the various glacial lakes and overlooks, we stopped for a bit on the shore of Lago Grey, a glacial lake that has a black sand beach. The lake gets its name from the glacier that forms it. Grey Glacier is one of the many glaciers in the southern ice field, it is 6km (3.7 miles) wide and approximately 30km (18.6 miles) high. The bright blue chunks of ice that have broken off the front of the glacier look like colorful misshapen boats floating in a sea of grey. The landscape in Patagonia is truly amazing, it’s no wonder it is referred to as one of the premier adventure destinations in the world. As the sun began to set we made our way toward El Calafate, a three-hour drive with our first border crossing. The Chile border was really easy, we just went in, got our stamps, and crossed. When we arrived at the Argentina Border it was a small building and luckily we arrived when we did because they were closing for the evening. After the camper inspection, the border agent told us that there was a shortcut to get back to the highway and that he was headed home so we could follow him. It’s good that we did because the roads are unmarked dirt paths that have no lights whatsoever, we might still be driving aimlessly in Southern Argentina.
In July 2017, Sep7imo Dia was transferring from Lima, Peru to Santiago, Chile which meant that Cris and I had a short tour break. We had 8 days between the last day of load out and the first day of load in so we decided to rent a camper and drive from Punta Arenas to Santiago. This was a crazy idea from the beginning, the distance between Punta Arenas and Santiago is approximately 4500 km (2800 miles), and we were going to drive it in a week! In addition to the distance, it was winter in the southern hemisphere. The southern sections of Chile and Argentina aren’t exactly the most hospitable during the winter, average temperatures are between -6 and 4℃ (20-40℉), and many of the businesses are closed because there are no tourists. More on that later…..
The translator is a traveller between words and worlds and cultures. Someone who, in the simplest terms, finds stories in other places and brings them back to us, as narratives that are new and unknown or, perhaps, tell our stories in different ways. Translators open imaginations to and of other worlds, by demonstrating that there are ways of seeing and telling and thinking the world that are not ours. Of course, this process is always mediated, initially through the experience of the translator, or the person who has found the story to be brought across, positioned between the two ‘banks of the river’ as French thinker Jacques Derrida had it.
Theatre in translation occupies an uncomfortable place in Britain. Bound often by the inevitable and wholly understandable force of the market and economic sustainability, theatre in translation from around the world has to jostle for even a minimal space with the many writers and groups vying for slots in the increasingly pressured theatres around the country.
