June 2007
“I hope you had a proper survey done,” emailed my concerned poppa (aged 89), when he learned that Gary and I had bought a house in southern Chile.  I told him that you can’t really find surveyors here, but as our house sits at the foot of one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world, it’s probably a moot point.  I don’t think it was the response he was hoping for.

Gary and I chucked in our executive city jobs and accompanying northern hemisphere lifestyles and incomes last October to move to Chile.  Why Chile?  The process of deciding was a long one, involving many spreadsheets and bottles of red wine, but overall it was time to find a place where we could live a real life; get off the merry-go-round, buy some land, plant some trees, breathe.  To me, the south of Chile feels like a cross between Spain and New Zealand.  It apparently has the largest land space in national parks and is the “most sustainable country in Latin America” for long term development.  It’s divine, relatively unspoilt, still has native forest; still has rivers you can drink out of.  And as it’s fairly affordable, it’s a place where you can make a difference and put your money where your mouth is.

Deciding to do just that, we arrived with a detailed eco-tourism concept mapped out, bought a pickup and started driving around the south of Chile to see all the places that looked good on paper.  Having now been in the country for seven months, we have learned that finding the right piece of land will take some time.  Meanwhile we bought our house in Pucón, as living out of the pickup was taking its toll on our relationship and we figured that in our thirties we should probably stop sleeping in cars.  Pucón feels like my old home town Queenstown, New Zealand, twenty years ago, though the belching volcano dominates the landscape here.  It has mountains, lake, rivers and trees, where people play and go rafting, hiking, kayaking, fishing.  It has a really positive energy and attracts interesting, and luckily like-minded, people.

Buying our house and developing it into “Chalet Pucón” has been great practice for the Chilean property and tourism markets and a lesson in bureaucracy.  Used to doing business in a professional English environment, the Chilean manner of things is taking some adjustment (on both sides).   Add to that the fact that, while Gary is fluent in Spanish, I’m limited to the present and simple past, and you can start to understand some of the everyday challenges and constant embarrassment I’m up against.   (You may know that embarrassed, by the way, is not embarazada. Embarazada means pregnant.  Loudly telling everyone in the bar as you wave a bottle of wine that you are embarazada is not a good look.)  Some days, I screw it up so badly that I just want to crawl under the duvet with a bottle of pisco and not come out until everyone has forgotten who I am.

We are still passionate about the sustainable eco-tourism concept but the old project management adage, that everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much as expected, stands true.  This is not because Chile is corrupt (at 17th in the world it is listed as equal with the US for corruption), but more because it is bureaucratic and no one wants to cause a fuss.  This is partly because they are such nice people, and I think partly a legacy of the Pinochet years.  It is taking me time to find out, as no one wants to talk about it and it’s hard to glean the facts using only the present tense.

We must have seen 50 campos by now in our search for the perfect site.  Everyone knows someone selling some land and being entrepreneurial types they are all keen to help out.  Even at the butchers the other day, the butcher said “What else? You want some bones for your dog, yes?  And some land, yes?”  Thinking my spanish had let me down (odds on) I asked him to repeat himself.  “Land.  Terreno.  Campo.  You want to buy some, no? I have some.”  I left the butchers with half a cow, bones for the dog, and a promise to visit his hectare next week.

That’s one of the constants about this part of Chile: strange things happen.  Like, when we drove to meet one of the estate agents we had been emailing, and a young man guided an old blind Einstein look-alike – complete with shock of white hair and white stick – to our car.  He introduced himself as Clarence the estate agent, while we tried, and no doubt failed, to keep the utter disbelief out of our voices.

A delightful, imaginative, if somewhat doddery old man, Clarence had been blind from birth.  He had a successful real estate business, but we did find his condition caused some problems, like when we wanted to ask about the views.  At the properties we saw I did my best to lead him around, but as my spanish is in the incubation phase, it was the incoherent leading the blind. “OK here’s a,,, er,.,, shelf, no, step.  You have to step down.  Oh no, sorry, are you OK?  I mean up!  OK watch, mind that… that… *donk* ah, pole!”

We are becoming accustomed to such weirdness and, taking into account the Chilean community spirit, now set aside a day for each viewing.  Last week we had a call from our favorite real estate agent telling us to come look at some land.  When we arrived it became apparent that the husband of another friend would be driving us in his 4x4.  His wife thought she’d come along and have a look too.  The girl who was showing the land was also coming.  On the way out of town, we stopped to pick up the girl’s brother.  Twenty minutes later, we detoured to a small village and two more lads leapt into the back.  As the pickup filled up with excited cackling, Gary and I exchanged meaningful looks and started to glean that none of the support crew knew exactly where their land was.  An hour after starting out we appeared to hit critical mass with nine people, and started off to find the campo.

Two hours later, the overheating of the radiator gave everyone the chance to unload, gesticulate a lot and walk up a dirt track for an hour, but still didn’t shed much light on the property’s location.  Luckily we came across some local peasants who suggested we hike over their land for an hour or two to find it.  At this point I lost my sense of adventure and suggested to our agent that perhaps access was a key factor if we were to set up an eco-tourism business.  She suggested the tourists would love riding in on donkeys.  I suggested it was time to go home.  The committee gesticulated some more, seemed to agree, and as darkness fell we retraced our steps without ever finding out where the property was.  (I’ve seen pictures though, and not surprisingly, it’s incredibly unspoilt!)

At this stage we are still looking at several properties every week and have come really close to the ideal land.  Meanwhile, we continue to rent out Chalet Pucón, I’ve got plenty of studying to get on with, the dog needs to go for a run by the lake, and it’s not long till winter when we can snowboard the smoking volcano…

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