By: Kate Hanson, Colby College
The view of Aquasol from atop the hill directly to the South.
It’s crazy to me how much Aquasol feels like home considering the amount of time that we’ve spent here. In all, it’s only been 28 full days, exactly a third of our overall time spent in Patagonia. However, it feels like so much more. We’ve all developed routines just like those that I do back at home. I can predict exactly where people are going to put their tents after each trip. I have expectations for which people are already going to be in the quincho when I get up in the morning. I know who will chop wood and start a fire if it’s cold outside. I can be almost as certain about these things as I am about the fact that I’ll be having oatmeal for breakfast.
Other people are much more creative with their meals than I am though. I love seeing what incredible new recipes they come up with. From banana pancakes to French toast to apple crumble, I’m always so impressed with their creativity, making the most of whatever they can scrounge up from the bodega. I would say that I’ve even picked it up a little bit myself. For our lunches at Aquasol, we’re free to make whatever we want, and I’ve found myself trying to mimic staple recipes from home I’ve begun to miss. I must admit that embarrassingly I don’t have the most cooking experience, but I would say that’s changed quite a bit while here. In addition to my ability to experiment on my own during lunch, every night at Aquasol two students are assigned to dinner, given ingredients, and let loose to cook for the entire group. Through this, I’ve loved learning some basics as well as people’s little tricks, getting to bond over cooking a meal with someone, and getting to try everyone’s delicious cooking.
The apple crumble that Miles made to celebrate pi day, with pi written in manjar.
In addition to cooking, the other chores we are assigned to do include dishes, cleaning the bathrooms, and organizing our common spaces, which involves encouraging people to clear their clutter, and taking out the trash, compost, and recycling. We compost all of our food scraps at basecamp, which means that it all gets taken to a former washing machine outside one of the greenhouses in order to decompose and be used for soil. Also, larger quantities of food that have gone bad are given to the chickens, so no food is wasted. The trash is another story. Cochrane’s recycling system is quite strict regarding paper and plastic so lots of that and all other trash is taken to the landfill. However, the city of Cochrane is producing trash at an alarming rate in that it’s too much for the current landfill space which is quite a problem.
Another chore that we must do that’s less so assigned and more so a necessity on your own terms is laundry. Now I won’t lie, it’s difficult. I start by doing a preliminary wash of my socks, and most of the time my pants, in order to get at least the noticeable dirt off. After that, I fill up my drybags with water and a concerning amount of soap, mix things around, and let them sit in the very intermittent sun. This is quite a common occurrence, especially after every trip, when, if you look over to the laundry bathtub, you can see a rainbow of drybags littering the lawn. After letting my clothes sit for as long as possible, or more often until I can get a turn with the bathtub, I embark on the ungodly task that is rinsing my clothes. The water always comes out disgustingly brown and takes forever to clear. When it finally does, or becomes good enough according to my declining standards, I walk it over to the fence and hang it all up to dry. The drying process is another issue. It seems as though it rains every time I hang my clothes up, and the wind blows them off the fence and into the dirt, not only ceasing them from drying, but just getting them immediately dirty again.
My laundry hanging up to dry on the fence.
Despite all this talk of chores I promise that life at Aquasol involves fun as well. There’s an incredible cliff jumping spot just down the river and back when it was warm out, we would all gather in our swimsuits and jump in to cool off. As the weather has gotten colder, we’ve taken to spending more of our free time in the quincho. We’ve played lots of Bananagrams and taken to watching people’s favorite movies. One thing that’s been constant throughout the semester is pelt. From the very first day that we arrived in Coyhaique, we’ve all been gathering to play hacky sack and transitioning into pelt, the version where you can throw the sack at others. We’ve all gotten quite good, learning fancy tricks, gaining hand-eye coordination, and easily targeting others. It’s become such a staple to have fun, and I hope that I can continue playing back home.
The group playing pelt outside the quincho.
Another thing that we love to do, especially on free days, is walk into town. It’s about 2 miles to the square, but well worth it for the wifi and snacks. I’m sure that the staff of Café Tero and the cashiers at the white store (the closest place that you can buy snacks in town) are simultaneously annoyed at the frequent presence of 13 gringos in their establishments and grateful for the vast amount of business that we bring them. Even the town has come to feel like home, as its small size and staple shops easily became well known.
As this semester comes to an end in sadly only a week, it’s hitting me how much I’m going to miss Aquasol. I’m going to miss walking into town, playing games, and being able to hang out with people all the time. I’m going to miss getting to cook, visiting the greenhouses, and jumping in the river. I’m even going to miss the things that are not as enjoyable: the satisfaction of having successfully hand washed my clothes, the roosters waking me up every morning, and the showers with their unreliable hot water. I’ve come to know and love this place and I can’t wait to look back on my time here and think about how a remote little campground in Chilean Patagonia came to be my home for three months.