Bus shelters have been the punctuation marks, the way-points on this journey down through Chile. They’re a constant, dependable institution, and just like the Corporation’s orange and green number 57 bus, they always arrive two together. One for each side of the road. Spot a road junction up ahead and, sure enough, there’s the shelters. A large industrial sawmill… another two, a school crossing warning… there they are.
The day starts to warm up, need to shed a layer, there’s bound to be one with a bench in a moment. Ten minutes in the shade… this will do, spitting on to rain… pedal frantically; sure enough here’s one, just in time. They’re regular, dependable, and each region has its own standardised design – some of them quite original. One village has shelters created out of gabion-box, with walls filled with selected water-rounded granite stones. Some have been adopted with a degree of pride, one even has a mosaic mural of ducks and hawks. Only an occasional stance might be termed ‘alfresco pissoir’, and they’re readily passed by… there’s bound to be something better just around the bend.
They might serve as an emergency bivouac, but it would need to be in extremis, always open to front, with a bench too narrow and two arched windows to frame the view. But go south and all that changes.
Approaching the Straits of Magellan and the ferry service over to Tierra del Fuego, the bus stop acquires a new, additional purpose. They become refugios; genuine emergency shelters, double glazed, draught-stoppered, sleeping-benched Crystal Palaces. The municipality asks me to respect and keep tidy the place, so I sweep out the little dust that’s crept in, along with a drift of dead bugs and several desiccated butterflies. I eject one lurid green spider and its web when it tangles in my hair, only to discover the occupant is still living. How all these denizens got in is a mystery, for the feeling inside with the door shut is of being hermetically sealed into a wildlife observation hide. The palpable silence, the enveloping warmth, the Attenborough viewing. Guanaco peacefully graze the verge, two grey foxes trot past, a skunk is gale-tousled as it crabs its way over the road. A passing truck driver calls in to chat and offer a lift, as well as a warning about the pumas that come down from the mountains to feast on new season lamb. As with arctic Canada, everybody looks out for each other, and for bragging rights you need a ‘bear/ puma’ story. We have plenty of the former, I’m in no hurry to collect the latter.
We settle in, and as the international frontier just up the road is closed, it’s an undisturbed night. Unfortunately there isn’t a water supply, otherwise there would have been a real temptation to call a rest day.
I’m not sure if any bus is scheduled to stop at this stance – there’s no posted timetable. None of the long-distance coaches have slowed down to inspect our intentions, although the carabineros have checked as to our safety. So more refuge than bus stop. Which brings us to the other type of official shelter.
These ones come in the Patagonian vernacular of corrugated steel. A tin box which inside has a table, bunk bed and a woodburner stove. Outside is an asado, table and a long-drop toilet, with a PV panel to power an incongruous lamp standard. There’s even a hitching post for your pony. And as the central government has just spent multiple millions of pesos in tax money on a programme of renovation, there’s the obligatory oversized bragging board that dwarfs the shed.
Stealth camping isn’t easy in these windswept pampas. The occasional bush never grows above waist height, there are few quarries, and even fewer bridges, which makes ‘calls of nature’ awkward and tent camping ‘interesting’. Which is why these structures start to occupy an inordinate amount of our attention, and, like their brethren further north, we need to inspect. We might have to retreat, and you never know if a fellow traveler met further down the road won’t be pleased to have our intel report.
Strange how something as simple as a bus shelter can become a distillation for a Patagonian cycle ride, reduced to craving their presence; the chance to escape, even just for a few moments, the pervasive attention of wind.
