At the bottom of the world at the southernmost tip of Chile, I spent a week with a 92-year-old woman named Sunila. Every night at 3:30 am I would wake up and sneak down to her parlor in my coat to teach English to kids in China online in a whisper. Their parents complained and rated me only two apples out of five, but I had no choice; the house was so small. In the half dark between lessons I heated water to pour over cup after cup of the instant coffee she left out for me. Throughout Patagonia, Nescafe was all I could find and in Tierra del Fuego, I finally fell in love. Sometimes I could hear the wind shake the walls as I took warmth from the coffee. During the days I read Darwin, Bruce Chatwin, and Gabriela Mistral or walked to the ocean to look for penguins or just stand and think. Darwin said: “Indeed it is impossible to bear too strong testimony to the kindness with which travelers are received in almost every part of South America.” Chatwin said: to travel through Patagonia “is the most jaw-dropping experience because everywhere you’d turn up, there, sure enough, was this somewhat eccentric personality who had this fantastic story. At every place I came to it wasn’t a question of hunting for the story, it was a question of the story coming at you.” Mistral said: “The wind wandering in the night sways the wheat” and in Patagonia “the mist is so thick and eternal it makes me forget where the sea’s briny wave tossed me—the land I came to has a long night which hides me like a mother.” And Sunila said very little, but when I said goodbye and we took a photo together, she squeezed my knee.
