The sixth time I crossed the border between Argentina and Chile, it closed without explanation. The bus’s engine idled for hours but when the driver shut it off finally, I stumbled with the other passengers out into the blinding snow and vivid sky of the Andes, shielding my eyes to stare up and down the line of vehicles waiting to cross the mountain pass. Someone had scrawled on a rock in dripping paint, “Las fronteras son un invento”—“Borders are an invention.”
After waiting eight hours, at night, the driver turned the bus around and made a crackling announcement. I had to ask my seat mate to repeat it for me, still struggling with the Spanish: we were heading back to Mendoza to stay in a migrant shelter and it would cost 45 pesos. Weeks before, I had forgotten my debit card in an ATM for the first time in my life and was traveling on a careful cash budget for this visit to Buenos Aires. I was en route back to Allison in Santiago. I had just 45 pesos in my pocket.
Carlos said he traveled up and down the spine of the Andes collecting folk music. He was a student from Chile. He had long black hair, a thin mustache, and foggy glasses. He bought a drink at Subway in Mendoza so I could sit and use their wifi to contact Allison. In the stairwell of the migrant shelter, before we slept on a stained mattress together, he played me a song on his reed pipe.
The bus set off for the border again at 4:00 am. The black sky blueing revealed the jagged silhouette of the Andes, and Carlos drew five lines on the condensation of the window, then notes, composing a bar of a song. I saw the blue Andes at dawn through his music. He smiled sheepishly.
We waited all day, and then, just as inexplicably as it had closed, the border opened.
