The Kindness of Drifters

As I watched Johnny walking off, out of sight, across a vast expanse of spring-fed marsh, I stood huffing and puffing. 25 lbs overweight from three months of overeating and driving, I could not follow, and realized Death March Dans star had been eclipsed; it was time to pass the baton.

I’ve met Johnny several years ago when he was a guide working for Patagonia River Guides. Johnny has the sort of affable, engaging personality that instantly makes anyone warm to him. He speaks excellent English. His Blonde hair and blue eyes betray his direct descent from the clans of Welchman who settled the Trevellin and Esquel area over 100 years ago. 

One of the first persons to hail Lynnettes and my new arrival to the photo sharing format Instagram was Johnny. His Instagram handle was Patagonia Drifters. With a little investigation I saw that Johnny had started his own business called Patagonia drifters. He invited Lynnette and I to come visit him if we were in the area between this Esquel and Rio Pico.   Remembering how we had enjoyed Johnny as a guide on our last trip, and being curious about his new venture, Lynnette and I promised we would visit.  

Late in January, Lynnette had departed from Chile for the United States to make a previous commitment and she would be away a couple of weeks. While meandering north to where I would meet her again, in Esquel, I took advantage of the time to make a couple of old connections. Johnny was one of them. It was great to return to the Rio Pico region, one of my favorites in Argentina.

The concept of Patagonia drifters Johnny envisioned was to have a small scale, mobile lodge. The lodge is made of a 1977 Mercedes Benz passenger bus manufactured entirely within Argentina. The platform is very widespread and parts are inexpensive and readily available. Johnny searched over a year before finding the bus he bought. He found it in Corrientes province in the far north of Argentina, flew there, negotiated & purchased it then drove it south to his home in Esquel. Johnny then, along with his fiancé, Lusia, and his boyhood friend, Sebastian, tore the bus apart and put it back together in the configuration they envisioned. 

Johnny, Luisa and Sebastian are now the hosting crew for this adventure on wheels. 

The bus now has a bedroom with two twin beds that can be converted into a king, a decent-size bathroom with a full shower along with an efficiency kitchen and living area with a wood stove to keep it all toasty-warm. 

Whenever possible, they cook outside using traditional Argentine country methods.

They then dine next to the fire using an ingenious table that doubles as the back of the couch. 

I was rather skeptical of the old bus concept until I saw it. While the restoration is done rustic, it’s very efficient, clean, cozy and comfortable. Being a guy that’s lived in small campers and motorhomes during much of my recreational time over the past few years, the bus feels huge.  When they have guests, Johny, Lusia and Sebastian live in tents.  

They have selected a number of campsites between the town of Rio Pico and Esquel, where they re-locate the bus as needed during a one-week, one-way trip. Therefore, a guest can see a fairly wide area and variety of rivers and lakes without experiencing undue driving. The whole operation keeps moving in one direction. 

As the guests depart from the bus in Johnnys Toyota Hilux pickup truck for fishing in the morning the bus packs up and then, lo and behold, it’s miraculously set up very close to where the guests were fishing. It’s an innovative, and ingenious idea.

Johnny’s training at the hands of Rance and Travis at Patagonia River Guides is extremely apparent. They’ve known him since he was a boy.  Everything is kept spotlessly clean and nice touches of hospitality are everywhere. In fact, the first morning I woke in camp I stepped outside my camper to find a tray of coffee and juice waiting for me on my step.

The plan was to spend about four days with Johnny, Lucia and Sebastian. The first night in camp went exceptionally well with several bottles of excellent wine getting killed, brave adventures being planned along with dreams discussed and jokes told. The next morning we were a little slow. 

After breakfast, Johnny and I went to fish a small spring creek, about 10 foot wide on average, choked with weeds and full of beautiful, 16 to 22 inch brown trout that sipped beetle and small grasshopper patterns off the surface. 

Johnny and I took turns using my vintage Orvis fiberglass four-weight fly rod. 

It was a rare day of light winds, sunshine and the mountains of Chile looming before us. South American ducks and marsh birds of all kinds squawked and rose up around us as we made our way up the tiny stream. 

Suddenly, the stream split into small branches and wide, flat ponds filled with ducks and wading birds. “I know that this stream comes back together on the other side of this marsh”, Johnny said, “I’d love to go to the other side and see if there’s any fish in it.”  During the previous nights drinking session I told Johnny I’d love to go exploring, as it’s in my nature as a flyfishing guide. I am, after all, Death March Dan, the Alaskan Guide who has marched hundreds to unexplored streams, fish & demise over the past 32 years. Therefore, expectation set, integrity caught in the moment and head still numb from the previous night, we set off together across the shallow spring marsh. 

After three months of sitting on his ass driving a camper alternated by sitting on his ass around a campfire drinking and eating, Death March Dan wasn’t up for the job. After following Johnny for about a half-hour through that mucky, marshy mess I cried uncle then turned and marched directly for the truck, alternately wondering at all the beautiful birds and the countryside surrounding. A group of gauchos was moving a herd of cattle with their dogs.  Always one of my most treasured scenes in Argentina, I paused to watch it all pass. 

Complete exhaustion had set in.  That night, while standing around the campfire waiting for dinner, I became violently chilled and retired to bed, where I would spend the next day flat on my back. 

Thinking I was feeling better, I did join Johnny and Sebastian on a fishing expedition to a lake that held some monstrous trout.  I managed to hook two and landed one. The one I lost was absolutely huge and literally broke my hook in half. Returning to camp after being in the wind & cold all day, I promptly went back to bed for another day and a half.  

While lying in bed utterly without the strength nor appetite to do anything, it was a deep personal disappointment. Here was perhaps the greatest opportunity I had on this four-month trip to experience back country adventure and fishing with young, eager and knowledgeable fly fishermen.  Alas, all I could do was lie in misery & shame while waiting for it to pass. 

Johnny, Luisa and Sebastian reminded me there was no shame in being sick. They did what they could for me the few times I came out of the camper to stretch and say hello.  Mostly, they entertained themselves by joking around like the old friends they are. 

They played with their dog Gia, who loved to jump several feet in the air to grab sticks. A new sport began where sticks would be placed high-up in trees to see if the dog could leap and catch them using the tree has an additional spring point. 

I’ve often remarked that the words are the last-thing to believe in a session of interpersonal communication.  Thus, it’s been an interesting combination of gift and curse on this journey of having limited ability to communicate in Spanish. While we’ve been able to ask for what we’ve needed, we’ve been unable to truly make conversation nor understand rapid Spanish spoken to us, especially as regional accents & slangs are constantly introduced.  Thus, along with a few well-placed words, we’ve had to rely upon a myriad of other clues using & observing  context, pantomime, facial expression or just plain vibe to either get our point across, or understand what is being communicated to us. There’s a trendy new book out about the ancient Korean art of “Nunchi”, and what I’m describing is exactly that. 

While slowly coming back to health in the midst of these three, close friends I was able to see who they really are: kind, generous and loving; appreciating the simple joys of freedom and building their dream together.  

Sebastian turned out to be a real clown. He was very guarded & suspicious of me the first night I arrived in camp until I’d let out a belly laugh. From that point onward he & I began to enjoy one another more and more as our jokes and gestures transcended language.  I determined his personality to be very similar to that of my Lynnette: adult in the mind and child-like in the heart. For instance, he constantly questioned me to see if I was ready to trust a fart. Sebastian’s other job was that a metal and wood fabricating teacher at a local technical school. He also took on an additional responsibility of being a whitewater kayaking instructor, and devoted a lot of time at that for persons with amputated limbs.  While showing me photos, Sebastian was very careful not to let me scroll through his iPhone. Then, later in the trip he showed me why; it seems he meets a lot of bikini-clad women (non-amputee) as a kayaking instructor and gets a lot of action accordingly (your imagination required to finish this visual).  

Again, while traveling I had entered into a situation with expectations and went away having been given a completely different experience than the one I’d sought.  I was a lone traveler suddenly needing care, and was taken in and healed without question.  

Kindness, and humor, are the best medicines.  We are all healers. These medicines I recommend you apply liberally and often to those around you