Reserva Añihue

Like much of the land in this region of Chilean Northern Patagonia, the 10,000 hectares that comprise Reserva Añihue, are owned by rich North Americans. Most of them claim that their primary goal is to protect the land from the lumber companies who have been ravaging it and driving out the native flora and fauna. But as North Americans there`s always a plan to make a profit and so Toninas, the first point of entry into Reserva Añihue, named after the doplhins that are seen almost daily in the bay, has been dedicated to tourism. They market it as `eco-tourism´ which I have come to believe is a contradiction of terms.

I spent my first night in a room at Toninas, the first and more accessible part of the reserve and the part where the tourists stay. The buildings are beautifully contructed with wood from the land (they claim to use only fallen wood in their constructions). There is electricity but it is all solar, and in a place where it rains 80% of the time needs to be used conservatively. I was shocked on my first night by the food I was served for dinner. Fresh lettuce from the garden, served with a side of canned corn, canned green beans, canned olives, and bottled ajì (a kind of hot sauce) made by Heinz or some company like it. I was told that the garden wasn`t producing much because of the rain and so they had to supplement it with canned goods. In the morning, it was homemade bread served with margarine that actually advertised the fact that it contained real milk, powdered instant Nescafe coffee (not unusual in these parts), powdered milk, dulce de leche (I love this stuff), and packaged marmelade. Waiting for my transfer to Añihue, the part of the reserve I would be staying at, I explored the area. I checked out the beautiful cabins that the tourists stay at, saw some dolphins playing in the bay, and I saw the gardens which mysteriously had lots of vegetables growing in them. Beets, carrots, lettuce, onions, cabbage, herbs, and many other things that were absent from our meal the previous night. Something didn`t add up.

I spoke with Felipe, the man who managed the entire reserve. He was from Santiago and has a background in tourism. I was trying to understand what the goal of the land and the volunteer project was and to understand why we were eating so many processed, packaged goods when there was perfectly good produce in the gardens. He didn`t provide any answers to my satisfaction, but rather explained why they chose to use solar electricity to power the 3 computers in his house and how sometimes certain things need to be sacrificed in the interest of comfort. He assured me that things were `very different´ over at Añihue and that a more rustic, wholesome life was led, with composting toilets, etc. He maintained that Añihue was the type of place that `really changes people´ and `people go into Añihue and come out completely transformed´. He was painting a pretty nice picture and I had some high hopes. I was looking to be `changed´.

That afternoon we took his boat across the ocean on a ride that took about 50 minutes over some choppy sea. Along the way we picked up Juliette, a French volunteer who was on her way back to Añihue for her second month there. If she was returning again I thought, it must be a pretty good experience. I focused on the horizon willing myself not to get sick while chatting with Juliette on the way there. When we arrived we were met by Gonzalo, who has been living and working at Añihue for the past two years, and Sarah an American volunteer who also decided to stay longer than the one month she originally planned for.

I quickly learned that life at Añihue wasn`t all that much different or more wholesome or more organic or more rustic than life in Tonina. Yes, they had a composting toilet, but it was located outside and away from the house. There was a perfectly functioning water toilet inside and no one was stressing the benefits of using the dry toilet over the conventional one and so, why would they? Besides, from what I could tell, the byproducts of the dry toilet were not being composted effectively and so rather than harnessing the power of human shit, they were letting it go to waste. Might as well just flush it down if you`re just going to waste it anyway. There was less electricity available to us at Añihue then they had at Tonina. We had fewer solar panels and so most of the energy we had stored, when we had bright enough days to store some, was used toward to internet, watching DVDs on the computer, and charging our iPods. Candles and headlamps were used at night. But again, what really got me was the food, nothing bus cans and packages.

Maybe if I hadn`t had such a phenomenal experience at Sacred Sueños then I Wouldnpt have been so let down and disillusioned by my experience at Añihue. In a lot of ways life at Sacred Sueños was more easily carried out in an environmentally conscious way than at Añihue. The relative proximity of Sacred Sueños to Vilcabamba, a town with regular tourism and a resident hippie population at the bottom of the mountain made access to certain things such as homemade bread (we didn`t have an oven there), real butter, milk for cheese making, and awesome granola more accessible. Though SS wasn`t producing enough vegetables to be self-sustainable at that time they were working toward it, and in the meantime were only a short trip (relatively speaking) down the mountain where they could find shops teeming with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Añihue is in a lot of ways more remote than Sacred Sueños. The nearest town is Raul Marin Balmaceda which has only about 400-500 residents and few resources. There are a few small markets, a medical center, a school, but not much else. The roads through town are not much more than sandy paths. Only recently was the Carretera Austral extended to connect them by road to other towns nearby (the nearest 75km away). Access to fresh produce is limited and most of the goods need to be brought in from far away by ferry. So, once a month they bring in a handful of fresh veggies (4 carrots, 4 onions, 2 cucumbers, 2 heads of garlic, a chunk of squash, a couple bananas and apples) and a bunch of non-perishable goods. But all these canned and packaged goods lead to empty cans and plastic packages, which is waste that eventually gets buried in a hole somewhere on the property (some of it gets taken back to Santiago to get recycled, so they say).

As I spent more time at Añihue I realized that the main problem with the land was not its location or even the climate, it was the vision (and the soil). I couldn`t figure out why we were there. It didn`t seem like we, as volunteers, were working enough for someone to support us. I was able to gather that they were primarily there as an act of conservation, and secondarily there as a tourist destination. No one could provide me with a third reason for our presence. I didn`t get it. The food we ate was packaged or canned, the cups we drank from were `Designed for Starbucks, Made In China´, the blankets we slept under were made in Indonesia or some other far off land. Purchasing these goods, rather than the quality products available locally (thus cutting down on carbon emmissions from transportation and in turn supporting the local economy) didn`t make any sense to me. Instead of buying real butter that comes in minimal packaging we`re buying this crap that comes in a big plastic tubs. If for some reason it is necessary to exist on packaged or processed foods, they could at least make smart choices about which products they purchase.

Our daily activities went like this:

- Wake up between 8 and 10, have breakfast (oatmeal, instant coffee, bread) and then go to the animals. Free the sheep and chickens, collect the eggs, sweep out the sheep and pig pens, feed the pigs, and check on the tomatoes growing in the greenhouse.

- Go back to the house and drink some tea or coffee. Eat more bread.

- If weather permits (10 or so out of the 15 days I was there it rained stormy horrible cold windy rain) we might do some small tasks like cut firewood, build a house to put our boots and shoes in, clean a beach (this meant moving trash out of the sight of the tourists, rather than removing trash for the good of the environment), clearing trails, or making a spot have a campfire.

- Make lunch, usually some sort of soup or pasta with fresh veggies while they lasted, canned once they were gone, and maybe some beans, and bread. These meals were actually pretty decent, based on what we had to work with. The afternoons were mostly free. I usually spent them baking bread, reading, or spinning wool by hand and the girls usually went out in the rain and tried to catch some fish.

- Around 6 or so, we went back out to the animals.

- We usually spent our late evenings checking our email and/or watching a DVD.

Sounds like a lovely and relaxing way to spend a few weeks, right? It definitely was, but I wasn`t just looking for some remote holiday. I wanted to learn and I wanted to get my hands dirty. We did a few small jobs here and there but most of it seemed like busy work and all for the benefit of the tourists when they make the day trip from Tonina to Añihue to see the volunteer program. The eggs from the chickens that we spent time caring for were handed over to Felipe so that they can be cooked for the tourists. I overheard Felipe tell the tourists that the volunteers are living all organically and about how we`re using the dry toilet...all a bunch of BS. We were expected to put on a little routine for their benefit and show them all the wholesome activities we`ve been up to. I didn`t want any part of this so I his upstairs and read a book. I felt like the whole place was just a big farce. It felt the way I felt the first time I put on my new North Face 30 SPF quick dry, zip-off pants made by small hands in Bangladesh.

They were doing some good things at Añihue and it was nice to see that it is possible to retain some ¨comforts¨ of technology in a more conscious way, that woodstove heating systems can efficiently cook your food, heat your water and heat your home. It was just the lack of gardening and the fake image of the place that really put me off. If they could just identify their goals, such as making their garden more productive and therefore reducing the dependence on non-perishable goods, then they could take prioritize steps to composting more effectively (both the animal and human shit) and eventually transform the sandy soil into usable soil so that the next time they get a sunny spell they don`t loose all the crops because the water runs straight out of the soil and the roots burn. I talked to Felipe about they way they were currently composting (all fresh vegetable matter is fed to the pigs, rather than composting, and the pig shit is then cleaned every day and added to a big pile that gets rained on, does not have any other material added to it, and evenutally ends up looking like a big shit lake) and he told me that he believes that with that system, if left long enough, it would just somehow magically turn into wonderful usable compost. I discussed with him what little I knew about composting but with arrogance like his it didn`t make much of a difference.

By the end of my stay, there were talks of doing the animal compost differently. Maybe after our conversation Felipe actually read a book and realized that a lake of shit won`t turn into compost overnight. Hopefully they follow through with it and start to identify goals, clarify a vision for the place and prioritize self-sustainability. In the end, it could be a wonderful place.