When I reached the village, it appeared to be completely deserted. What to do now? Did I have to return? That was the safest option. But then I had to go back thirty kilometers against the storm.
I decided to continue in the hope of better luck in the next village. After another twenty kilometers I reached Guanta. A small grocery store was the only place where I found human life. The offer was limited. They had a bottle of water, they had a bottle of coke and they had twenty roles of biscuits.
I felt sorry that I did not have a little more food, but it was not supposed to be. I would not go back fifty kilometers with storm against. Instead I made use of the storm. I flew another sixty kilometers up through a narrow river valley with several thousand meters high, bare mountain slopes.
The obscure villages that were marked on the map had an unclear to non-existent state. One time the appointed village was nothing more than a collapsed house in reality, another time there was not even a trace of something that looked like a house. It was getting late.
The evening light gave the rocks a magical golden glow. I experienced the magic of the moment, but I had to look for a place to stay as well. Within fifteen minutes the night would fall. The Chilean border complex stood like a lonely fortress in the landscape, a last bastion of humanity before the total uninhabited region of the high Andes.
