JOEL GRIFFETT

Pre-order ‘Long Road to Nowhere: The Lost Years of Richard Trevithick (Part One)’ now, HERE.

The towns got smaller, the accents got even more cryptic. Brand new 4x4s made way for rickety old pickups. I was in the campo now.  

Those intrusive, slightly anxious thoughts clouded my brain once more this morning as I set off from the hotel. They continued whilst I scrambled round looking for another suitable piece of cardboard in a bush by the highway. I crouched in the bus stop and wrote on both sides of my latest sign. On one side ‘Chañaral’ and on the other, ‘Taltal’, my final destination for today. I walked up the road adjacent to the highway and once again squatted on my pack in the afternoon sun at the edge of the petrol station practising my best non-angry face. The wind by the coast set a lot of dust up into the air and battered my already crumpled sign. A complete lack of traffic sent my thoughts straight to the bus terminal back in Caldera. I was in for a long wait.

A local passed by, turned his head and saw me sat there. Curious he walked over, ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Hitchhiking,’ I replied. He repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before and then mumbled something that I couldn’t catch. I thought he was trying to suggest a better place but I still couldn’t hear what he was mumbling, a combination of his refusal to open his mouth, the wind and my poor Spanish. He pointed to the highway and said something about this not being the highway.
‘Well, can you recommend a better place for me?’ I asked, unsure of whether he was trying to help or simply baffled by my presence.
He nodded, ‘the bus station,’
He wasn’t trying to be funny but I couldn’t help but laugh. He wasn’t wrong . Normal people paid money and caught a bus. Ever more these days, I got the inkling that I wasn’t quite normal.
‘This is much more interesting,’ I eventually replied, ‘and cheaper,’
He looked at me blankly for a moment and then wished me good luck with whatever it was that I was doing here. Watching him walk off into the dust, I was puzzled…was this man an incarnation of my thoughts only one hour ago, anthropomorphised and presented before me like a mirror? A brief out of body experience that whispered in my ear, ‘are you really sure about this?’

No less than 10 minutes later, a ride appeared. An olive empresario in a Nissan 4×4 on his way back home to Antofagasta. We spoke at length and there was only one interlude where I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. He dropped me in Chañaral, at the first petrol station, and told me to text him when I got to Antofagasta tomorrow or the day after, he knew a lot of fellow writers in the city – all crazy, he assured me.
I walked to the next petrol station, flipped my sign and resumed my post, sat on my backpack throne looking hopeful, surrounded by swirling winds and dust kicked up by the trucks rolling through north. Just as I debated going back to the first station, a white pickup appeared in front of me and the woman in the passenger seat beckoned me over. The couple were quiet but very generous, offering me coca cola, cigarettes and chocolate. Not much conversation ensued, so I sat quietly in the back marvelling at the Martian scenery all around me and every so often glancing back to make sure the Cornish flag strapped to my bag hadn’t flown off.

I desperately needed a piss but this strange thought told me, if you jump out and they drive off, you’re dead mate. The chances of that were slim but I am riddled with paranoia, so when they dropped me in the middle of nowhere off Route 5, I threw my bags down immediately and pissed with such venom against the pink wall of a bus shelter that it splashed all over me. Emptiness; rust coloured sand stretched out for hundreds of kilometres around me. A sign ahead said ‘Taltal: 22km.’ For no particular reason, I geared up to walk the entire way but I stuck my thumb out on the off chance and the third car that passed stopped and graciously gave me a lift all the way down to Taltal. As if my magic, I had arrived once more at my destination.

The hospederia in Taltal was pure vintage; cash only and colourful décor that was plucked right out of 1950s Cuba. Only the flat-screen TV on the wall and the ‘no smoking’ sign reminded me this was 2022. I felt like I was living within one of my favourite books, The Rum Diary. This room is exactly how I imagined many of the ones that main character Paul Kemp frequented and I should know, I’ve read that book countless times. A bed in one corner, a small desk in the other, where I type these words feeling like I’m in the book. High ceilings finished with wooden slats and a white set of doors that opened up my room to the sounds and smells of the street below and the sea just one block away (If your only knowledge of The Rum Diary is the film then please, read the book. The film is atrocious).

I felt an immense sense of satisfaction upon plonking myself down on the bed, far more than any bus ride could muster. The spontaneity of hitchhiking makes it feel a bit like teleportation. You leave one place in the morning and arrive somewhere else in the blink of an eye without having spent a single peso. All those silly morning thoughts disappear, until I wake up again. In life, you pay for privilege of comfort but uncertainty will always be free. In the long run this would get tiring, but right now I’ll take uncertainty any day.
Have faith; in yourself and others. Resist the urge to take the easy path, striding into the bus station and walking out with a ticket, and you will be rewarded. Mere minutes fly by and boom, your chariot awaits. It could be any shape or size, with any human imaginable behind the wheel. Chance encounters, new experiences and the best possible way to practice a language.

I’ve spoken nothing but Spanish in the last week and it is still atrocious. I am my harshest critic after all but my ability is nonetheless inconsistent. Almost as if I can only speak Spanish on certain days of the week – one moment I’ll be chuffed as the conversation flows well and relatively easily and the next I walk out of a shop feeling stupid because I got confused between six and seven.

The sun sets to the west, obscured by the hills on the coast. The town is cast into shadow, but further up the shore, those slopes burn Martian red in the approaching dusk.  

Please like and share and all that good good if you enjoyed this article. Don’t forget to follow too so you never miss a post!