Villa Pacifica
Authors: Kapka Kassabova
Tags: #travel, #resort, #expat, #storm, #love story, #exotic, #south america
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Villa Pacifica
first published in New Zealand by Penguin Books NZ in 2010
This new, revised edition first published in the UK by Alma Books Limited in 2011
Copyright © Kapka Kassabova, 2011
Paul Bowles epigraph: Copyright © 1972, The Estate of Paul Bowles. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency.
Robert Frost epigraph: âThe Road Not Taken', from
The Poetry of Robert Frost
, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, published by Jonathan Cape. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
Map of Villa Pacifica © Andrea Ross.
Kapka Kassabova asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Mackays
eBook design by
Tetragon
ISBN
: 978-1-84688-151-0
eBook
ISBN
: 978-1-84688-218-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.
Like any Romantic, I had always been vaguely certain that sometime during my life I should come into a magic place which in disclosing its secrets would give me wisdom and ecstasy â perhaps even death
Paul Bowles
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Robert Frost
For my parents, Nik and Diana,
with love and gratitude
Part One
1
U
te was not just well travelled, she was professionally well travelled. So she of all people shouldn't have been surprised that sometimes the road to hell begins with an ordinary bus ride, in an ordinary South American country, at the end of the ordinary year 2009. And on that bus, we sit next to the one we ordinarily love.
Ute and the one she loved had taken the last bus of the day from what the guide book, penned by Ute herself five years ago, called “the regional centre”. That was guide-speak for hideous industrial dump with a car yard at one end and a bus station at the other. Having the transport to get away is its only saving grace, Jerry pronounced. The station was full of squat hustlers with dirty nails who waved bus tickets and yelled in high-pitched voices, “Guaa Guaa Guaaaaaa!” and “Jipi jipi jipiiii!”
“What's this hippie place they're selling?” Jerry enquired.
“Jipilini. Small transport hub a few hours down the main road. Been there once, and that was plenty.”
“Guaa Guaa Guaaaaaa!” the taloned hustlers kept squealing, but nobody paid attention.
“They're paid commission by the passenger, aren't they?” Jerry snorted.
“Well spotted,” Ute said.
“I'm an old South American hand, me. Any questions about South America, I'm your man.” Jerry was good at self-parody. This was only his second time on the continent.
They had just spent two dust-choked days in the “regional centre”, long enough for Ute to trawl around hotels and eateries and update the practical section of the guide, while Jerry stayed behind in cafés, nursing fruit juices and a jet lag headache. They didn't sleep much at night. The noise was diabolical, and it seemed to ooze from every pore of the city: traffic, car alarms, motorbikes, music, people shouting, dogs barking, and car alarms again. Every night, Ute cursed herself for leaving behind in an Andean village three thousand metres above sea level her box of silicon earplugs, the only type that really seals out noise.
There was a new, “revolutionary” government with great plans, which had just been re-elected that year. Along the road, giant billboards announced in excited letters “THE CITIZENS' REVOLUTION IS FORGING AHEAD!” and “THE FATHERLAND NOW BELONGS TO ALL!”
In the rickety bus, the citizens were asleep as usual, mouths agape, while the loudspeakers above them blared out Cumbia and advertisements at eardrum-shattering decibels.
“Are they deaf or brain-dead?” Jerry looked around at the inert passengers.
“All of the above,” Ute said. “Round here you either go brain-dead from lack of sleep or from the music.”
“You mean the same fate awaits us if we hang out here long enough?” he snorted. “Which we won't, thank God.”
Jerry took things personally. He thought the world was out of joint if it didn't coincide with him. He was already not enjoying himself. He was normally great company, but outside his comfort zone he became ratty â another reason why they didn't travel together much, except for pleasantly uneventful holidays to France, Italy and Greece. Four hours on a potholed road, in a stinky clapped-out bus with seats that spilt stuffing was definitely outside his comfort zone.
Ute was worn down after seven weeks on the go and what felt like seven hundred days of broken sleep, but it was a habitual fatigue. Sore buttocks and broken sleep were part of the job description.
Jerry had joined her for this leg of the journey along the coast, to soak up some sunshine in the middle of December. It was his winter holiday.
They rarely travelled together, because his academic holidays never complied with her schedule. Besides, she always travelled alone for work.
She had covered the Andes, which ran along the centre of the country like a spine, and the better part of the coast. They were now headed for the last stretch of it, in the south. It was the least visited.
Puerto Seco wasn't in the guidebook. But it was on a newly printed local map she'd picked up somewhere further up the coast. It seemed to be the closest point to a local attraction â a recently established national park which consisted of dry tropical forest and cloud forest, an unusual combination. Ute was curious. Every travel-guide writer, even when updating their own guide, wants to discover something new. Who knows, she thought, maybe Puerto Seco was worth a look. Jerry agreed to stop overnight, or maybe for a couple of nights. He just wanted a nice beach, somewhere to warm his bones for the second half of the English winter. Ute had a feeling they weren't going to find his dream beach along here, simply because all the good beaches were further up north. But they were already on their way, no point in bringing the mood down.
An hour into their bus journey, when it was still daylight, a salesman got on. The bus slowed down, and on he hopped with his suitcase. He was a young man, well groomed, with slicked-back hair and a buttoned-up pink shirt under his jacket. His baked-earth face glowed with sweat. He addressed the lethargic crowd.
“
Señoras y señores
,” he shouted over the music, holding in one hand a tiny bottle and gripping a seat with the other as the bus dived in and out of potholes as big as moon craters. “Can any of you here honestly say that you are completely healthy? That you have never experienced aches and pains, mental and physical? No, of course not. Can any of you tell me how many green vegetables you eat every day, how much broccoli, tomato, carrots?⦠Ah, you'll say, but we eat banana and plantain.
Señoras y señores
, do you know the nutritional value of a plantain?”
He went on like this for a while. People's heads bobbed up and down, and he staggered about the front of the bus like a man on the deck of a ship in a sea storm.
“That's one hell of a sales pitch,” Jerry said. He didn't understand Spanish, but it was obvious that the man was blabbering. The salesman didn't make eye contact with any one person; his glazed eyes hovered over their heads. He finally came to the point.
“Have you heard the magic word âginseng'?” He held up the tiny bottle for everyone to see. “Ginseng means health and long life. The Koreans and the Chinese take this regularly, and do you know that China's oldest man, who is a hundred and twenty years old, has a lover of twenty-five?
SÃ, señores
, you too could enjoy that if you started taking ginseng regularly.”
Someone chuckled.
“What I have here is pure extract of ginseng,” the vendor went on. “You can buy it or not buy it, it's your choice. You can buy health and a long life for three
dolaritos
apiece, five
dolaritos
for the pair, or you can continue to suffer fatigue, anxiety, arthritis, indigestion, uterine cramps, cancer, erectile dysfunction and early death.”
He cheerfully distributed tiny bottles to the audience. Jerry took one too. A couple of women were already reaching for their bags.
“Thank you,” Ute said to him when he passed to collect the unwanted bottles, “we already have some.” Lying is a form of politeness. Ute had learnt this long ago.
“Thank you,
señora
,” he lied back, for he knew this too, “you're very kind.”
His business completed, he sat in a free seat across from them, to wait for the next stop. They were enveloped in a damp cloud of cheap
eau de cologne
. After a while, he leant towards them and spoke to Ute, glancing at her inï¬amed face.
“
Señora
, ginseng is also excellent for skin ailments.”
Ute grimaced a smile. “
Bueno
,” she said. “I'll remember that.”
The faces of women were open to judgement everywhere in the world. Something about a woman's face made it a free-for-all. Anybody with half a brain had the right to comment on female beauty or the lack of it. Not that Ute was ugly. It was just hard to see her face properly when the evil ï¬ower of eczema blossomed over her cheeks, nose and eyelids.
“What's your destination?” the man shouted over the music â which, unbelievably, had just got louder.
“Puerto Seco,” Ute shouted back. The salesman fixed her with his cherry-black eyes.
“Are you visiting someone there?”
“No, just stopping for a day or two. Do you know it?”
“Yes, I'm from a village further down the road. Not for tourists. Puerto Seco is not for tourists either. But the national park is nice.”
“Is there anywhere to stay in Puerto Seco?” Ute asked.
He shook his head. “I don't know, there used to be⦔
A fresh explosion of Cumbia from the loudspeaker above their heads wiped out some of his words. “I don't know⦠still⦠animals⦠Pacifica⦔
“What?” Ute shouted.
“Villa Pacifica,” he shouted back. Then he got up, waved goodbye and moved to the front of the bus. The bus slowed down without stopping, and he jumped off nimbly. Ute and Jerry looked out the grubby window. He was already walking along the road with his case. He didn't look up at the bus as it passed him.
“What was that about?” Jerry asked. “Were you asking him about Puerto Seco?”
“Yeah, places to stay. Apparently there's none. It's not a touristy place.”
“There's a surprise,” Jerry snorted.
“But there's one place called Villa Pacifica, or something like that. I'm not sure if it's for people or animals though. He wasn't actually sure if it's still there. I didn't hear everything he said.”
“First he's keen to talk to you, then suddenly he's keen as hell to get moving.”
“It was his stop. Anyway,” Ute said brightly, always bright when faced with Jerry's fussiness, “it's good to have at least one recommendation about a place to stay. It could be interesting â this Dry Port.”
“Good name anyway. And we might get a couple of nights' decent sleep out there. This noise and dust are driving me nuts. Have you got any water left?”
They took a last sip each from the warm plastic bottle, and he put a sweaty hand on her thigh. They had another bottle of water in her pack, somewhere in the viscera of the bus. She leant into him and sniffed his familiar sweaty, chicken-soup smell.
And she thought, quite out of the blue, that she would leave the last sip of water for him if they were both dying of thirst. But would he, she wondered hazily, would he do it for her? Then she berated herself for thinking such neurotic thoughts.