Foraging Report Card

Centro Silvestre el Sauce – Parral, Chile

Chile may be the number one foraging country that we’ve been through on this trip. It’s probably not even close, actually. 

Let’s start with the stuff along the road.

We already documented all the onions. And, really, anyone who is on these roads on any type of regular basis should never have to buy an onion again. They’re pretty much everywhere. I estimate that Chile loses about $2.7 Billion in GDP just in lost onions alone . . .

Then there’s tomatoes. Tons of tomatoes as well. Admittedly, tomatoes are not quite as resilient when it comes to falling off the truck. They are much more likely to bruise, or to just plain disintegrate. Still, with a little effort it is certainly possible to procure all the tomatoes you could possible want along the Chile highway system.

So that kind of covers a person’s vegetable needs. 

But, of course, fruit is the gold standard for foraging. After a tough start, Chile really rallied in this category today. So many black raspberries. Like a bajillion. Just growing wild along the edge of the highway. And grapes. Lots of grapes growing along the roadways as well. 

We tried some wild green grapes today. At the time, they were the best grapes I’ve ever had. Super sweet. Like candy, really. Now, they do have seeds. Which merits a little downgrade. But Diana, she pretty much discounts the value of seeded fruit completely. Like they go from a clear A to a D- . . . not even worthy of discussion. But is it really that bad to have to spit out a few seeds? It’s not like we’re eating at the Ritz Carlton or something. I mean, Mrs. Manners is not hiding around the corner. I don’t think she even lives in Chile . . . And who cares about Mrs. Manners anyway? Everyone knows she’s boring and stuffy . . .

Now, I said they were the best grapes that I had ever had – at the time. 

That’s true. 

But they were soon surpassed. We ended up obtaining some purple grapes that had been growing in a manicured field in a vineyard. No word on how we procured these grapes – but I will say that the gate was open and it was pretty much like there was a WELCOME sign hanging there. Almost like it said: “Free Samples Here!”

Anyway, after we obtained these grapes we tried them. So good. Juicy. Sweet. Almost divine. Yes, there were a few seeds. But, again, what’s a little seed-spitting between an old married couple? And you have to figure that seed spitting is important to the re-generation of the grape. I don’t know about you – but I like to feel like I’m contributing to society . . . And I think I did my part today by spreading a few of these important seeds . . .

What about apples? Yes, it is true that apples are the ultimate foraging fruit. Good right off the tree. Consistently juicy. Longer shelf life. And Diana can make some mean baked apples when there are enough available. 

Sadly, so far we have not found any available – i.e., we have not found any apple trees that are not secured behind barbed wire. We did find a few pears – they were on a roadside tree – and I picked a few. But they were hard as a rock – like baseballs, really. 

And, really, there are apples available. They’re of the lying-along-the-road-after-falling-off-the-truck variety. Turns out these are not the best eating apples. Maybe they’re good for cooking or something – but as far as eating they are almost as bad as Red Delicious. Which is really saying something. Because Red Delicious are horrible. To this day, I really don’t understand why they are produced at all. Are they part of the Deep State? Some horrible beaucrat trying to get school children to hate fruit? I mean, it seems like they are part of every school lunch. Why? They’re less valuable as a fruit than ketchup is as a vegetable. Even writing about them gives me PSTD because I start thinking about the big brown bruises. Nothing worse than biting into an apple and encountering that soft brown yuckiness . . .

But, sorry, that wasn’t really the point, was it? The point is that so far Chile has been pretty underwhelming on the apple foraging front. 

All told, though, Chile rates a solid B+/A- for fruit foraging – just on the strength of the grapes alone . . .

Next up? Grain. Here, again, Chile does okay. I don’t know where they come from – off of the truck, I suppose. But Chile does have big ears of corn available right along the road. I mean really big. Like, from an American perspective, these ears of corn look pretty suspicious. Like they were grown in a field right outside of Chernobyl. 

Diana received an ear of this corn as part of her lunch today. Diana’s a big corn lover . . . when corn is good. She has this very disturbing way of eating her corn – like she’s a squirrel or something. When she’s done with an ear there is no corn matter left – anywhere. Seriously looks like a animal worked the thing over . . .

Still, despite her rodent-like corn eating habits I have no reason to doubt her corn judgement. After squirrel-izing her ear today she said it was like eating seed corn. No sweetness at all . . .

But if the goal is to check the grains box I guess these nuclear-sized ears at least offer some calories. And it’s not like there are a lot of options in this department. Not every state can have wild rice like Minnesota . . .

So this leaves only the protein type category. Now, really, none of the countries we’ve pedaled through have been super great here. But Mexico did have the fish that our friend Victor netted. That was good.

And Colombia had raw milk. I liked that – even if Dr. Liu was kind of a hater . . .

Chile? It’s kind of sad really. There are no monkeys. There are no deer. There’s not even good road kill in Chile. It’s so bad that there are no vultures even. 

Seriously, it is kind of disturbing. As far as I can tell there are no mammals in Chile other than humans and the animals that we’ve domesticated. There are no squirrels. There are no raccoons. It really doesn’t seem like there is anything out there at all. Just a few feral dogs and maybe a stray cat . . .

I mean, when we go camping we can just leave food sitting around and nothing bothers it. Supposedly, raccoons made their way over the Panama land bridge – but as far as I can tell they never made it out of Colombia. Maybe Colombia is just too attractive for the little bandits. They probably joined the narco gangs . . . They’re like: “Umm, why would we leave again?”

So, in summary, one could be a pretty happy vegetarian, or even fruit-itarian forager around here, and vegan could probably work as well – but for the average carnivore hunter/gatherer this might not be a great place . . .

The ride today? Another long, flat-ish day. Starting to see some more snow covered peaks. Assuming that some of that is volcanoes. 

We – or at least I – started getting pretty tired by the end today. It may be flat, but three successive longer days eventually starts adding up . . .

And I wanted to comment on one real-ish thing as well. We’ve had a few different conversations in the last few days where Chile-ans have been telling us how important security is to Chile-ans. Victor the wine maker the other day. And Jose – an entrepreneur who we met in Talca. Real or not, people are clearly really concerned about a perceived rise in things like robberies and pickpockets and such. 

Victor told us that this contributes to a lot of people liking Trump – even though they apparently refer to him as “urine head.” It’s so weird that we have this president that, in my perception, is basically giving the finger to the rest of the word – but the rest of the world kind of likes the guy. So while America’s urban liberals like us think that everyone will hate Americans because of Trump, the reality seems to me to be much different. Weird. 

Tomorrow we keep charging south . . . Prettier and prettier every day – with more and more water and green. And we’re even starting to see some leaf changing. First time for us in like eighteen months . . .