Today I visited the Parque de La Paz, a former torture and murder site during the Pinochet regime that has since been converted into a memorial garden. I had read about it in my guide book and thought it would probably be worth visiting, although they don’t give tours unless you have a prearranged group, so I would have to figure things out on my own. I arrived around one in the afternoon and spent some time exploring.
At the time that the site was used for torture it was an old colonial-syle villa, where a rich family had built a large house, surrounded by high walls and with private stables, a pool, and plenty of trees. All of these pretty, enjoyable attributes were put to work when it changed to be a torture site. The horse stables were re-constructed to be tiny, completely encapsulated cells which five or six people at a time were jammed into. The large house was a base of operations and a site of prisoner torture. A water tower next to the pool was the main torture location, with an electricity table and various torture instruments placed in the bottom. Further up, the DINA (the national “intelligence” agency) built two levels of tiny cells, where prisoners were once again stuffed into quarters so small that they couldn’t sit down to sleep. Although the pool was never actually used for water torture (which did take place at the site, just in other parts) it was used for psychological torture. Family members of people working for the DINA would come to the Villa during the weekends, and the children played in the pool while prisoners were held captive and tortured in the structure directly next to them. The large, beautiful trees were used at times to tie prisoners to while they were tortured.
This part of my visit was interesting and informative, but I wouldn’t exactly describe it as having a terrifically strong impact on me. However, as I was leaving the guard told me that there would be a tour starting in about an hour, if I was interested in having more information about the park. Realizing that guided tours are almost always worth taking advantage of, and being quite fascinated with the subject, I decided to stick around.
I walked down the street and bought a whole, fresh pineapple for a dollar, and ate it for lunch while I waited. (That doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of this, but it’s pretty awesome in its own right.)
The tour group I joined was made up of about 25 high school junior or senior aged students. The guides were a female volunteer who works there and an elderly gentleman who soon divulged the fact that he was tortured at that very site. He spent a great deal of time describing his experiences with torture, incarceration and the camaraderie that existed amongst the prisoners. Apparently he had been taken prisoner because he had been a member of the military, but with left-leaning politics, before Pinochet came into power,
Some of the more interesting parts of the site included a place called “La Sala de Memorias,” the Room of Memories. This was a small pool house between the pool and the water tower, which the DINA had used as a location for false document fabrication. They were known to make forms of identification which would name them as public works employees, for example, as a way to covertly gain information about possible subversives. One of the few original buildings still standing on the site, (nearly everything was destroyed shortly before Pinochet was removed from power, in order to eliminate evidence) it now houses shadow-box type dioramas where families have donated small personal items that belonged to their loved ones, and written short explanations of who they were, what they were like and what activities or thoughts of theirs had resulted in their murder. Among the “desaparacidos” (the “disappeared,” which is the collective name for people who were murdered but a body was never recovered) were two pregnant women and a woman with a 6 month old son at the time she was taken. Most of the individuals were in their early or mid twenties – my age.
Also very impressive was the water tower, which has been reconstructed to be just like it was at the time of its use as a torture center. Tiny, completely enclosed cells with sliding doors at the floor level were used to house prisoners; our guide told us that he once spent a month in this block of cells with a group of 18 other people. Of his group, only 6 survived. He told us about a woman he had been kept there with who was seven months pregnant, and shared with us the sort of things they all did together to occupy the time. He told us about a cellmate of his who had been taken prisoner when he had a two day old son, and told us that talking about this son was something they did often. This particular cellmate was eventually killed by the DINA.
Our guide also told us why so many people were simply considered disappeared, a reason which correlated with the strategic location of this particular torture site. An easy and discreet was to dispose of the bodies of individuals who died in the torture process was to take them by helicopter – there’s an airport right next to where we were, I saw it on my way to the park today- and dump them into the sea.
As he finished the tour, our guide shared with us the two most important reasons that he dedicates his free time to giving these tours. For him, this is a way to give a small homage to the people with whom he suffered, but did not survive. Additionally, this is his effort to preserve the memory of what happened, a way to ensure that the future generations of Chile will realize what constitutes their past. I was incredibly grateful to the man for sharing everything that he did with us, and I told him that when our tour was over. We commenced to converse, and he asked me where I was from. Upon finding out that I’m from the US, he asked me to please, share with other Americans when I go back what I had learned today.
When people think of Chile, they often realize that a dictator (many don’t even know his name) ruled the country for a while. That’s about it. They don’t think about the fact that thousands of people were brutally murdered, nor do they acknowledge the fact that our own government had a strong hand in bringing about the Pinochet dictatorship and supporting it for a very long time. That’s not hearsay or legend, its documented fact. I didn’t even realize it until very recently, but a Chilean diplomat was murdered via carbomb by Pinochet’s people in Washington, DC right before the coup d’etat took place, and it’s documented in public record that our government knew it was going to happen, for example. It’s just as important for us, as Americans, to realize what took place as it is for Chileans.
So…here’s the moral of my story. I’m sharing this story with you, as this gentleman asked me to do. Keep this sort of thing in mind when you vote, please. The US is a very powerful country, more powerful than we as everyday citizens usually take the time to realize. Our ability to have a say in who is the head of our nation has an affect that reaches much farther than we as individuals ever envision it to. It’s important that we make wise decisions, based on more than our selfish feelings about gun control or tax rates. Just think about it, and make smart decisions.
And that’s my soapbox for today.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Last Day on Easter Island...I Finally Finished My Journal!
DAY 5
Our fifth day on the island we woke up rather late (by our standards – 10 o’clock is relatively early by Chilean standards.) It had stormed all night long, with rain and wind and the works, and continued showering off and on all morning. This didn’t exactly encourage us to get out of bed or go exploring, by any means. Also, we didn’t really have any plans left; we’d honestly seen all of the important sights of the island in four days. Napohe had told us the night before that if we went down by the waterfront in a certain area there were giant sea turtles we could watch swimming around. Right around that same area we had found a panadaria (a bread store) that sells fresh bread which is actually good, something which is unfortunately a completely foreign concept around here. It’s funny, actually, because no one buys store-bought, bagged bread, they all buy fresh bread every day at the bakery. However, instead of having fluffy, crispy on the outside soft on the inside tasty fill you up with goodness flavor, all of the bread is awful. The most popular kind is a sort of hard, flat, incredibly dense disc that is served with pretty much every meal.
That’s why this particular panadaria was so special; the woman who owned knew that not all bread has to be sucky, and as a result, hers was awesome. In an effort to take advantage of her bread store, since we knew that good bread is impossible to find in Santiago, our lunches almost the whole time we were there were some variation of fresh avocado, bread and various additional things. That day once again we grabbed an avocado, bought some bread at her store and headed down to check out the sea turtle scene.
We looked around where he had told us to go, but the directions he gave us were confusing from the beginning and we didn’t exactly know where to look. It was about lunch time, though, so we went and found a bench looking over the ocean and started in on the fresh bread, avocado and tuna fish we’d brought. Right as we got good and settled, with the can of tuna open and our avocado cut, a sudden downpour commenced. That’s great. Luckily, there was a scuba shop nearby that happened to have a little round table and plastic chairs sitting under a canopy in front of the store. We picked up our things and hurried over there, where we finished the rest of our meal eating at their little table. Every once in a while the people from the shop poked their heads out and looked at us a little funny, which seemed odd, but no one was using the table and it made a lot more sense for us to sit there than it did to sit in the rain. We finished our food, the rain having stopped a few minutes before, and were just about to go when one of the shop workers brought out a large tray with hot water, a selection of tea and coffee, three coffee mugs and sugar. He set it down in front of us, said “té” and went back into the store.
We had no idea what the entire interaction was about. The man who owned the store and we had seen several times appeared to be Chilean, not Rapa Nui, which made any sort of generosity like this rather unprecedented. In general, generous is not a word that comes to mind when describing Chileans. We weren’t sure if they were bringing this out to us because they thought we were having tea, which would make sense to them because no one eats lunch here as early as noon ever, or because they felt like we were using something of theirs and wanted an excuse to charge us for it. The store owner came and stood in the doorway for a few seconds watching us, as if waiting for some sort of reaction, then went back inside and waited. The whole exchange was very strange.
Since we weren’t sure what it was all about, but were pretty sure the store owner was acting weird, we decided to just leave without touching his offering. We got up from the table and went around back, where we thought there was a street or alley leading to the main road. Unfortunately, we were quite wrong. There was a small parking lot, and then it just turned into back yards of people’s shops and homes. We found ourselves standing in the middle of an unkempt backyard-like area, with tall wet grass that we were going to have to walk through and a fence we would have to cross to get back to the road. What made things better was the fact that in this same open area was a Rapa Nui couple having a very loud and angry argument in Rapa Nui. The woman was backed up against a wall, crying while the man yelled at her quite emphatically and intensely. Not exactly something you want to walk right into the middle of.
We quietly made our way through the tall grass and hopped a fence at the other end, then headed back up towards Napohe’s house because we didn’t exactly have any other plans or ideas. As we were walking that direction it started to rain again. Luckily we were right in the area of a large indoor artesian market where all of the local people sell their tourist wares. Neither of us had much interest in buying anything, realizing fully well that it was probably all expensive, but it seemed like a nice idea to escape the rain and at least see what sort of things they were selling.
We looked through the booths for a while until the rain stopped, then went the rest of the way up the hill to Napohe’s house. There, we encountered another American student-studying-in-Chile compadre who Napohe had befriended that morning at the airport and offered to let stay in his house as well.
Robert, this guy, turned out to be quite a character. He’s about as square as a rubik’s cube, but really nice. The funniest part about him was the fact that, on top of a strong gringo accent with hints of Kentucky flavor, one of his early Spanish teachers had been from Argentina. This had a strong affect on his pronunciation, and alone would have been pretty funny. However, in addition to this, he’s in the process of reading Don Quixote, and as a result of that he enjoys using very antiquated words pronounced with a strong Spanish accent – which also by itself would have been hilarious. The result was a very distinctive manner of speaking, to be sure.
Not long after we had started getting to know Robert and began to understand the situation a bit better, Napohe showed up. He started to explain everything to us, but it quickly became obvious that we’d figured it all out and were totally cool with the situation.
Napohe had to run some errands, and he invited us (including Robert) to come along with us. Before getting started on his things, though, he took us down to the waterfront again to make sure we saw the turtles. We only saw one, but it was pretty cool to watch swimming around. Napohe saw my skin that day, and as it was considerably nastier looking, he suggested that I go into the ocean for a bit. He was quite convinced that sea water is the best healing agent on earth and all I needed to do to reach a cure was wade around for a bit.
Figuring it couldn’t possibly hurt and that he might be at least partially right I took his advice and waded into the ocean for a few minutes while everyone else was looking at the turtles. It did feel a bit better afterwards, which was really nice, even though it might have been all mental.
The three of us accompanied Napohe on his errands for a while and then he brought us back to the house. He had to help a neighbor fix his water heater, and took off to go get some supplies. During the time we had been running the errands my skin had started to burn and itch like never before, and by the time we got to the house it was pretty agonal. What’s more, it had also started to change colors, from a deep dark purple-ish red to bright rose pink. Hmmm. Although Napohe seemed convinced that it wasn’t that big of a deal, I didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the idea of leaving the island with some sort of unknown tropical rash. It seemed like an especially bad idea since I didn’t know exactly what had cause the reaction to occur, and if things got worse after I returned to Santiago I wouldn’t have the ability to tell any doctors what they were dealing with. It seemed more likely that if anything, local doctors might be familiar with whatever plant had irritated my skin. These facts, combined with the increasing level of discomfort, ended up leading us to the island hospital.
I was actually kind of excited to see the hospital, because I had read that initially it had been a US Army hospital and when the US Army left they turned over the facilities to the people of the island. I don’t know why that made it more exciting, but somehow it did.
We thought we had a general idea where it was located, and it’s not exactly a large metropolis or anything so we didn’t think it should be too hard to find. However, we started out walking in exactly the wrong direction and proceeded to spend a good half and hour longer than necessary en route. Finally we asked a passing car, who not only told us where it was but offered to take us there as soon as the dropped of their passenger. Thinking that this sounded like a fine plan, we agreed and waited alongside the road until he came back, picked us up and delivered us to the front door. This was all really rather fortunate, because the pain I was experiencing had continued to grow in intensity for some time and by now I was actually quite uncomfortable.
I had long since forgotten about the front page newspaper article I had read on the flight over, but it’s relevance in this particular situation quickly refreshed my memory. Unfortunately enough, there happened to be a “paro naciónal,” a national strike, in the healthcare system. Bummer. That meant that they were only seeing dire emergencies, which were listed on a handmade poster as being things like babies with fevers and car accidents. Initially, seeing that poster was a bit disheartening, but more disheartening were the look on the face of the triage nurse when I showed her my leg, and her agreement that I needed medical attention. Uh-oh?
I ended up waiting in the bare, slightly dirty lobby for about two hours, luckily with the company of KellyAnne, Robert, and two very entertaining two year olds playing and waiting as well. Finally the nurse called me in, and I entered the central room they were using to treat people. It looked exactly like the Army hospitals in the movies; initially an open workspace with a countertop for filling out paperwork and a scale, then a long row of cubicles, each with an old, dingy gurney, separated by sheets. I wish that I had taken pictures of the hospital, because its stark, antiquated nature was really something to see.
I entered the cubicle she led me to and sat down on the gurney, hoping to speak with someone soon as the discomfort was becoming, well, uncomfortable. “Soon” turned out to be 45 minutes later, when a doctor came in, glanced at my skin, wrote a few notes on a piece of paper, told me I’d had an allergic reaction to a plant (duh, genius brain), said I would need a shot today and a week-long treatment of antihistamines, and left. In all, nearly three hours of waiting for three minutes of speaking with a doctor. The nurse came in and gave me a quick shot of antihistamines and corticosteroids, which turned out to be just what I needed as the burning and itching disappeared nearly immediately.
The most surprising thing about this entire experience was the fact that, even after receiving an injection in the emergency room, I didn’t have to pay a dime! I knew that Chile has a very good public healthcare system, but this was amazing! I have healthcare insurance, but I didn’t have any of the information with me nor did I have any idea how I was going to get it if they asked. To be honest, I showed up without any acceptable method of payment, and it was never an issue.
After the hospital we walked back to Napohe’s house, where he had apparently finished helping the friend with the water heater and left again. The three of us cooked a dinner of noodles and sauce together, cleaned up and were trying to figure out what to do next when Napohe showed back up.
We spent the night rather relaxed, hanging out at Napohe’s house with him, Robert and a Rapa Nui friend of Napohe’s who had stopped by and didn’t end up leaving until late. More interesting conversations with interesting people and interesting viewpoints, a recurring aspect of the trip that kind of turned out to be a major bonus and somewhat of a highlight.
Getting up not entirely early the next morning, we just had time to pack our things, eat a quick breakfast, say goodbye to Robert and Napohe (who we somehow never managed to get a picture of, which is really most unfortunate) and head to the airport. We didn’t have any sort of boarding pass, since our tickets were all taken care of electronically and we didn’t have computer access on the island. We thought we remembered our flight time, but actually arrived at the airport exactly as it was boarding and nearly didn’t make it. That just added an element of excitement, I suppose.
The flight back was absolutely divine; apparently the wind has a huge affect on the trip and it was about an hour and a half shorter than the trip there had been. In addition to this, the in-flight food was actually really good, with a meal of salmon and rice. Not only that, but they gave us free wine and a free after-meal “bajativa” of Bailey’s to sip on along with our coffee, which the consistently re-filled. I don’t exactly know why, but I hadn’t expected much of LAN (the Chilean national airline), but I was honestly quite impressed with our trip.
We arrived back in Santiago sunburnt, rashed (me, anyways) and exhausted, but also full of excitement about our trip. On the plane ride back, looking around at the other passengers, we confidently felt like probably no one else on the plane had a better trip than us. Not only that, but we had each managed to spend only about $40 (after the plane ticket, which was relatively cheap thanks to our student discounts) on an island that is said to cost at least that much a day just for food.
And that’s our trip. This has taken me 16 pages to write, so congratulations on getting to the end, both to you, and to me!
Our fifth day on the island we woke up rather late (by our standards – 10 o’clock is relatively early by Chilean standards.) It had stormed all night long, with rain and wind and the works, and continued showering off and on all morning. This didn’t exactly encourage us to get out of bed or go exploring, by any means. Also, we didn’t really have any plans left; we’d honestly seen all of the important sights of the island in four days. Napohe had told us the night before that if we went down by the waterfront in a certain area there were giant sea turtles we could watch swimming around. Right around that same area we had found a panadaria (a bread store) that sells fresh bread which is actually good, something which is unfortunately a completely foreign concept around here. It’s funny, actually, because no one buys store-bought, bagged bread, they all buy fresh bread every day at the bakery. However, instead of having fluffy, crispy on the outside soft on the inside tasty fill you up with goodness flavor, all of the bread is awful. The most popular kind is a sort of hard, flat, incredibly dense disc that is served with pretty much every meal.
That’s why this particular panadaria was so special; the woman who owned knew that not all bread has to be sucky, and as a result, hers was awesome. In an effort to take advantage of her bread store, since we knew that good bread is impossible to find in Santiago, our lunches almost the whole time we were there were some variation of fresh avocado, bread and various additional things. That day once again we grabbed an avocado, bought some bread at her store and headed down to check out the sea turtle scene.
We looked around where he had told us to go, but the directions he gave us were confusing from the beginning and we didn’t exactly know where to look. It was about lunch time, though, so we went and found a bench looking over the ocean and started in on the fresh bread, avocado and tuna fish we’d brought. Right as we got good and settled, with the can of tuna open and our avocado cut, a sudden downpour commenced. That’s great. Luckily, there was a scuba shop nearby that happened to have a little round table and plastic chairs sitting under a canopy in front of the store. We picked up our things and hurried over there, where we finished the rest of our meal eating at their little table. Every once in a while the people from the shop poked their heads out and looked at us a little funny, which seemed odd, but no one was using the table and it made a lot more sense for us to sit there than it did to sit in the rain. We finished our food, the rain having stopped a few minutes before, and were just about to go when one of the shop workers brought out a large tray with hot water, a selection of tea and coffee, three coffee mugs and sugar. He set it down in front of us, said “té” and went back into the store.
We had no idea what the entire interaction was about. The man who owned the store and we had seen several times appeared to be Chilean, not Rapa Nui, which made any sort of generosity like this rather unprecedented. In general, generous is not a word that comes to mind when describing Chileans. We weren’t sure if they were bringing this out to us because they thought we were having tea, which would make sense to them because no one eats lunch here as early as noon ever, or because they felt like we were using something of theirs and wanted an excuse to charge us for it. The store owner came and stood in the doorway for a few seconds watching us, as if waiting for some sort of reaction, then went back inside and waited. The whole exchange was very strange.
Since we weren’t sure what it was all about, but were pretty sure the store owner was acting weird, we decided to just leave without touching his offering. We got up from the table and went around back, where we thought there was a street or alley leading to the main road. Unfortunately, we were quite wrong. There was a small parking lot, and then it just turned into back yards of people’s shops and homes. We found ourselves standing in the middle of an unkempt backyard-like area, with tall wet grass that we were going to have to walk through and a fence we would have to cross to get back to the road. What made things better was the fact that in this same open area was a Rapa Nui couple having a very loud and angry argument in Rapa Nui. The woman was backed up against a wall, crying while the man yelled at her quite emphatically and intensely. Not exactly something you want to walk right into the middle of.
We quietly made our way through the tall grass and hopped a fence at the other end, then headed back up towards Napohe’s house because we didn’t exactly have any other plans or ideas. As we were walking that direction it started to rain again. Luckily we were right in the area of a large indoor artesian market where all of the local people sell their tourist wares. Neither of us had much interest in buying anything, realizing fully well that it was probably all expensive, but it seemed like a nice idea to escape the rain and at least see what sort of things they were selling.
We looked through the booths for a while until the rain stopped, then went the rest of the way up the hill to Napohe’s house. There, we encountered another American student-studying-in-Chile compadre who Napohe had befriended that morning at the airport and offered to let stay in his house as well.
Robert, this guy, turned out to be quite a character. He’s about as square as a rubik’s cube, but really nice. The funniest part about him was the fact that, on top of a strong gringo accent with hints of Kentucky flavor, one of his early Spanish teachers had been from Argentina. This had a strong affect on his pronunciation, and alone would have been pretty funny. However, in addition to this, he’s in the process of reading Don Quixote, and as a result of that he enjoys using very antiquated words pronounced with a strong Spanish accent – which also by itself would have been hilarious. The result was a very distinctive manner of speaking, to be sure.
Not long after we had started getting to know Robert and began to understand the situation a bit better, Napohe showed up. He started to explain everything to us, but it quickly became obvious that we’d figured it all out and were totally cool with the situation.
Napohe had to run some errands, and he invited us (including Robert) to come along with us. Before getting started on his things, though, he took us down to the waterfront again to make sure we saw the turtles. We only saw one, but it was pretty cool to watch swimming around. Napohe saw my skin that day, and as it was considerably nastier looking, he suggested that I go into the ocean for a bit. He was quite convinced that sea water is the best healing agent on earth and all I needed to do to reach a cure was wade around for a bit.
Figuring it couldn’t possibly hurt and that he might be at least partially right I took his advice and waded into the ocean for a few minutes while everyone else was looking at the turtles. It did feel a bit better afterwards, which was really nice, even though it might have been all mental.
The three of us accompanied Napohe on his errands for a while and then he brought us back to the house. He had to help a neighbor fix his water heater, and took off to go get some supplies. During the time we had been running the errands my skin had started to burn and itch like never before, and by the time we got to the house it was pretty agonal. What’s more, it had also started to change colors, from a deep dark purple-ish red to bright rose pink. Hmmm. Although Napohe seemed convinced that it wasn’t that big of a deal, I didn’t exactly feel comfortable with the idea of leaving the island with some sort of unknown tropical rash. It seemed like an especially bad idea since I didn’t know exactly what had cause the reaction to occur, and if things got worse after I returned to Santiago I wouldn’t have the ability to tell any doctors what they were dealing with. It seemed more likely that if anything, local doctors might be familiar with whatever plant had irritated my skin. These facts, combined with the increasing level of discomfort, ended up leading us to the island hospital.
I was actually kind of excited to see the hospital, because I had read that initially it had been a US Army hospital and when the US Army left they turned over the facilities to the people of the island. I don’t know why that made it more exciting, but somehow it did.
We thought we had a general idea where it was located, and it’s not exactly a large metropolis or anything so we didn’t think it should be too hard to find. However, we started out walking in exactly the wrong direction and proceeded to spend a good half and hour longer than necessary en route. Finally we asked a passing car, who not only told us where it was but offered to take us there as soon as the dropped of their passenger. Thinking that this sounded like a fine plan, we agreed and waited alongside the road until he came back, picked us up and delivered us to the front door. This was all really rather fortunate, because the pain I was experiencing had continued to grow in intensity for some time and by now I was actually quite uncomfortable.
I had long since forgotten about the front page newspaper article I had read on the flight over, but it’s relevance in this particular situation quickly refreshed my memory. Unfortunately enough, there happened to be a “paro naciónal,” a national strike, in the healthcare system. Bummer. That meant that they were only seeing dire emergencies, which were listed on a handmade poster as being things like babies with fevers and car accidents. Initially, seeing that poster was a bit disheartening, but more disheartening were the look on the face of the triage nurse when I showed her my leg, and her agreement that I needed medical attention. Uh-oh?
I ended up waiting in the bare, slightly dirty lobby for about two hours, luckily with the company of KellyAnne, Robert, and two very entertaining two year olds playing and waiting as well. Finally the nurse called me in, and I entered the central room they were using to treat people. It looked exactly like the Army hospitals in the movies; initially an open workspace with a countertop for filling out paperwork and a scale, then a long row of cubicles, each with an old, dingy gurney, separated by sheets. I wish that I had taken pictures of the hospital, because its stark, antiquated nature was really something to see.
I entered the cubicle she led me to and sat down on the gurney, hoping to speak with someone soon as the discomfort was becoming, well, uncomfortable. “Soon” turned out to be 45 minutes later, when a doctor came in, glanced at my skin, wrote a few notes on a piece of paper, told me I’d had an allergic reaction to a plant (duh, genius brain), said I would need a shot today and a week-long treatment of antihistamines, and left. In all, nearly three hours of waiting for three minutes of speaking with a doctor. The nurse came in and gave me a quick shot of antihistamines and corticosteroids, which turned out to be just what I needed as the burning and itching disappeared nearly immediately.
The most surprising thing about this entire experience was the fact that, even after receiving an injection in the emergency room, I didn’t have to pay a dime! I knew that Chile has a very good public healthcare system, but this was amazing! I have healthcare insurance, but I didn’t have any of the information with me nor did I have any idea how I was going to get it if they asked. To be honest, I showed up without any acceptable method of payment, and it was never an issue.
After the hospital we walked back to Napohe’s house, where he had apparently finished helping the friend with the water heater and left again. The three of us cooked a dinner of noodles and sauce together, cleaned up and were trying to figure out what to do next when Napohe showed back up.
We spent the night rather relaxed, hanging out at Napohe’s house with him, Robert and a Rapa Nui friend of Napohe’s who had stopped by and didn’t end up leaving until late. More interesting conversations with interesting people and interesting viewpoints, a recurring aspect of the trip that kind of turned out to be a major bonus and somewhat of a highlight.
Getting up not entirely early the next morning, we just had time to pack our things, eat a quick breakfast, say goodbye to Robert and Napohe (who we somehow never managed to get a picture of, which is really most unfortunate) and head to the airport. We didn’t have any sort of boarding pass, since our tickets were all taken care of electronically and we didn’t have computer access on the island. We thought we remembered our flight time, but actually arrived at the airport exactly as it was boarding and nearly didn’t make it. That just added an element of excitement, I suppose.
The flight back was absolutely divine; apparently the wind has a huge affect on the trip and it was about an hour and a half shorter than the trip there had been. In addition to this, the in-flight food was actually really good, with a meal of salmon and rice. Not only that, but they gave us free wine and a free after-meal “bajativa” of Bailey’s to sip on along with our coffee, which the consistently re-filled. I don’t exactly know why, but I hadn’t expected much of LAN (the Chilean national airline), but I was honestly quite impressed with our trip.
We arrived back in Santiago sunburnt, rashed (me, anyways) and exhausted, but also full of excitement about our trip. On the plane ride back, looking around at the other passengers, we confidently felt like probably no one else on the plane had a better trip than us. Not only that, but we had each managed to spend only about $40 (after the plane ticket, which was relatively cheap thanks to our student discounts) on an island that is said to cost at least that much a day just for food.
And that’s our trip. This has taken me 16 pages to write, so congratulations on getting to the end, both to you, and to me!
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Rapa Nui, Day 4
DAY 4
We woke up in the morning to an empty house, and got our things together to walk up to Rano Kao. It was a pretty nice day, way better than the rainy storm which had continued on all of the night before, and we started out in the direction of Rano Kao. Scaling the volcano turned out to be a several hour, relatively tiring task. We finally reached the top, where we were almost immediately blown off by the extreme, powerful wind which sweeps across the top of the crater off of the ocean to reach us on the other side.
Even though a road exists which winds around the crater a little below the rim, indubitably existing where it does to avoid the full wrath of the wind, our adventuresome selves weren’t about to take the easy way out. Nearly exactly directly across from where we had arrive was a ranger station and the Orongo park, where you can visit the location of the Bird-Man Cult ceremonies and see the two rock islets off-shore where rituals were performed. We circled the rim of the volcano, feeling through the entire walk like every time we lifted one foot off of the ground we were risking being totally blown off the face of the island.
When we arrived at the Orongo ranger station we were greeted by two of the funniest and friendliest park rangers imaginable, who chatted with us and told us jokes for quite a while before giving us a student discount to visit the park. We went out onto the cliff where the park is located and checked out all of the sights, feeling the whole time like we were in some precarious, life-or-death balance between our desire to live and the wind’s desire to sweep us into the ocean crashing into the cliff hundreds of feet below us. Unfortunately, none of the pictures either of us took accurately captures how uncertain my survival felt through the whole process. In all honesty, I don’t think we were ever actually in any sort of danger of being blown off the volcano, but the whole experience was a lot more adrenalin-filled when we imagined otherwise.
Upon returning from the cliff to the ranger station, we inquired about the possibility of descending into the crater, which seemed like it would be absolutely impossible to do when looking from about. However, the rangers told us that yes, in fact, there was fruit growing in the bottom, and if we returned to the place where we had initially arrived at the top of the volcano we would find a path winding its way down into the mysterious depths. What’s more, they gave us directions for finding a little-known of petroglyph hidden in the depths of the forest. Encouraged by their advice and instructions for making it down the crater, we continued on with our adventure, since the idea of descending a volcanic crater in order to eat tropical fruits had seduced us since we first knew it was possible.
We started down into the canyon on a steep, switch-backing trail, slipping on the shale rocks while tall grass scratched our bare legs. From above, the crater appeared to be divided into three distinct parts; at the very bottom lies a deep blue lake covered in patches of “rotting vegetation,” as the guide books said. It reminded me of the descriptions I’ve read of the floating gardens and cultivating methods used in ancient Mexico City. From the bottom of the lake to about halfway up the crater a huge forest is formed, described by the park rangers as being so dense and tall that at times daylight is incapable of penetrating through. The upper half, in sharp contrast, was bright and hot, reminiscent of pictures of the Grand Canyon. As we slid down the shale, I noticed a patch of nispero plants growing off to one side. Eager for the feast of tropical fruits to begin, we rushed over and began devouring them, while discussing the distinct possibility that we would each gorge ourselves on so much fruit that it would be impossible to climb our way out of the crater once we reached the bottom.
It was during this conversation that I realized the truly Shakespearean nature of our situation. Seduced by our insatiable appetites for the fruit which I have already describe my passion for, we were descending down an ancient volcanic crater in search of more and more and more. In order to reach the dark (and somewhat foreboding) forest we had to first pass through a thicket of leaf-bare thorn trees which we hadn’t noticed from above. At that particular moment in time, it seemed perfectly feasible for us to eat our way to the bottom, feeling sicker and sicker with each fruit and yet never being able to stop. Finally, we would reach the deep dark heart of the forest and find ourselves intoxicated and sick from the volumes of fruit we had consumed. We would fall into a deep, Rip Van Winkle sleep and awake half-goat women, or surrounded by pixies stabbing us with tiny spears, or maybe even confronted by a giant, angry talking bear wearing a top hat and carrying a cane.
Alas, nothing nearly as exciting as that ended up actually happening once we reached the bottom. The forest was rather impressive, but unfortunately the only edible fruits we found were coffee beans, lemons and guava. There were a few avocados rotting on the ground and lots of picked-clean pits, but apparently we had just missed the growing season. The petroglyph at the bottom was pretty impressive, but we had really come down there to eat the fruit that never ended up appearing. Bummer. I’m glad that we went down, because it was pretty neat, but not quite the produce department paradise we were anticipating. After wandering around for a while in the bottom of the crater we decided it was time to head back up. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t turn out to be exactly an easy feat, since we had come down an incredibly steep trail that was pretty directly vertical. However, we persevered, probably only because we never ended up locating more nispero plants, which would have just convinced us to homestead in the crater.
When we finally reached the top of the crater, there was another tourist, from Belgium, standing at the top and enjoying the view. He asked us about the trip to the bottom of the crater and what there was to see. It was apparent very early on in our conversation that he spoke English, because he started out talking to us in a mix of English and Spanish, but since the two of us responded in Spanish the entire time he followed our lead and quickly dropped the English part. Experiences like this are what make me the most proud of my progress in learning Spanish; all three of us were conversing in a language which wasn’t our primary, and even though KellyAnne and I obviously could have chosen to speak in English we were perfectly comfortable and capable in Spanish. The three of us were able to have a crystal-clear, interesting and relatively long conversation without struggling, and I never even though about the possibility of switching to English until I was looking back on the situation and realized it had all been in Spanish. When I recognized that, I felt the same sense of pride I feel when I’m on the plane and the flight attendants are making bi-lingual announcements. So far they’ve always announced in Spanish first, since we’re obviously in Chile, and I don’t even notice until they start making the same announcement in English (with a thick accent, always) that the reason I feel like I already heard all of this information is because I already have, just in Spanish. To be able to understand what someone is saying when I’m not paying direct attention, something we do all of the time, has been one of the hardest things for me to do as I’ve been learning, but I’m finally feeling like I can do it occasionally.
Anyhow, we made our way back down the side of the volcano to Hanga Roa. We had previously decided that one night during our trip we would eat out, taking advantage of the fresh fish and hopefully tasty food that they would have to offer tourists. We found a restaurant and both ordered a fresh-caught-that-morning plate of fish, and it was in fact impressively tasty. Impressively expensive, as well, but this was our one splurge eating out so we didn’t let ourselves get worked up about it.
We decided to get dessert, too, but just so that we could try something different on our only eating-out night we went a little café-bistro type place in another part of town for dessert. The prices here were even more extraordinary than the prices in the first place; we ordered a brownie and ice cream dessert to share and ended up paying $7 for it! Thank God we’d met Napohe and had cooked with him the rest of the time we were there, we wouldn’t have lasted long paying those prices for dinner each night!
When we first met Napohe, we also met his cat, a beautiful and friendly white kitty who was clearly about to give birth to the babies filling her belly at any minute. That night, when we showed back up at the house, there were 5 new, rat-like kittens mewing away in a box on the back patio. It was like a nice little present waiting for us to end the day to!
We woke up in the morning to an empty house, and got our things together to walk up to Rano Kao. It was a pretty nice day, way better than the rainy storm which had continued on all of the night before, and we started out in the direction of Rano Kao. Scaling the volcano turned out to be a several hour, relatively tiring task. We finally reached the top, where we were almost immediately blown off by the extreme, powerful wind which sweeps across the top of the crater off of the ocean to reach us on the other side.
Even though a road exists which winds around the crater a little below the rim, indubitably existing where it does to avoid the full wrath of the wind, our adventuresome selves weren’t about to take the easy way out. Nearly exactly directly across from where we had arrive was a ranger station and the Orongo park, where you can visit the location of the Bird-Man Cult ceremonies and see the two rock islets off-shore where rituals were performed. We circled the rim of the volcano, feeling through the entire walk like every time we lifted one foot off of the ground we were risking being totally blown off the face of the island.
When we arrived at the Orongo ranger station we were greeted by two of the funniest and friendliest park rangers imaginable, who chatted with us and told us jokes for quite a while before giving us a student discount to visit the park. We went out onto the cliff where the park is located and checked out all of the sights, feeling the whole time like we were in some precarious, life-or-death balance between our desire to live and the wind’s desire to sweep us into the ocean crashing into the cliff hundreds of feet below us. Unfortunately, none of the pictures either of us took accurately captures how uncertain my survival felt through the whole process. In all honesty, I don’t think we were ever actually in any sort of danger of being blown off the volcano, but the whole experience was a lot more adrenalin-filled when we imagined otherwise.
Upon returning from the cliff to the ranger station, we inquired about the possibility of descending into the crater, which seemed like it would be absolutely impossible to do when looking from about. However, the rangers told us that yes, in fact, there was fruit growing in the bottom, and if we returned to the place where we had initially arrived at the top of the volcano we would find a path winding its way down into the mysterious depths. What’s more, they gave us directions for finding a little-known of petroglyph hidden in the depths of the forest. Encouraged by their advice and instructions for making it down the crater, we continued on with our adventure, since the idea of descending a volcanic crater in order to eat tropical fruits had seduced us since we first knew it was possible.
We started down into the canyon on a steep, switch-backing trail, slipping on the shale rocks while tall grass scratched our bare legs. From above, the crater appeared to be divided into three distinct parts; at the very bottom lies a deep blue lake covered in patches of “rotting vegetation,” as the guide books said. It reminded me of the descriptions I’ve read of the floating gardens and cultivating methods used in ancient Mexico City. From the bottom of the lake to about halfway up the crater a huge forest is formed, described by the park rangers as being so dense and tall that at times daylight is incapable of penetrating through. The upper half, in sharp contrast, was bright and hot, reminiscent of pictures of the Grand Canyon. As we slid down the shale, I noticed a patch of nispero plants growing off to one side. Eager for the feast of tropical fruits to begin, we rushed over and began devouring them, while discussing the distinct possibility that we would each gorge ourselves on so much fruit that it would be impossible to climb our way out of the crater once we reached the bottom.
It was during this conversation that I realized the truly Shakespearean nature of our situation. Seduced by our insatiable appetites for the fruit which I have already describe my passion for, we were descending down an ancient volcanic crater in search of more and more and more. In order to reach the dark (and somewhat foreboding) forest we had to first pass through a thicket of leaf-bare thorn trees which we hadn’t noticed from above. At that particular moment in time, it seemed perfectly feasible for us to eat our way to the bottom, feeling sicker and sicker with each fruit and yet never being able to stop. Finally, we would reach the deep dark heart of the forest and find ourselves intoxicated and sick from the volumes of fruit we had consumed. We would fall into a deep, Rip Van Winkle sleep and awake half-goat women, or surrounded by pixies stabbing us with tiny spears, or maybe even confronted by a giant, angry talking bear wearing a top hat and carrying a cane.
Alas, nothing nearly as exciting as that ended up actually happening once we reached the bottom. The forest was rather impressive, but unfortunately the only edible fruits we found were coffee beans, lemons and guava. There were a few avocados rotting on the ground and lots of picked-clean pits, but apparently we had just missed the growing season. The petroglyph at the bottom was pretty impressive, but we had really come down there to eat the fruit that never ended up appearing. Bummer. I’m glad that we went down, because it was pretty neat, but not quite the produce department paradise we were anticipating. After wandering around for a while in the bottom of the crater we decided it was time to head back up. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t turn out to be exactly an easy feat, since we had come down an incredibly steep trail that was pretty directly vertical. However, we persevered, probably only because we never ended up locating more nispero plants, which would have just convinced us to homestead in the crater.
When we finally reached the top of the crater, there was another tourist, from Belgium, standing at the top and enjoying the view. He asked us about the trip to the bottom of the crater and what there was to see. It was apparent very early on in our conversation that he spoke English, because he started out talking to us in a mix of English and Spanish, but since the two of us responded in Spanish the entire time he followed our lead and quickly dropped the English part. Experiences like this are what make me the most proud of my progress in learning Spanish; all three of us were conversing in a language which wasn’t our primary, and even though KellyAnne and I obviously could have chosen to speak in English we were perfectly comfortable and capable in Spanish. The three of us were able to have a crystal-clear, interesting and relatively long conversation without struggling, and I never even though about the possibility of switching to English until I was looking back on the situation and realized it had all been in Spanish. When I recognized that, I felt the same sense of pride I feel when I’m on the plane and the flight attendants are making bi-lingual announcements. So far they’ve always announced in Spanish first, since we’re obviously in Chile, and I don’t even notice until they start making the same announcement in English (with a thick accent, always) that the reason I feel like I already heard all of this information is because I already have, just in Spanish. To be able to understand what someone is saying when I’m not paying direct attention, something we do all of the time, has been one of the hardest things for me to do as I’ve been learning, but I’m finally feeling like I can do it occasionally.
Anyhow, we made our way back down the side of the volcano to Hanga Roa. We had previously decided that one night during our trip we would eat out, taking advantage of the fresh fish and hopefully tasty food that they would have to offer tourists. We found a restaurant and both ordered a fresh-caught-that-morning plate of fish, and it was in fact impressively tasty. Impressively expensive, as well, but this was our one splurge eating out so we didn’t let ourselves get worked up about it.
We decided to get dessert, too, but just so that we could try something different on our only eating-out night we went a little café-bistro type place in another part of town for dessert. The prices here were even more extraordinary than the prices in the first place; we ordered a brownie and ice cream dessert to share and ended up paying $7 for it! Thank God we’d met Napohe and had cooked with him the rest of the time we were there, we wouldn’t have lasted long paying those prices for dinner each night!
When we first met Napohe, we also met his cat, a beautiful and friendly white kitty who was clearly about to give birth to the babies filling her belly at any minute. That night, when we showed back up at the house, there were 5 new, rat-like kittens mewing away in a box on the back patio. It was like a nice little present waiting for us to end the day to!
Dia 3, Isla de Pascua
DAY 3
We awoke, relatively sore and groggy the next morning to a beautiful day. The waves were crashing right next to us, we had plenty of food for a great breakfast of granola and yogurt, Tongariki was to our left and behind us awaited Rano Raraku. We packed all of our things and, leaving them there, started off for Rano Raraku. We spent the entire morning exploring, first on the outer part of the volcano, with hundreds of moai in various states of completion and transport down the volcano. From there, we entered the depths of the crater, full of guava-heavy trees (which we took full advantage of, don’t even worry about that) and more moai, before finally walking the entire circumference of the rim, from where we had excellent views of the entire island.
We returned to our cave for lunch after Rano Raraku, then set out along the road once again with our giant backpacks. Our next goal was Anakena, one of the few white-sand beaches on the island. Getting there required crossing a sizeable stretch of road inland, then following the coast for several miles. Unfortunately it was raining off and on, and there really wasn’t anything interesting for scenery. We ended up deciding to hitchhike, and we immediately picked up by a Chilean threesome sightseeing that side of the island. We ended up hitchhiking/touring with them, getting out with them at all of the various places of interest en route and taking pictures before finally reaching Anakena, where they dropped us off. As we hopped out of the car, the one woman of the three, marveling over the idealistic beauty of the palm trees and cerulean blue water, joked at how nice it would be to have a Mango Sour while basking in the sun. Once again, the guardian angel of life was right there with us, and we looked at each other with expressions of surprised realization. We had both more or less forgotten about it until that moment, but we actually had with us all of the supplies to make Mango Sours! We had brought with us to the island our own bottle of Pisco, thinking that we would probably want it at some point along the way and realizing that it was incredibly expensive on the island (about three times the price in Chile, which works out to normal US prices, actually.) Anyhow, not only did we have an entire bottle of Pisco with us, we also had a packet of mango juice concentrate, fresh lemons, and several water bottles filled with water. Perfect! It didn’t turn out that well, and we actually didn’t end up drinking it, but it was fun to have.
KellyAnne, a bit more brave than I, headed pretty much instantly toward the water, while I set up a little pick-nick for us on the beach. At this point we didn’t actually have any food left that could be creatively mixed together to enjoy anything resembling a meal; by “pick-nick” I mean that we ate pickles, peanuts, granola, gummy worms, bran crackers and our own house formula Mango Sour. Unfortunately the weather was rather fickle, and although there was enough sun on the beach that I ultimately ended up a little sun burnt from that day, there were also enough clouds irregularly blocking the sun that it was kind of cold and windy at times.
We hung out on the beach for a few hours, and had original plans to spend the night there, but the weather started to look like it might get nasty and the occasional fat raindrop was finding its way to our cheeks. We decided that if the weather was going to be like that the next day, too, we probably weren’t going to have much interest in spending the whole day at the beach like we had originally planned. Instead of camping in the rain that night, and surviving through the next day on our rather boring rations, we elected to head back to Hanga Roa. We packed our things and made our way to the road, where a thumb stuck out towards traffic ended with the first car we saw stopping for us.
We threw our backpacks in the back of the pickup and hopped in the cab, where we were greeted by a very delightfully interesting and fun Rapa Nui couple probably in their 40’s. They had decided that instead of working that day, they were going to spend the day fishing together, and were heading back to town to cook a dinner of the fresh fish they had just caught. That, my friends, is the life.
We told the couple to drop us off at the intersection between the church and the artisan market, but once we got there we weren’t exactly sure what to do. Sure, Napohe had offered to let us use his facilities again, but he wasn’t expecting us back for another day. As we stood in the intersection trying to decide if we should head up to his house and see if he was home or possible try and come up with a plan B, once again life was looking out for us. Moments after we arrived there, who should drive through the intersection and see us but Napohe himself? He stopped and said that he was leaving and wouldn’t be in the house for a bit, but we should head on up and let ourselves in.
We walked up to his house and sat down on the front porch, where we only waited a few moments before he returned. He asked us all about our trip and invited us to use his shower, but this time the shower in his house instead of the shower in the cabaña. Whatever, a shower’s a shower, so we both took one and drank a cup of coffee. We told him all about what we had seen and done, and he offered to drive us up to Rano Kao and check it out that night. However, when we left the house it started to rain pretty insistently, so instead of going to Rano Kao in the rain we just ended up driving around the town and talking to people he knew for most of the night.
At one point he told us that he had a friend who grew some really huge, awesome avocados at his house, way better than the little ones in Napohe’s own garden, and he wanted to go get some for us, his “amigas.” We drove up to the friend’s house, picking the best bananas in the world off the roadside along the way and stopping to be introduced to nispero.
Nispero, by the way, had a strong enough impact on me that it deserves an explanation. I’ve seen in various famous works of art different portrayals of Eve picking the Forbidden Fruit, and often times it doesn’t actually look anything like an apple. If you think about it, there are definitely fruits in the world far better than apples, and therefore probably more deserving of being the fruit responsible for the downfall of mankind. Although up to this point I’d never encountered anything amazingly good enough to be a potential candidate for the role of the Fruit of Original Sin, everything changed when I tried nispero. I don’t have any idea how to describe it…the flavor is unlike anything else on earth. It’s sweet, and tangy, and kind of pops open with juice and flavor when you bite into it. There’s a bit of sour flavor, but balanced out with a succulent taste reminiscent of the best tasting apricot you’ve ever eaten. But better. Much, much better. Quite honestly, the first thing that came to mind on my first bite of nispero really was that Eve was in the right; this taste was worth everything that’s evil in the world. Immediately after thinking that, I became conscious of the fact that anything which would make me think such a strong thought must be somehow associated with the devil, and by eating this fruit I was probably starting down a path that can only end in selling my soul for more nispero. And even as I processed these thoughts I continued eating them, a burst of joy filling my body with each bite.
We drove around for a little bit and me a few of Napohe’s friends that evening before going home, making dinner and going to bed. Another successful day on the isla!
We awoke, relatively sore and groggy the next morning to a beautiful day. The waves were crashing right next to us, we had plenty of food for a great breakfast of granola and yogurt, Tongariki was to our left and behind us awaited Rano Raraku. We packed all of our things and, leaving them there, started off for Rano Raraku. We spent the entire morning exploring, first on the outer part of the volcano, with hundreds of moai in various states of completion and transport down the volcano. From there, we entered the depths of the crater, full of guava-heavy trees (which we took full advantage of, don’t even worry about that) and more moai, before finally walking the entire circumference of the rim, from where we had excellent views of the entire island.
We returned to our cave for lunch after Rano Raraku, then set out along the road once again with our giant backpacks. Our next goal was Anakena, one of the few white-sand beaches on the island. Getting there required crossing a sizeable stretch of road inland, then following the coast for several miles. Unfortunately it was raining off and on, and there really wasn’t anything interesting for scenery. We ended up deciding to hitchhike, and we immediately picked up by a Chilean threesome sightseeing that side of the island. We ended up hitchhiking/touring with them, getting out with them at all of the various places of interest en route and taking pictures before finally reaching Anakena, where they dropped us off. As we hopped out of the car, the one woman of the three, marveling over the idealistic beauty of the palm trees and cerulean blue water, joked at how nice it would be to have a Mango Sour while basking in the sun. Once again, the guardian angel of life was right there with us, and we looked at each other with expressions of surprised realization. We had both more or less forgotten about it until that moment, but we actually had with us all of the supplies to make Mango Sours! We had brought with us to the island our own bottle of Pisco, thinking that we would probably want it at some point along the way and realizing that it was incredibly expensive on the island (about three times the price in Chile, which works out to normal US prices, actually.) Anyhow, not only did we have an entire bottle of Pisco with us, we also had a packet of mango juice concentrate, fresh lemons, and several water bottles filled with water. Perfect! It didn’t turn out that well, and we actually didn’t end up drinking it, but it was fun to have.
KellyAnne, a bit more brave than I, headed pretty much instantly toward the water, while I set up a little pick-nick for us on the beach. At this point we didn’t actually have any food left that could be creatively mixed together to enjoy anything resembling a meal; by “pick-nick” I mean that we ate pickles, peanuts, granola, gummy worms, bran crackers and our own house formula Mango Sour. Unfortunately the weather was rather fickle, and although there was enough sun on the beach that I ultimately ended up a little sun burnt from that day, there were also enough clouds irregularly blocking the sun that it was kind of cold and windy at times.
We hung out on the beach for a few hours, and had original plans to spend the night there, but the weather started to look like it might get nasty and the occasional fat raindrop was finding its way to our cheeks. We decided that if the weather was going to be like that the next day, too, we probably weren’t going to have much interest in spending the whole day at the beach like we had originally planned. Instead of camping in the rain that night, and surviving through the next day on our rather boring rations, we elected to head back to Hanga Roa. We packed our things and made our way to the road, where a thumb stuck out towards traffic ended with the first car we saw stopping for us.
We threw our backpacks in the back of the pickup and hopped in the cab, where we were greeted by a very delightfully interesting and fun Rapa Nui couple probably in their 40’s. They had decided that instead of working that day, they were going to spend the day fishing together, and were heading back to town to cook a dinner of the fresh fish they had just caught. That, my friends, is the life.
We told the couple to drop us off at the intersection between the church and the artisan market, but once we got there we weren’t exactly sure what to do. Sure, Napohe had offered to let us use his facilities again, but he wasn’t expecting us back for another day. As we stood in the intersection trying to decide if we should head up to his house and see if he was home or possible try and come up with a plan B, once again life was looking out for us. Moments after we arrived there, who should drive through the intersection and see us but Napohe himself? He stopped and said that he was leaving and wouldn’t be in the house for a bit, but we should head on up and let ourselves in.
We walked up to his house and sat down on the front porch, where we only waited a few moments before he returned. He asked us all about our trip and invited us to use his shower, but this time the shower in his house instead of the shower in the cabaña. Whatever, a shower’s a shower, so we both took one and drank a cup of coffee. We told him all about what we had seen and done, and he offered to drive us up to Rano Kao and check it out that night. However, when we left the house it started to rain pretty insistently, so instead of going to Rano Kao in the rain we just ended up driving around the town and talking to people he knew for most of the night.
At one point he told us that he had a friend who grew some really huge, awesome avocados at his house, way better than the little ones in Napohe’s own garden, and he wanted to go get some for us, his “amigas.” We drove up to the friend’s house, picking the best bananas in the world off the roadside along the way and stopping to be introduced to nispero.
Nispero, by the way, had a strong enough impact on me that it deserves an explanation. I’ve seen in various famous works of art different portrayals of Eve picking the Forbidden Fruit, and often times it doesn’t actually look anything like an apple. If you think about it, there are definitely fruits in the world far better than apples, and therefore probably more deserving of being the fruit responsible for the downfall of mankind. Although up to this point I’d never encountered anything amazingly good enough to be a potential candidate for the role of the Fruit of Original Sin, everything changed when I tried nispero. I don’t have any idea how to describe it…the flavor is unlike anything else on earth. It’s sweet, and tangy, and kind of pops open with juice and flavor when you bite into it. There’s a bit of sour flavor, but balanced out with a succulent taste reminiscent of the best tasting apricot you’ve ever eaten. But better. Much, much better. Quite honestly, the first thing that came to mind on my first bite of nispero really was that Eve was in the right; this taste was worth everything that’s evil in the world. Immediately after thinking that, I became conscious of the fact that anything which would make me think such a strong thought must be somehow associated with the devil, and by eating this fruit I was probably starting down a path that can only end in selling my soul for more nispero. And even as I processed these thoughts I continued eating them, a burst of joy filling my body with each bite.
We drove around for a little bit and me a few of Napohe’s friends that evening before going home, making dinner and going to bed. Another successful day on the isla!
Easter Island, Day 2
DAY 2
We got up Sunday morning and went to Mass, which was absolutely packed and really neat. It’s a regular Catholic service, but all of the music is Rapa Nui, which was pretty neat to hear. It was also kind of cool to see so many people at Mass—we had to stand in the back along with probably 35 other people because the pews were full.
After Mass we went back to the house, packed our backpacks for the approaching voyage, and were about to leave when Napohe showed up at the house. He offered to drop us off at the beginning of our planned route, so we wouldn’t have to walk out of town, and we gladly accepted the offer. Before dropping us off, Napo pointed out the wild guava fruit growing along the road, and told us how to tell if they were ripe or not. This turned out to be some pretty important information, and we ended up eating a fair amount of wild guava during the trip.
We started off at Vinapu, which is where the best-constructed ahu is located; the stones are cut so well that people thought they were done by the same Peruvians who built temples like Machu Picchu. It was pretty impressive to see, the giant stones are all cut precisely to fit together and you really wouldn’t be able to slide a piece of paper between them.
We spent the day walking and walking and walking in the rain and the sun, on the road and the coast, walking and walking and walking. We saw a lot of gorgeous scenery, tons of horses free-range grazing, and a fair number of ahu and moai that most people probably don’t see (they were off of the road and down by the water). Our goal for the day was to reach Tongariki, the site of 15 moai together at the base of Rano Raraku, which was the quarry where all of the moai were made. By the time 5 in the evening rolled around we were realizing that we still had at least 2 hours worth of walking to do, both of us were exhausted, and it was probably going to be dark when we reached our final destination. Right around the time we were trying to decide if we should keep going or start looking for a place to set up camp, a pack of about 7 guys on motorcycle happened to drive by us heading the opposite direction. They all waved or at least smiled in a friendly way, and the last one stopped to talk to us. It was immediately obvious that he was an American, and he said that they were looking for “the quarry,” which is Rano Raraku, the place that we were hoping to reach that night. We let him know that he was going to wrong direction, but since all of his motorcycling buddies had already continued on without him he kept going up the coast to catch up with them.
No very surprisingly, about 10 minutes later we heard the entire pack making its way toward us along the road, and when they reached us they stopped again to get further directions from us. After talking for a bit they realized that we were all ultimately going the same direction, and they offered to give us a lift to Tongariki, which they unceremoniously referred to as “the 15 heads.” KellyAnne and I both spent a bit of time chatting with the boys giving us rides, and we learned that they were basically rich spoiled New York kids (they appeared to all be in their late 20’s) who travel around the world spending money and doing exciting things. However, our during our limited interaction with them it was glaringly obvious that they must miss the real point – the awe-inspiring beauty and unbelievable feats of human engineering that constitute the Easter Island moai, for example – every where they go. They had come to Easter Island to surf after spending a week snowboarding in the Chilean Andes. Woop-de-doo. They couldn’t even find one of only three volcanoes on an island of 69 square feet because they were too busy zooming around on their rented motorcycles. We left the backs of their motorcycles feeling very fortunate that we at least were both on the same wavelength when it came to walking as a preferred method of exploring the island.
Really, in all of the interactions we had with other tourists, I feel like we probably ended up enjoying ourselves more, spending less money and leaving with a far deeper understanding and knowledge of the island than any of the others. I feel like rather than being restricted to a less in-depth discovery of the island because we wanted to do it cheaply, we got a much more “insider” tour that included meeting (and really talking to) locals and seeing far more sights because we did it slowly and on foot.
We arrived, rather unceremoniously on the motorcycles at Tongariki, and both agreed that it was kind of disappointing to have showed up at one of the most important sights of the island so quickly and without the time to take it all in we would have had if we’d arrived on foot. With that, we decided to turn around and walk down the road a little ways, so we could see it again for the first time, and pretend we had walked there instead of riding. As we walked down the road with our backs to the ahu, we noticed some people fishing and barbequing in several caves along the rocky coast. Curious, we headed that direction, and soon found ourselves invited to drink Piscolas and chitchat with some Rapa Nui families who had come to spend their Sunday afternoon on the far side of the island. They turned out to be very nice, and made the excellent suggestion that we spend the night in the cave they were currently using. It was a beautiful place to camp; right next to the water, on the back side of Tongariki, fully protected from the wind and weather and with plenty of room to pitch a tent inside the straw-lined cave. We agreed that it was a grand idea to camp in that very spot, and after they left we set up our tent (a project that ended up being incredibly complicated and probably took a solid 30 minutes), ate dinner, and went to bed. The sun had gone down, we were totally beat and we didn’t have a flashlight or anything to occupy our time with, so it just kind of seemed like the next logical step.
Unfortunately, we didn’t bring sleeping pads, and even though we were both totally ready to hit the sack early that night, neither of us slept very well because it turned out to be kind of uncomfortable. Oh well.
We got up Sunday morning and went to Mass, which was absolutely packed and really neat. It’s a regular Catholic service, but all of the music is Rapa Nui, which was pretty neat to hear. It was also kind of cool to see so many people at Mass—we had to stand in the back along with probably 35 other people because the pews were full.
After Mass we went back to the house, packed our backpacks for the approaching voyage, and were about to leave when Napohe showed up at the house. He offered to drop us off at the beginning of our planned route, so we wouldn’t have to walk out of town, and we gladly accepted the offer. Before dropping us off, Napo pointed out the wild guava fruit growing along the road, and told us how to tell if they were ripe or not. This turned out to be some pretty important information, and we ended up eating a fair amount of wild guava during the trip.
We started off at Vinapu, which is where the best-constructed ahu is located; the stones are cut so well that people thought they were done by the same Peruvians who built temples like Machu Picchu. It was pretty impressive to see, the giant stones are all cut precisely to fit together and you really wouldn’t be able to slide a piece of paper between them.
We spent the day walking and walking and walking in the rain and the sun, on the road and the coast, walking and walking and walking. We saw a lot of gorgeous scenery, tons of horses free-range grazing, and a fair number of ahu and moai that most people probably don’t see (they were off of the road and down by the water). Our goal for the day was to reach Tongariki, the site of 15 moai together at the base of Rano Raraku, which was the quarry where all of the moai were made. By the time 5 in the evening rolled around we were realizing that we still had at least 2 hours worth of walking to do, both of us were exhausted, and it was probably going to be dark when we reached our final destination. Right around the time we were trying to decide if we should keep going or start looking for a place to set up camp, a pack of about 7 guys on motorcycle happened to drive by us heading the opposite direction. They all waved or at least smiled in a friendly way, and the last one stopped to talk to us. It was immediately obvious that he was an American, and he said that they were looking for “the quarry,” which is Rano Raraku, the place that we were hoping to reach that night. We let him know that he was going to wrong direction, but since all of his motorcycling buddies had already continued on without him he kept going up the coast to catch up with them.
No very surprisingly, about 10 minutes later we heard the entire pack making its way toward us along the road, and when they reached us they stopped again to get further directions from us. After talking for a bit they realized that we were all ultimately going the same direction, and they offered to give us a lift to Tongariki, which they unceremoniously referred to as “the 15 heads.” KellyAnne and I both spent a bit of time chatting with the boys giving us rides, and we learned that they were basically rich spoiled New York kids (they appeared to all be in their late 20’s) who travel around the world spending money and doing exciting things. However, our during our limited interaction with them it was glaringly obvious that they must miss the real point – the awe-inspiring beauty and unbelievable feats of human engineering that constitute the Easter Island moai, for example – every where they go. They had come to Easter Island to surf after spending a week snowboarding in the Chilean Andes. Woop-de-doo. They couldn’t even find one of only three volcanoes on an island of 69 square feet because they were too busy zooming around on their rented motorcycles. We left the backs of their motorcycles feeling very fortunate that we at least were both on the same wavelength when it came to walking as a preferred method of exploring the island.
Really, in all of the interactions we had with other tourists, I feel like we probably ended up enjoying ourselves more, spending less money and leaving with a far deeper understanding and knowledge of the island than any of the others. I feel like rather than being restricted to a less in-depth discovery of the island because we wanted to do it cheaply, we got a much more “insider” tour that included meeting (and really talking to) locals and seeing far more sights because we did it slowly and on foot.
We arrived, rather unceremoniously on the motorcycles at Tongariki, and both agreed that it was kind of disappointing to have showed up at one of the most important sights of the island so quickly and without the time to take it all in we would have had if we’d arrived on foot. With that, we decided to turn around and walk down the road a little ways, so we could see it again for the first time, and pretend we had walked there instead of riding. As we walked down the road with our backs to the ahu, we noticed some people fishing and barbequing in several caves along the rocky coast. Curious, we headed that direction, and soon found ourselves invited to drink Piscolas and chitchat with some Rapa Nui families who had come to spend their Sunday afternoon on the far side of the island. They turned out to be very nice, and made the excellent suggestion that we spend the night in the cave they were currently using. It was a beautiful place to camp; right next to the water, on the back side of Tongariki, fully protected from the wind and weather and with plenty of room to pitch a tent inside the straw-lined cave. We agreed that it was a grand idea to camp in that very spot, and after they left we set up our tent (a project that ended up being incredibly complicated and probably took a solid 30 minutes), ate dinner, and went to bed. The sun had gone down, we were totally beat and we didn’t have a flashlight or anything to occupy our time with, so it just kind of seemed like the next logical step.
Unfortunately, we didn’t bring sleeping pads, and even though we were both totally ready to hit the sack early that night, neither of us slept very well because it turned out to be kind of uncomfortable. Oh well.
Easter Island, Part One...
Alright, I'm really really sorry that it took me this long to post this, but I feel like I have a million things to write about the trip and every time I sit down to do it I end up typing for over an hour without having completed a day's worth of descriptions! However, I have finished the first tew days, so I'll post them here. I'll put each day as a separate post, just so it's easier to read, because some of them are pretty long. With that, here's ...
DAY ONE
The amount of excitement we were feeling the night before our trip is difficult to describe; we were eagerly packing and re-packing our giant backpacks, discussing via emails sent every few minutes late-breaking adjustments into the early hours of the mroning and fretting over the discovery of the fact that Rapa Nui is home to a sizeable population of scorpions and black widows. When we finally made it to sleep that night, several hours later than our initial goal, visions of moai danced in our heads. Even though neither of us are morning people by any stretch of the imagination, we were both glad that our plane left at 8:30 in the morning. When you take into account the two hour time difference, which placed us on the island in mid-afternoon, we would have plenty of time to take advantage of our part-day and find a good camping spot.
The flight over was long -6 hours- but exhaustion from the previous night’s lack of sleep quickly wooed us into a classically useless trans-flight-nap. By some stroke of incredible luck, I happened to glance down at the ocean below us just as we were passing over the Islas de Juan Fernandez, otherwise known as the Robinson Crusoe Islands, which apparently is nearly deserted save a few fishermen who live there in limited contact with the outside world and monthly freight trips bringing food and supplies. We felt pretty fortunate to happen to see the islands, because they were only truly visible for a few seconds of our long flight.
Since we still had no idea where we were going to stay upon arrival, we paused to investigate the long counter of hostel representatives at the airport. That turned out to be a bad idea; one of the main cultural differences I’ve noticed here is that people are very tenacious about putting pressure on anyone who may be a prospective customer. Walking past restaurants (not just on Easter Island, anywhere in Chile) people will come approach you on the street and try to usher you into their establishment, and these hostel representatives were equally persistent in pressing us. They were nearly arguing with each other about whose facilities were better as they fought over us, and everyone insisted that there is absolutely no place on the island aside from the parcels of land they rented in their yards where you could pitch a tent. Since we had read in numerous other places that you can camp “unofficially” and for free anywhere on the island, I left the counter of hostels and approached the official tourism desk. Unfortunately, it became quickly obvious that the two women working in this desk had a close affiliation with one of the hostels, as the only thing they would tell me was to go to there and to no one else. They even told me it’s very dangerous, both to your person and to your gear, to camp anywhere on the island outside of the town. This proved to be about as far from the truth as humanly possible, and I’m glad we didn’t pay much attention to them.
We got pretty frustrated with feeling like we were getting inaccurate information and being pressured into making a decision immediately, so we just put our backpacks on and left. Without any plan, completely charged with excitement and blessed with a fresh, sunny afternoon we started out walking into town and trying to decide what we should do next. We hadn’t known while in Santiago if we would be able to build fires on the island or not, and we hadn’t brought anything at all to cook with, so we were a little unsure how we were going to have fresh water or food. We’d brought a few things to eat –cereal, pickles, nuts, canned tuna (although we didn’t have a can opener), and some other assorted ready-to-eat foods, but certainly not enough to last us the entire 6 days.
Luckily the atmosphere of the town was very friendly and welcoming; every person we saw said hello or even tried to strike up a conversation, and it felt completely safe to ask people for advice or directions. We’d read in all of our research that the people are very nice, absolutely no crime exists on the island, you don’t even have to try and hitchhike people just offer you rides, and you can pretty well trust everyone you meet. We very soon learned how true all of that was.
As we were walking alongside the road, a pickup slowed down next to us and asked what we were looking for. Feeling pretty comfortable with the safety of our situation, I honestly answered “I don’t know.” We explained that we were looking for a place to camp but didn’t know how to go about finding one, and the driver (who introduced himself as Napohe) told us to hop in and he’d take us to a perfect place. We threw our backpacks in the bed and jumped in the cab, eager to have a bit of knowledgeable help. Napohe drove us just a little ways out of town to a beautiful cave right on the water’s edge, surrounded by ahu and standing moai. It was almost too good to believe; here we were on Easter Island with a friendly local, an amazing and picturesque camping spot, awesome weather…what more could we ask for?
After showing us the spot, Napohe offered to take us back to his house and fill some bottles of water before leaving us there to camp. Realizing that was a pretty important part of camping success, we took him up on the offer, and got back in the pickup to head to his house. There, he not only offered us several giant bottles of water, but also fresh papaya, avocado, pineapple and lemons from his garden. As we filled the water bottles, he made the suggestion that we could spend our first night camping in his yard, if we wanted to, because then we could use the kitchen and bathroom as well. Even though we were pretty excited about the idea of camping, we figured we’d better take advantage of the opportunity to cook and have running water while we could. We also thought we could probably get some good advice regarding exploring the island if we talked to him a bit more, so we decided to stay there that night. In addition to his own house, Napohe also has two or three “cabanas” surrounding his home that he rents out to tourists. One of them he’s renting out for a year to an American woman and her husband who are apparently on a year-long vacation. The other two were empty when we arrived. He told us that he had to go finish some things at work, but we were welcome to leave all of our camping gear in one of the cabanas, and use the kitchen and bathroom and whatever else we needed. He suggested we explore a little bit around Hanga Roa that afternoon, and then that evening we could all make dinner together. He took off and so did we, after eating the fresh pineapple and rejoicing in our good luck.
We spent the afternoon exploring the city, bought some bread to eat with our freshly picked avocado, and watched the locals surfing. When we returned to the house several hours later, exhausted and overwhelmed by our good luck and disbelief that we were actually on Easter Island.
That night we made dinner with Napohe, and even though we’re not exactly sure how it ended up happening we never set up our tent and he never even acted like that was the idea. We spent the night in the guest cabana, which KellyAnne found a price list for and discovered it usually costs $40/night per person. Before going to bed we sat around for quite a while chatting, listening to bits and pieces of his life story. Apparently when he was in his 20’s, he married an American woman in her 40’s who worked for NASA and came to visit Easter Island. He moved to the US and lived in San Jose for 8 years where they had a daughter, and he traveled around enjoying life and not working because she didn't want him to. Eventually he decided that he didn’t enjoy a life with people who were so focused on money, and he wanted to work, so he divorced her and moved back to Easter Island, where he’s been ever since. Now, he owns a graphic design company making textiles with ethnic designs to sell to tourists. His house was completely decorated with his work, and during our time on the island we saw lots of his work for sale in shops.
That night we went to bed more excited than either of us had been since coming to Chile; we felt like we’d met an incredibly cool, friendly and interesting person.
DAY ONE
The amount of excitement we were feeling the night before our trip is difficult to describe; we were eagerly packing and re-packing our giant backpacks, discussing via emails sent every few minutes late-breaking adjustments into the early hours of the mroning and fretting over the discovery of the fact that Rapa Nui is home to a sizeable population of scorpions and black widows. When we finally made it to sleep that night, several hours later than our initial goal, visions of moai danced in our heads. Even though neither of us are morning people by any stretch of the imagination, we were both glad that our plane left at 8:30 in the morning. When you take into account the two hour time difference, which placed us on the island in mid-afternoon, we would have plenty of time to take advantage of our part-day and find a good camping spot.
The flight over was long -6 hours- but exhaustion from the previous night’s lack of sleep quickly wooed us into a classically useless trans-flight-nap. By some stroke of incredible luck, I happened to glance down at the ocean below us just as we were passing over the Islas de Juan Fernandez, otherwise known as the Robinson Crusoe Islands, which apparently is nearly deserted save a few fishermen who live there in limited contact with the outside world and monthly freight trips bringing food and supplies. We felt pretty fortunate to happen to see the islands, because they were only truly visible for a few seconds of our long flight.
Since we still had no idea where we were going to stay upon arrival, we paused to investigate the long counter of hostel representatives at the airport. That turned out to be a bad idea; one of the main cultural differences I’ve noticed here is that people are very tenacious about putting pressure on anyone who may be a prospective customer. Walking past restaurants (not just on Easter Island, anywhere in Chile) people will come approach you on the street and try to usher you into their establishment, and these hostel representatives were equally persistent in pressing us. They were nearly arguing with each other about whose facilities were better as they fought over us, and everyone insisted that there is absolutely no place on the island aside from the parcels of land they rented in their yards where you could pitch a tent. Since we had read in numerous other places that you can camp “unofficially” and for free anywhere on the island, I left the counter of hostels and approached the official tourism desk. Unfortunately, it became quickly obvious that the two women working in this desk had a close affiliation with one of the hostels, as the only thing they would tell me was to go to there and to no one else. They even told me it’s very dangerous, both to your person and to your gear, to camp anywhere on the island outside of the town. This proved to be about as far from the truth as humanly possible, and I’m glad we didn’t pay much attention to them.
We got pretty frustrated with feeling like we were getting inaccurate information and being pressured into making a decision immediately, so we just put our backpacks on and left. Without any plan, completely charged with excitement and blessed with a fresh, sunny afternoon we started out walking into town and trying to decide what we should do next. We hadn’t known while in Santiago if we would be able to build fires on the island or not, and we hadn’t brought anything at all to cook with, so we were a little unsure how we were going to have fresh water or food. We’d brought a few things to eat –cereal, pickles, nuts, canned tuna (although we didn’t have a can opener), and some other assorted ready-to-eat foods, but certainly not enough to last us the entire 6 days.
Luckily the atmosphere of the town was very friendly and welcoming; every person we saw said hello or even tried to strike up a conversation, and it felt completely safe to ask people for advice or directions. We’d read in all of our research that the people are very nice, absolutely no crime exists on the island, you don’t even have to try and hitchhike people just offer you rides, and you can pretty well trust everyone you meet. We very soon learned how true all of that was.
As we were walking alongside the road, a pickup slowed down next to us and asked what we were looking for. Feeling pretty comfortable with the safety of our situation, I honestly answered “I don’t know.” We explained that we were looking for a place to camp but didn’t know how to go about finding one, and the driver (who introduced himself as Napohe) told us to hop in and he’d take us to a perfect place. We threw our backpacks in the bed and jumped in the cab, eager to have a bit of knowledgeable help. Napohe drove us just a little ways out of town to a beautiful cave right on the water’s edge, surrounded by ahu and standing moai. It was almost too good to believe; here we were on Easter Island with a friendly local, an amazing and picturesque camping spot, awesome weather…what more could we ask for?
After showing us the spot, Napohe offered to take us back to his house and fill some bottles of water before leaving us there to camp. Realizing that was a pretty important part of camping success, we took him up on the offer, and got back in the pickup to head to his house. There, he not only offered us several giant bottles of water, but also fresh papaya, avocado, pineapple and lemons from his garden. As we filled the water bottles, he made the suggestion that we could spend our first night camping in his yard, if we wanted to, because then we could use the kitchen and bathroom as well. Even though we were pretty excited about the idea of camping, we figured we’d better take advantage of the opportunity to cook and have running water while we could. We also thought we could probably get some good advice regarding exploring the island if we talked to him a bit more, so we decided to stay there that night. In addition to his own house, Napohe also has two or three “cabanas” surrounding his home that he rents out to tourists. One of them he’s renting out for a year to an American woman and her husband who are apparently on a year-long vacation. The other two were empty when we arrived. He told us that he had to go finish some things at work, but we were welcome to leave all of our camping gear in one of the cabanas, and use the kitchen and bathroom and whatever else we needed. He suggested we explore a little bit around Hanga Roa that afternoon, and then that evening we could all make dinner together. He took off and so did we, after eating the fresh pineapple and rejoicing in our good luck.
We spent the afternoon exploring the city, bought some bread to eat with our freshly picked avocado, and watched the locals surfing. When we returned to the house several hours later, exhausted and overwhelmed by our good luck and disbelief that we were actually on Easter Island.
That night we made dinner with Napohe, and even though we’re not exactly sure how it ended up happening we never set up our tent and he never even acted like that was the idea. We spent the night in the guest cabana, which KellyAnne found a price list for and discovered it usually costs $40/night per person. Before going to bed we sat around for quite a while chatting, listening to bits and pieces of his life story. Apparently when he was in his 20’s, he married an American woman in her 40’s who worked for NASA and came to visit Easter Island. He moved to the US and lived in San Jose for 8 years where they had a daughter, and he traveled around enjoying life and not working because she didn't want him to. Eventually he decided that he didn’t enjoy a life with people who were so focused on money, and he wanted to work, so he divorced her and moved back to Easter Island, where he’s been ever since. Now, he owns a graphic design company making textiles with ethnic designs to sell to tourists. His house was completely decorated with his work, and during our time on the island we saw lots of his work for sale in shops.
That night we went to bed more excited than either of us had been since coming to Chile; we felt like we’d met an incredibly cool, friendly and interesting person.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Weekend plans
In case you happen to be thinking right now "Gee, I wonder what Jenna's going to do this weekend?" the answer is: she's going to Easter Island!!!! I've got a huge break from school because there's el 18 de Septiembre is a GIANT national holiday (picture celebrations on the scale of Christmas, Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, Superbowl Sunday and Memorial Day all rolled into one)(I'm not kidding), so I've got nearly 3 weeks off of school. I still don't exactly understand how or why, but I found plane tickets to Easter Island for less than half of the normal price, so I'm going with KellyAnne for 5 days. We're going to camp around the island and take 1.5 million pictures. Now you know.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Pichilemu pictures
I put up pictures of our trip to Pichilemu...you'll be surprised how much they look like home. Here's where they're at...
http://groups.msn.com/JennasPicturesofChile/septiembre.msnw
http://groups.msn.com/JennasPicturesofChile/septiembre.msnw
Monday, September 04, 2006
Pictures
In order to make it easier to share pictures, I've found a picture sharing website on through msn...I think you can see the pictures without signing up for the group, but I might be wrong. Also, I'm limited in the amount of storage I have to use and I'm already near my limit so I'll probably have to start another "group" every few months...if anyone knows an easier way to go about doing this, do let me know!!
For now, you'll need to copy and paste the following address in the address bar, then when you get to the page click on "pictures" on the left hand side. You'll find albums organized by month.
...y...
disfruta!
http://groups.msn.com/JennasPicturesofChile
For now, you'll need to copy and paste the following address in the address bar, then when you get to the page click on "pictures" on the left hand side. You'll find albums organized by month.
...y...
disfruta!
http://groups.msn.com/JennasPicturesofChile
A few day's worth of stuff...
It's been a while since I've written anything, so I think I'll just do a day - by- day.
Wednesdays I don't have class until 6:30 at night, so I've decided to make Wednesdays my "exploring Santiago" days. I currently have a list of about 40 sights and events I want to make sure and experience/see while I'm in Santiago, and this can make for a pretty full Wednesday as I discovered last week. I ended up going to the Cathedral and exploring around a little bit -- I went to Mass there two Sundays ago before going to the soccer game, but I didn't have time to look around and it's huge so there was a lot to see. The cathedral is in the Plaza de Armas, which is one of the oldest parts of the city and sort of a cultural center downtown. After the Cathedral I tried to go visit the Museo de Historia Nacional, which is also supposed to be in the Plaza, but I couldn’t find it, which is odd. I have its address, but along the whole section of street where it should be only exists a boardwalk of hotdog stands, and when I asked someone where it was they sent me down the street to another museum. The other museum they sent me to, El Museo de Santiago, is housed in a restored colonial house, La Casa Colorado, and it’s pretty cool and also on my list, so I went and explored there with KellyAnne instead of continuing to search for the other museum.
Next we walked to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, which is kind of a long ways away, because we had gotten an email from the University telling us there would be a Brasilian performance art piece there on that day. We went to the performance art, which was actually participatory, and spent several hours listening –and understanding!!—a Brasilian artist speaking Portuguese and explaining the piece to us. It was supposed to be an exploration of communication and how people relate, and it’s kind of hard to describe what we did, but it was basically pouring cups of water into other people’s cups with our eyes closed while dancing around. It sounds strange, I know, but it’s really pretty much impossible to explain. It was, however, really neat and I’m glad we went.
After that we walked the entire distance of Parque Forestal, a park in the middle of the city that stretches from El Museo de Bellas Artes clear to La Plaza Italia. We walked there because KellyAnne had class at one of the University campuses near that area. During the walk I happened to see a Turkish coffee press in the window of a variety store and I went in and bought it for about 7 bucks, which was an awesome price. Honestly, I would have paid four times that to have real coffee –the coffee here is just instant coffee grounds and it’s AWFUL. We were both starving, so we got something to eat and then she went to class. I had some time to kill, a few hours before my class, so I walked down La Alameda (the main street through the heart of downtown) to La Iglesia San Fransico, the oldest church in the country. It was built during the years between 1572-1618.
Afterwards, I went to my class, which was actually pretty interesting (it’s a class about the culture of Chile, and before it was mostly just the professor lecturing about the Mapuche, which is the Indian population of Chile, but it’s now changed to him talking much more about modern history and the cultural affects, which is fascinating. It’s amazing how much the dictatorships have affected the culture – and it’s especially interesting because there’s a huge mix of foreign and Chilean students in the class, so we get lots of perspectives and opinions – but I digress). After that, I met KellyAnne and three people who live in her house with her (Rafa, a Mexican and Paulina and Melanie, two French girls) at an “alternative” movie theater downtown where we watched a Peruvian movie. By now it was about 10:30 and I was exhausted from walking all over the town all day long, so I went home. When we left the movie there was a band setting up to play later that night, and we originally planned on coming back around 12 to watch them, but by the time I got home I realized I was too beat to leave again.
Thursday I went to class….and didn’t do anything more exciting than that. I had Fonologia first, which is actually pretty interesting, and then went to Salsa in the neighborhood Bellavista. Luckily Salsa has gotten quite fun, and last time I had a really good partner which makes a world of difference. Maybe one of these weekends I’ll get up enough courage to go to one of the Salsa clubs with some people from my class and see what happens…although I don’t know if I’m brave enough to or not.
After Salsa class I went wandering around downtown because I didn’t have anything better to do and I still have a huge list of things I want to see downtown. I tried to go to a pair of museum in El Barrio Brasil, a funky-artsy type neighborhood downtown, but they were setting up a new exhibit so they told me I would benefit more if I came back another day after they’d finished with the exhibit. Oh, yeah, and after my Fonologia class on Thursday I spoke with one of my fellow American classmates, Fred, about visiting La Serena, an area to the north that’s supposed to be really scenic and neat, because I was thinking about going that weekend. He gave me all kinds of details about his visit, and apparently he had a really great time, but he also told me that he was planning on going to Pichilemu, a beach town to the south a few hours that he’d visited once already. He raved about how nice it was for a while, and suggested that I go check it out some time. Since it’s a few hours closer than La Serena I changed my mind and decided to go to Pichilemu for the weekend.
So….Friday afternoon/morning KellyAnne, Fred and I left Santiago on bus for Pichilemu. It was about a 5 hour trip because our bus got a flat tire once and then broke down at the very end. It broke down about 22 km from Pichilemu, and we were going to have to wait for an indefinite period of time for another bus to come pick us up, so the three of us decided to hitchhike. We started walking, and walked for about 4 km before someone in a pickup stopped for us. Don’t worry, we didn’t get in the cab or anything and there were three of us and one of them so we weren’t terribly worried. I know I probably shouldn’t even share this part of the story, but it’s what we did, so sorry Mom and Dad but now you know. Honestly, hitchhiking here in general has a reputation of being very safe.
Anyhow, we arrived in Pichilemu and Fred told us that he had a Chilean friend with a beach house there. His friend, Ricardo, had told him that he was welcome to use the house any time he wanted to, but we couldn’t get a hold of the friend now. Even though he had told us that, we didn’t want to just go stay in his house without talking to him first, so we tried to call him for quite a while. Apparently Ricardo lives in Santiago but comes to Pichilemu to surf (it’s actually a world-famous surfing spot—Jack Johnson included footage of it in one of his films) and just generally hang out. He does, however, have a “key keeper” in Pichilemu for people just like us who want to use the house. Dubiously enough, the key-keeper’s name is “Equis,” which is how you pronounce the letter “X” in Spanish. Yeah. Anyhow, we also couldn’t get a hold of X, but when we went to check out the house before going to get something to eat we found several picture windows unlocked and even one bathroom window wide open. We didn’t really want to carry all of our stuff with us to dinner, so we decided to just stash it in the house while we ate.
During dinner Ricardo finally called Fred back and gave us permission, so it felt a lot less like breaking and entering, which felt much better. We ate a really awesome “expensive” fresh seafood dinner at a relatively nice restaurant with an ocean view – by “expensive” I mean that my cioppino-style soup, along with fresh bread and a drink cost all of eight dollars. Afterwards we went to the supermarket and bought groceries for the next day and some Pisco and papaya juice to make Serena Libres, then spent the evening hanging out in the house chatting and getting to know each other –since we really didn’t know Fred that well to begin with.
The next day Fred stayed in the house and studied while KellyAnne and I spent the day at the beach. We went to a place called “Punto de Lobos” which means “Seal Point,” it’s a gorgeous rock cliff over the ocean, with a ton of surfers and beautiful views. I can’t explain how much it reminded me of home – everything – I mean everything—looked exactly like Pacific City, the Chilean version. It was a lot less developed – the roads are mostly dirt and it’s a lot more what we would consider “run down,” but it obviously mostly exists for the tourists in the summer and fishermen year –round. We met some local surfers our age and the three of us hung out with them that night. One of them actually has a surf-school in the summer and offered to take me out and teach me the next day, but he kind of got creepy the more time we spent with him that night and I decided I’d rather not let him have an excuse to put his hands on me in the water the next day, even if it was going to be a free surfing lesson. Sunday we slept in late, made breakfast and went to the beach again to try and study a bit (but obviously that’s pretty much a lost cause) then got on the bus and came back home. The whole time we were there the weather was incredible, and it felt just like being home for the summer again. It was a really nice (and important for me) break from the city, which was exactly what I needed and wanted. Even though we had a place to stay for free, unfortunately we only had enough gas to cook and not enough to heat the water, so none of us ended up taking a shower all weekend long. Like camping, I suppose, but coming back into the city and getting on public transportation I felt like everyone probably thought I was a bum because I smelled and looked so filthy. Oh well.
So that was my weekend. I’ve kind of given up on posting pictures on my blog, because they take FOREVER to load, and I’m currently in the process of finding another online photo-hosting service that’s quick. I’ve tried Flickr and Photobucket, but both of them are just as slow. I know it doesn’t have to be that slow, because Facebook is super fast at uploading pictures, but only other members can see them so that won’t help. Anyhow, as soon as I figure out where I’m going to post albums I’ll let you all know.
Oh, and my biology professor told me today that when we have our tests (our first one is coming up) I can write in English….HOORAY!!
Wednesdays I don't have class until 6:30 at night, so I've decided to make Wednesdays my "exploring Santiago" days. I currently have a list of about 40 sights and events I want to make sure and experience/see while I'm in Santiago, and this can make for a pretty full Wednesday as I discovered last week. I ended up going to the Cathedral and exploring around a little bit -- I went to Mass there two Sundays ago before going to the soccer game, but I didn't have time to look around and it's huge so there was a lot to see. The cathedral is in the Plaza de Armas, which is one of the oldest parts of the city and sort of a cultural center downtown. After the Cathedral I tried to go visit the Museo de Historia Nacional, which is also supposed to be in the Plaza, but I couldn’t find it, which is odd. I have its address, but along the whole section of street where it should be only exists a boardwalk of hotdog stands, and when I asked someone where it was they sent me down the street to another museum. The other museum they sent me to, El Museo de Santiago, is housed in a restored colonial house, La Casa Colorado, and it’s pretty cool and also on my list, so I went and explored there with KellyAnne instead of continuing to search for the other museum.
Next we walked to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, which is kind of a long ways away, because we had gotten an email from the University telling us there would be a Brasilian performance art piece there on that day. We went to the performance art, which was actually participatory, and spent several hours listening –and understanding!!—a Brasilian artist speaking Portuguese and explaining the piece to us. It was supposed to be an exploration of communication and how people relate, and it’s kind of hard to describe what we did, but it was basically pouring cups of water into other people’s cups with our eyes closed while dancing around. It sounds strange, I know, but it’s really pretty much impossible to explain. It was, however, really neat and I’m glad we went.
After that we walked the entire distance of Parque Forestal, a park in the middle of the city that stretches from El Museo de Bellas Artes clear to La Plaza Italia. We walked there because KellyAnne had class at one of the University campuses near that area. During the walk I happened to see a Turkish coffee press in the window of a variety store and I went in and bought it for about 7 bucks, which was an awesome price. Honestly, I would have paid four times that to have real coffee –the coffee here is just instant coffee grounds and it’s AWFUL. We were both starving, so we got something to eat and then she went to class. I had some time to kill, a few hours before my class, so I walked down La Alameda (the main street through the heart of downtown) to La Iglesia San Fransico, the oldest church in the country. It was built during the years between 1572-1618.
Afterwards, I went to my class, which was actually pretty interesting (it’s a class about the culture of Chile, and before it was mostly just the professor lecturing about the Mapuche, which is the Indian population of Chile, but it’s now changed to him talking much more about modern history and the cultural affects, which is fascinating. It’s amazing how much the dictatorships have affected the culture – and it’s especially interesting because there’s a huge mix of foreign and Chilean students in the class, so we get lots of perspectives and opinions – but I digress). After that, I met KellyAnne and three people who live in her house with her (Rafa, a Mexican and Paulina and Melanie, two French girls) at an “alternative” movie theater downtown where we watched a Peruvian movie. By now it was about 10:30 and I was exhausted from walking all over the town all day long, so I went home. When we left the movie there was a band setting up to play later that night, and we originally planned on coming back around 12 to watch them, but by the time I got home I realized I was too beat to leave again.
Thursday I went to class….and didn’t do anything more exciting than that. I had Fonologia first, which is actually pretty interesting, and then went to Salsa in the neighborhood Bellavista. Luckily Salsa has gotten quite fun, and last time I had a really good partner which makes a world of difference. Maybe one of these weekends I’ll get up enough courage to go to one of the Salsa clubs with some people from my class and see what happens…although I don’t know if I’m brave enough to or not.
After Salsa class I went wandering around downtown because I didn’t have anything better to do and I still have a huge list of things I want to see downtown. I tried to go to a pair of museum in El Barrio Brasil, a funky-artsy type neighborhood downtown, but they were setting up a new exhibit so they told me I would benefit more if I came back another day after they’d finished with the exhibit. Oh, yeah, and after my Fonologia class on Thursday I spoke with one of my fellow American classmates, Fred, about visiting La Serena, an area to the north that’s supposed to be really scenic and neat, because I was thinking about going that weekend. He gave me all kinds of details about his visit, and apparently he had a really great time, but he also told me that he was planning on going to Pichilemu, a beach town to the south a few hours that he’d visited once already. He raved about how nice it was for a while, and suggested that I go check it out some time. Since it’s a few hours closer than La Serena I changed my mind and decided to go to Pichilemu for the weekend.
So….Friday afternoon/morning KellyAnne, Fred and I left Santiago on bus for Pichilemu. It was about a 5 hour trip because our bus got a flat tire once and then broke down at the very end. It broke down about 22 km from Pichilemu, and we were going to have to wait for an indefinite period of time for another bus to come pick us up, so the three of us decided to hitchhike. We started walking, and walked for about 4 km before someone in a pickup stopped for us. Don’t worry, we didn’t get in the cab or anything and there were three of us and one of them so we weren’t terribly worried. I know I probably shouldn’t even share this part of the story, but it’s what we did, so sorry Mom and Dad but now you know. Honestly, hitchhiking here in general has a reputation of being very safe.
Anyhow, we arrived in Pichilemu and Fred told us that he had a Chilean friend with a beach house there. His friend, Ricardo, had told him that he was welcome to use the house any time he wanted to, but we couldn’t get a hold of the friend now. Even though he had told us that, we didn’t want to just go stay in his house without talking to him first, so we tried to call him for quite a while. Apparently Ricardo lives in Santiago but comes to Pichilemu to surf (it’s actually a world-famous surfing spot—Jack Johnson included footage of it in one of his films) and just generally hang out. He does, however, have a “key keeper” in Pichilemu for people just like us who want to use the house. Dubiously enough, the key-keeper’s name is “Equis,” which is how you pronounce the letter “X” in Spanish. Yeah. Anyhow, we also couldn’t get a hold of X, but when we went to check out the house before going to get something to eat we found several picture windows unlocked and even one bathroom window wide open. We didn’t really want to carry all of our stuff with us to dinner, so we decided to just stash it in the house while we ate.
During dinner Ricardo finally called Fred back and gave us permission, so it felt a lot less like breaking and entering, which felt much better. We ate a really awesome “expensive” fresh seafood dinner at a relatively nice restaurant with an ocean view – by “expensive” I mean that my cioppino-style soup, along with fresh bread and a drink cost all of eight dollars. Afterwards we went to the supermarket and bought groceries for the next day and some Pisco and papaya juice to make Serena Libres, then spent the evening hanging out in the house chatting and getting to know each other –since we really didn’t know Fred that well to begin with.
The next day Fred stayed in the house and studied while KellyAnne and I spent the day at the beach. We went to a place called “Punto de Lobos” which means “Seal Point,” it’s a gorgeous rock cliff over the ocean, with a ton of surfers and beautiful views. I can’t explain how much it reminded me of home – everything – I mean everything—looked exactly like Pacific City, the Chilean version. It was a lot less developed – the roads are mostly dirt and it’s a lot more what we would consider “run down,” but it obviously mostly exists for the tourists in the summer and fishermen year –round. We met some local surfers our age and the three of us hung out with them that night. One of them actually has a surf-school in the summer and offered to take me out and teach me the next day, but he kind of got creepy the more time we spent with him that night and I decided I’d rather not let him have an excuse to put his hands on me in the water the next day, even if it was going to be a free surfing lesson. Sunday we slept in late, made breakfast and went to the beach again to try and study a bit (but obviously that’s pretty much a lost cause) then got on the bus and came back home. The whole time we were there the weather was incredible, and it felt just like being home for the summer again. It was a really nice (and important for me) break from the city, which was exactly what I needed and wanted. Even though we had a place to stay for free, unfortunately we only had enough gas to cook and not enough to heat the water, so none of us ended up taking a shower all weekend long. Like camping, I suppose, but coming back into the city and getting on public transportation I felt like everyone probably thought I was a bum because I smelled and looked so filthy. Oh well.
So that was my weekend. I’ve kind of given up on posting pictures on my blog, because they take FOREVER to load, and I’m currently in the process of finding another online photo-hosting service that’s quick. I’ve tried Flickr and Photobucket, but both of them are just as slow. I know it doesn’t have to be that slow, because Facebook is super fast at uploading pictures, but only other members can see them so that won’t help. Anyhow, as soon as I figure out where I’m going to post albums I’ll let you all know.
Oh, and my biology professor told me today that when we have our tests (our first one is coming up) I can write in English….HOORAY!!
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