Fossils and freezing and frights, oh my!

A team picture in front of our cave (L-R Ketty, Elsavio, Myself, Rodolfo, Bruce)
Ketty and I, outside the cave

Cast of Characters:
Elsavio, all-around good guy, Jack-of-all-trades, Museo Natural de Historia Natural, Lima, Peru
Ketty, paleobotanist, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru
Jenna Emerson, clueless gringa inadvertently included in the expedition
Rodolfo Salas, Paleontologist, Museo Natural de Historia Natural, Lima, Peru
Bruce J. Shockey, Paleontologist, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, USA

The first day of digging for fossils turned out to be a blast – arriving at the cave, I was pretty nearly overwhelmed with excitement. The fun was especially enhanced when I was able to unequivocally identify the species of the very first two fossils I picked up – one being a llama tarsal and the other a jaw fragment of an Andean fox.
Unfortunately, the temperature deep inside the cave did eventually affect my energy level, as my poor fingers became increasingly entumbicedos (that’s a new word I learned on this trip. It’s a rather specific description of the terribly paralyzed feeling one gets when their extremities have lost circulation and are threateningly close to frostbite.) However, despite the sub-zero temperatures sapping my liveliness and taxing the fun level a bit, I couldn’t help but occasionally get an extra set of goosebumps (in addition to the typical cold-induced ones which were already present) of excitement. This, I kept telling myself, is science! Happening! Right now! And I’m a part of it! I must admit, it’s a pretty incredible feeling. So much of my exposure to science up to this point has been learning about already known and understood concepts. Sure, such knowledge is certainly fascinating and exciting, but it lacks the sustained energy of discovery. Just think for a second about the possibility of being the very first person who puts together enough information to actually compile completely original knowledge: isn’t it thrilling!
Sure, half of the things I found had little or no significance to me. More than once I carefully excavated a seemingly nondescript bone, only to have Rodolfo later pick it up and exclaim “Que bueno! Where’d you find this?!” My luck at finding bones from the elusive oso pedasoso (a type of prehistoric giant ground sloth) was somewhat overshadowed by my ignorance in recognizing them. I sort of was forced to develop a technique after a while. The most common, abundant fossils of llama metatarsals and carpals are pretty distinctive, so any of those which I removed I did so with nonchalance. Really really big bones (comparatively speaking) were pretty much exclusively Onohippidion, an extinct genus in the Eqidae family. When I felt like showing off the fact that I knew that, I would occasionally mention “Ahh, otro Onohippidion” while setting them aside. Jaw fragments of any species, I quickly learned, are always a good find, and worth pointing out to the people around you. Beyond that, if it wasn’t obvious, at least I wasn’t a total fool for missing any of these plainly obvious objects.
One relatively important thing which I realized while falling asleep that first night was that, while I may not absolutely love every moment of what I’m doing, I always appreciate the value later. This concept happens to be particularly applicable to this fossil field work. During our days in the cave, many times I was totally and completely entumbicedo, cramped and aching, and willing to pay any price to escape from my mixed-species catacomb. Even though those feelings were occasionally relieved by the previously mentioned lightening bolts of excitement, such events were really quite few and far between. However, the misery of these extended periods of time was immediately erased from my memory upon warming up a bit, and even before we made it back into town I would be loving it all again.
The first night, after working all day, we arrived back into town cold, hungry and dirty. We got back to the hotel (after a two and a half hour drive from the worksite into town) and everyone showered quickly, with the intentions of heading directly to dinner. However, instead of finding a restaurant, we found a flat tire on our rented jeep. We had already decided during the drive back into town that we wanted to get an early start the next day, since the long drive to the cave cut into our work time. With this in mind, we agreed that it would be best to fix the tire that same night, rather than waiting until morning.
This started a rather extended search through the congested, crazy streets of silly little Huancayo for a service station which could repair our tire and was open after 9 pm. The streets were full with more than just the typical unruly, incessantly honking taxies and bicycle carts; entire masses of teenage kids still wearing their school uniforms also packed the streets, munching on the skewers of beef heart which were barbequed right there over open fires on the sidewalk by worn-out looking altiplano women wearing bright skirts, leggings, and bowler hats, their dirty-faced babies slung on their backs in brilliant woven blankets. Considering the temperature outside, it was an incredibly lively town.
After numerous stops at various closed tire-repair shops, a process which probably seemed exponentially longer as a result of our empty, growling stomachs protesting the delay, we finally found someone open. The service station, titled “Vulcanizador El Loco” (a business name which was spray-painted on the wall beside the shop), was more than happy to receive our business, and set to work right away setting up the jack to remove our fallen rubber soldier. Unfortunately, in order to take off the damaged tire they needed a special anti-theft device which slides onto the wheel nuts before a tire iron can be employed. This little key was somewhere inside our rented jeep, but no one had any idea where. This started the second giant search of the night, one which requiring completely emptying the entire vehicle, opening every secret compartment imaginable and generally expressing hunger-enhanced frustration for a good half an hour before the whatzamahozit was found.
Finally, two hours after setting out for dinner, we were able to sit down and satiate our stomachs. That first night was actually a little rough on me, I think because I have a natural tendency towards anemia (I’ve been turned away from giving blood more times than I’ve been actually allowed to donate as a result of low iron content). While this normally has no effect on me, spending the whole day working at a pretty high altitude (we were around 3,800 m) and going without eating much induced a condition which can be described as nothing less than total exhaustion. Luckily after that first day I didn’t have any further trouble, and never got altitude sickness despite everyone’s expectations that as a “lowlander” I would.
Of course, drinking the local mate de coca (tea made from coca) and chomping on the occasional ball of coca leaves may have helped, as they say it does. I never felt any strongly notable feeling from the coca, although some people claim it has a strong affect. It kind of numbed my mouth a little bit, and maybe, maybe, I could say that it was relaxing, but that could just as easily have been psychosomatic.
After returning to Huancayo from the cave the first day, we decided to spend the next night in the tiny little town of Yanacancha in an effort to save time. Yanacancha was only about twenty minutes from the cave itself, although the only option for lodging was a bit dismal. A giant, ancient concrete building with huge, tall-ceiling, linoleum-floored rooms was the town’s “hostel,” and we made arrangements to sleep there. I think it would be accurate to describe our night’s lodging as the coldest, emptiest, most sparse building I have ever entered. During the day, for example, the only place colder than outside in the wind was inside our rooms. We didn’t even have running water – not that we would have wanted it, since it surely would have been refreshing glacial temperatures. None of us was exactly looking forward to spending the night there, but we knew we wanted to have as much work time as possible, so it seemed like a worthy sacrifice.
That afternoon, we didn’t finish up in the cave until after the sun had set, and the cold was nearly unbearable. During the trip from the cave into Yanacancha, I resolved myself mentally to the fact that I was going to remain that miserably freezing until the sun came up the next day. Rather than expecting or hoping to warm up, I was just going to have to suck it up Quechua style and deal with the wretched discomfort. Elsavio had made arrangements with the owners of the town’s cafeteria for us to have a hot dinner that night, so at least there was a light somewhere in the end of the tunnel. We waited in the car, more or less frozen into place, while dinner was prepared, then braved the cold for the fifty-foot walk from our location parked alongside the hotel to the cafeteria.
Dinner turned out to be a heavenly surprise; a hot, savory soup warmed us from the inside out, and was followed by amazing fresh fried trout. The trout was accompanied by an Andean variety of potatoes unlike any I have ever had; while they presented inconspicuously enough, the flavor was incredible. A big bite of simply boiled, plain tuber tasted as if it had been slathered in butter. The fish and potatoes were accompanied by rice which, as a consequence of our extreme altitude, had been boiled around 85 degrees (C) instead of the normal 100, and resulted gluey and undercooked. Not that it mattered, there was plenty of other food to keep us happy, it was just funny to think that we were high enough above sea level that rice couldn’t even be cooked correctly.
Through the duration of our feast the bone-cold feeling faded away, and by the end we all felt fat and warm and happy, basking in the enjoyment of good times with good company. Unfortunately, that comfort was temporary, as our bodies jolted our minds back to the reality that we were sitting in the middle of nowhere on the Andean altiplano after dark, in a tiny pueblito which had never heard of central heating and didn’t have trees to cut wood to build fires for warmth. It didn’t take long for us to come to the group conclusion that some strong liquor would be a possible body-warming solution, and our eyes scanned the shelves behind the counter of the cafeteria where we sat. After inspecting the three options available in the small tiendacita in which we were currently located, it was decided to purchase a bottle of anisado (anise liquor) to sip on. The liter bottle cost 2.50 soles, equivalent to about 70 cents, and good Lord we got what we paid for. It didn’t take more than the first sip to decide that we had purchased an entire bottle of anise-flavored methanol water. Being the troopers that we are (and starting to feel desperation as the life-sapping cold began to settle back into our bodies) we made a pretty strong group effort to choke it down.
However, when Elsavio revealed the knowledge that there was (miraculously) another small general store in town, the decision to investigate their alcohol supply was an easy one to make. Elsavio and Bruce headed off into the night, and returned shortly presenting a hip-flask sized bottle of “Ron Kankun,” a peach-flavored, sickly sweet rum concoction. While failing to rise above the ranks of simply disgusting, this alternative was a world of quality about our last selection, and the five of us eventually finished off four bottles that night. This feeble alcohol supply didn’t come without a cost, however – the idea that nothing about life is easy on the altiplano was reiterated in many permutations during our field work. Not realizing how desperate we were going to be for the brightly orange-dyed body warming liquid they had found, Bruce and Elsavio initially only purchased one bottle. As it didn’t last long at all, they returned to the store a second time, and then another. The third and final time they found the store closed with its owner already in bed. Desperation mounting, they actually went so far as to wake her, begging for one last sale. Hugely appreciative of her compliance with their request, the men paid double for two bottles (a purchase amounting to 20 soles, a little less than seven dollars). Adding to the dramatic situation, one of the bottles was dropped and shattered in route to our table, before the cap was ever even opened.
Midway through the evening we transferred locations from the little cafeteria where we had eaten dinner to a “sitting room” (a bare room with a card table and a handful of plastic chairs) in what was to be our home for the night. The short, thirty second walk from the little store to our hotel was so cold that Ketty and I decided to add on a few layers of clothes. We both put on every single article of clothing we had brought with us; I headed downstairs from our room wearing three pairs of jeans over one pair of sweatpants and nine upper-body layers. Giggling to myself at the absurdity of the amount of cold I was still feeling, I entered the area where the men were sitting to find a roomful of rather somber faces. Bruce, wearing a “I’m trying really really hard to be serious right now but I’m kind of having a hard time doing it” expression, reported in a matter-of-fact matter that “We have a bit of a security concern.”
In this tiny town, which couldn’t possibly have more than 50 residents, in what is genuinely the definition of “the middle of nowhere,” I couldn’t imagine what sort of threat could possibly exist. Had we been unwittingly cast as leads in some outrageous Hollywood horror film? Was I about to find out that we were actually staying in a town of gringo-eating zombies? Was the hotel haunted with ghosts of fossil hunters past?
The truth was way better than anything I could have concocted. As it turns out, we were the threat. The strange, unexpected arrival of our little team, especially threatening because of the presence of English-speaking gringos, had sparked into action the imagination neurons of the natives. It didn’t take long for them to reach the conclusion that surely we were pishtakos. (CUE SCARY MUSIC OF DOOM).
Ghastly demonic creatures, pishtakos are well known to roam the frozen desolation of the Andean altiplano. They hide in the darkest, coldest areas available near concentrations of human populations, waiting for unsuspecting prey to cross their path. Usually gringos, pishtakos love nothing more than to murder unwary Andeans in order to strip away and feast on their body fat.
I couldn’t control myself; I burst into outrageous laughter. I was going to kill people and eat their body fat? REALLY? Immediately launching into giggles and jokes, I was surprised to realize that no one else seemed quite as amused as I did. Actually, none of the others appeared to be amused at all. They quickly shushed me, explaining the fact that this was actually a real problem. In the past, people have actually been killed after coming into small, isolated towns such as Yanacancha, when the “natives” feared for their own safety. It was dangerous for me to even say words like “pishtako,” “fat,” or “hungry” aloud, as people may very well be listening outside.
I tried my hardest to take the situation seriously, and even found myself feeling a bit nervous when a dog started barking mournfully outside. Here we were, miserably freezing and actually fearing for our security in an isolated Andean village. No one would even know of our disappearance for weeks if anything happened, and in this vast, empty landscape hiding our corpses would be a piece of cake. No search party would ever be able to totally cover the expanses in search of us. We might actually be in sticky situation.
Luckily the healthy portions of peach flavored ron were able to dull the actual fear we should have felt, and once the last drop had been consumed there wasn’t much left to do besides hit the sack. Ketty and I snuggled down together in one of the twin beds in our double room, piling the blankets from the other bed on top and providing ourselves with 10 layers of warmth. Still wearing all of the clothes we had previously put on, it didn’t actually take too long to cozy up and doze off.
We all awoke the next morning with headaches as a result of our fine choice in after-dinner beverages the night before, but at least we awoke. Apparently the locals were too afraid of our potential magical pishtako powers to dare entering the human-feasting lair we had created for ourselves in quaint little Yanacancha. We may have lucked out that night, but it wasn’t hard to decide that heading back to Huancayo, where they not only had hot running water but also didn’t suspect us of wanting to eat the neighbors, would be the best alternative for the following evening.

Feria de Frutas

A wonderful phenomena exists here in Chile...everywhere, all week long, you can randomly find an alley full of fruit and vegetable vendors selling the most amazing produce at dirt cheap prices. It's INCREDIBLE. I finally took some pictures the other day....



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A silly little experience with Chilean street theater...

Numero 1: I began typing this blog on Saturday and didn’t finish until today, Monday. Because of the time lag there are several blog-worthy things that have happened since then, but the only one I’m going to mention for the time being (until I get a chance to dedicate more time to a real narrative) is the fact that this morning I did one of the scariest things yet since I’ve been in Chile. What might that be, you ask? Well, in my ecology class we had to present research papers to the class, explaining everything about the published experiment with PowerPoint aides and the whole nine yards. Something I’ve done a million times in classes at home and doesn’t bother me a single bit…when the whole process is happening in English. It’s kind of a completely different story, however, to get up in front of a group of my peers and

So….the weather has been pretty awesome lately, with hot sunny days and warm nights. I have a pretty good sunburn on one of my arms, contesting to the truth of that fact. However, yesterday was abnormally chilly and overcast, and unfortunately I found myself in a bummed out mood as a result. That’s pretty bad news, since I’m going to leave summer in a few weeks and plunge into the dark deep terrible horrible no good very bad misery of winter for the rest of my life. But that’s another story.

Anyhow, I was having a hard time making myself productive at home (I truly think as a result of the weather) so I went for a quick run to energize myself and then I went out to visit a few museums that are still on my list of places to visit in Santiago. First I went to the Palacio Cousiño, an elaborate early 1900’s mansion built by one of the richest families (still) in Chile. It had, for example, the first elevator in the country, central heating (which most homes still don’t have here, even mine), gas plumbing for the lights, hand painted specially designed for the house Italian floor tiles (you have to wear booties over your shoes when you visit), hundreds of special types of international marbles making up the stairs and fireplaces and everything…it was quite a spectacular. The family lived there for three generations, and then the home was used as a place for foreign dignitaries (kings, queens, presidents, the like) to stay while they were visiting Chile. Now it’s a national monument owned by the government for showing off to tourists like myself. (Although to be honest I don’t really consider myself a tourist anymore, I’ve been here long enough, but I’m not really a resident, either, since I’m leaving soon…I don’t know if I have a classification.)

Anyhow, after visiting the Palacio, I thought I’d go downtown and make a trip to the National History Museum, something I’d been meaning to do for some time.

Sidenote:
I started out that direction, initially taking the metro the wrong direction well, not exactly the wrong direction, but I had two different options to change to two different metro lines that would both eventually take me to the same place, and I chose the one that takes me about 6 stops farther. Not a big deal, though; I love taking the metro places. It’s a blast! There are always interesting people to watch, and usually I have some sort of random interaction with strangers, and I always listen to my iPod while I’m riding so it’s like a have a movie soundtrack to listen to through all of this. I think one of these days when I have some free time I’m going to get on the metro and ride to every single stop on the line, and then come back home, and call it a day.

Anyhow, the National History Museum is in the Plaza de Armas, right in the center of downtown. There are always a million interesting things going on down there—people selling sunglasses and baseball caps and fingernail clippers and belts and avacados and candied peanuts and fingernail polish and sewing needles and purses and jewelry…anything and everything on earth. Often times – especially during what I suppose are “peak” times like a Friday afternoon or the weekends- there are musical acts, people doing traditional Chilean dances, comedians, all sorts of things. I was a few blocks away and the museum was supposed to be closing in an hour, so I decided that instead of worrying about making it there and rushing through the museum I would just enjoy all of the things going on downtown, instead. I started wandering through the crowds of people, rather aimlessly, when a newly gathering group caught my eye. It was evident that a comedy show was about to start, and even though the comedians usually talk in such a very Chilean way, and rapidly, that it’s hard to understand, most often I at least stop and watch for a second to see if I can catch anything that’s going on. Anyhow, I found myself pretty much in the front row of this particular circle forming. As the comedian was getting started he made a point several times to tell all of the men to put the women towards the front, both so that they wouldn’t get their purses stolen and also so that he could have a better look or something cheesy like that. Anyhow, as he was saying all of this he was pointing out specific people in the audience and making slight jokes about them or saying they should step forward more and things like that. He pointed me out several times telling me to come more towards the front as he was doing all of that, and I ended up in the first row of people in the gathering crowd.

Often times as he was making jokes with people they were rather interactive-the people had to respond to his questions and things. For example, a very pregnant woman was standing with her husband holding her hand, and the comedian told him to put her in front of him so no one snatched her purse. As her husband moved positions and stood to hug her from behind the comedian asked the lady “And what’s your husband’s name?” “Enrique” “Oh, that’s nice. And is he here?” That sort of cheesy joke.

Anyhow, I don’t even remember how he started with me, but at some point the guy asked me a question and I had to respond. Thank God I understood him talking; like I said before sometimes they’re going so fast and with so many modismos that it’s pretty nearly impossible. However, I responded to whatever his question was and he caught on immediately that I’m not Chilean. Well, foreigners are always novel, of course, and somehow that little interaction ended up launching me right into the center of attention. The comedian started just by asking me various, normal questions, like what I’m doing here in Chile and if I like it and all of that. Apparently, however, his show usually involves a few audience participants, and me being exotically foreign clearly made me a prime candidate.

And thus commenced what ended up being about an hour of me participating in this guy’s comedy show, helping him act out various scenarios and the like. Anyone reading this obviously knows me, and thus know that I don’t mind the occasional opportunity to ham it up and play along with fun stuff like that, so you can rest assured that I wasn’t a boring participant. A few examples of what we did….

I don’t remember what the ending idea of the joke was, but for part of one of his little shticks he wanted me to act like I was greeting my favorite movie star. He went on and on explaining to me that when famous American movie starts come to Chile all of the girls scream and cry and run to them and throw themselves at the movie starts, and on and on and on, and he wanted me to do the same. He was very thorough in explaining that on his cue I needed to run to him excitedly and cling to him. Uh, yeah right, I’m really going to do that to some slightly creepy street performer. When his cue came, I calmly walked up to him and shook his hand. Since I’d been playing along so well the whole time I think he half expected me to do what he’d told me to do, and the look of shock on his face when I didn’t was pretty funny. He tried a few more times to get me to do it, but each time I found another variation of a formal, polite greeting to use instead of running to him and leaping on him. When he started over slowly explaining to me again that he wanted me to act like a Chilean girl greeting an American rock star, as if maybe I hadn’t understood the first six times, I interrupted him and explained that he couldn’t possible expect a dignified American like myself to behave as crazy as a Chilean girl would. (It was in a joking manner, of course, after all he was cracking jokes about the US the whole time.)

After he passed his hat around to collect people’s coins in the audience, before the show was over, he noticed that someone had put in a rather large coin- $500 pesos. He made a big deal about how much he appreciated it, and said that we should do a special ceremony in thanks. He had me kneel down with him on a jacket, and put another jacket out in front, and then he started singing a song of thanks to God for giving him a $500 piece. Then, he sang (like the prayer-songs the priests do) “And as a demonstration of our faith we will stay here until you deliver us another $500…..(we sat for a minute while he looked around at the audience expectantly)….or maybe five $100’s…..” and we sat there for a bit until people started throwing their 100 peso coins towards the circle. There were two or three pieces on the jacket in front of us when someone else threw coin that didn’t land on the jacket “….it has to land on the jacket to count, Lord….” That little caveat turned out to be the real moneymaker, as we ended up waiting for quite a bit while people threw coins toward the center of the circle and they bounced off of the jacket. As we were sitting there, someone threw in a quarter. He stopped from the singing for a second and stared at it, surprised. “A quarter!” I said “Uh, clearly that belongs to me.” and I snatched it out of his hand and put it in my pocket. I guess it doesn’t sound that particularly funny right now, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

Anyhow, the “show” continued on for about an hour until finally he was done. Apparently he works in a bit of a group, taking advantage of the crowd that exists when one person finishes their show. Instead of just having the people disperse, someone else quickly steps in and starts their routine. The guy who I’d been acting with the whole time was saying thanks to the crowd and doing one last joke as the next people were coming in, and I don’t exactly remember what he said but after asking for a round of applause for me in thanks for being good natured and playing along he grabbed my arm and said “yeah, and now we’re off to go have dinner together” or something along those lines. Yeah, so everyone laughed and we left the circle, and I kept expecting him to let go of my arm and say goodbye and thanks and everything.

This, unfortunately, is where he turned into a creeper. Yeah, I thought he was joking when he said to the crowd that we were going to go have dinner, as I’m sure they did, too. Turns out he, however, didn’t think he was joking. We started to walk away and I said “Pues…ciao!” several times, and tried to pull away, and each time he said “ciao? Porque? Vamos a tomar una cerveza, por lo menos!” Sorry buddy, I don’t think so.

It ended up being a bit of an affair getting away from him, and I had to explain that I was engaged and my fiancé was waiting for me before he got the hint and reluctantly let me go.

Bummer that something as fun and lighthearted as participating in some street theater had to regress to the same old creepy Chilean men story, but as long as I forget how uncomfortable I felt at the very end it’s a good memory. Too bad I was alone, so I don’t have any pictures!

Fotos de Buenos Aires...por fin!

Aqui hay algunos fotos de Buenos Aires....eso.


Create Your Own

Photos of the riot brigade...

These photos are a bit old, I took them back in September during a giant free outdoor concert being held in the center of the city. I was during international diversity week, or something like that, and they closed off part of downtown to traffic and opened up the entire Plaza Italia for the afternoon and evening. The concert was called "Youth for Diversity," or "Celebrating Diversity" or something along those lines. Even though it was an totally peaceful event, the ubiquitous guys in green were on hand in case things got exciting. Of course nothing happened, but I took advantage of the calm situation to take some pictures of the crazy (and serious) vehicles that they use for crowd control.


Create Your Own!

Big Kid's Field Trip...

Well.....this weekend my ecology class had a "Salida al Terreno," which translates pretty much exactly into "Field Trip." The entire class had to camp together in a nature reserve about an hour outside of Santiago, along el Rio Clarillo. Our mission was to think up and gather data for an "ecological study" of our own design, which we will present to the professors on the last day of class. Luckily two guys that I've worked with a few other times on lab projects invited me to work with them, so I wasn't completely alone in the world, and it turned out to be pretty fun. I don't exactly know how the project will turn out; I have my doubts about the quality of the data that we gathered, but we'll see. Unfortunately I was lucky enough to get a cold right before going, and I've been pretty much exhausted as a product of the combination of being sick and going on a camping trip that didn't involve much sleeping.

Classes are starting to intensify a bit, in general, because we've only got 3 more weeks left of school. That means that I've got to final presentations (to be done in Spanish, of course, something I've never had to do before and my very well die from nerves before completing) as well as a approx. 15 page paper on the culture of protests here in Chile (I've never written more than 5 pages in Spanish, and I was pretty impressed with myself for being able to do that at the time.)

So, that's what's new this week, in case you were wondering.

Buenos Aires, Pt. 2

So… a little more about my time in Buenos Aires…..

One of the stories that I wanted to be sure and share regards a rather silly and uncomfortable incident that took place on the metro. I don’t remember where we were going, but for some reason KellyAnne and I happened to be on the metro in the height of rush hour. It was crowded to a degree that I have never experienced in my life; people were pushing and pushing to get in, shoving everyone tighter and tighter together to a ridiculous and probably unsafe degree. I was standing facing a business man as people continued to shove all of us tighter and tighter together, and the degree of closeness that we were reaching was uncomfortably intimate. Luckily he was also uncomfortable, not a creeper in the slightest, so I guess it could have been worse. However, as more and more people crowded into the train our bodies were being shoved tighter and tighter together, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that we were as close as we were. Because we were facing one another, it was rather awkward, and as people continued to push into me from behind (my back was to the door) I had to move forward more and more into a space that simply didn’t exist. In order to try and decrease the discomfort level in respect to the man and I being so personal, as I moved my body forward I leaned my head back, otherwise I would have had to have my face resting on his chest. This resulted in my stomach being pressed tightly against his while my back was arched and my face was throw back almost to the ceiling. (I hope) as a result of my odd posture, the man decided that I must be pregnant, and he told all of the people around us that I was pregnant and needed to sit down. Probably he was also trying to escape our terribly awkward situation. So there I was, on a packed subway train where it was impossible to move, being told that I looked pregnant. Awesome. Here’s a recent picture of me, taken the weekend before in Mendoza:






Now tell me, do I really look like I'm "with child"? I sure hope to God not! Don’t tell me that Argentinean’s don’t have body image problems if that’s what pregnancy should look like!! Luckily I just laughed it off, and I thought it was too funny of a story to not share, even though it’s pretty embarrassing!

I don’t remember the exact chronological order of the various things we did the rest of the time there, but I know it included at some point the following things:


MALBA: A big, new art museum full of famous and important Latin and South American works. Although I’m not very familiar with the world of art (I can look at it and enjoy it, obviously, but I’m pretty lost when it comes to the whole culture of appreciating it through interpretation and blah blah blah) KellyAnne is pretty into it. In fact, last semester she took a South American Art Appreciation class, and this particular museum was incredibly exciting to her because we saw tons of works that they actually studied in her class. It was a very nice museum, and it was fun to be with her because she was so animated about everything we were seeing, and was able to explain some of the interesting details about many of the works and artists to me.

Tango Show: On evening we went to a tango show at a restaurant downtown. It was incredible! I had no idea it was going to be as involved as it actually was; there were three pairs of dancers, a live band, a live singer for all of the songs they danced to, and sort of a vaudeville-style running interaction between the dancers, the singer (who was also like the MC), the band and the audience through the whole show. It was very fun and impressive to watch, and lasted about 2 hours.

Discothèque: We went out one night to a giant techno club of several levels with Rosie and several of her friends from her immersion program. I’m not sure exactly why, but it turned out that there were about 2 million guys and 5 girls, of which we were 3. Not only that, but Argentine guys are kind of creepers; they’re very forward and presumptuous, and assume that you will be going home with them tonight, thank you very much. Since they happened to be quite wrong in the presupposition, we devised some very entertaining methods of deterrence. The three of us girls invented a super fun dancing game, where we stood together in a little circle and made rules about how we had to dance. For example, one of use would say “dance like a dinosaur would dance!” and then all three of us would have to imitate dinosaurs dancing until someone said “now you’re a penguin!” Among having animal dances, there were rules like “any kind of dance you want as long as your hands are above your head for the next five minutes!” “Only move your left knee!” “Drive a car and sing along with the radio!” “Put your elbows in the middle of the circle!” … and it went on, and on, and on. Because we were acting so strangely everyone pretty well left us alone, and we danced that way for probably 2 ½ hours. We were getting so creative at the end that we ended up exercising parts of our body that we probably forgot existed, and I woke up sore the next morning! It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a dance club, to be honest.

Food fair!!
I don’t know how we ended up finding out about it, but at the Buenos Aires convention center there just happened to be a huge food festival going on. You paid 3 dollars to get in, and then enjoyed all kinds of food tastings of the finest Argentine foods – olive oils, wines, meats, cheeses, chocolates, jams, jellies, preserves, olives…..the list goes on an on. We spent several hours there, and I ate twice as much as I should have because my baby was hungry, too.

And….yeah. We did several other random things, like wandering through the St. Elmo neighborhood where we were staying and checking out all of the antiques and boutiques, etc, as well as eating at some pretty nice restaurants. We went to a really nice Sushi place across the street from a live concert in a park, and the people tried really hard to rip us off because we were speaking English. We had to send the bill back three times for them to correct it before they were honest with us. It was pretty silly and frustrating—that’s the first time I’ve had that kind of problem, even though I know lots of other people that have dealt with being treated that way. Thank God we speak English and aren’t idiots, otherwise we would have paid way more than we should have for our meal! We went to bed late the night before our flight back home, because it was the birthday of one of the girls in our hostel, and it was fun to celebrate together. And then…we returned to Santiago….y punto. :)

Buenos Aires, Pt. 1

So...I had to come home for a day after going to Mendoza, because every Monday I have my 7 ½ hour long Ecology class, and every afternoon we have a quiz that can’t be rescheduled. Since we only have two real tests the whole semester, I think that the quizzes are relatively important, so I decided I’d better not miss it. It was probably good, though, because being away from home for over a week would have been a bit overwhelming anyways. I took the bus back from Mendoza and arrived in Santiago late Sunday night, and promptly went to bed since I had class at 8:30 the next morning.

I don’t know what prompted me to check the Ecología class website Monday morning when I woke up, but right as I was getting ready to leave I did, thank God! For some unexplained reason class for that morning was canceled; we didn’t have to show up until the afternoon session at 2:30. Since I was already up, I took advantage of the morning by washing my clothes, getting started packing, organizing things, etcetera. The rest of the day was pretty normal—class, then back home. I made it to bed around midnight, and had to get up at 5 to make it to my flight. One of the sweetest things about living in a city, luckily, is that I only had to pay 8 dollars for an airport transfer service to come pick me up at my house and deliver me to the airport on time. Yes please!

I got to Buenos Aires in the early afternoon, and set out on my own adventure. KellyAnne had told me roughly how her and Rosie (the friend who just moved to Buenos Aires from Santiago) had made it from the airport to the hostel, but they had taken a taxi from the airport transfer service terminal in town to the place we were staying. Thinking that didn’t sound like anything of a challenge, I decided to start off right away learning about the BA subway system…and did, just fine. Yeah for me—before living in Santiago I NEVER would have DREAMED of doing that by myself. I showed up at the hostel without any problems, and KellyAnne was there waiting for me.

Once I ate a little food and used the hostel computers to register for classes (something which I had sort of forgotten was a major priority, and best done as soon as possible since classes fill up…I decided on my schedule on the flight over) we set out into the city. The weather was swelteringly hot; possibly on the verge of deadly for a heat wimp like myself. We spent the afternoon wandering around the area of Recoleta, one of the many “comunas” of the city. We spent several hours in the Recoleta cemetery, and ancient and incredibly creepy city of the dead, where everyone is housed in above ground monuments built by the families. People basically built elaborately decorated alters for their loved ones, and the caskets are entered inside. They’re meant to be visited, and nearly all have doors and windows, and usually the caskets are shelved in plain site. All of them have crazy details, like beautiful expensive stained glass or statues modeled after the deceased. While some are in very good condition, the majority aren’t even close, some even with broken windows and dead birds inside. I don’t really know how to describe it, so I’ll put up some pictures as soon as I can. Many very famous Argentineans are “buried” there, including Eva Peron, who’s tomb we visited.

Later that afternoon we did some more wandering around the downtown area of Recoleta, but I was exhausted as I’d only gotten 5 hours of sleep and it was intensely hot, so eventually we just went back to the hostel and made dinner.

Our hostel situation was actually pretty cool; there were probably 25 or 30 other people there the entire time we were there, all of them our age and all of them except for us backpacking across South America. It was really a fun environment to hang out in, and we ended up spending the rest of the night there just talking, getting to know each other and relaxing. Being in the hostel for the whole week kind of felt like living in the dorms again, which was nice.


It’s funny, because KellyAnne and I both agreed later, after talking to them, that we feel like it really is important to live somewhere as opposed to just visiting it if you want any kind of real perspective for where you are. I mean sure, you can go look at Iguazu falls for example, which all of them had done, but none of them really understood the reasons or implications of the falls being unusually dry, which is related to politics between Brasil and Argentina. It’s certainly possible to enjoy their beauty without understanding everything at work behind controlling them, but I think it makes for an entirely different experience if you have a more holistic perspective of what you’re seeing—in Spanish there are two different words that you can use for going to visit a place – “ver,” which means “to see,” and “conocer,” which means “to know.” I’ve pretty much decided that since I now know there’s a difference between the two, it won’t really be worth my while to just “ver” things anymore.


The next day was Wednesday, and it was raining rather hard all day. We went shopping almost all day, although we didn’t really buy much—everyone in Argentina is anorexic (seriously, they have the highest rate of anorexia in the world) so we couldn’t really put on any of the clothes. That makes for a fun day of shopping…

That night we went out to a play, and it was really fun to go to a play that was obviously entirely in Spanish and to understand everything that happened. I haven’t talked much on here, I don’t think, about all of the PDA that goes on in Chile, but it’s pretty substantial. Enough so that the teacher of my “Chile, Chilenos y su Cultura” class actually spent a fair amount of time talking about the reasons behind it one day. I won’t go into all of that, but I can tell you that coming from the US it’s very shocking to see not only teenagers but also grown adults making out in pretty much any public place you can imagine—the metro, parks, street corners, restaurants, whatever. Even though I’ve been here long enough to be relatively accustomed to all of that, the extra show we ended up getting at the theater is worth mentioning. KellyAnne and I were in the second to last row in the theater (it was pretty small, so it didn’t matter) and seated in front of us was a couple probably in their mid thirties. Unfortunately distractingly for us, they spent almost the entire show loudly and passionately kissing. It was pretty ridiculous, and made it difficult to pay attention to the show at times, but also funny enough that I thought it was worth mentioning.

I don’t exactly remember what all we did the next day, although I know it included lots of walking around because by the end of the day my feet were dead. That’s pretty standard for us—just walking around the city so we can see the various “sites” that aren’t touristy or exciting at all, they’re just part of life there, until we’re so exhausted it’s almost impossible to think. In addition to walking around a lot, we went to the museum of Eva Peron’s life, which was very interesting, and went to the Plaza de Mayo in the afternoon. Every Thursday afternoon since the military dictatorship mothers and grandmothers of “the disappeared,” victims of the government’s kidnapping and murdering tendencies, have protested the losses of their children. We went to watch their protest, which was kind of a strange experience. Here were these women, most of them probably in their 70’s, marching around the Plaza square holding pictures of their children while a big crowd of tourists watched them. Not only that, but before and after they sold t-shirts, which apparently went to fund the cause of their organization which works on social justice projects nationally. It just seemed odd that something as intimate and personal as the message each of these women was sending – that she desperately wanted to know what had happened to her missing child – had kind of been reduced to a tourist attraction. I couldn’t quite decided how I felt about it—on one hand, I guess you could look at all of the people who showed up to watch them as supporters, but on the other hand I can’t say that I personally did anything to actually support them aside from being there and watching, and I don’t know if that counts or not. It was a strange experience, anyways.

Well, even though that’s only the first little bit of what I did while in Buenos Aires, it’s 11:30, I’m exhausted and I have a test tomorrow. So…that’s all you get for now. Sorry!

Pictures from Mendoza

All of these pictures are from the last day, because I didn't want to take my camera rafting, of course. Katie has a few pictures of that day, though, so if I ever get them from her I'll add them in.


Create Your Own!

Chiloe and Puerto Montt...pictures, finally!

Here's a slideshow of pictures from Chiloe and Puerto Montt...if I have time I'll make one from Mendoza today, too, although I didn't take many pictures so it won't be terribly exciting.


Create Your Own!

Weekend in Mendoza

So…I spent this last weekend in Mendoza, Argentina. I originally wanted to take off on Thursday night and go to Buenos Aires, skipping the entire next week of school and getting a feel for Argentina, but my ecology professor wouldn’t let me reschedule a quiz so I had to be in Santiago all day today, Monday. Bummer. Luckily Mendoza is just barely over the border, only about a 6 (ish) hour bus ride, tickets are cheap getting there and back, I’d wanted to go check it out for a long time and Argentina is dirt cheap. I happened to mention to a fellow American classmate, Katie, (she studies at UC Davis) that I was thinking of going but wanted a travel companion, and she was very excited about the idea of going with me. All right, it all seemed to be working out!

We initially thought that we would leave on Friday morning, early, because everyone says that the trip over the mountains is well worth being awake for. However, we ended up finding a bus that left at 10:30 Thursday night, which would put us in Mendoza around 5 the next morning and give us the full day to explore. Of course when we got to Mendoza that morning we didn’t have a hostel arranged and we were completely exhausted, but it ended up working out all right. We found a really beautiful, posh hostel that’s way nicer than anything I’ve stayed in so far (pool, bar and restaurant, tons of people our age, free amazing continental breakfast…) that only cost $8 a night. Oh, Argentina, you amaze me! We crashed for a little nap that morning, and then got up and started planning out weekend’s adventures.

Let me just say, to start with on something positive, that there were redeeming features of traveling with Katie. Well, one, anyways. Because they make and drink a lot of wine in this general part of South America, I’ve recently decided that I need to become much more educated on the subject. KellyAnne, our friend Rosie and I decided to start a little self-education project, where each week one of us would research a wine, buy a bottle of it and share it with the others while teaching them about it. A fun way to get started, anyhow. We had a day of monsoon rains last weekend, and instead of doing real studying I spent some time online learning (and forgetting) a million different things about wines and wine tasting. It was pretty fun, and it got me excited to go wine tasting and learn some stuff. Luckily, Katie lives around Napa Valley and has taken 3 college courses on wine and wine tasting. Additionally, the valleys around Mendoza produce 70% of Argentina’s wine, so it’s a good place to start. The local wines are dirt cheap and very good, so Katie and I made a point to buy wine with all of our meals and then she would dissect it for me as we ate. It was very fun, and the last day we were there we went on a wine tour (for only $10!!! A chauffer picked us up at our hostel and drove us around the valley to different wineries where we got complete tours and tasting and everything! Katie’s mom came to visit her last month here in Chile, and they did the same sort of thing but only got to visit 1 winery, and it cost them $50 each!).

However, I’m afraid to say that the rest of the experience traveling with her was a bit of a disaster. KellyAnne and I do a very good job of being reasonable about spending money when we’re traveling together; that was clearly not a focus of Katie’s. I don’t know where all of her money comes from (I kind of get the impression that beyond the ATM, she doesn’t, either) but she spent spent spent spent spent! Sure, Argentina is way cheaper than Chile, but only if you don’t go to all of the fancy boutiques and buy ridiculous amounts of super stylish clothes. It doesn’t really count as saving money if you still $40 on a shirt that you wouldn’t have bought if it wasn’t in Argentina, but whatever. Not only that, but she was incredibly rude to people—for example on the bus ride over to Mendoza the two of us were talking, probably a bit loudly, and it was around 11:30 or 12 at night. One of the people sitting behind us asked us to please speak a little softer, and instead of the reasonable response of “Oh, I’m so sorry! Of course we will!” Katie snidely remarked in her very poor Spanish with a terrible gringo accent “Fine. All you have to do is ask, geeze!” She even threw in one of those “Cccchhhhaaa” disgusted exhaling sounds people make between their teeth and their lips. I was mortified. That’s a pretty solid example of what her behavior was like for the rest of the trip, and I’m not even going to get started with the incredibly embarrassing way that she threw herself at every pretty boy that we saw, making very obvious and over-the-top comments about whichever part of their body she happened to find particularly attractive. Needless to say, I don’t have any plans to travel with her again.

Luckily, at the very least her craziness drew attention to my sanity, so I suppose in the end it probably only helped me meet people and make friends.

Anyhow, with all of that said, the first day she spent shopping (I just kind of followed along) and enjoying the cheap, incredible steaks and wines. The next day we got up early and went on an all-day river rafting excursion, which was AWESOME! The rapids were all class 3’s or 4’s, which I guess is on the medium-large-ish size scale, but it wasn’t ever wild or crazy or scary so it gave me desire to try something bigger. Our boat was quite an international mix—besides Katie and I there were three French boys (one of them half French half English), our guide who was a guy just a little older than us from Mendoza, and another guide who was on his first day on the river here in Mendoza, just arrived from Italy where he guides all summer up there. He actually was really interesting – he spends the northern hemisphere summers in Italy, where he’s from, guiding, and the southern hemisphere summers traveling to various rivers around the world river raft guiding there. Last summer, he was in Uganda! Anyhow, we had a lot of fun, and got back to the hostel around 6 exhausted. Of course, that didn’t stop us – there was a huge artesian fair in the plaza two blocks from our hostel, so we walked down there and spent several hours looking at and buying all of the cool stuff. Artesian fairs like that are so amazing here in South America –it’s like Saturday Market in Portland, with all of the neat, funky, unique handicrafts, but it’s all dirt cheap here.

Probably the craziest part of the whole trip was a strange strange encounter that happened while we were at the artisan fair. I happened to just be wandering through the booths when who did I happened to run into but Robert, the fellow American we met on Easter Island!!! It was so hilarious to see him again, especially there in Argentina!!!

After the fair, Katie and I went out to dinner (I had a thick, tasty stake cooked in Roquefort sauce and side dish and a drink all for about $7. I think I might move to Argentina.) We returned to the hostel for a bit, then our river rafting guide from that day came to meet us and we went out for drinks. We hung out for a while, and eventually Katie decided she wanted to go to a discothèque, so she headed out with some other people that we met and I made my way back to the hostel (it was like 3 in the morning at that point and our wine tour started at 8:30 the next morning.) She ended up staying out all night, getting back right as I was packing my things to leave, and slept through a solid portion of the winery tour that day.

While on the tour, we met two lady doctors from Cordoba who studied in Buenos Aires; they were in Mendoza for an international conference on diabetes. They were incredibly friendly and nice, and asked for our email addresses to stay in contact with us. I told them about some of the various directions I’m considering taking my life after I finish at Carroll, and they were very enthusiastic about helping me find connections of any type in Argentina. I’m sure that as you’re reading this, Dad, you’re either panicking or fuming, but I feel pretty confident that my future holds some sort of project in Argentina. Senior research project to write an honors thesis with next summer, perhaps? Or working in a public health clinic for a year before going on to a professional program, maybe? Only time will tell….aren’t you excited for me that I’m so interested in broadening my horizons and exploring the world?  (I already know the answer to the final question is “No.”) What’s more, I could get any sort of job for a tourist agency while I’m there, since I speak Spanish and English—maybe even at a winery!

Another exciting part of the wineries tour is the fact that we went to a small, familiar-style winery (“Cavas de Don Arturo”) that only sells bottles directly in their bodega and on the international export market. I bought a bottle of Malbec and another of Cabernet Sauvignon for 9 dollars total. Why is that special, you ask? Well, my friend, each of those bottles is in the $90 + range in the US!! Ohh yeah.

And that’s pretty much that…Katie wanted to stay and shop one more day but I had class this morning, so I went to the bus station to head home. Getting tickets to Mendoza is a breeze, so I wasn’t too worried about getting back to Santiago, but unfortunately all of the trips until 10:30 that night were booked up. Crap. Once again the fact that I speak Spanish was crucial in being able to get everything worked out (and I hate to say it, but unfortunately in these machismo countries the fact that I was wearing a skirt might have had something to do with it, as well); I explained to a bus driver my situation and they ended up finding me a seat, even though it was the middle front bench seat in a mini-bus/van type thing, so I made it back to Santiago last night.

You may remember from earlier in this post that I had wanted to skip a week of classes and go to Buenos Aires for several days, but had to come back for a bio quiz. Well, have no fear, dear reader, because I wasn’t about to give up on that idea. I’m back in Santiago right now, yes, but at 8:30 tomorrow morning I’ve got a flight to Buenos, where I’ll be until Sunday. Don’t worry; I didn’t pay too much for my plane tickets, in case you were wondering. GOL Airlines, a Brazilian company, has incredibly cheap tickets that I just had to take advantage of. Why would any particular Brazilian airline have insanely cheap tickets right now? Just take my advice and don’t think about it too much-you’re probably happier without the answer.

Chiloe and Puerto Montt

Oops…I’m terrible about keeping things updated here…I hope no one minds.

The weekend before last, KellyAnne and I went down south, to Puerto Montt and Chiloé. We didn’t have school on Monday the 9th because it was Columbus Day (Día de la Raza, here), and we never have class on Friday, so we jumped on a bus (for 14 lovely hours) and headed south. Puerto Montt is basically the biggest and most important city south of Santiago, as far as I can tell, and Chiloé is a relatively large island right next to the mainland.

We spent the first three days of our trip traveling around Chiloé and seeing the sites, which basically are the exact same as the sites on the Oregon coast. The only difference is that the hills and mountains are a bit more impressive, because the entire area was created by volcanic activity and as a result of that there are deep valleys and great big cliffs. The island itself is known for having a distinct culture as compared to the rest of the country, although I sort of feel like presently it serves more for tourist value than anything else. The island is also famous for its giant wooden Catholic churches, most of which are several hundred years old. Apparently in the 1700’s a delegation of priests sent from Spain had the job of making a boat trip around the island every year (lasting most of the year), stopping regularly to perform masses in the towns along the coast. We met some very nice and interesting people, and had a great time even though there was rain or at least overcast conditions most of the days we were there.

The last day we spent down south, Monday, we returned to Puerto Montt, where we had previously met a lady who owns a tour company at the bus station. We’re not exactly sure why, but she offered to let us join in on one of her tours leaving that day for half price, which was only $10 per person. Usually we sort of shun tours, thinking we can it all by ourselves thank you very much, but all of the places her tour went were rather spread out and difficult to get to, as well as being high on the list of areas around Puerto Montt we wanted to see.

This particular area is right in the heart of the “lake region,” and we got to take a tour around the largest of the 7 lakes, Lago Llanquihue, as well as driving up to the top of a volcano on the edge of the lake, Mount Osorno. Additionally, we got to drive up the River Petrohue to Lago Todos Los Santos, an absolutely breathtaking national park on the border with Argentina and right at the base of the Cordilleras. There, we took a boat ride across the lake to a cabin, where we were served a lunch of fresh caught trout from the river and enjoyed an incredibly view of the lake and volcano. (I actually bought a postcard here in Santiago that has a picture on in which couldn’t possibly have been taken from any place other than where we were eating.) After that, we drove back down the river, got out at an amazing set of waterfalls created by ancient lava flows, and then headed back to town. It was an entire day’s worth of touring, from 11 in the morning to 8 at night, for only $10!

After that, we jumped back on a bus and rode another 14 hours back to Santiago, arriving downtown around 9:30 am on Tuesday. Lucky for me, I happened to have a class starting at quarter to noon, so I had to hurry home, take a quick shower and walk a half an hour to the university campus. It was a long day, to say the least!

Anyhow, that’s the quick version of our trip, because I’m too lazy to write out all of the details, but luckily I now have an easy method of sharing pictures so I’ll try and get a few of the good ones up right away.

RAPA NUI PICTURES!!!

I figured out how to made a slideshow of my pictures--here are a few of them!



Create Your Own!

ENJOY!!

Amnesty International

Yesterday I did something kind of cool--I have a friend (she lives in the same residencial as KellyAnne) who's from France. Apparently in the program they have at her university, all of the students have to spend their 3rd year in externships, and she chose to come here and work for Amnesty International. Apparently Amnesty International has an worldwide campaign (get it...they're international) that's been going on for a while (I remember hearing about it at school last year) petitioning the UN to change arms trafficking laws. Apparently they'll be a UN meeting in a few weeks, and this is supposed to be one of the issues on the table.

Melanie (this friend) organized a demonstration to gather petition signatures, that will eventually be presented to the UN, in the incredibly busy centro yesterday. Apparently every minute worldwide someone dies from a firearm, and she had four people lying in bodybag type things with labels on them explaining this, and some giant posters, and then we handed out pamphlets and gathered signatures. I wasn't orginially supposed to be a part of the project, I just kind of showed up because I happened to be at her house when the other people (the ones who layed in the body bags) were heading out toward the centro, and they invited me to come along.

However, with all of her previously organized volunteers in bodybags and another Amnesty worker who failed to show up, Melanie needed help gathering signatures. I spent the afternoon explaining the cause to people, handing out informational flyers and asking them to sign our petition. It's a little bit silly, really, that with just a few seconds of prep by Melanie I commenced acting like I knew exactly what the whole issue was about when talking with people, but I guess that's what a bit of extemp/debate background does for a person. (Makes them a great bluffer? Is that a good thing?)

It was pretty fun, and it forced me to speak Spanish to strangers, which is good for me. I was surprised at how much attention our demonstration attracted; people are always doing demonstrations of some sort in that general area of town. As a matter of fact, exactly opposite us on the other side of the street was a group trying to get people to adopt homeless pets, and they even had puppies to play with and everything, but we still had a much huger crowd. It kind of surprises me that anyone still stops and pays attention! I guess the "corpses" in body bags were a pretty important touch; people thought they were really dead!

Anyway, it was pretty fun, and then they invited us to go do some more Amnesty stuff today, which we did...however, it's 2 in the morning and I'm tired from everything I did today so you'll have to just wait until I write about it tomorrow or something. Tough luck for you.

Parque de la Paz

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.

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!

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!