For Easter we decided to visit Termas del Flaco, or Skinny Hot Springs. On Friday we drove south, stopping to buy some wicker chairs on the side of the road before heading out to the road up to the hot springs. After about half an hour on dirt roads we made it to the start of the road up to the springs. The road is thin, so it is a one way road. Usually, during the week it is down in the mornings and up in the afternoons, but because it was a holiday, it takes the weekend schedule of up in the morning and down in the afternoon. Since it was already 5 pm we were stuck until the morning. We found a campground and set up camp.
Saturday morning we drove up to Termas del Flaco. We arrived and found a campground and had a small asado, or cookout. We then walked around town and found out that in order to see the local dinosaur footprints you had to hike two hours up into the hills above the town. We decided that that would wait until morning. Instead we changed into our bathing suits and went down to the springs. The hot springs water was channeled into some concrete pools by the river. The water was then mixed with water from the river to cool it down. The spring water comes out of the ground at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, too hot for people.
After the springs we found a restaurant for dinner. Because the town caters to tourists, most of the restaurants are connected to hotels and only make food with a two-hour warning from the hotel customers, but we were able to find one that had enough extra food for the seven of us.
Sunday morning we got up early and hiked up to the dinosaur footprints. The hike, almost entirely uphill, took a little over an hour. The footprints were pretty obvious and cool to look at. Each foot was bigger than my head. You could even still see the toenail marks in some of them. The sign said that the prints belonged to a Sauropod. There were also smaller prints that were much harder to see from other species. Based on the other fossils, it was clear that the area had been a beach. Shortly after the dinosaurs had walked in the sand along the beach, a volcanic eruption had filled the prints with ash, which had then eroded away over the 150 million years that have passed since. Over those millions of years the beach had turned on its side, so it was now a cliff side on which the prints had been immortalized.
After hiking back down (a much easier feat) we had empanadas and pie de limon for lunch before packing up camp and driving back to Santiago. We hit a traffic jam about an hour south of the city, which we circumvented on back roads, but which took a while, so we didn’t get home until around 9pm even though we had expected to arrive two hours before that.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Todd's Visit
On Sunday morning, March 7th, I took the metro to the bus and the bus to the airport to pick up my boyfriend, Todd, who was visiting from the U.S. for two weeks. The airport had suffered a lot of damage during the earthquake, so most of the main building was completely closed. Tents had been set up in the parking lot to serve as a waiting area for people picking up friends and family. One tent held international arrivals, while the other held domestic arrivals as well as the gate through which all departing passengers leave. To get past the tent in the parking lot you need a ticket.
His flight down had not been a great experience. He had flown on Lan Chile and though they told him his flights were fine, they cancelled both of them at the last minute and gave him a huge hassle about getting him on a different flight. When I got to the airport, I was not entirely sure that Todd would be on the flight. Luckily, he was.
We took a cab to the apartment where I showed Todd around. We picked up my family and took the metro to Los Dominicos, a local artisan market, where we had a traditional Sunday afternoon lunch. Todd got to sample some local cuisine, including pastel de choclo, a baked corn casserole. After lunch we walked through the shops before heading home for a dinner of empanadas.
Monday, Todd and I took the metro downtown to Puente Cal y Canto. There we checked out the local fish market, fruit market, flower market, and Estacion Mapocho, an old train station converted into an events hall. The fish market was dark and wet. The building that houses it looks like an old warehouse and used to be Santiago’s central market. All types of seafood can be found in the numerous stands there. Estacion Mapocho was also fascinating. The building had suffered significant damage in the earthquake, so we were only allowed to walk through part of it, but what we saw was beautiful.
From there we headed down to the bead district to find some lapis beads for Todd’s stepmother, Linda. Lapis is a semi-precious stone that is only found in two places in the world: Chile and Afghanistan, needless to say, most lapis jewelry comes from Chile. We had a light lunch and headed down to the plaza de armas, the central square that every Chilean city has. Around the square are metal prints of maps from various points in Santiago’s history. It was interesting to see how the city had grown over time.
From there we made our way down to Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in the center of Santiago. Though the hill itself was closed, because of earthquake damage to the stairs that go up it, the craft market across the street was open. We checked it out and visited the local catholic university and La Moneda, Chile’s version of the Whitehouse, before heading home.
On the walk from the metro stop to the apartment, we witnessed a purse snatching. We know to watch out for pickpockets, but I had never heard of a purse snatching in Providencia, the community that we live in, considered one of the safest in Santiago.
Tuesday we rented bikes and rode to Cerro San Cristobal, another hill in Santiago. Unfortunately, Todd’s bike broke about half way there, so the going was slow. Once there, we took the fenuicular, a cable car that goes up the steep hillside, to the top. There we tried mote con huesillos, a traditional drink here made from rehydrated peaches with wheat germ in the bottom. We walked down the hill on a cute path through the woods that was very peaceful and gave us great views.
Wednesday morning Todd and I headed out of town to the beach. We took the metro to the bus station and the bus to Papudo, a town about two and a half hours northwest of Santiago. We found a hotel and nice seafood restaurant near the beach. We tried a variety of local seafood, including razor clams, congrio, shrimp, and mussels. We walked along the beach, but the overcast weather did not tempt us to swim, though there were many people surfing in wet suits.
Thursday, after another walk along the beach in which we got to see the fishermen preparing their daily catch as well as a washed up dead sea otter. We took the bus down the coast to Zapallar where we checked out the town square and the beach. From there we headed out to the peninsula that juts out from the coast. We were half way up the hill on the peninsula when we heard a siren. It was exactly noon and it shortly ended so we didn’t think anything of it until we got to the top of the peninsula. From there we could see emergency vehicles driving all over the town, and people leaving all of the houses and businesses we could see. We realized that it was a tsunami warning, so I tried to call my parents in Santiago to find out more information. We weren’t sure how big of a wave was predicted or when they thought it would hit, so we weren’t sure whether we should stay on the hill on the peninsula, or run down and back up the hill on the mainland.
Unable to get a hold of anyone because the phone lines were down, we decided to stick it out. We watched for almost half an hour as the police came down the hill and led people back up, then back down and more people headed up, then more vehicles coming down to get more people to go up. After half and hour, Todd decided that if there was this much warning, it must be a huge wave, and we would be better off running to the mainland. So we did. We went down to the beach and ran straight up a dirt road, that I am convinced is too steep for cars. We reached the paved road and a man stopped. He had no room in his car, but confirmed that it was a tsunami warning. Another man stopped and gave us a ride up the hill. There we sat at a café and waited it out. No tsunami hit, and after another 45 minutes I was able to get in touch with my parents to let them know that we were ok. Because when the original tsunami hit after the big earthquake, there had been no warning, and people had been fired as a result, I suspect that those responsible for the warning were quick to put one out.
After the warning ended, we waited a bit for good measure and then took a walk along the coast south of town. The south shore is full of gorgeous mansions owned by Santiago’s elite. After walking the coast we headed back to town to wait for the bus to Viña del Mar.
We waited two and a half hours for the bus, which usually runs every hour. We were on the verge of changing our travel plans when the bus arrived. The driver explained that the company had stopped the busses when the tsunami warning occurred because of its route’s proximity to the shore. We weren’t the only passengers who had been waiting. The poor bus driver had to explain every time a new passenger got on the bus.
We finally arrived in Viña, as it is affectionately known, around 8 pm. We found a hotel and checked out the main part of town. A couple restaurants had people on the street ushering people in with free drinks or discounts. One guys offer of two free drinks and the smell of fajitas lured us into a Tex-Mex restaurant, where we had the most delicious fajitas I have had in a long time.
Friday morning we walked around Viña. We saw the castles that litter the coast. Apparently, in the 1920s someone decided that it would be cool to make their house look like a castle. Others copied. We also saw the flower clock, a working clock that is built into the hillside in downtown Viña, made of planted flowers. From there we headed to the main park and museum in the city, only to find that it was closed. Viña, way over crowded in the summer months, was wonderfully relaxing in March. There were only a few people along the beach going about their daily lives. Because there weren’t that many people we were able to notice the pair of pickpockets checking us out and loose them.
We had the biggest completo (hotdog on a bun with tomato, avocado, and mayonnaise) I have ever seen, before catching the bus back to Santiago. At the completo café, we were sitting outside when another big earthquake hit. The fence blocking off the sidewalk café started rattling and everyone felt it. In Chile, waiters never give you the bill until you ask for it; to give it to you without your asking would be the equivalent of asking you to leave. The earthquake scared everyone so much that the waiter, apologizing profusely, brought us the bill as they were closing the outdoor part of the café. On the way home from the bus station, Todd and I hit up Bravisimo, the biggest ice cream store in Santiago, to treat our sweet teeth.
Saturday we loaded up the car and headed up into the mountains with my family. My siblings’ squabbles made for a long car ride, but the scenery was beautiful. We drove up to Juncal, just west of the border crossing into Argentina. Four years ago, we had an exchange student from Chile, Gabriela, and her brother, Fernando, is a park ranger at Juncal. They had two guest rooms, but the rest of us slept in old ovens. Yes, ovens. The park station used to be an old gypsum mine, so they still had one of the old buildings with gypsum ovens in it, previously used for drying out the gypsum into plaster so that it was easier to transport. The ovens provided shelter from the wind and definitely beat sleeping in a tent, the alternative. We had a cookout of longenizas and hotdogs for dinner and sat around the campfire before going to bed.
Sunday we got up and hiked five kilometers up toward the mountains to get a better view of the glaciers. I was not feeling well, so turned back at the two and a half kilometer point, walking a total of five kilometers, but Kalindi, Sterling, and my parents continued on going twice as far. Back at camp, the rest of us played cards, dice, and charades while we waited for everyone else.
When they got back, we packed up the car and drove back down to Santiago. We arrived to a nation-wide blackout. By the time we got to our apartment, the power had just gone back on, but much of the country was still without power. Apparently there had been a problem with one of the power stations caused by leftover damage from the earthquake.
Monday we took it easy because Todd was feeling under the weather. We picked up my brother from his school and took him out for a snack, but other than that, we laid pretty low.
Tuesday we drove out to Pomaire. Pomaire is a town about an hour and a half from Santiago where most of the traditional Chilean pottery comes from. We walked around the town and picked up some gifts for friends in the US and some bowls for my mother. We had fresh empanadas at a restaurant in town and drove home, stopping at a roadside vegetable stand for potatoes and onions. For dinner, Todd and I made sushi for my family.
Wednesday we drove out to my parents’ friend, Diego’s winery. The winery is in Pirque, just 45 minutes from Santiago when the traffic isn’t bad. The winery had suffered severe damage during the earthquake and they had lost most of their wine. Luckily, the earthquake struck just before the start of the new harvest season. Most of the stainless steel tanks were destroyed. Only those who were empty survived. According to someone who was driving by at the time of the earthquake, a wave of wine came out of the winery and was strong enough to spin his car around. Most of the grass and trees around the winery had died because of the wine. The tanks that fell knocked out a wall, which they were in the process of rebuilding, so we all needed to wear hard hats. After the winery tour, we had lunch with my parents at a nice outdoor restaurant before returning to Santiago.
Because it was St. Patrick’s day, Todd and I went out to the local Irish pub to celebrate. The place was completely packed! We never even went inside, opting instead to hang out on the sidewalk so as not to pay the $15 cover charge. Apparently there are no open container laws in Chile, as the bar had set up a table on the sidewalk and was selling every imaginable type of beer that comes in a green can. They did not, however, have Guinness. Apparently, they ran out early in the evening. We met lots of English teachers from the U.S. living in Santiago. Almost everyone there was speaking English. It was almost like being back in the U.S.
Thursday we headed back to the plaza de armas for lunch, before going to the nearby Pre-Columbian museum. The museum was fascinating and with artifacts from all over Latin America, including a Mayan Stele. After the museum we zipped back to Los Dominicos to pick up a copper bowl that we had seen the week before and headed home.
My parents took us out to dinner while the kids stayed in with a movie. We went to a revolving restaurant for appetizers and got a great view of the city. Then for dinner we went to an Indian restaurant, which was good, if not spicy enough for our tastes.
Friday we went back up Cerro San Cristobal to take photos of the view before going out to dinner with my family, kids included. Todd got to try steak tartar, sea urchin, and pastel de jaiba, a crab and cheese pie. After dinner we picked up Todd’s luggage and I took him to the airport. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go past the tent in the parking lot, but his flight left as planned and he made it home safe.
To see photos of Todd's visit you can check out his pictures at tdmack.smugmug.com/Chile2010.
His flight down had not been a great experience. He had flown on Lan Chile and though they told him his flights were fine, they cancelled both of them at the last minute and gave him a huge hassle about getting him on a different flight. When I got to the airport, I was not entirely sure that Todd would be on the flight. Luckily, he was.
We took a cab to the apartment where I showed Todd around. We picked up my family and took the metro to Los Dominicos, a local artisan market, where we had a traditional Sunday afternoon lunch. Todd got to sample some local cuisine, including pastel de choclo, a baked corn casserole. After lunch we walked through the shops before heading home for a dinner of empanadas.
Monday, Todd and I took the metro downtown to Puente Cal y Canto. There we checked out the local fish market, fruit market, flower market, and Estacion Mapocho, an old train station converted into an events hall. The fish market was dark and wet. The building that houses it looks like an old warehouse and used to be Santiago’s central market. All types of seafood can be found in the numerous stands there. Estacion Mapocho was also fascinating. The building had suffered significant damage in the earthquake, so we were only allowed to walk through part of it, but what we saw was beautiful.
From there we headed down to the bead district to find some lapis beads for Todd’s stepmother, Linda. Lapis is a semi-precious stone that is only found in two places in the world: Chile and Afghanistan, needless to say, most lapis jewelry comes from Chile. We had a light lunch and headed down to the plaza de armas, the central square that every Chilean city has. Around the square are metal prints of maps from various points in Santiago’s history. It was interesting to see how the city had grown over time.
From there we made our way down to Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in the center of Santiago. Though the hill itself was closed, because of earthquake damage to the stairs that go up it, the craft market across the street was open. We checked it out and visited the local catholic university and La Moneda, Chile’s version of the Whitehouse, before heading home.
On the walk from the metro stop to the apartment, we witnessed a purse snatching. We know to watch out for pickpockets, but I had never heard of a purse snatching in Providencia, the community that we live in, considered one of the safest in Santiago.
Tuesday we rented bikes and rode to Cerro San Cristobal, another hill in Santiago. Unfortunately, Todd’s bike broke about half way there, so the going was slow. Once there, we took the fenuicular, a cable car that goes up the steep hillside, to the top. There we tried mote con huesillos, a traditional drink here made from rehydrated peaches with wheat germ in the bottom. We walked down the hill on a cute path through the woods that was very peaceful and gave us great views.
Wednesday morning Todd and I headed out of town to the beach. We took the metro to the bus station and the bus to Papudo, a town about two and a half hours northwest of Santiago. We found a hotel and nice seafood restaurant near the beach. We tried a variety of local seafood, including razor clams, congrio, shrimp, and mussels. We walked along the beach, but the overcast weather did not tempt us to swim, though there were many people surfing in wet suits.
Thursday, after another walk along the beach in which we got to see the fishermen preparing their daily catch as well as a washed up dead sea otter. We took the bus down the coast to Zapallar where we checked out the town square and the beach. From there we headed out to the peninsula that juts out from the coast. We were half way up the hill on the peninsula when we heard a siren. It was exactly noon and it shortly ended so we didn’t think anything of it until we got to the top of the peninsula. From there we could see emergency vehicles driving all over the town, and people leaving all of the houses and businesses we could see. We realized that it was a tsunami warning, so I tried to call my parents in Santiago to find out more information. We weren’t sure how big of a wave was predicted or when they thought it would hit, so we weren’t sure whether we should stay on the hill on the peninsula, or run down and back up the hill on the mainland.
Unable to get a hold of anyone because the phone lines were down, we decided to stick it out. We watched for almost half an hour as the police came down the hill and led people back up, then back down and more people headed up, then more vehicles coming down to get more people to go up. After half and hour, Todd decided that if there was this much warning, it must be a huge wave, and we would be better off running to the mainland. So we did. We went down to the beach and ran straight up a dirt road, that I am convinced is too steep for cars. We reached the paved road and a man stopped. He had no room in his car, but confirmed that it was a tsunami warning. Another man stopped and gave us a ride up the hill. There we sat at a café and waited it out. No tsunami hit, and after another 45 minutes I was able to get in touch with my parents to let them know that we were ok. Because when the original tsunami hit after the big earthquake, there had been no warning, and people had been fired as a result, I suspect that those responsible for the warning were quick to put one out.
After the warning ended, we waited a bit for good measure and then took a walk along the coast south of town. The south shore is full of gorgeous mansions owned by Santiago’s elite. After walking the coast we headed back to town to wait for the bus to Viña del Mar.
We waited two and a half hours for the bus, which usually runs every hour. We were on the verge of changing our travel plans when the bus arrived. The driver explained that the company had stopped the busses when the tsunami warning occurred because of its route’s proximity to the shore. We weren’t the only passengers who had been waiting. The poor bus driver had to explain every time a new passenger got on the bus.
We finally arrived in Viña, as it is affectionately known, around 8 pm. We found a hotel and checked out the main part of town. A couple restaurants had people on the street ushering people in with free drinks or discounts. One guys offer of two free drinks and the smell of fajitas lured us into a Tex-Mex restaurant, where we had the most delicious fajitas I have had in a long time.
Friday morning we walked around Viña. We saw the castles that litter the coast. Apparently, in the 1920s someone decided that it would be cool to make their house look like a castle. Others copied. We also saw the flower clock, a working clock that is built into the hillside in downtown Viña, made of planted flowers. From there we headed to the main park and museum in the city, only to find that it was closed. Viña, way over crowded in the summer months, was wonderfully relaxing in March. There were only a few people along the beach going about their daily lives. Because there weren’t that many people we were able to notice the pair of pickpockets checking us out and loose them.
We had the biggest completo (hotdog on a bun with tomato, avocado, and mayonnaise) I have ever seen, before catching the bus back to Santiago. At the completo café, we were sitting outside when another big earthquake hit. The fence blocking off the sidewalk café started rattling and everyone felt it. In Chile, waiters never give you the bill until you ask for it; to give it to you without your asking would be the equivalent of asking you to leave. The earthquake scared everyone so much that the waiter, apologizing profusely, brought us the bill as they were closing the outdoor part of the café. On the way home from the bus station, Todd and I hit up Bravisimo, the biggest ice cream store in Santiago, to treat our sweet teeth.
Saturday we loaded up the car and headed up into the mountains with my family. My siblings’ squabbles made for a long car ride, but the scenery was beautiful. We drove up to Juncal, just west of the border crossing into Argentina. Four years ago, we had an exchange student from Chile, Gabriela, and her brother, Fernando, is a park ranger at Juncal. They had two guest rooms, but the rest of us slept in old ovens. Yes, ovens. The park station used to be an old gypsum mine, so they still had one of the old buildings with gypsum ovens in it, previously used for drying out the gypsum into plaster so that it was easier to transport. The ovens provided shelter from the wind and definitely beat sleeping in a tent, the alternative. We had a cookout of longenizas and hotdogs for dinner and sat around the campfire before going to bed.
Sunday we got up and hiked five kilometers up toward the mountains to get a better view of the glaciers. I was not feeling well, so turned back at the two and a half kilometer point, walking a total of five kilometers, but Kalindi, Sterling, and my parents continued on going twice as far. Back at camp, the rest of us played cards, dice, and charades while we waited for everyone else.
When they got back, we packed up the car and drove back down to Santiago. We arrived to a nation-wide blackout. By the time we got to our apartment, the power had just gone back on, but much of the country was still without power. Apparently there had been a problem with one of the power stations caused by leftover damage from the earthquake.
Monday we took it easy because Todd was feeling under the weather. We picked up my brother from his school and took him out for a snack, but other than that, we laid pretty low.
Tuesday we drove out to Pomaire. Pomaire is a town about an hour and a half from Santiago where most of the traditional Chilean pottery comes from. We walked around the town and picked up some gifts for friends in the US and some bowls for my mother. We had fresh empanadas at a restaurant in town and drove home, stopping at a roadside vegetable stand for potatoes and onions. For dinner, Todd and I made sushi for my family.
Wednesday we drove out to my parents’ friend, Diego’s winery. The winery is in Pirque, just 45 minutes from Santiago when the traffic isn’t bad. The winery had suffered severe damage during the earthquake and they had lost most of their wine. Luckily, the earthquake struck just before the start of the new harvest season. Most of the stainless steel tanks were destroyed. Only those who were empty survived. According to someone who was driving by at the time of the earthquake, a wave of wine came out of the winery and was strong enough to spin his car around. Most of the grass and trees around the winery had died because of the wine. The tanks that fell knocked out a wall, which they were in the process of rebuilding, so we all needed to wear hard hats. After the winery tour, we had lunch with my parents at a nice outdoor restaurant before returning to Santiago.
Because it was St. Patrick’s day, Todd and I went out to the local Irish pub to celebrate. The place was completely packed! We never even went inside, opting instead to hang out on the sidewalk so as not to pay the $15 cover charge. Apparently there are no open container laws in Chile, as the bar had set up a table on the sidewalk and was selling every imaginable type of beer that comes in a green can. They did not, however, have Guinness. Apparently, they ran out early in the evening. We met lots of English teachers from the U.S. living in Santiago. Almost everyone there was speaking English. It was almost like being back in the U.S.
Thursday we headed back to the plaza de armas for lunch, before going to the nearby Pre-Columbian museum. The museum was fascinating and with artifacts from all over Latin America, including a Mayan Stele. After the museum we zipped back to Los Dominicos to pick up a copper bowl that we had seen the week before and headed home.
My parents took us out to dinner while the kids stayed in with a movie. We went to a revolving restaurant for appetizers and got a great view of the city. Then for dinner we went to an Indian restaurant, which was good, if not spicy enough for our tastes.
Friday we went back up Cerro San Cristobal to take photos of the view before going out to dinner with my family, kids included. Todd got to try steak tartar, sea urchin, and pastel de jaiba, a crab and cheese pie. After dinner we picked up Todd’s luggage and I took him to the airport. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go past the tent in the parking lot, but his flight left as planned and he made it home safe.
To see photos of Todd's visit you can check out his pictures at tdmack.smugmug.com/Chile2010.
Earthquake
At 3:43 am on the morning of Saturday, February 27th an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile, about 100 kilometers from the city of Concepcion, in the eighth region (Region Bio Bio).
As it was almost four in the morning, so we were all asleep; the earthquake woke us up. I was in Lago Ranco, in the tenth region (Region de los Lagos), at the summer home of my parent’s friends, Mary Anne and Diego. The house we were in was made of wood, one of the safest building materials for earthquake zones. I was sleeping in the top bunk of a bunk bed and awoke to the violent shaking. My first thought was that whatever it was couldn’t last long, so I waited. My second thought was that the house was sliding off of its foundation and down the hill toward the lake. My third thought was to try to get out.
I tried to get up, but was almost thrown from the bed, so I pressed my body down against the mattress and gripped the sides of the bed. The quake seemed to last forever; in reality it was three and a half minutes, an eternity for an earthquake.
I remember hearing the doors creek back and forth and slam over and over again. When it finally stopped, I made sure that everyone else in the room was fine and went back to bed.
We had been planning on leaving early the next morning, but when I got up, my dad said that we were going to wait and make sure the road was clear before we tried to go back to Santiago. There was remarkably little damage in the house. No dishes had broken as they had all been in the dishwasher. A few cracks in the wood had appeared, but there was no structural damage to the house. Next door, all of the dishes had shattered.
We spent the day trying to get an email out and searching for news. Our cell phones didn’t work, but Diego’s iphone worked for a few minutes here and there. Around 2:00 pm I was finally able to get an email out telling my boyfriend that I was fine and asking that he call my grandparents to let them know that we were all ok.
We tried to listen to an old radio that Diego had, but couldn’t get it to work. I guess the news stations were down too. We finally got an old, little TV to show us a news station. The government asked people not to travel, so that the roads could be used by those bringing in emergency services. We decided to wait.
We finally headed back to Santiago on Monday as Diego wanted to get back to Santiago as his winery had suffered a lot of damage. We set out around 9:00 am and headed north. We left before Diego and Mary Anne, but they soon caught up with us as they drive a bit faster. We stopped at a gas station to find a line 20 cars long. We waited and waiting knowing that we would only get 10,000 pesos worth of gas, about $20 worth. After 45 minutes the manager came out and told us that the car in front of us, Diego’s car, would be the last one to get gas as they had to save some for the army. Diego talked to the guys at the pump and they agreed to give us gas as well as we were traveling together. After Diego got his gas, we pulled up, and just then, the manager cut the generator and we didn’t get gas.
We headed on to the next gas station where we were able to get 10,000 pesos worth of gas in the car as well as fill the 10 liter gas tank we had on top of the car, which Kalindi walked in with separate, pretending not to know us. We followed this routine at about 5 gas stations before finding one that would fill the tank.
In addition to the problem finding gas, there were many cracks in the road, sometimes as much as six inches change in the height of the pavement. If it was more than six inches, the section would be marked off or we would be funneled onto a long detour on which the traffic was horrible. At 1:00 am we made it back to the highway after spending over three hours on a single detour, averaging about 2 miles an hour. Because we could no longer see the cracks in the road and had already seen a couple people pulled over after cracks changing tires, we decided to stop for the night. We camped out next to a toll booth, and only later found out that we were only a few miles from a prison from which all the prisoners had escaped because of the earthquake damage and power outages.
We made it home the next night after crossing a number of questionable bridges and seeing a lot of damage. Even Santiago had some damage, though not as much as Los Angeles and Talca. A couple of apartment buildings had collapsed, but all of them had been built by companies with bad reputations.
Though nothing had broken at the house in Lago Ranco, a few glasses had fallen in our apartment in Santiago (our apartment is on the 5th floor) and a few cracks had appeared in the walls and in the tiles around the doorframe. For weeks after the earthquake we experienced aftershocks. Though interesting at first, they got old real fast.
For more about the earthquake and our experiences feel free to check out my mother’s blog at cnaslund.blogspot.com
As it was almost four in the morning, so we were all asleep; the earthquake woke us up. I was in Lago Ranco, in the tenth region (Region de los Lagos), at the summer home of my parent’s friends, Mary Anne and Diego. The house we were in was made of wood, one of the safest building materials for earthquake zones. I was sleeping in the top bunk of a bunk bed and awoke to the violent shaking. My first thought was that whatever it was couldn’t last long, so I waited. My second thought was that the house was sliding off of its foundation and down the hill toward the lake. My third thought was to try to get out.
I tried to get up, but was almost thrown from the bed, so I pressed my body down against the mattress and gripped the sides of the bed. The quake seemed to last forever; in reality it was three and a half minutes, an eternity for an earthquake.
I remember hearing the doors creek back and forth and slam over and over again. When it finally stopped, I made sure that everyone else in the room was fine and went back to bed.
We had been planning on leaving early the next morning, but when I got up, my dad said that we were going to wait and make sure the road was clear before we tried to go back to Santiago. There was remarkably little damage in the house. No dishes had broken as they had all been in the dishwasher. A few cracks in the wood had appeared, but there was no structural damage to the house. Next door, all of the dishes had shattered.
We spent the day trying to get an email out and searching for news. Our cell phones didn’t work, but Diego’s iphone worked for a few minutes here and there. Around 2:00 pm I was finally able to get an email out telling my boyfriend that I was fine and asking that he call my grandparents to let them know that we were all ok.
We tried to listen to an old radio that Diego had, but couldn’t get it to work. I guess the news stations were down too. We finally got an old, little TV to show us a news station. The government asked people not to travel, so that the roads could be used by those bringing in emergency services. We decided to wait.
We finally headed back to Santiago on Monday as Diego wanted to get back to Santiago as his winery had suffered a lot of damage. We set out around 9:00 am and headed north. We left before Diego and Mary Anne, but they soon caught up with us as they drive a bit faster. We stopped at a gas station to find a line 20 cars long. We waited and waiting knowing that we would only get 10,000 pesos worth of gas, about $20 worth. After 45 minutes the manager came out and told us that the car in front of us, Diego’s car, would be the last one to get gas as they had to save some for the army. Diego talked to the guys at the pump and they agreed to give us gas as well as we were traveling together. After Diego got his gas, we pulled up, and just then, the manager cut the generator and we didn’t get gas.
We headed on to the next gas station where we were able to get 10,000 pesos worth of gas in the car as well as fill the 10 liter gas tank we had on top of the car, which Kalindi walked in with separate, pretending not to know us. We followed this routine at about 5 gas stations before finding one that would fill the tank.
In addition to the problem finding gas, there were many cracks in the road, sometimes as much as six inches change in the height of the pavement. If it was more than six inches, the section would be marked off or we would be funneled onto a long detour on which the traffic was horrible. At 1:00 am we made it back to the highway after spending over three hours on a single detour, averaging about 2 miles an hour. Because we could no longer see the cracks in the road and had already seen a couple people pulled over after cracks changing tires, we decided to stop for the night. We camped out next to a toll booth, and only later found out that we were only a few miles from a prison from which all the prisoners had escaped because of the earthquake damage and power outages.
We made it home the next night after crossing a number of questionable bridges and seeing a lot of damage. Even Santiago had some damage, though not as much as Los Angeles and Talca. A couple of apartment buildings had collapsed, but all of them had been built by companies with bad reputations.
Though nothing had broken at the house in Lago Ranco, a few glasses had fallen in our apartment in Santiago (our apartment is on the 5th floor) and a few cracks had appeared in the walls and in the tiles around the doorframe. For weeks after the earthquake we experienced aftershocks. Though interesting at first, they got old real fast.
For more about the earthquake and our experiences feel free to check out my mother’s blog at cnaslund.blogspot.com
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
South Trip
The trip south got off to a bad start. In the five days that we were home, we took the car to the mechanic twice first to have the engine fan fixed and then to have the radiator cleaned out and put back together. Neither repair solved the problem, so on Sunday, January 31st we headed south anyway, with the heat on full blast trying not to overheat the car.
We arrived in Talca three hours after setting out from Santiago for an afternoon tea at the house of one of my youngest sisters classmates from the last time that we were in Chile. Her mother and mine had kept in touch. After tea and cake and a dip in their pool we continued south looking for a campground. By 11:30pm we had not found a campground so we stayed in a hotel in Chillan and had sandwiches in the hotel restaurant before going to bed.
The next morning we drove on to Los Angeles, where we stocked on up groceries before driving out to Junquillos, the estate of my mother’s colleague, Enrique’s, wife’s family. We passed a gorgeous volcano on the way and of course stopped for photos. The road to the house from the main road is a gravel one that winds through the trees, coming out of the forest on the far side of the polo field in front of the house. We arrived at the house, or should I say mansion, just in time for lunch. The big house had 12 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms as well as a dinning room that could seat 20 and a huge living room with a two story ceiling and windows that ran from top to bottom, not to mention a grand piano, floor to ceiling book shelves full of old books and the biggest chandelier I have ever seen. We stayed in the guesthouse, just down the hill, a three-bedroom cottage that was perfectly suited for us.
In the carriage house, sure enough, there were carriages. 8 carriages of a variety of ages and styles were on display. Two of them have been restored so as to be of use, and we even got to ride around the lake in one of them. We went down to the lake for an evening swim before dinner and got to take kayaks and inner tubes around the lake just before sunset. Walking up from the lake we ran into the herd of alpacas that live on the farm right by the tennis courts.
On Tuesday, my father and I drove the car to Concepcion, the biggest city in southern Chile, to the Mitsubishi repair guy to have it looked at again. We left the car with him and returned to Junquillos by taking first a bus to Los Angeles and then a second bus to Santa Barbara where Josephina, Enrique’s wife, picked us up.
Wednesday, after waking up to the cries of the farms peacock herd, we were invited up to the main house for tea and were told that we had to prepare a skit. The kids at the main house had prepared a version of little red riding hood. We, myself, my brother, and my three little sisters, took a short joke and turned it into a skit for the adults. Our translation couldn’t have been too bad, because the punch line still got lots of laughs. The skit was followed by tea and cake and lots of conversation. I finally took my siblings home around 8:30pm and cooked them dinner before going back up to the big house for “the adult dinner” and drinks.
Thursday morning we covered ourselves in sunscreen and rode the horses down to the blueberry fields. One of Josephina’s cousins had studied agriculture and in the last few years had turned the empty fields of the family estate into a blueberry and hazelnut farm. We picked bags full of blueberries to take home. At the big house, they turned most of the blueberries into jam. At our cottage we baked crisps and scones.
Friday, our last day, we invited everyone over for tea at our cottage and to try our blueberry sweets. Blueberries are not very common in Chile, so few Chileans know what to make with them and were surprised at the variety of things we knew how to make with them and how delicious they turned out.
Saturday morning we packed up the trunks, leaving them and the tents and camping gear in one of the storage rooms at the big house. With each of us taking a backpack, as well as a couple of bags of food, guidebooks, etc. we caught a ride into town and took a bus to Los Angeles. There we caught a taxi to the other bus station and took another bus to Concepcion. As the car was not yet ready, we hopped on another bus to Dichato, a coastal town north of Concepcion. We arrived to a torrential downpour, found a hotel, and braved the weather to find a restaurant on the beach.
The next morning we got up and took two busses to Talcahuano, the port town just south of Concepcion. There we took a tour of the boat “Huascar,” the second iron clad battleship in the world. The ship was Peruvian, captured by the Chilean navy at the end of the war of the pacific. The ship was restored and is still on display as a national treasure. To get onto the ship, you climb on a raft with twenty to thirty people. Two navy seamen then pull the raft from shore out to the boat along a rope.
On the boat is a memorial to Captain Arturo Prat, the father of the Chilean navy, who was killed on the ship in an earlier battle of the War of the Pacific. He looks very much like my dad, to the point that a little girl on the boat asked him if he was Arturo Prat. My dad said no, but that Arturo Prat was his grandfather. The girl looked surprised to say the least.
We had a seafood lunch on the coast before taking the buses back to Dichato, where us girls hit the streets for some shopping and Sterling rode a pedal car with my father.
The next morning we packed up and headed back through Concepcion to Lota, a mining town south of the city. We took a tour of the local mine, El Chiflon del Diablo, no longer in use. Because it only closed in 1997, the tour guide was a former miner who lost his arm in a mine collapse in 1992. We took an old mining elevator down into the main mine shaft. The guy was very much encouraging us all to get an education so that we didn't have to work the way he had. He told us about how he was trapped in the mine three different times and the time he lost his arm he was down there for over 48 hours and then spent almost two and a half years in the hospital culminating in the loss of his arm from about three inches above the elbow. We got to go down one of the arms of the mine and see the coal vein in the walls. The mine was out underneath 40 feet of ocean and 17 feet of sea floor. We slowly climbed out seeing the cart shafts and the canary cage. We all had hard hats with lights on them and at one point we all turned our lights off to see what it would be like to be blind. Even after five minutes I couldn’t adjust to the darkness; we could see absolutely nothing. At the mine we also got to see an old movie set and even bought a bootleg copy of the film that was shot there from one of the old miners.
We then went up to the botanical gardens; more beautiful if not as interesting as the mine. They had been the personal gardens of the family that had owned the coal mine before the government nationalized it in the fifties or sixties. After the garden we went to the historical museum, a small collection of things owned by the same family. The most interesting part was looking at the birthdates and wedding date and figuring out that the couple, first cousins, had married about six months before the birth of their first child. Scandalous!
Tuesday morning we left Lota, after poking around the local cultural center and headed back to Concepcion to pick up the car. We arrived to find out that the car would not be ready until that afternoon so we visited the local art museum, famous for its mural “Presencia de America Latina,” painted by Mexican muralist Jorge Gonzalez Camarena in 1964. It was the most beautiful mural I have ever seen and did a wonderful job of depicting the history of the region.
After gyros at a Middle Eastern restaurant, where we met a colorful Texan who had moved to Chile because of his dislike for the US government, we headed off toward a second museum. About a block from the restaurant, my mother tripped on the uneven sidewalk and caught her pinky finger on a fence as she fell. It immediately began swelling and was off at an odd angle, so we changed directions and walked the three blocks to the local hospital. There we paid $34 to be seen and waited over an hour before my mother was admitted. No one was allowed to go in with her, so my father, siblings, and I waited in a café just outside the hospital, receiving phone calls every half hour or so with an update from my mom. The doctors took x-rays and determined that her finger would be fine. It was not broken or dislocated, though it sure looked it (and still does a month and a half later).
Despite many assurances that he would call us the minute the car was ready, at 7pm my father and I headed to the car shop, waited about half and hour, then picked up my mother and siblings at the hospital and headed up to Junquillos to pick up the trunks and camping gear we had left.
We arrived around 11pm just in time for some birthday cake, as it was Josephina’s mother’s birthday. We packed up the car and left just after midnight to get some of the drive behind us. We arrived in Villarica around 4 in the morning only to find every hotel and campground full. We found a back road and slept in the car on the side of the road for about 4 hours before continuing on the half hour to Pucon for breakfast and photos of the Villarica volcano nearby.
We crossed the border into Argentina in the shadow of the Lanin volcano without much hassle. We arrived in San Martin de los Andes and met up with Cambria’s boyfriend, Tomaz’s family for a barbeque on the lakeshore. Tomaz’s family had been in Argentina for the previous two weeks.
After the barbeque we found a campground and set up the tents before meeting Tomaz’s family in town for some light shopping and birthday cake, since it was my birthday.
Thursday we started the drive down to San Carlos de Bariloche. After having the head gaskets on the car replaced and repaired we needed to have them retightened by a mechanic after 1000 kilometers. Therefore, we were hoping to get to Bariloche, as it is now called, by Friday.
Thursday we made it most of the way along the dirt road known as the seven lakes road, seeing beautiful views. My mother said that it looked just like Switzerland. We camped en route on the edge of Lago Espejo Chico, or Little Mirror Lake.
Friday we finished the drive and arrived in Bariloche in time for lunch. Leave the campground that morning we had broken a shock absorber, making for another bumpy ride, and so we set off to find a mechanic. Unfortunately every mechanic we could find was closed from noon to four for lunch, so we found a wonderful little Italian restaurant for lunch.
After lunch we found a mechanic to weld the shock, but the gaskets could only be tightened when the engine was completely cold, something that takes four hours, so we made an appointment for Monday morning and headed back out to one of the lakes at Villa La Angostura.
Saturday we did laundry in the morning and then took a boat trip out the peninsula in town where a national park is home to hundreds of arrayanes trees, whose bark looks like cinnamon. From there we hiked the thirteen kilometers back to town, a wonderful hike because of the perfect weather.
We had dinner at a restaurant in town: wild boar and deer, or mountain food as it is called in Argentina. Not bad.
Sunday we headed back to San Carlos de Bariloche, where we stopped at one of the many chocolate shops the town is famous for, for 80% Cacao ice cream and souvenir shopping.
After dinner we headed up to the campground bar to catch some of the winter Olympics on TV and check email. I have officially been accepted into a masters program at the University of Washington! When we headed back down to camp, we discovered that one of the tires was flat, and so at one in the morning, my parents put on the spare so that we wouldn’t have to do it at six am.
My dad woke me up at six am to go into town with him to park outside the mechanics so that the engine could cool before the mechanic shop opened at nine. We slept a little in the car and when the mechanic arrived we went and got breakfast. The car was done at 11:30am and we headed to a tire repair shop to get the tire patched. Everything went smoothly, until when putting the tire back on the car, the tire guy broke a bolt. He sent his assistant into town to get a new one while he took apart the wheel. Because it was after noon, no car shops were open, so the assistant was unsuccessful. Finally a friend of his came by and said that he may have one that was the right size at home and went to check. He conjured one up out of somewhere and helped put the wheel back together. I am thankful that he was there as the tire guy did not inspire much confidence. By the time the car was fixed, it was two pm so we picked up my mother and siblings and headed south.
We spent the night north of Esquel in a town called Epuyen. We woke up to sheep in the campsite that were barely afraid of humans. One ate out of my hand.
Tuesday we continued on to Trevelin, a small town south of Esquel, known for its Welsh immigrants. There we had an old fashioned Welsh tea including tea, scones, toast, various jams, peach pie, raspberry tart, cream cake, and a traditional fruit and nut bread.
After tea we continued on to Parque los Alerces, where we camped for the night. Entering the park, the guard had originally told us that it would be 30 Argentine pesos a person, for our family, a sum of about 55 dollars just to get into the park. My mother told him that we were just there to camp for the night and after checking that we would not be passing another guard station told us that he could let us in for 50 pesos, only about 12 dollars.
Wednesday morning we left the park, stopping to see the rock paintings there, interesting, but not the best-preserved rock art I have seen. From there we crossed the border back into Chile and drove on to the town of Puerto Cardenas where we were to meet my parents friends Diego and Mary Anne and their kids. The border cross was uneventful until they realized that we had some peacock feathers that Neelam had collected at Junquillos. We were told that we had to throw them away. Just before we left, the guy in charge pulled my parents into his office. He explained that he knew the feathers were Neelam’s and that if we didn’t let his men see us, that we could take them. We hid them for the rest of the trip.
We arrived in town and found only one established campground, so we tried there. Sure enough, they had a reservation for us. Diego and Mary Anne had not yet arrived. Just before we arrived it had started to pour so we set up the tents in the rain and headed over to the dining room at the hotel attached the campground for dinner. Just before midnight Diego and Mary Anne arrived and opted to stay in a cabin instead of camp out with us.
We arrived back at camp to find a river running through the girls tent. My parents tent, of course, was dry. After bailing out buckets of water, digging trenches around the tent, and soaking five towels, only to discover that the downhill half of the tent was sitting on water and felt something like walking on a waterbed, I called it quits and set up my brothers two-man tent in the entrance to the storage closet outside the bathrooms (my brother was sleeping with my parents). One of my sisters, Kalindi, joined me and we spent the night nice and dry.
The next morning it had cleared up a little and Diego and Mary Anne and the five of their eight kids that had come on the trip joined us in the campground. They set up their camp and tried to make a fire. They lit a fire and then decided it was too small so poured gasoline on it. Of course the whole thing burst into flames causing Diego to drop the gas can, spreading the fire further. My father grabbed the shovel and shoveled dirt over the fire to put it out before it caught the picnic area on fire. We put the fire out, but the picnic bench smoldered for another half hour or so.
That afternoon we went into town and Diego and the kids went fishing while Mary Anne, my mother, my father, Kalindi, and I checked out a local fishing lodge and walked around town. My brother, Sterling, was the only one to catch a fish, which we cooked up for appetizers.
After fishing it started to rain again so we headed to the hot springs. The spring water had been diverted into a large pool. It was very relaxing and we stayed for about two hours.
Friday we drove into Chaiten to see the damage caused to the town from the volcano that erupted a year before. Most of the houses in town had been abandoned. The original population of 4,000 people had been reduced to only about 200. The gas station had opened three days before our visit and we were only able to find one open restaurant. Throughout the town there was ash scattered. The locals said that on days when it wasn’t rainy, the ash floats around, coating everything, and making it hard to breath. Along the river the mudflows had buried the homes for two blocks in either direction to the second story. When the volcano erupted ash had accumulated all over. Eventually it became too much, got too wet, and washed down the river, widening the river, and destroying all of the river front property. The bay that Chaiten sits on had been filled in with the mud and ash, extending the beach by over 50 yards. The build up of ash in the bay was causing problems for the port nearby. Serious consideration has been given to moving the entire town over and the port as well.
While we were in Chaiten we checked in with the boat company to be sure that our reservation was on the list for the next day’s boat to Puerto Montt. Because southern Chile is riddled with lakes and bays, the main road south stops in Puerto Montt. To go further south than that, you need to load your car onto a ferry or drive through Argentina. Our names were on the list, but the boat had been held up because of the storms, so it would not be there. We could wait until Sunday and hope that there would be enough room on the boat for the people who had reservations that day and the day before, or we could drive through Argentina. We chose the later.
After lunch at Chaiten’s only restaurant, we loaded up on food at the one grocery store in town and headed back, stopping once again at the hot springs for an afternoon dip. We arrived back in camp to find out that each of Diego’s boys had caught a fish, one of which was about three feet long. Two of them were enough dinner for the 14 of us.
Saturday morning I got up early with my mother and father and drove back to Chaiten. As it had been too cloudy to actually see the volcano the day before, we were hoping that the early morning would give us the gap in the clouds we were hoping for. No such luck. We tried to fill up the gas tank in Chaiten, but the power was out, a common conundrum, and the generator was only strong enough to pump gas from the diesel tank, not from the deeper unleaded gas tanks.
We drove back to camp, loaded the car, and headed back toward Argentina. Again the border cross was simple and uneventful, and we spent the night at a campground in Esquel.
Sunday morning we drove north, stopping again in San Carlos de Bariloche for ice cream, and crossed back into Chile. At all previous crossings we had never had to unload the top of the car. Usually, the guys poke around for a minute inside the car and check what is convenient and let us go. A family with five kids doesn’t exactly look like the drug running type. But at this border station, it was a different story. We were the last car to cross the border before it closed for the night. Maybe this caused them to be more thorough, or maybe that border cross is always more thorough, but we had to take all of the bags out of the car and unload the roof rack so that a drug sniffing dog could walk through our stuff. I unloaded the back of the car, and as it was dark, I conveniently left Neelam’s peacock feathers in the car. One of the guards was very interested in a jar of crushed red pepper that my mother had in the cooking trunk. He turned it over and over, making sure that there was no baggie hiding inside the pepper. I guess that is a common trick.
We arrived at Lago Ranco to Diego’s summer home just before eleven pm. We ate a quick dinner and went to bed. Their house, built entirely of wood, was gorgeous. There were three bedrooms upstairs holding a total of seven bunk beds, as well as a huge master bedroom downstairs. The dining room table was solid wood and big enough to seat all fourteen of us.
We spent the next five days sun bathing, playing chess, reading, and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere. At night, Diego would pull down the projector screen and we would watch movies. On Tuesday, a bunch of us girls, took the bikes that they had and rode the twenty kilometers to the river and back. At the river was a ferry on which you could load one car. A motor would then pull you across the river. Apparently, it was cheaper than putting in a bridge. We got home after dark, and let me assure you, it was not easy riding the bikes on dirt roads without light, but we made it home safe.
On Thursday, Diego took out the water skis and we all got a chance to try it. Kalindi went first, and got up after about eight unsuccessful tries. Cambria tried about ten times before giving up. I, with the knee brace on (I tore my ACL and MCL last winter skiing), got up on my third try!
Friday night we packed up the car in the hopes of making an early exit Saturday morning. That night, an 8.8 earthquake hit Chile. Needless to say, we weren’t going anywhere on Saturday.
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