The Andes of EL Colorado

Friday before last I woke myself up in the morning at a crisp 0630 hours or so to embark on my first excursion up and in the mountains for a one-day skiing adventure. The previous night I was chatting and tooling around the ‘net before discovering that a buddy was heading up to the Andes the following morning. I jumped at the opportunity, and literally about 7 hours later I was picked up, and three of us gringos were off on the 90 minute trip out of Chile’s capital and up the Andes Mountains to ski resort El Colorado.

Naturally I was heading off with a couple of seasoned snowboarders. And although I liked to tell people I’d been out skiing before, it actually consisted of a couple of gos down a small plastic hill hosed down with soapy water during a mid-summer trip I took in Colorado, USA, with my grandmother more than a decade ago.

This was going to be my first rodeo.

After a bit of a hassle with renting equipment (but at least I got the student discount!) it was me and the mountain. My friends had already ran off to the more challenging areas, leaving me to figure out how the hell to put on my boots, move, get to a lift, find a beginner hill, and, you know, consider how I might possibly negotiate breaking, turning, surviving, etc. Oh, happy days. But it was a peach of a day. There had been a bunch of new snow the day before, it was a weekday meaning it was not busy at all; it was sunny, clear, and beautiful.

I went for it and began applying the only tactic I really remembered about skiing… which was something about making your skis into a pizza or something to slow down. Unfortunately that seems only to work on plastic hills hosed down with soapy water. I gave up the whole ‘be cautious’ experiment and just flew down the hill. This is SWEET! I thought. And the beginner hill even graciously produced a steady incline to conveniently slow my speed. Unfortunately the blind spot produced from the upward angle quite deviously shrouded the very steep, rapid final descent, complete with orange banners, cautions, ‘Slow Down: The End is Nigh!’, and I am again flying down the hill, this time frightfully close to real skiers and snowboarders casually looking on. So it goes without saying that it was a pretty cool feeling as I threw myself to the ground in the by-now desperate hope of stopping before I ram into something or someone.
..& the snowdust settles.
Success.
Hey I’m even pretty close to the ski-lift.

But if any of you know me you know that I have the reflexes of a cat and the physical dexterity of those that may commonly be referred to as a natural athlete. After a couple trials, naturally, I was carving lines across the beginner patch and really enjoying myself, only crashing when I became over-confident, which was basically often. But for a while, for a while there it was all looking good. And by lunchtime, I was quite pleased with my progress. Lookin’ pretty legit, ‘innit?

After lunch I joined my snowboarding friends, and they guided me down a low-intermediate hill a few times. Of course they were impressed with my exquisite turns and overall style and grace. Stephanie had been a longtime skier, actually, so she gave me some crucial advice and encouragement which helped a lot. But, man, what a lot of work it is, this sport. My! my leg muscles were burny.

Stephanie carving up the thick stuff

Finally us three went all the way to the top. I was pretty worn out, but I wanted to go up there. Once I got up there I was finally certain that I was definitely too tired to ski anymore. They flew down the hill before I made my pitiful descent, filled with a lot of snow in my trousers as I skidded and slowly scampered down the more difficult terrain. At least I got to enjoy the gorgeous view. Notice the hazy brown fog in the distance, which demarcates Santiago.

"Yeah, I'm a skier, just look at where I'm at" pose

As I dozed off on the car ride home, I vaguely remembered feeling this facial irritation, which I attributed to it being drug through the snow on the final descent. If only I had been so lucky!!

“So he said, ‘Do you love me?’ And she says, ‘No, but that’s a real nice ski mask!’”

Subject: Security Notice

I received an e-mail from the US Embassy this afternoon warning about the coming days and weeks on the streets of Chile. The 2-page document contains some interesting bits about how the current state of affairs has played out as of late, as well as some general information about what to expect this week.

It starts like this:

Message for U.S. Citizens

To: U.S. Citizens in Chile
From: Mark Leoni, Consul General
Date: August 22, 2011
Subject: Security Notice

The U.S. Embassy in Santiago alerts U.S. citizens traveling to and residing in Chile of the likelihood of continuing disturbances in Santiago and other urban centers in connection with the student protest movement. A planned national strike and the anniversary of the 1973 military coup also present opportunities for unrest. …

full .doc below
American Citizen Services Unit

Pictures from winter break

Goodbye Atacama

See below post about my winter holiday. Here are more pictures, many from a failed excursion to San Pedro, where ferocious winds prevented us from checking out the flamingos, among other sights.

Goodbye Atacama

Winter break!

So almost exactly one month ago I began my 13 day winter holiday in between semesters here in Chile. It was great because I had the time to journey back to the Atacama Desert, where my love affair with Chile began back in 2009. Rather than the comfort and quickness of a short 2-3 hour flight, I considered my budget and embarked on a 24 hour bus ride to Calama.

Ridin' high!

It really wasn’t as bad as it sounds though: after adjusting one’s expectations, one can deal with quite a rather lot (Isn’t that really what life is, figuring out how to properly adjust our expectations?). Also it was a neat way of seeing the country. This isn’t I80 across Nebraska. There’s wine country and lush greens, there’s the Andes Mountains and the Pacific ocean. There are rolling hills and stops in small, quaint towns. Finally, we even get little snack packs with peach juice and strawberry wafer!

small, quaint town somewhere on the coast of Chile

Of course, all of that would have gotten old where it not for my Kindle, which saved the day. Even when my dome light wouldn’t turn on, it would read me books. I read and/or listened to HG Wells, Oscar Wilde, and Bill Bryson. I also watched some really crappy movies like Skyline and Charlie St. Cloud (the latter of which I admittedly got somewhat attached, to my mild distaste).

I spent about 10 days in the north all told. Mostly I stayed with my old host family in Calama. It was really nice spending quality time with them again, especially Javiera. She’s 6 years old now and just as energetic and silly and funny as ever. And she still never gets tired, it seems. For example, on the day we went to San Pedro (about 90 minutes away) we all got up at 8am. We spent half the day there, came back, went out to dinner, went to the mall to see a movie. There was a huge delay because the power went out. We walked around the mall, had ice cream, then finally saw the movie Zookeeper. Then we proceeded to go to two different department stores AND the grocery store. At all the stores Javiera and I are literally running wild, playing tag, hide-and-sick, and generally wreaking havoc while Claudia and Cristian buy whatever they needed. We finally get home in the evening and have tea and bread. While we have tea, Resident Evil is on TV, and we are all watching it. It’s got to be about 9 or 9:30 by this time. Mind you Javiera napped for maybe 30 minutes in the car from San Pedro. But after tea she wants to play more. She’s literally unchanged while I’m totally gassed. Anyway, this is turning into a long story but she didn’t go to sleep until her mother did at 11 or 11:30, and I for the life of me don’t know how she does it.

Javiera is loca!

Javiera is loca!

During my time in Calama I met with most of my old buddies. Most all of them were seniors in the high school I volunteered at and were in the English Club. I didn’t speak any Spanish in 2009 so they were mainly my only friends besides the handful of other volunteers in town. It was really awesome because they were all back in town. We partied together one night, which was awesome, but I definitely felt a little bit old drinking rum and Coke in plastic cups in some dingy, grassless park while being harassed by a good half-dozen street-dogs before walking all the way across town to a girl’s house where we danced until we woke up all of her family members and had to disperse at 4 o’clock in the morning.

hehehe

Iquique– population 216,419

Back in 2009 I was surviving off the monthly stipend I received in my program, which was just barely enough to survive. I didn’t get to travel much at all, so this time I wanted to see something. So I took another bus ride (only 6 hours!) to the beach town of Iquique. I went by myself and stayed at a hostel. I was there less than 24 hours. I arrived early evening and left the next afternoon, but it was awesome. On the bus the gentlemen next to me was very friendly and helped me figure out how to get to my hostel. That made me feel good. Chileans so often are really genuine people…it was funny because when he sat down next to me on the bus I groaned and imagined that he was somehow a jerk. He didn’t say anything and soon put his hat over his head to rest. Maybe it’s just me, but tight spaces in buses with strangers provoke general distaste and distrust. So I was quite surprised as we were descending into Iquique (you actually do descend on it, by way of a large hill that overlooks the entire town and ocean, which is very beautiful) when he began telling me about his work and his family and offered to help me find my destination.

My hostel was pretty sweet. It was cheap and right on the ocean, and there was a kitchen, so I went to the grocery store and made completos (glorified hot dogs) and drank pisco and lemon sour soda (poor man’s pisco sours) at the hostel while I chatted with a Brazilian cyclist dude and the woman who looks after the public kitchen space. It was a weird feeling telling people that I am on holiday, but I live in Santiago. It was also funny talking to a Brazilian and being better at Spanish than him. He talked really slow, and he used the formal Usted form instead of the Tu form, which annoyed me, which in turn made me realize that I must know some Spanish if that difference actually annoyedme.

View from my hostel

The next day I got up at a decent hour and just walked along the boardwalk that overlooks the ocean. It was awesome. Turned into a gorgeous day. There were surfers and body-boarders and joggers and cyclists. I also saw llamas and pelicans and sea lions. I think there are three proper beaches and a pretty big sized port as well. Some spots were definitely a bit sketchy…I saw a few campers and beach dwellers down there that probably aren’t too popular with authorities and residents alike. Also, it was crazy because on the north side of the city (definitely the older and not-so-nice part) there were clumps of 15-odd story apartment buildings that were straight up GHETTO. Dilapidated, graffiti and trash strewn about, and hideously ugly, yet with this phenomenal view, the ocean probably less than 100 yards away. Being from Iowa where you might as well be as close to heaven as you are to the ocean, it seems criminal to allow such a travesty. I mean, I thought ocean views were SACRED!
…Speaking of sacred, I guess I did see the 10 commandments.

I guess they've got it covered.

As I was walking back through town to the bus station, I stumbled across a little “Strip Tease” joint before checking out a church on the next block. Depending on order of entrance, I suppose you can either try to right your wrongs or wrong your rights! Either way, I got a real kick out of their spelling of topless.

Topples!

verybrfupdte

Hello, it’s Saturday afteroon and I just finished a whole week of the 2nd semester. It’s now been 6 months in Santiago, Chile. My week has been great, and I love my new classes and my new schedule and my improved confidence and ability in the classroom.

I still get to teach adults, teens, and university students. I still teach Saturday mornings. This semester I’ll try to teach some private lessons– there is always demand, and the pay is good. I’ll work with someone starting next week.

Anyway I just wanted to write a quick update. Communication has been difficult in these last few weeks. I was without my computer for a good month. Last week my cell phone stopped working. It’s being fixed so I’m still without. And now my Skype doesn’t work. There’s some absurd issue between my sound card, my Logitech webcam, and Skype.

Finally, I’d been wanting to write about my winter holiday to the north of Chile. But I took a bunch of pictures on my cell-camera, which I can’t access because my phone is being repaired. Perhaps next week I’ll have both a phone and a blog overview (complete with low-resolution images!) of my time in Calama, Iquique, and San Pedro, Chile.

I don’t like to only write words and not have any pictures, so I’ll part with this. It’s from a weekly Spanish/English conversation social that I sometimes go to. This was only a few hours after my 24hr return bus trip from the north, mind. I guess I’m still a spring chicken.

LAST NIGHT

¨Chile spends 4.4 percent of the country’s budget on public education, less than the 7 percent recommended by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).¨

Riot Police Fire Tear Gas and Water Canons on Student Protesters in Chilean Capital

Fran’s Farm

The weekend before the last weekend I used a weekend to go really far south, the furthest toward the south pole I’ve ever ventured; that is to say, southerly.

"Disco Jesus" (Purén, Chile)

My awesome friend Fran invited me to visit her family farm, which is in the 9th region of Chile. The town is called Purén. Three of us took a Friday night bus (9hrs) and arrived Saturday morning. Fran’s mom usually lives there but is in Canada visiting her family. We just spent Saturday and Sunday there before returning with another evening bus to return Monday early morning.

But it was really neat. The Farm is rather picturesque and boasts all sorts of animals we might associate with a proper farm. And in addition to “Disco Jesus” who overlooks the town, I even saw an immense rainbow overlooking Fran’s awesome family farm.

Later we even spotted a double rainbow. I’ve seen rainbows in Iowa, don’t get me wrong, but I never remember being able to pick out all the colors and see them all so vividly as here. Of course it’s full-on winter here in Chile, and the south is very wet in the winter. I was surprised that it wasn’t so much colder than Santiago (a full 9 hours north, mind), but it rained at least 6 times a day I’d guess.

On Saturday we got out on a full walk-round of the farm in between rains. The rain closed in on us though, as we had to speed-walk back to the house to beat it.

Little piggies.

On Sunday we drove to a tiny old town that the government gave to some Italian settlers a couple hundred years ago or something. We ate at a restaurant there. They were all about pork. And peacocks.

APPETIZER HAAAAAAAAAAM! platter

Peacock Pen

The restaurant was really fun. I had some sort of pasta that I don’t remember the name of, but it was exactly what you might imagine if you dreamed up of an Italian pasta burrito with alfredo sauce. Unfortunately the alfredo was pretty standard. I don’t know anything about the history of Italian food, but alfredo sauce doesn’t seem to be very prominent in Chile at all..wrong group of Italians I suppose. But the peacocks were awesome, in addition to the Haaaaaaaaaaaaam! platter and the pisco sour.

new jacket

I threw caution to the wind in my attempt to fill in the void left by the loss of my black leather jacket, and I purchased some sort of awesomely discounted-yet-still-pretty-much-not-that-cheap-after-shipping-and-taxes black peacoat.  I usually always wear size Small, but they only had one single Medium remaining and no Smalls!
But I imagined that since I’m such a big boy now (you know, like living on my own, and not even complaining about working Saturdays anymore!), that maybe it would suit me.

For the 3 weeks while it was sitting in customs, I fretted about the probable fact that I had overspent on a jacket that would not only NOT FIT, but would be UNRETURNABLE.

But I got away with it. I felt like a boy at Christmas as I discovered that it in fact did NOT drape over me like a sheet.

Now I just have to figure out how to not lose the damn thing.