Perú is the past – Argentina is the future… Chile is my present.

Hey there guys and gals,

I have no idea if anyone still reads this blog, but you know what, I’m going to write nonetheless.

I’m in the dry town of Arica up here at the top of the country of Chile. We explored the harbour today and fed the pelicans and sea lions that were hanging out by the dock. The sea lions are unbelievably fat and pelicans are really weird looking up close, but they both love fish, so it was pretty fun. We saw the Chilean Navy marching along side the United States Navy here in the port today, and I heard my national anthem played by the Chilean military band. I felt very patriotic about the whole thing.

It feels great to be back in Chile and away from the possibility of getting rocks thrown at us as we drive past burning tires, like what happened twice by Ica in Perú. We made it out of Perú without a scratch, and I already miss some parts of the Peruvian life, one of them being the insanely cheap food and lunches that were available (you can get an enormous lunch for $2 just about anywhere in the country.)  We celebrated our arrival with a very Chilean dinner of super big sandwiches and enormous completos followed up by some Escudo. Tasty.

The end of this trip and my time in South America is bitersweet in many ways. We said goodbye to our good friend from our university and travel buddy David as his trip ended today; he’s headed back to Santiago today. I am excited for the next leg of the trip, but at the same time am sad that our vacation has to end so quickly.   I am looking forward to my last couple days in Santiago and seing a few special people there before I leave, but that just means that I have to say even more goodbye’s, some of them forever.  Bitterweet.

It sounds like Salta and northwest Argentina is going to be awesome. Good wine and meat.  There are vineyards, national parks and historic buildings to check out.  I’m not going to be particularly happy to have to put up with the “sha, sha, she, she” Spanish of the Argentinians, but I’ll do my best not to laugh in their faces as they shush their way all over the place. 

Cheers from down here in the southern hemisphere, guys.  I’ll be back before you know it.  I’ve got quite the to do list set out for when I get back home.  Number one on the list is go to Chipotle, so whoever picks me up from the airport is going there with me ASAP.  I’ve got about 20 other things that I want to do when I get back.  One of them is to volunteer at a place where I can use my Spanish so I don’t lose it right away.  Mom, can you organize something through Neighborhood house for me?

Saludos amigos,

Ian J

 

A Small Update from Perú

Hey there guys,

So I am writing to you from a noisy internet cafè in Nazca, Perú where we are trying to change our travel plans around with limited success. We have successfully scaled the heights of Machu Picchu and seen the historic churches and museums of Cusco, which were the main goals of our trip, so I am happy with that. Our original plans had us going through Lima over to the Cordillera Blanca to do a 4 day trek through beautiful snow capped mountains, 23 of which are over 16,000 feet in altitude. However, the worker strikes here have made travel quite difficult to organize safely and consistently, so we are going to head out of the country and explore northern Chile and northwestern Argentina.

There are a number of national parks with varied wildlife as well as an elegant city called Salta in Argentina that sound worth the effort. We were able to change the city that we embark onto our flight, so our travel plans work out a bit more smoothly.

We’ve had quite the interesting time these last couple of days and I think we´ll all be relieved to get out of the country and back into our South American homeland of Chile. I’ll be updating my blog with pictures when I get back into Santiago. I’ve gotten gifts for a good number of you guys while here in Perú, although packing them all up will be a challenge. Is anyone interested in South American alcohol, like some wine or pisco? Let me know and I can pick you up a bottle.

Cheers from Perú,

Ian J

 

Concha y Toro, Last Weeks of School and Crummy Weather

Hey there guys,

So, my good friend Eddy recently finished his trip to Ireland and also finished his blog after nine months of keeping at it more diligently than I expected them to when first convincing him to start writing down his thoughts. So now, there is one less of my friends doing international blogging although a former coworker of mine is still writing about her experiences in the Swiss Alps.

 

It has been a little while since I’ve last written here, although it has not been for lack of free time. I’ve been enjoying my weekends with friends and parties in the house, as well as going out this past Friday for a birthday party and clubbing afterwards that turned out to be a great night. I think I will be having a repeat of this sort of night this upcoming Friday when I have a joint birthday party with my good friend Anya. We’ve rented out a pretty classy portion of a bar called Cienfuegos, and afterwards will be rocking the house next door at bar Constitución until the wee hours of the morning.

At a friend Jennifer’s birthday party, one week before my party. So many parties!

 

This past weekend I had the joy of doing a wine tour with our group from school, a group of about 15 kids. The vineyard is an exquisite and surprisingly technological place that has a rich history of more than 120 years of winemaking. They are the largest vineyard in Chile and are named Concha y Toro.  Although the grounds and buildings are breathtaking, it is winter and thus the grapevines were empty, and bare. We did get to sample wine, obviously, but only of two varieties which was a bit of a letdown, to be honest. Although the second wine that we did try was the best wine that they make, and was positively delicious. As a group we bought a couple of bottles of wine and planned on enjoying them on the terrace right outside of the vineyard’s gift shop, but were stunned to find out that the vineyard does not have an alcohol license, and therefore could not open our bottles of wine and let us drink them on the premises. So, we ended up at a friend’s sushi restaurant where we enjoyed wine and sushi together, a wonderful combination.

 

 

 

 

At Concha y Toro – Group shot after the tour

 

I also went this past weekend to the Museo de Arte Pre-Colombiano in downtown Santiago, which is supposedly the best museum in the country for this sort of thing.  It was well laid out and classy and I must say that I learned a lot. One of the funniest things that I learned about was the ancient tradition of taking hallucinogenic substances. The brave natives searching for an out of body experience were first required to purge their stomachs using a sort of vomiting spatula to purify their digestive systems before taking the drugs. After that, they would strap themselves to a chair as to eliminate any possibility of movement during the experience. There were a couple drawings that depicted purging and throwing up that were a little bit over the top.  We also checked out the cathedral, too.  Around the Plaza de Armas, where we were walking around, I noticed a number of suspicious looking men that I had pegged as pickpockets for their extremely darty eyes and aimless, repetitive walking patterns.  After having been pick pocketed once, I was not about to have it happen again, catchai?

 

Viña del Mar, a Mini Cooper and Hernan Cattaneo

So, it’s been a little more than a week since I last wrote to y’all, and although I have been staying in Santiago, I have not been wanton for adventure.  My life has recently been surprisingly shaped by a 1980 blue Mini Cooper, for a couple reasons.  First being that last weekend I took a little road trip out to Viña del Mar with my housemates.  It was myself, the three Frenchies (Ben, Xavier and Constant), the two Mexicanos (Alvaro and Eduardo) and another Frenchie (Macha).  I had the distinct pleasure of riding out there in the Mini Cooper, recently bought by Eduardo.  It really is a masterwork of a Mini Cooper, "Why buy the car of the year, when you can have the car of the century?"  That’s the praise that most Mini owners shower upon their little gems.  I must say that the old mini’s are almost ridiculously small, but they do manage to comfortably fit four people, which is commendable considering its dimensions. 

Note: The pictures without my watermark were taken by my friend Alvaro, you can check out his Flickr photos here.

The friends that we were visiting in Viña were mainly a French group, but with some Americans and Germans intermingled.  Their abode for the semester was far from humble, situated well off the ground floor of one of many luxury apartment buildings lining the coast of Viña del Mar.  The views offered up by the apartment are really unrivaled, as the sunsets over the ocean stir up many different emotions from inspiration to nostalgia depending on your mood.  We spent hours and hours drinking and being merry with about 30 other social minded people from around the globe until we went off in search of a dance club at about two in the morning.  We found a fairly classy place that gave us a group discount where we moved our bodies to a respectable variety of music including the ubiquitous reggaetón, as well as house music and some Latin American pop.

After the club we meandered through the blocks in a quest for drunken cuisine: we found what we were looking for beneath the golden arches of a neon McDonald’s ‘M’ where I would have a wonderful date with a Grande Big Mac combo meal.  Satisfied with their food, my annebriated French compadres felt like there was no time like the present to rustle up some trouble as a scuffle broke out between some Chileans and the French kind.  It was really pretty funny, even at the time, as drunken insults were dealt and received by both sides, as well as the occasional bitch slap or punch.  Since we were a group of about 15 people still by then, I was not the least bit worried and to be honest, I was still preoccupied with the tantalizing idea of getting a second Big Mac.  We finally went to bed at about 8:30 in the morning after some 7:00 am Jack Daniels.  If you haven’t found out already, the French love to party, and that’s one reason I have a great amount of gratitude towards my French friends.

This weekend also offered up a nice smorgasbord of friends, drinking, dancing and general "living it up" experiences.  On both Thursday and Friday night we had parties at our house, with the Friday night event getting the best turnout.  We probably had about 50 people over throughout the course of the night and I’m pretty sure that everyone had quite a good time.  We drank and danced until the early morning as we love to do, although after a fervent Mexican led sort of tap dancing, pop music fest put on by my housemates at 5:30am that marked the final climax of the party I was more than ready to hit the hay.

Last night being Saturday night, I adventurously headed out with my Mexican housemate Eduardo, a Chilean and a Brazillian to check out a late night electronic dance party that was a bit across town.  The main man of the night was Hernan Catanneo, an Argentinian DJ and producer who is a friend and collaborator with the infamous Paul Oakenfold (widely considered to be the ‘best DJ in the world.’)  Hernan put on a frenzy of a show that took place in a place called Espacio Riesco which turned out to be a surprisingly classy concert venue, complete with body-painted dancers, plasma screen drink menus, marble floored entry with chandeliers and ample security at the front door.  My buddy Eduardo brought along his ridiculous, silver Luche Libre wrestling mask, whose presence alone made our group about 100 friends.  At one point during the nonstop 5 hour dance fest, the mask was tossed up to Hernan to wear, but he was unable to because of the necessity of his DJ headphones.  Graciously, he threw it back to its rightful owner, so it could continue to draw curious looks and surprised smiles. 

 

 

The real adventure of the night actually came after the concert, when the Mini Cooper that we had driven in decided to break down about half a mile from the concert.  We found ourselves trying for more than an hour to do anything we could think of to get it to start, including putting in more gas, using jumper cables and pushing it up to a sprinting speed with the hopes of pumping life into the engine during ignition.  Alas, all of our efforts were for not, and by about 6:30am, we had to make a decision.  We decided not to leave the car alone low class neighborhood we were in (which would have happened had we taken a taxi) and instead opted to spend the night, the four of us, in the Mini Cooper.  Believe me, it is tough to get a good night’s sleep in the back seat of the smallest production car on the planet, but that’s what had to be done.

At about 10:30 the next morning a helpful man in a truck offered to tow us back to our place for 10,000 pesos; not a bad deal ($17).  Now, you must realize that I use the word "tow" lightly, considering that he pulled us behind his truck using a startlingly weak looking length of blue rope that was frayed in many different places.  He did manage to drag us the 20 minutes back home, though, so all my fretting over the dwindling fibers of the rope were for not. 

A couple side notes that I found out later about the neighborhood and street that we spent the night at: first is that the street is nicknamed "Asalto" or "Assault" because there are often robberies and assaults that take place along its stretches.  Also, in the morning after staggering our way out of the Mini, we saw a very small puppy in a funny pink doggy shirt, and naturally we started to pet it until its owner, a gruff looking 20 something year old guy came and took it inside of his house.  We were told later that he was actually a  known criminal.  So, I suppose we lucked out and made it out without a scratch from our mishap filled, one night stay on Asalto Street.

Well, I just thought I would update you guys on the adventures of life down here, and do not fear: I am alive and well.

 

Trip to Pablo Neruda’s “Isla Negra” and other goings ons…

So it’s been a good while since I’ve last written, although it has not been for a lack of source material.  My weekends have been full and interesting for the most part, and I have heard many an interesting story from my fellow abroaders.  I’ve met new people, grown my hair out even longer, begun a workout program and been inspired more than once.  I’ll do my best to get some things out of my head and onto your screens.

So my last post was a couple of weeks ago and was about Chiloé and my adventures there.  Since then, more than a couple of my friends have decided to make the same trip and I know of other still that are planning on making the voyage out to the enchanted archipelago.  I think that’s a great thing.  Moreover, I decided to do one of my final papers for my folklore class on the subject of Chilote Mythology.  So far, research has been quite easy, as a former student of La Catolica wrote a lengthy graduate thesis on the subject, and since we have full access to all of the thesis’ recently written, I can use that as one of my prime sources.  Another interesting source I found was an etymologic dictionary of Chilote words, which goes to show you how different Chiloé is than main land Chile, considering they’ve got their own language for all intents and purposes.

As far as traveling and adventuring outside of Santiago, there is not a wealth of things that I have to talk about, although we did have our last group trip out to one of Pablo Neruda’s houses.  Pablo Neruda ( 1904-1973) is a sort of national icon here in Chile; I consider him to be like a pop star of the Chilean poetic and literary spheres.  He is revered by many, although I do not think that most have read his poetry or heard it read.  However, my good friend listened to some older recordings of Pablo reading his poetry and he described it to me as one of the most dull and drab experiences of his life.  Apparently he puts so little emotion into his words that it hurts.  Regardless, he is a national hero and deserves respect for that; he was one of the first Chileans to win the Nobel Prize, which he did in 1971 if I’m not mistaken.  He was a well known communist and also supported the socialist Salvador Allende, whom I’ve decided is my favorite Chilean leader in modern history (I saw his memorial at the Cementerio General, and that’s where our tour guide broke into tears). 

Since I was not allowed to take any pictures inside of his house, I will describe it instead.  The house of Neruda’s that we went to (this is one of his three houses, all are well traveled by tourists) is known as Isla Negra and contrary to its name is not on an island.  In fact, it’s a wondrous house built by the seaside on the Pacific coast where a large number of black rocks rest on shore, hence lending to the “Black Island” naming.  Mr. Neruda was enamored by the sea and loved all things nautical although he was terrified of actually going out into the ocean, or any large bodies of water; go figure.  His house was filled with wondrous collections of all sorts of things: the large mast-head collection in his living room, a ridiculously cool sea-shell collection, African/Asian/North and South American mask collection as well as very cool beetle and butterfly collections.  The house also reflects the landscape: the portion of the house that faces the land is decorated with browns and dark greens while the side that faces the sea has blues of different hues and aqua marine colors.  Another interesting facet of the house’s design is the fact that the architectural dimensions align closely with those of an actual ship, so the door ways are about 12" – 15” wide and no more than 5’6” in heights, so it really feels like you’re on a ship as you walk from room to room.  Now a few pictures for your enjoyment:

Sign on a mural in front of the Pablo Neruda house “Isla Negra”

Me in front of the Pacific Ocean – notice Neruda’s personal sailboat that he never took out onto the open waters because of his fear of the ocean

The fish that is one of the trademark symbols of the Isla Negra house

 

This is a shot that shows just how awesome the clouds were that day.     One of the many beautiful flowers around the Pablo Neruda house and gardens.

The last picture that you see there was taken from inside of the restaurant that we ate in after seeing the house.  We had some really great seafood stew, which had an entire fish fillet in it; that was after we had a course of bread AND an empanada.  I can actually feel my mouth watering and my stomach growing hungrier as I write about it.  All in all a pretty good day, especially since we didn’t have to pay for any part of it (pre paid with the program).

So that was my Isla Negra day, I’ve got a new gallery up with all of the best pictures from the day on my PICASA WEB ALBUMS if you’d like to check it out.  If you guys want to I could easily make another video slide show in HD, if you thought that was a good way to check out the pictures.  I’ll be writing more pronto.

Chao. Ian J.

 

Salida a Terreno, Winter in Santiago and My First South American Cold

Hey there guys, I seem to be on a bit of a roll tonight, and despite a brief power outage caused by a blow fuse in the second floor of my house, I plan on being able to finish up two entries tonight, this being the second.  At the current moment I am being fueled by my delicious home made dinner of a whole chicken with baked potatoes, the power of Windows Live Writer, a couple glasses of wine, a cup of chai tea and some quite relaxing Asian meditation music.  I had a moment of great nostalgia and realization today on the metro as I came back from class listening to the newest Coldplay album “Viva la Vida;” my realization was that I have an astoundingly short time left here in Chile.  I felt a wave of desire to do all sorts of things and show everyone that is close to me as much love as possible.  I figure we really do not have any time to lose and there is no better day than today to become who you want to be.  With that, I begin.

So my last entry was originally intended to cover all of the topics mentioned in the title of this entry, but the entry became very large, very quickly and here we are.  So the previous week I went on a Salida a Terreno (Field Trip) with my Flora Nativa class out to the mountains to the east of Santiago.  The purpose was to walk around with our ayudantes (pretty much like a T.A. except they are often older) and identify plant species, taking photos and measuring the relative densities of the different plant species as we climbed up the mountain face.  The hypothesis was that as you go higher in the mountains, there should be less plants, and although this was generally true, I think we skewed the results a good deal based on which spots we chose to take measurements on.  I suppose it’s not all that scientific of a class but the engineering part of my personality didn’t feel right having mushy and subjective data.  I guess that’s just another example of the Chilean informality with most things academic.  This can also be seen in the fact that many people do not even bother showing up to class, and some of those that do come in up to an hour after the beginning of class.  I also have found that deadlines are very flexible: this week in my Folklore class, a girl asked a question vaguely involving the timing of our next paper’s due date and the professor nonchalantly gave us another whole week for the paper!  That would never happen in the U.S., at least it’s never happened to me, not without a fight and a lot of groaning from the whole class.

With no further ado, here are a few pictures from the Salida:

 Seeds of a small plant that stick to your clothes – Chile’s try at burrs.

One of the few flowers on the trip since it is fall going on winter here.

Close-up of a cactus with curved spines Nice close-up of some fiery red plants growing in between the rocks.

Big ant that a lot of people were frightened of for some reason.  I just thought it was a pretty awesome hormiga (ant).

Our “Facultad de Agronomia” bus that had definitely seen its fair share of road time over the years.  Gotta dig a giant blue school bus with that written on the side of it.

 

Well, this post has already gotten a bit lengthy, so I’ll start another one where I actually cover more recent events   The winter in Santiago and my first cold coming up next!

Chao. Ian J.

 

(For Real) Winter in Santiago and My First South American Cold

So, I find myself writing the third entry of the night, and am feeling quite in the zone at this point in time.  I think I can attribute some of my motivation to an article I read earlier containing tips on how to actually get some writing done.  I hope that I will continue to make interesting blog posts throughout my last month spent here in Chile, although I’m unsure of how much blogging I’ll be able to do while out of the country traveling through Perú and Bolivia, though we shall see.  That would be one time when I would LOVE to have an Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which has recently become the number one object of my desires.  I plan on getting one when I get back to the U.S. and rustle up sufficient scratch.  I figure that I can use it to take some great lecture worthy notes during class, as well as get some solid work done in the libraries and cafés around Madison.  But enough about my tech lust, onto the real world.

So the cancerous growth that my first entry of the night saw, happened to the second entry as well, so now here we are with entry number three.  Blogging is so much nicer when done in bite size pieces I’ve found.  Thankfully you won’t need to get a bag of popcorn or take a bathroom break while reading through my post today. 

Throughout this past weekend I had about 4 days where I would consider myself to be sick.  I would wake up in the morning with my throat so filled with junk that I was unable to even move my vocal cords and any noises that did manage to make their way out of my mouth sounded like the grunts of some prehistoric ogre.  After a steamy hot shower my respiratory system was a bit more agreeable and I was able to launch a few liquidy, yellow missiles off of my balcony onto the grass below, which helped, too.  My previous post talked about the Salida a Terreno and I was sick during that excursion, so the second half especially was not all that enjoyable.  I spent a couple days resting and mostly eating chicken noodle soup throughout the day intermixed with tea containing lemon and honey, a suggestion that came from my Mexican roommate Alvaro.  He called it a grandma’s remedy.  It did the trick quite well.  It took about 3 days to get over the main part of being sick and I was very happy that I didn’t get something like the flu that would give me massive headaches, fevers and a tumultuous stomach situation. 

This was my first South American cold that I’m pretty sure was brought on by the onset of winter (or something resembling it) here in Santiago.  We have had rain once this week and it truly does improve the air quality by a lot.  I went for a run the night after a heavy rain and the wonderful aroma of wet leaves and crisp air filled my lungs and reminded me of fall in Madison, something which I cannot wait to return home to.  I am elated by the fact that I get to have two summers and two falls while escaping the majority of winter.  That’s a nice side effect of the timing of my semester down here that I often smile about when it comes to mind.

On the topic of maladies, one of my friends in my abroad program named Lisa went across the border into Argentina this past week and she had a far worse experience than I had when I was sick.  She had some motion sickness on the plane ride over to Buenos Aires and the flight attendants took note and responded by giving both her and her sister those white protective breathing masks.  When they were getting off the plane, the rest of the plane got off first and they were told to sit and wait for doctors to come aboard who had been waiting for them at the airport.  They were suspicious that she may have had the swine flu, so they tested her temperature and eventually let her go.  But it doesn’t end there: doctors and police officers came and found her at her hostel in B.A. and after a 30 minute argument told her that she had to come to the hospital to have tests done.  So Lisa spent more than 24 hours in an Argentinean hospital being poked, prodded, having blood drawn and having swabs shoved up here nose and down her throat.  She said that “I would have rather had them just deport me right then, I really wanted to just go back to the U.S. at that moment.”  She said that she was treated like crap for the most of it and her opinions and knowledge were considered all but worthless.  I just thought that I would pass that onto you guys, I thought that it was a pretty interesting tale.

 

Well, it’s about time for me to hit the hay.  I’m going out to Viña del Mar for the weekend with my housemates.  Apparently we’re going to stay at a house of a friend, so it should be a pretty rowdy time.  Looking forward to it.

Cheers. Chao. Check you later. Ian J.

 

P.S. A picture of mine for your enjoyment, this was taken on Avenida Providencia in downtown Santiago.  The building is called Casa Matriz.

 

 

Video slideshow up on YouTube in HD

Hey guys, so I spent part of the morning putting together about 100 of the better photos that I took over this last weekend in Chiloé. I was able to upload it onto YouTube as well as this book in high definition and that put a music track from the genre of trip hop behind the photographs. It’s about five minutes long and it turned out pretty nice if you’d like to check it out here’s the link:

Chiloé Slideshow in HD

also, if you’d like to check out the other photos that I took in Chile, you can head over to my Picasa Web Albums

Hope your having a great day and enjoy the weekend.

Chao,

Ian J

P.S. Another photo to enjoy:

 

Fall in Santiago

So it’s the middle of May here in Santiago and the nights are getting colder while the days become shorter, but it’s not all that bad. There are beautiful fall colors on all the trees as well as wonderful sweater temperatures during the daytime. I can honestly say Santiago is a much more comfortable city now that it’s not 100° during the daytime. I feel like I am thoroughly in the swing of things as far as school and classes go and I can understand all of what my professors say in lectures which is a big help. I feel like I’ve gotten by with so much less than I thought that I would need when I first got down here. I thought for sure that I would need a bike to zip around town on and that I would need loads of things to fill my time everyday, but I’m learning to enjoy the simplicity of life and the beauty of routine as well as the convenience of public transport and super cheap taxis.

 

This is my first entry that I’m writing with speech recognition software, and it seems to be going pretty well. It’s really nice to be able to write a blog entry without even having to touch the keyboard and also to be able to type it up about twice as fast. I still don’t know if this thing can handle Spanish, but that would be awesome.  Here’s a picture for your enjoyment.

 

Picture of the day: Lamps in a club that I went to dancing one Santiago weekend on a late Saturday night.  Great music and atmosphere.

 

I am growing to love my house and really have come to think of it as my home. However, at this current moment it is a very quiet home. I actually have no idea where my seven roommates are and it seems like at least one of them should be around but that is not the case. They are still constantly planning out new travels and I think that a large group of them are heading out to Buenos Aires, Argentina for about a week. This is a trip that I would love to make but can’t really afford the flight, so I guess I will just be arriving there at the end of my tour through South America which I am currently planning out with Nick. It looks like were going to be able to hit up Peru, Bolivia and Argentina seeing the sights of Iguazú Falls, Macchu Picchu, Bolivian salt flats, Lake Titicaca and hopefully a tour in the Amazon rain forest *crosses fingers*

I had the South American handbook 2009 in hardcover delivered to my house and have been reading through it and looking around for information for our trip. This book really is a lot like a Bible, the pages are so so thin it’s hard to believe; it’s really tough to go just one page forward, and if you flip through a few pages which you feel like is a very small amount, it’s actually like 40 pages. It does make a satisfying thump whenever you close it, which is nice.  The book is 1796 pages in lengt so I’ve got plenty of reading ahead of me.

One of the principles for packing that it recommends a spring half as many clothes as you would think you need and bring twice as much money, which is something I should’ve taken notice of before I left the US, ha ha. Anyways, I just really felt like using my speech recognition software to write an entry so here you go, it doesn’t really have much of a point it’s more just telling where I’m at right now and I think I may be doing a couple entries on my experiences that I’ve yet to write about. 

I hope motivation and inspiration are running through your veins.

Chao,

Ian J

 

Chiloé – An Archipelago of Curanto, Piscola, and Warlocks

So I am back in the warm, smoggy confines of Santiago and find myself with a mountain of blog entries ahead of me.  Rather than work my way backward chronologically from the start to the finish, I’m just going to write about what’s most fresh in my mind – my recent 3 night, 5 day excursion to a wonderful archipelago in central / south Chile called Chiloé.

 

Chiloé was discovered by western explorers in 1588, and before then was inhabited by the native tribes of the Araucano.  The group of islands is dominated by one large island known as Chiloé grande which faces the open ocean on the west coast.  Off of the east coast of the main island there are about 20 islands that vary in size, with Quinchao being the largest of them.  The capitol city is Castro which is where we spent 2 of our 3 nights. 

So, it turns out that Chiloé is one of the more unique places in Chile and is nearly famous for its unique inhabitants, folklore, myths, and traditions.  We had been studying Chiloé in my folklore class for a while and it was pretty cool to know what “El Trauco” and “La Pincoya” were before even stepping foot on the island.  The people of Chiloé were the last people to give in to the Spanish conquistadors and I think that this sense of being independent from the rest of Chile has continued on and helped bolster the presence of unique folklore and quirky beliefs.

Anywho, we (our normal group minus Samantha) consisted of Nick, Ben, Anya, Lizzy and myself.  We parted from Santiago on a 13 hour night bus that took us into Puerto Montt, which is a pretty unremarkable town in my opinion.  Arriving somewhat groggy in the morning after a night spent in the semi-cama bus (much better than Clasico), we departed from Puerto Montt on a 3 or 4 hour bus ride to Castro, where we looked around in our guidebooks for a good hostel.  After checking out 3 options that all had ocean views, we compared prices, and did some talking down of prices and ended up at a comfortable hostel with great views and a nice, warm, living room with a fireplace and a balcony with a table and chairs that faced out over the sea. 

Our first meal in the city was, of course, at a seaside restaurant where we chowwed down on a ridiculous amount of curanto (a Chilote special sea food dish) and other seafood such as crab along with a bottle of wine.  A picture of curanto up close:

The great thing about Chiloé is that it is a place designed for relaxation – there are always sea views and green rolling hills that calm one down, there are few other tourists, and all the towns are small enough to walk around on foot so there aren’t any buses or taxis or metro to get all worked up about.

We spent most of our nights with vague plans of going out and looking for a club or party even though all of us knew darn well that after the sun goes down at 6:30 there is nothing to do in Chiloé that involves partying or music.  Good friends and piscola is one of my favorite combinations, and Chiloé had plenty of that to offer. 

Our second day we went out to Cucao, a town on the western coast of the island that sits on the southern edge of the National Park of Chiloé and is just a 5 minute walk from the beach.  The beach is a dark sand wonderland that stretches 20 km up the coast.  One can hear the thunderous Pacific surf crashing against the windswept coastline.  On the way there, a friendly dog that we called Durak (the Russian word for idiot, which we learned in a drinking game the night before).  Durak followed us in and out of the national park and out to the beach and back into town – he was a constant source of entertainment and fun as he bounded ahead of the group, picking up sticks and rocks and wanting us to throw them out for him.  We lucked out and got some sun shine while we were out at the beach for a lunch time picnic.  We also spotted some blue jellyfish that had washed ashore.

Moss on a tree in the National Park of Chiloé

 

Little plant on the beach

 

Mysterious blue jellyfish

 

Our friend ‘Durak’ that followed us for 4 hours to 3 different places – in this picture he watches on as we eat a delicious lunch.

 

The second leg of our adventure brought us to the island of Dalcahue and the city of Achao, which are east of the main island.  There we saw the oldest surviving church in Chiloé, built in 1730 by Jesuits.  It’s made entirely of wood and is the darkest building in the whole town.  Also, we may have met a warlock on the streets at night and my good friend Nick may or may not have had a curse cast on him by this night time marauder, who with the power of his drunken mumblings, ensured that Nick will have a tough time unless he can get some help from our knowledgeable folklore professor.

We had hoped to get a boat ride around the bay at some point, but we realized after a couple tries that Achao is not a tourist city and none of these honest Chilote fisherman were about to show us the wondrous sea in their vessels.  So we had to be content with walking around the island and taking pictures of all the boats floating idly near the shore.

Well, that about wraps it up: you all should make sure to check out my PICASA WEB ALBUMS for more pictures of this and all of my other recent Chilean trip.  I’ll go through and put captions on most of the pictures for your enjoyment.

Chao,

Ian J