This one is for you...mom

Well its now been about four months since my last blog post and after the urging of a certain someone I have decided to get back into it. A lot of stuff has happened since January but I should probably begin by telling a little story about our time in Patagonia and a certain ferry ride in Chile Chico.

So this summer (January-February) Cole and I went down to the ranch in Patagonia, where we had been earlier in September. Everyone we were living with went down there to spend the summer vacation so we figured it would be fun to go down there again and work on the farm and then as long as we were so far south we might as well go even farther south afterwards, to the end of Chile (and South America too). So we bought two round trip tickets. One from Santiago to Balmaceda (the airport in the middle of nowhere, 1 hour from Coyhaique, the captial of the Aysen Region of Chile, and 6 hours by bus over dirt roads to the ranch the Manquehue Movement has on the shores of Lago General Carrera). The other round trip ticket was from Balmaceda to Punta Arenas (pretty much the farthest south you can fly). So the plan was to fly to Balmaceda, go to the ranch, work and hang out there for about two weeks, then fly down to Punta Arenas and travel around there, then fly back to Balmaceda, and then back to Santiago. However, since we are living in South America, things didnt turn out exactly the way we wanted them to.

Our time on the farm was great. We were living in the mens house with about 8 other guys. Cole and I and Esteban (an alumni of San Lorenzo who wandered/hitch-hiked his way down to the farm and has been there for the past 6 months or so) worked on the farm while we were there. Some of our tasks include: tossing hay bales onto a trailer and then storing them in a barn, cutting down a bunch of grass and shrubs and making stuff look nice, cleaning and organizing one of the barns, and burning garbage (I know, dont ask).

So anyway, during this time we needed to buy bus tickets to get back to the airport for our flight to Punta Arenas. So one day when we were in the small town nearby Rodrigo and I went around asking if there was a bus that left on a Saturday that was going to the airport (our flight was on a Saturday). Turns out there was no bus on Saturdays but we found out that instead of taking the 6 hour direct bus over dirt roads we could take a bus on Friday to Chile Chico (east of the farm) then get on a ferry across the lake and then take a bus to Coyhaique, stay the night there and then get to the airport the next day. It sounded great to me at the time. We could break the long 6 hours up into smaller pieces, we could see Coyhaique and we could take a ferry across the second largest lake in South America. So we bought two tickets to Chile Chico and we were also able to buy the ferry tickets from the bus company too. (This bus company was run out of a butcher shop so in addition to being able to buy a trip by minivan to the nearest town, you can also buy assorted groceries and cuts of meat).

So our flight to Punta Arenas was Saturday Feb 14, which meant our bus trip was Friday Feb 13. Yes, February the 13th. So right away we were off to a bad start. Plus I started to get sick on Thursday and I woke up on Friday feeling like crap. But anway, the bus to Chile Chico comes to get us at the farm and we get into town about 3 hours later, but still with plenty of time to get to the ferry by 2 pm, or whenever it was supposed to leave. Right away we realized that Chile Chico is probably the windiest city in the world. No joke. So we escaped from the wind in an internet cafe and checked our email that we hadnt seen in about 4 weeks. Then we headed over to the port to wait for the ferry. After waited for several hours in the office without seeing anything that looked like a ferry or hearing any official announcement we talked some woman who looked like she was in charge. (she was also wearing way too much make-up and clothes that were way too tight) She told us that the conditions on the lake were pretty bad because of the wind (No, really?) and that the ferry wouldnt be leaving from the other side until 4 pm. Then at 4 pm when the ferry still didnt show up she told us that it was not going to come to today, but it would definitely come tomorrow. So Cole and I were like crap, that sure does suck (we may have said something a little more profane) but hey, we can still catch the ferry tomorrow, take the bus to the airport and make the flight. So the lady told us to come back tomorrow at 6 am to catch the ferry. Really, I said, 6 am? Are you sure. Yes sir, 6 am. Whatever. So we went around Chile Chico looking for a place with two beds for the night. And that is what we got. A room with two beds, and nothing else. Ok, there was a light and a light switch. But there was a kitchen and a shower and the price was right - $5000 pesos (like $9).

So we woke up early the next morning and headed over to the port in the dark to catch the ferry (it was still really windy, and although it was no longer Friday the 13th but Valentines Day, our luck didnt look like it was changing). And of course on the door of the office is a sign that says the ferry will be leaving the OTHER side at 6 am and getting to Chile Chico around 8:30. Thank you so much ugly ferry office lady. So anyway, the ferry finally gets to Chile Chico at around 10 am (or something like that, I dont remember all the details because it wasnt a very memorable experience). So we are all relieved. Everyone else waiting for the ferry is relieved because although it was still windy, everyone said that if the ferry crosses to one side, it ALWAYS goes back to the other side, so we would DEFINITELY be going to the other side. And so Cole and I were relieved because we would still make our flight. So we are all ready to get onto the ferry when the captain stands in our way and says that he is not going back.
What?
Thats right, I have permission but I just dont want to risk it in this weather.
¿Qué?
Yeah, I might go back over at like 2 pm, but who knows, I hope all you passengers dont have anywhere really important to go.
So Cole and I said to ourselves - well this is no good (%$&$#), but if this ferry DOES leave at 2 pm we can still just barely make the flight, I guess we will just have to wait around and put ourselves at the whim of mother nature and this captain guy. But here is where the plot thickens ( I hope you are still reading and/or paying attention). We called up the airline just to make sure that everything was the same with our flight and it turned out that our flight had been changed slightly and was now leaving 2 hours earlier. Darn ($#&*). Looks like even if this ferry does finally leave there is no way in hell we can get to our flight on time. I guess we better cancel that flight. So we did that and gloomily walked back to the ferry port realizing that our dream of seeing the end of the world, Parque Torres del Paine and above all some penguins, was ruined. At this point we figured we had few options
1. Hitchhike back to the farm and spend the rest of the time there then fly back to Santiago on our return flight
2. Wait around for the ferry and spend the rest of the time in and around Coyhaique and find something to do there.
We decided to wait around for the ferry. At this point I just wanted to get on that damn ferry and cross that stupid lake. I didnt care what was waiting on the other side. So we get back to the ferry office and hang out with the rest of the pissed off passengers. We start talking to these two Isreali guys about our age who had stayed in our hostel and we had talked to them before. They told us they had been in Chile Chico for about 5 days now waiting for the ferry and we told them about our problem and how we had to cancel our flight and miss our trip. They told us that we could still make it down to Punta Arenas if we went by bus, an idea that never occured to us. They said it was easy, although long. So we said, hell yeah, lets get the %&$& of Chile Chico! We walked down the street, just barely caught a bus across the Argentinian border to a town called Los Antiguos, and from there we just barely caught a bus to Perrito Moreno, a place we were told had a huge bus terminal with routes all over, including one to a town called El Calafate, which was also just a short bus ride to Puerto Natales, which was going to be our second destination after arriving in Punta Arenas. So we get into Perrito Moreno and ask one of the bus companies if there just happened to be a bus leaving anytime soon to El Calafate. Why yes of course there is a bus, that one right there leaves in 15 minutes. Awesome. We'll take it. How much? $170 Argentinian pesos or something. Uh oh, we dont have that much Argentinian money, let alone do we know what the exchange rate is! So we took off running into the center of town to hit up a cash machine. We got some pesos and took off running back towards the bus station, holding out our thumbs on the off chance that someone would pick us up, and sure enough a nice young man gave us a ride back to the bus station (our luck was finally changing). So we get back to the station and we are both sweating and I still feel kinda sick, just the kind of condition you want to be in when starting an 18 HOUR bus ride.

Before getting on the bus I asked the guy selling tickets if there was an easy way to get to either Coyhaique or the airport at Balmaceda from here. (Thinking about the trip back, because we were going to need to get back to Balmaceda for our flight to Santiago and we had cancelled our flights between Punta Arenas and Balmaceda because we didnt think we were going to go anymore.) So the guy tells me - There isnt really a way to go through Argentina but hey, you know what you can do, you can bus over to Chile Chico and then take a ferry across the lake and then bus to the airport.
HA!
No way in hell I am doing that!
So we get on the bus and it turns out it wasnt actually going to leave in 15 minutes (In Argentina, probably even more so that in Chile, things usually dont happen on time.) We left about 90 minutes later and began the trek down Route 40 thru Argentina. Which was sort of like driving on the moon. There was seriously nothing out there. It was a dirt road through barren pampas. At one point a saw a fence crossing the landscape and a few horses alongside the road but I had no idea where they were from because there was nothing but flat plains and mountains in the background as far as I could see. Anyway, the next day we finally got into El Calafate. From there we took a bus to Puerto Natales in Chile and were able to continue with the trip we had planned. We saw Torres del Paine (which was beautiful), went to a penguin colony in Punta Arenas and saw the southern-most brewery in the world, although those jerks wouldnt let us tour it, or even sell us a beer mug or t-shirt.

I will try to put some pics up at some point.

Well this has been way too long. I will try to write more about what else has been happening here in Chile. You know, stuff like what am I doing here, how is it going, etc, etc.

Peace

January

Wow, almost an entire month has passed again since my last blog post. There is something about living here in Chile that makes time pass it a strange way. I dont know if it is the different seasons (southern hemisphere, its hot right now), being away from home, or the slower pace of life here. Its hard to believe that I have already been here for almost 5 months. Speaking of 5 months, I finally got my Cedula de Identidad Extranjeros (Chilean Identity Card for Foreigners) yesterday after many struggles with the local bureaucracy. I know what you are thinking, 'Charlie, you have been in Chile for 5 months and you are just know getting legal?'. Yes. I already had my one year visa coming in but upon arriving I needed to register with the international police here and get an ID card. It was quite a hassle (for me at least, Cole got his with no problems). Let me go back to the start and explain all the steps I needed to take in order to get a one year visa and ID card. (I hope I dont leave anything out)

Apply for a one year temporary resident visa to Chile – This requires sending a few things to the Chilean consulate in Chicago

A signed letter from my doctor stating that I am in good health
Results of an HIV blood test (negative)
FBI criminal background check – requiring the following

Fingerprints taken at Ramsey County Government Center (the first of many fingerprints)
$18 money order
Wait 3-4 weeks

3 passport sized photos
$131 money order
My passport
Application letter

Take a family trip to Chicago to pick up my visa in person and have my thumb print taken

Customs in Chile at the airport (duh)

Register within 30 days of arrival with the Chilean International Police

After registering, obtain an ID card from the communa where you will be living. This is where the fun starts and my memory gets a little hazy.

Applying for the ID card requires more fingerprints, photo, and about $6. Should take no more than 2 weeks

Go to Patagonia for 2 weeks, forget about the whole thing

Return to Santiago to find that the civil workers are on strike (this of course includes the people working on my ID)

Return after strike to pick up ID card only to find that it has been rejected. Apparently the last name on my visa – Sawyer III, because my full name is Charles Edmund Sawyer III – didn’t work in the computers so they rejected my application

Go to three different government buildings downtown to get the name on my visa changed to just Charles Edmund Sawyer

Return to the International Police to re-register

Return to the Vitacura community office to reapply for my ID card with my updated visa. More fingerprints

There was another civil workers strike in here somewhere

Discover that my card was rejected yet again

Return to the Vitacura office to find that they didn’t have my date of entry into Chile in my application, which they did have. The guy we talked to said my card would be ready in under a week

Celebrate Christmas and New Year’s with my sister here in Chile and forget about the whole thing.

Return on Jan 2 hoping to get my card. This time without Rodrigo, our contact guy, who talked to all the civil workers for me and was a real good sport about the whole thing.

Find out my card is not ready and go through the process of applying for an ID again – more fingerprints, another photo.

Return after a week and a half to the Vitacura office and finally get my ID, although it has the old photo and old ID number on it and says that it was issued on Dec 30. So my last visit was totally pointless.

But the point is, I have my ID card. Sorry if all that was confusing. This isnt meant to be a knock on the Chilean bureaucracy or government (well maybe a little), merely an observation or maybe a little venting.

But hey, on the bright side my sister Anne came to Chile between Christmas Eve and New Year's day and we had a great time together. Here's a few of the fun things we did.

• Went to Valparaiso for three nights and explored the entire city - hills, beautiful colored houses, delicious food, hills, the ocean, great food, ascensors, hills, one of Pablo Neruda's houses.
• While in Valparaiso we took a day trip to a nearby national park and climbed a nice hill (if it was in MN I would consider it a mountain, but since its in Chile its a hill) We didnt quite make it to the top but it was still great. Saw a huge spider
• Checked out various sites in Santiago - the central market, my school, parks, Plaza de Armas, another one of Pablo Neruda's houses (that guy sure knew how to live)
• Toured two vineyards (with tastings) just to the south of Santiago
• Rode in the teleferico (sky ride) that offered great views of Santiago and my neighborhood in particular. Anne was terrified.
• Spent New Year's (the rest of the nights in Santiago) in Bellavista, a hip, Bohemian part of town with great restaurants, bars and clubs.

After Anne left, Cole and I went to Trabajos (work missions) with about 30 of the high schoolers from San Lorenzo. We stayed in a school in Pabellon, a small town outside of Melipilla about an hour from Santiago. We slept on hard floors in the classrooms and had cold showers but we got to help the people in the area fix up their houses and we had a lot of fun with the students so it turned out great. I dont want to brag, but while we were there we played a few games and I won musical chairs, the dance contest, and the fun run (although one kid really pushed me and I was impressed with how fast he was, and also that all the kids ran and ran fairly fast. I couldnt help but think of how kids in America would react if they had to run 2-3 km, but these kids were all about it). We also hitch-hiked in Melipilla...twice...both Sundays we were there...to go to Mass! It was my first experience with hitch hiking but it went great. The people here in Chile are ridiculously friendly. Either someone would pick us up along the road, or the students would knock on the door of a house if they saw a truck in the driveway. And it worked!

Cole and I are leaving for Patagonia tomorrow. We are going on a work trip there with about 30 other kids our age who are involved with the Manquehue Movement and we will be in three different towns all close to the retreat center the Movement has in Patagonia. Not exactly sure what we will be doing. After that is over (about 2 weeks) we are planning on staying at the retreat center/farm for two weeks and hopefully working with some of the gauchos again. And then after that we are flying down to the end of Chile, Punta Arenas, and travelling around there for 8 days, including a few days in Torres del Paine, one of the best natioanl parks in Chile, if not anywhere, or so I have heard. Then by the time we come home in will almost be March and school will start again. Its a rough life down here. I guess I will probably miss the inaugruation and the Super Bowl too, but at least it isnt below zero.

December

Well I guess I should apologize again for letting my blog get so far behind. Its not so much that I have been super busy. We don’t have internet at the house I live at and while I am able to use computers at San Lorenzo (the school) and I use them often, they are pretty slow and I seem to waste most of my time on the internet keeping up with emails and the news. But Cole’s laptop finally arrived here (long story) so now we have a good computer that’s available to us at all times at school. However, the school year just ended (its summer here, well, technically its not summer yet, but its pretty hot). But we will still be at San Lorenzo for a little while doing some stuff. Then we have Trabajos (works) starting in early January. Trabajos is a service trip run by the school every winter and summer. And like everything else, we don’t yet know what we will be doing and where we will be going. After trabajos, we have another trip to Patagonia coming up (Jan 16 – Feb 1) and again we still don’t really know what will happen there. We at least have our plane tickets but I don’t think other essential logistics have been planned yet such as where we are staying, food, etc. After going to two meetings for this trip, one of which was about 5 hours long, all I really know is that Cole and I, and a bunch of other college-aged and slightly older people involved in the Manquehue Movement will be going to Patagonia and we will be split up into three groups, each living and working in a different small town. After that is over, Cole and I are hoping to stay on the farm that the Movement owns in Patagonia and then we would like to travel farther south, hopefully to Punta Arenas, Parque Torres del Paine (supposed to be the best national park in Chile) and Tierra del Fuego if possible. And by the time all that is done it will almost be March and the school year will start up again.

I cant believe it is already the middle of December. It gets pretty hot outside during midday and its really weird to see Christmas decorations (although there aren’t that many up yet) when the weather is like this. I have never been this tan in December. Its still a farmer’s tan but right now I am about as tan as I usually get during a Minnesota summer.

Giant Christmas Tree in downtown Santiago. Not bad, but its missing snow.

The big end of the year kindergarten production. I was chosen to play the role of a tree. I still have no idea what the 5 minute play was about. All the dialogue came from a song on a cd player and I couldnt understand any of it.

End of the year mass.



Andrea (7th grade) and I. I let the kids write all over my nice white t-shirt. Yes, I do wear a plain white t-shirt to work, almost everyday now. Its too hot for me to wear anything else.

Religion

Here are a few events that took place a while ago that help to illustrate how Catholic a country Chile is.

Cardinal’s Birthday

I think it was during my first month here that we attended a mass given by one of the cardinals in Chile. It was his birthday so I guess he wanted to throw himself a big party. Anyway, after school one day we (the people who work at San Lorenzo) chartered a bus downtown to the cathedral that is located at the Plaza de Armas (the main square downtown). By the time we got there the cathedral was already packed and so Cole and I, along with a bunch of other people from San Lorenzo, San Benito and San Anselmo, stood on one side of the church. Of course, it took a long time for things to get going and during this time Cole and I both realized we needed to go to the bathroom. We were still pretty new to life in Chile then and of course we did not know where the bathrooms were located at the Santiago Cathedral (not that I know where they are now). So two kind high school kids from San Lorenzo took us to the nearest bathroom, which happened to be located in a mall, three blocks away, on the third floor. I found it hard to believe that this was the closest bathroom. The two kids let us know that this was a good place to pick up chicks and pointed out all the hot girls to us. On our way back to the cathedral I thought to myself that we probably missed some of the mass, since we were gone for so long. Then I remember that we were in Chile, and not a whole lot of things run on time, so we probably didn’t miss much at all. Sure enough when we walked in the front door, there was a huge procession of priests and the birthday boy himself (the cardinal) looked right at us. Other interesting facts about the mass are; the entire gospel was sung and there were two jumbotrons so that people with bad seats could see what was going on. Ok so they weren’t jumbotrons like at a stadium but they were pretty big.

A view of the Santiago Cathedral after the mass.

Procession of the Virgin

Yeah so I don’t remember a whole lot about this one. The Virgin of Carmen is like the patron mother of Chile or something and they had a big parade/procession through downtown on her feast day. Here are some pictures. There was a big float carried in the parade with the statue of the virgin and a whole mess of people followed it along its route from the cathedral at the Plaza de Armas, around downtown and back to the cathedral. All the Catholic schools were there too and so we hopped in with the people from San Lorenzo and the rest of the Manquehue schools.

The float

Some crazy dancing they had afterwards, it comes from the desert in the north of Chile.

Caminata

I went on a 27 km walk over a large hill with 80,000 other Chileans. Here is how it went down. It was a pilgrimage for Santa Theresa de los Andes who is one of the two saints in Chile. She died young and wrote a bunch of letters and the pilgrimage ends at the sanctuary that she used to live at. It started on the other side of a huge hill.

I woke up around 4:45 AM, ate some chocolate frosted flakes (first cereal I had eaten in a while) and we were out the door at 5:15 so that we would be ready for the bus that left San Lorenzo at 6 am. The bus ride was probably between 30 and 45 minutes and I passed the time talking with the 7th grade girls, waving to the people on the dozens of other busses going in the same direction (which the 7th grade girls found hilarious) and I even managed to fall asleep for a few minutes (despite the girls’ best efforts). The pilgrimage started on a road in a small town, kind of in the middle of nowhere, outside Santiago. We managed to find the rest of the people from Manquehue and the three schools (Lorenzo, Anselmo, Benito). There were vendors selling bags of tiny pieces of white paper (confetti actually) and so that stuff was everywhere and we stood in a huge line for twenty minutes and every once and while someone would throw a handful of confetti into someone else’s face. We finally got moving and for the first kilometer there was a guy walking next to us playing a guitar over some sort of portable PA system he rigged up. That got pretty annoying, but then we finally got ahead of him. The first 5 or so kilometers of the walk before the big hill were flat and there were still houses and farms along the way. So there were a lot of vendors along the road selling all sorts of food, including empanadas, which were really tempting me, but I didn’t buy one which was probably a good thing. I would have been moving pretty slow after an empanada. I did buy some delicious strawberries on the way up and shared them with some of the students I was walking with. (Oh yeah, a bunch of students from San Lorenzo came along). We got to the summit sometime in the afternoon and had lunch there. I enjoyed my packed lunch of two ham and cheese sandwiches (which were surprisingly good despite being left out all night long as well as baking the entire morning in my backpack), some delicious clementines and a few cookies. We got walking again after lunch and my legs were already pretty sore. Going downhill wasn’t much better than going uphill too.

The start

Going up.

Santa Theresa de Los Andes



There were a lot of people

Stopping for lunch at the summit

The view from the top, not bad


Carrying the San Lorenzo banner, with Elle.

Towards the end of the downhill section, with about 8 km or so to go, I noticed I was running low on water. I figured I could probably go the rest of the way and be fine but I was with some other students from San Lorenzo and we decided to stop at one of the water stations, which was just a huge truck with a water tank on it, like the kind you might see hosing down streets or watering public parks. So I waited in line with Elle, a 9th grade girl from San Lorenzo for about 30-40. The line seemed to be moving ok but when we finally got to the part of the line alongside the truck, it seemed like we were never going to make it to the end where the water was being dispensed. There were actually two lines. One was the real line that ran alongside the truck and the other was a – pardon my French – clusterf%&$ at the end of the real line right where the water was being distributed. The workers stopped pouring out water for a couple of minutes and rumors went around that there was no water left. Then the water came back on. Then it stopped again when I was really close to the end. Then all the water station workers yelled at us because a ton of people weren’t in line but were just clustered around the hose. Then they turned the water back on and there was a mad dash to of people trying to fill up their water bottles. I remained patient and calm on the outside of the scrum and waited for my turn. Then they turned the water off again and yelled at us. Then they turned the water back on but instead of pointing the large fire hose towards the ground and letting people fill their bottles, they decided to spray the water into the air and douse the crowd. Then they turned the water off again and told us that this station was now closed because none of us were in line (except for me, the other students from San Lorenzo and about 50 people behind us who had also patiently waited in line for over 30 minutes for the water that was promised to them when they sign up for the pilgrimage). They told us there would be other water stations on the way down with water, which turned out to not be true. I wanted to yell at the people working at the station “What would Jesus do?” but I had not yet mastered the conditional verb tense and I wasn’t sure how to translate it. I was just pissed.

About 1 km later I bought some Orange Crush and lemon soda and gave some to the students I was walking with. It didn’t do much to quench my thirst. Later on there was a house along the way giving out water with a hose. I thought it was a little shady but I got some anyway and drank it, figuring it was ok. I offered some to the girls I was with and they told me it was dirty and didn’t want to drink it. They also advised me not to drink it. I then realized it did taste and smell kinda funny, but by then it was too late. The last part of the walk was on one side of a highway that led to the town of Los Andes where the sanctuary is. I amused the junior high girls by asking every car and truck that passed by to honk their horn. There were also a bunch of kids behind us who heckled every car and truck that had Argentina license plates. The big Chilean win over the Argentina football team had just happened and so they all yelled “1-0” and held up fingers indicating what the score had been. We finally got the sanctuary in the middle of the mass that was going on. Afterwards everyone started celebrating and a small riot erupted in our group, led mostly by the students from San Lorenzo. They are a lot more fun than those rich kids from San Benito and San Anselmo. Everyone was jumping around, singing, dancing, throwing confetti in people’s faces and dousing each other with water. It was just nuts. All in all it was a great experience and despite walking 27 km over a huge hill in pretty hot weather, I had a great time. I felt like I got to know the kids from San Lorenzo a lot better and we really bonded. When I got home I ate dinner and a bunch of ice cream, took a much needed shower and realized that I had been in Chile for exactly 2 months.

The last leg of the journey


27 km in the Chilean sun took a toll on my hair.


The riot afterwards. I cant believe they had this much energy left

Cole and I with Mario, the dean of San Lorenzo, and some high school girls.



Immaculate Conception

Speaking of pilgrimages, there is an even bigger pilgrimage in Chile on the feast day of the Immaculate Conception, which just happened a little while ago. It isn’t organized like the Santa Theresa de Los Andes pilgrimage, but this year around 600,000 Chileans walked from their homes to a sanctuary where there is a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Cole and I weren’t up for this one. I cant remember where the sanctuary is but it’s a lot farther than 27km from Santiago. Instead we decided to go up Cerro San Cristobal (a big hill right next to our house with a statue of the Virgin at the top that looks over the entire city). We had heard that a lot of people go up there on the day of the Immaculate Conception so we figured we could check it out. Plus we didn’t have school that (it’s a national holiday in Chile – 3 day weekend). I think we were a little late getting up there; most of the people seemed to be coming down already. But it was still pretty cool. There were a lot of people up there and the views of the city, even though it was smoggy, were amazing.



The north side of the hill. This is the "Latin American" side of the hill, as I like to think of it. San Lorenzo, in the communa of Recoleta, is on this side of the hill

South side, Providencia (where I live), Vitacura, Las Condes and the other affluent communas. This is the "European" side. I think my house is somewhere right in the middle of this pic.





The statue of the Virgin at the top of the hill.

Confessions? No thanks. I didn't climb this hill so I could feel guilty

Priests only you say? Looks like I can't go this way. I have been throwing a lot of stuff out there about religion so I just thought I would emphasize this point.

Santiago, looking towards the west from the very top of Cerro San Cristobal. There are only some 6 million people in Santiago, but from the top of this hill, this city seems like it is the biggest city in the world. From up here all you can see is the city, until the mountains or the smog obstructs your view.

So basically the main point of all this, besides letting you know some of the stuff I have done here, is to illustrate how important religion is in the lives of the people here. And that’s not just the case because I was sent to live with a Lay, Catholic, Benedictine community. It seems like everyone in Chile is pretty serious about being Catholic.

Patagonia

Here it is. The final days of my trip to Patagonia, that happened like 2 months ago. Sorry for the delay.

Some cows crossing the road outside of Cochrane. Check me out in the side view mirror.

Lago General Carrera

Day 5

Manual labor. Man work. First day of real work (in Patagonia and probably in Chile). But this was all in the afternoon so I have to tell you about the usual morning stuff we did first. We prayed Lauds (first prayer of the day) while breakfast cooked on the woodfire stove. Breakfast was usually hot water for tea or coffee, oatmeal, already baked homemade bread that we heated up and then some butter and jam. After breakfast we read over some interesting Papal documents of environmental issues that we had brought with us. We had a brief session of Lectio Divina, in English, and Rodrigo explained all the steps to us so it made a little more sense. Then we ate lunch 3 hours after breakfast. The eating schedules always confuse me. I wasn’t even that hungry but I managed to put away 3 bowls of thick lentil soup. Once again I was moving a little slow afterwards. I laid down to rest and digest for a minute but then we had to leave to go work. We worked with the high school kids in the part of the ranch that was down by the lake. We had to widen a irrigation ditch that was built to divert the water coming down from the waterfalls into the fields. This ditch has been started a few months ago to keep the fields from getting flooded with water so that the cows could graze on them. Jose Antonio told us that cattle grazing is the only thing that could be at all profitable for this land (he said you could probably grow some nice flowers on it but what the hell are you going to do with nice flowers in the middle of nowhere?). However, before they could put a lot of cows on the land they had to convert it from a swamp. So basically we were digging in the ground…in about a foot of water…and I had a hole in one of my rubber boots. But it was nice outside, and we were in a beautiful place, and we were doing some real work so I felt great. I felt like a tough guy. The high school kids weren’t working very hard and this just motivated me to work even harder. I was like a machine with that shovel. But I paid for it the next day. While I was working someone mentioned that when I get back to Santiago and I could tell all my friends that I dug a ditch in Patagonia. So I got to thinking, what I am going to tell people when they ask what I am doing here.

So Charlie, what did you do in Patagonia/Chile?
- Oh, I helped dig an irrigation ditch.
Oh yeah, like for some poor farmers or something?
- Um, no, not really

But that’s not really fair because while the people who own this farm are not poor, its not exactly a money maker. And it felt good to finish a hard day’s work (half day really) and when we got back to the house all the other stuff like prayer and cooking dinner weren’t as boring as they were before because I had actually accomplished something today. Dinner was pretty simple, just salchichas (hot dogs) and arroz (rice) but we had a little pisco sour beforehand and I think we had plenty of wine during dinner. The wine we drank in Patagonia (for every dinner) came in a carton but it was great. Jose Antonio really likes it and he was his usually gregarious self at dinner and told us a bunch of stories.

Day 6

Day 6 in Patagonia was a lot like day 5. I woke up really tired and sore. I didn’t sleep much during the night and I have no idea why because I was thoroughly exhausted after working on that ditch. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for a few hours. Thoughts just kept racing thru my mind. We went back to work on the ditch in the afternoon. I wasn’t working as hard as the day before. Before we got started on the ditch however, we got to witness one of the gauchos killing a lamb. This was going to be the lamb that we would eat the next day for the big asado (bbq) to celebrate the Chilean independence day which was the next day. I am pretty sure this was my first time seeing an animal slaughtered and while it wasn’t gruesome it was a, for lack of a better word, interesting experience, which I will retell right now. Basically the gaucho laid the lamb down on the ground, placed a bowl under its next and then plunged a knife directly into its neck. This part, although somewhat shocking for me, wasn’t nearly the end. As the blood poured and then dripped out of the lamb’s neck and into the bowl, the animal continued to move around a little bit and one of its eyes seemed to be looking directly at us. After a few minutes, when it seemed to be over, the gaucho broke the neck of the animal. At this point I thought the lamb was dead, and maybe it was, I don’t know much about lambs or biology in general so I don’t really know how to explain what happened next. For about 10 or maybe even 15 minutes after the lamb’s neck was broken, its legs continue to move around while it lay on the ground. This was really weird. I kept thinking, “Ok, that thing has to be dead now”, but then it would twitch again. When we passed by the same place on our way back from work, the gaucho had already skinned, cleaned and removed all the organs from the lamb and the carcass (or whatever you call the meat and bones, basically all the stuff we would eat the next day) was hanging up in the barn.

Day 7

Dieciocho – The Chilean National Independence Day. So no work today. Basically all we did was have a huge, day long asado (BBQ). We went to a fire pit that was in between both of the house at around 10:30 for a mass. The local priest was nice enough to stop by to say the mass and after he left we pretty much just sat around the fire until sundown, eating and drinking. Seriously, that’s like all we did. I left once to go to the bathroom but I think there might have been some people that didn’t leave the firepit for like 8 hours. It was the people from my house (myself, Cole, Paul, Rodrigo and Jose Antonio) , Joselo, the tutors (Mono and Osito – that’s monkey and little bear for those of you who don’t “se habla espanol”, everyone here as a “sobre nombre” or nickname if you will), the 6 boys from San Benito (“Pajaro”, Miquel, Rafael, Felipe, “Rosy”, and Ignacio) and the two girls from San Benito (Alejandra and Sophia) as well as everyone else from the women’s house (I can’t remember all of their names). Here is a list of what was served.

· Meat – there was a lot of meat. First there was churripan (sausage and bread, like a really good hotdog) then big cuts of beef (pretty sure it was beef, I didn’t actually have any) and then finally towards the afternoon we all devoured the masterpiece that was the roasted lamb. This lamb was pretty much crucified and sat next to the fire for hours. Joselo rammed a steel rod right along the spine of the animal and then stretched the front and rear legs so that the crucifix itself looked like a capital I and the animal looked kind of like an X. This was then stuck into the ground and then rotated a few times during the day while Joselo doused it with something, oil or some other flavoring. When it was finally done they placed it on a huge wooden board that served as a table and went all just went at it like hungry dogs, even though we probably weren’t hungry at all because we had been eating for several hours at this point.
· Empanadas – these were one of the first things we ate. I think the women made them and then we heated them up on one of the grills near the fire. They were delicious.
· Bread – we had some regular rolls and then some fried bread that we ate with some delicious pebre (salsa)
· Cake or some sort of delicious dessert. All I know is that it has manjar in it and it was great.
· Wine – we started out with white wine that was poured into a huge tub along with several huge cans of duraznos (peaches). Later, we moved on to the vino tinto (red wine) that comes in cartons but is still really good.

I think those were all the things we ate. There might have been some other smaller things but this is the jist of it. We ate a lot. To pass the time while eating, someone had the idea to get everyone together and go touch the electric fence (keeps the cows in). So all the young people (tutors, students, Cole, Paul and myself) got in a long line with the last person placing their hand on the ground (this was necessary in order to be shocked). Then the person on the other end touched the fence and we all jumped up, even though it wasn’t that much of a shock. That’s what we did for fun in Patagonia. Also, after that we threw some cow pies at each other. Dry ones of course. We also sang a bunch of songs around the fire. They had a few books with song lyrics and even had some American songs. One of the guys, Esteban, was pretty good at playing guitar and could sing a lot of American songs, even though he didn’t speak any English. They had the lyrics for “Summer of 69” and I was trying to teach him the tune but he seemed more interested in sadder, dreary songs by Nirvana or other similar bands.

Joselo getting the lamb ready

The feast, or at least part of it. From the left; potatoes, empanadas, and a crucified lamb.

We devoured that thing.

Touching the electric fence.

Day 8

The day after Dieciohco was a lot like Dieciocho. There was no way we were going to work today, because if we were back in Santiago we wouldn’t have gone to work the day after the independence day, especially when the day after is a Friday. (Chileans are known to “make sandwiches” often when holidays come around, which means to take an extra day or two off work and sandwich them between the holiday and the weekend. I think the day after Dieciocho is national holiday anyway. (Chileans usually just call it Dieciocho, with no reference to the fact that it’s in September, similar to the way Americans sometimes call it “the 4th”))

We did do a little bit of work. Cole, Paul and I helped Jose Antonio feed the cows in the morning. The gauchos who usually did this were all gone since it was the holidays. So we loaded a bunch of bales of hay into the pick up then one person threw them off the truck as it drove around while the other people pulled the metal wire off the bale so that the cows could eat it. We got there a little late so the cows were pretty hungry. They would just stare at us. I think they knew that their food was coming. Then they would all slowly follow the truck around as it drove across the field. We also came them some delicious oats and salt.

So anyway, for the rest of the day we pretty much did the same thing we did the day before except we went to a spot on the Baker River to sit around all day and eat and drink, and we ate a little bit less than the day before. I ate some pebre out of the jar with the fork. That stuff is so good. I need to learn how to make it. The Baker River is beautiful and it was flowing incredibly fast. All the rivers we saw it Patagonia had this blue/green tint to them.

The Baker River

Day 9

After going without a shower for a few days I finally clean myself up, shaved, and put on some fairly clean clothes. Paul, Cole and I went for a horseback ride around the ranch with Joselo and Mono. It’s a pretty big ranch so we had plenty of places to go. This was only my second time riding a horse and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing at first. It also didn’t help that we started by going straight up a steep hill with Joselo and Mono way ahead of us. But after a while I got the hang of it and I think that I really bonded with my horse Bandit. I also got to wear some sweet authentic sheep skin chaps, like the guachos wear. These things come in handy when riding through Patagonia because every bush and plant on the ground is covered in thorns and we kept brushing up against stuff. Also, there are a lot of small trees and I had to keep putting up my hands to shield my face from all the low branches. And we were riding for several horses and after a while my legs, butt and back started to hurt. But nonetheless it was a great experience. We went up into the hills that surround the ranch and the view was amazing. We were in a huge valley with the Andes on three sides and large hills on the remaining side and a huge lake in the middle. The clouds were really low that day it seemed like there was a giant ceiling directly over our heads, trapping us in this isolated landscape where the only evidence of human beings were the fences and the five of us on horseback. The land itself was very foreign to me, with plants and trees that I had never seen before. At one point it seemed like we were riding through some sort of forbidden forest, like something out of a book. I kept expecting to see some rodents of unusual size lurking about. We stopped near the top of the hills and ate our lunch of lamb sandwiches (leftovers from Dieciocho), some churripan, manjar with crackers and a box of wine. After lunch we checked out the hidden lagoon that is up in the hills above the farm. When we got home I was exhausted once again and couldn’t wait to eat. During dinner Jose Antonio and Rodrigo wanted to know about some typical American desserts so we told them all about the wonders of Dairy Queen.

I have no idea what this dainty peacock is doing in a rough place like Patagonia. There are three of them on the farm, two males and one female. The guys just strut around all day with their feathers out trying to impress the girl.

A calf.



Cole on his horse before setting out.

Me on my horse, with the lake in the background.

The lagoon in the hills. Lago General Carrera is in the background.

Day 10

This Sunday was pretty chill, which was great because, working, eating, and riding horses was wearing me out. We woke up late and prayed Lauds at 10 am then had a nice breakfast of fresh bread, cream cheese, eggs, oatmeal and raspberry jam. We spent the rest of the day at the family house which is across the road, down the hill and sits alongside Lago General Carrera. This house is amazing and I can’t even imagine how hard it was to build since transportation and technology in Patagonia are pretty old school. Plus I think it was built just after WWI and there wasn’t much in Patagonia then. (There isn’t much in Patagonia now) When I say amazing I don’t mean its something out of MTV Cribs. It’s fairly big and well furnished but still very simple and doesn’t have electricity. What makes it amazing is that it is a beautiful house and it is right next to a huge, amazing lake that has towering snow covered mountains on the other side. And what makes the lake amazing is that it is not only enormous and beautiful (as well as totally calm the day we were there) but also when you are sitting in front of the house, looking out onto the lake, you can’t see any evidence of development or human beings except maybe the faintest hint of a dirt road on the other side of the lake. I have seen a lot of lakes in my day and I have never seen anything like this. If this lake was in America, there would probably be mansions and jet skis everywhere, or most likely it would be in a national park but there would still be development and people around. And not that development and recreation are bad (it depends) but there is seriously nothing on this lake and I was just in awe of that. I almost felt a little guilty being there (at the house on the lake and in Patagonia in general). Who am I to deserve seeing this beautiful place? My 23 years here on Earth haven’t been the most environmentally friendly when compared to the rest of the people on this planet. Why should I get to enjoy all this? Maybe the fact that barely anyone is here is a good thing. I don’t mean to be cynical but as humans we have a pretty good habit of destroying things and maybe Patagonia is something we should just leave alone. But I’m getting off topic. So we pretty much just sat around all day, which was great, especially in this majestic setting. We sat outside and read the rest of the Papal documents on environmental issues. Later on we busted out some fishing poles and I casted a few lines from the shore. I caught a rock. No joke. I seriously caught a rock. The shoreline in front of the house is just a bunch of smooth rocks and they told me it was a good place to fish and since I don’t know much about fishing I gave it a shot. The first time I casted out I hit some of the rocks but I eventually got my line back. I should have quit right there because later on I hit some more rocks but this time the line wouldn’t budge. I struggled with it for about 5 minutes then Jose Antonio helped me bring in the line and there was actually a rock stuck to the lure. I seriously caught a rock. I stopped fishing after that. We ate some dinner outside and then went for a little hike up to the top of a small hill that sits right next to the lake. From there we just sat for a few minutes, staring out at the crystal clear lake and the mountains beyond it. The view was amazing and I can’t really put it into words. I will put up some pictures but they won’t really do it any justice either. When we got back to the house the sun was setting and there this beautiful pinkish glow on the peaks of the Andes in the distance and then an amazing sunset that filled up the space in between two mountain peaks. But both of them only lasted for a few minutes before they faded away.

There is a big island in the middle of the lake that reminded me of somesort of mystical island you would read about in a book or something.

The hike.

The house.

It has a pretty nice backyard

The Andes reflecting off the lake.

Sunset.

Day 11

Monday; back to work. The high school students went to work on the irrigation ditch while Jose Antonio took Cole, Paul and I to find one of the gauchos so we could help him with some odd jobs. In the morning we were fixing one of the fences that separates the farm from the dirt road. A few of the wooden posts needed to be replaced so we had to pull them out of the ground, dig new holes and then secure the new posts in the new holes. It was actually pretty tough work and afterwards I had a much greater appreciation for all the fences with wire and wood posts that run along the few dirt roads that I saw in Patagonia. We went back to the house for lunch and then returned to work with the gaucho. (I can’t remember his name, it was something like Elizaho or something. I think it was the Spanish version of some prophet from the bible. He didn’t talk much. He had actually lived in the US for a few years, on a ranch in Colorado. But that’s about all I learned about him, other than the fact that he knew how to do pretty much anything; butcher sheep, tie any kind of knot, fix anything, ride a horse, etc.) Anyway, in the afternoon we had to move some oats and salt, feed for the cows, to another part of the farm. So we loaded up this old Toyota Land Cruiser truck and a trailer behind it with 100 lbs bags of salt and 60 lb bags of oats. The trailer didn’t have any sides to it, just a flat bed, and we had quite a few bags tied down onto it. We almost lost a few on the bumpy ride.

Day 12

More man work with the gauchos. We fed the cows in the morning. We had to load up one of the horse drawn carts with about 20 bales of hay from one of the barns. Orlando, one of the gauchos, took this hay to the cows in the nearby field, while we loaded up some more hay in the Land Cruiser (nicknamed Poderoso or Powerful) and drove it back to the cows near our house. (I can’t believe this truck is still working. They told me it was only from the 70’s but I found that hard to believe. I guess its not the years but the mileage. I rode in the bed a few times I thought it was going to collapse underneath me. The exhaust fumes started to get to me too.) So we dropped of the hay for the cows but we had to take their troughs that they eat their oats and salt from. The cows were going to be moving to a different pasture soon and we needed to bring the troughs there first. I didn’t really understand why we were doing this because these troughs were big hallowed out tree trunks and they were not the easiest things in the world to move. I thought it would just be easier to cut down some new trees and hallow those out instead of lifting these onto a trailer and driving them a few miles down the road. But anyway, that took us a while because we had to make like 3 trips. After that we went back to fixing the fence from yesterday. We had to replace a few more posts and make sure all the wire was connected. And my job was to take a huge knife, pretty much a machete, and hack down all the thorny plants that were growing anywhere near the fence. Now I am usually a peaceful person and I don’t like destroying nature, but it felt kind of good to chop down all these thorny bushes because they had been pissing me off all week, especially when we were riding horses. I got a little too into this job and eventually my right arm was lifeless and I got a blister on top of one of my other blisters on my right hand. I felt pretty tough after that and the ride back to the house was great. Just sitting in the bed of an old pickup truck, flying down a dirt road, with the Andes Mountains in the background.

Day 13

Last day in Patagonia. Woke up around 7 and had a quick breakfast. Said our goodbyes to Jose Antonio and the women. The bus ride to Balmaceda wasn’t bad at all. No stomach problems. We had the same driver as before so we got to hear all the same songs but I liked them a lot better this time. I saw some snow on the ride back when we were higher up in the mountains and it reminded me of Minnesota. I don’t think there will be much snow when I go back to Patagonia in January so that was probably the last time I will see snow in a while. Except for the peaks of the Andes around Santiago, but that doesn’t really count. We got the airport early and to pass the time we sat in the cafeteria and watched music videos from the 70’s and 80’s. They had some sort of music video megamix from both decades. They played all the classic songs but for only 10 or 15 seconds before moving on to the next one. I found it hilarious. I listened to some more American music on the plane ride back, much more recent of course. It made me a little homesick and nostalgic. I realized I hadn’t had any contact with anyone from home in a long time. When we got back to Santiago the city seemed even more foreign to me than when I first got there. Life in Patagonia reduces everything to its simplest terms. You start to understand what you really need to get by. So all the other crap that comes with living in the city seemed strange to me. But we when got back to the house it felt more like home.

Patagonia Sin y Con

In the spirit of the Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia without Dams) campaign, here is a list of things that Patagonia has and does not have. (is that proper grammar? I have no idea any more. English is so confusing, especially when I am trying to explain it to students.) This list is not definitive, merely an account of what I observed during my short time in a small part of Patagonia.

Patagonia Con…

· Shit…I mean poop, manure, both of the cow and horse variety. I swear, this stuff was all over the ranch, everywhere I went
· Mountains – they were pretty much all around us.
· Thorns – 90% of the plant life I encountered had nasty thorns. On a macro scale Patagonia is spectacular and beautiful, but on a micro scale, at least during the end of winter, when we were there, the land is rough and unforgiving.
· Clear waters – the rivers have a greenish blue tint but they are still crystal clear along with the lakes
· Lakes and Rivers – they are all over. The lake that the family house is on was incredibly calm one day. The whole lake, at least what I could see of it, was totally still.
· Sheep – the ranch has mainly cows but sheep are ubiquitous in Patagonia
· Gauchos – these guys have a lot of “man knowledge” and “man strength”. They are pretty quiet but fascinating.
· Mate – bitter herbal tea. You fill a small tea cup with this green herb, pour hot water over it and then drink it through a metal straw. It’s really popular with the gauchos. I tried it. It was ok. Really bitter, but I was starting to get used to it. I think it gets addicting.
· Stars – The most amazing stars I have ever seen. I thought Saint Johns had impressive stars when I arrived there from the city but Patagonia is probably way better than any place in America. There was a full moon when we were there but when the moon wasn’t out there weren’t any lights for miles and I have never seen so many stars in my life. You can actually see the Milky Way stretched out across the sky
· The Moon – I have never seen the moon this bright. It’s probably because I am in the Southern Hemisphere and the moon is much closer to the Earth. No but seriously, it was the brightest full moon ever and when I saw it rising over the hills it almost looked like the sun was coming up.
· Wine – we drank carton wine every night at dinner.

Patagonia Sin…

· Electricity – Obviously there is electricity in Patagonia and there is a line running along the road that cuts through the ranch. But the ranch isn’t plugged in and I think the electric fence is solar powered
· TV – I don’t even watch that much tv in Santiago so this wasn’t that big of a deal. I did see a little of the news when were at the restaurant in Cochrane. It was just weird being so isolated from the world.
· Refrigerator – butter, eggs, leftovers? Nah, don’t worry about it, just leave it out.
· Paved roads – There were a few paved roads on the drive in and the city streets of Puerto Guadal are mostly paved, but other than that it’s all dirt/gravel.
· People – not a lot of people in the entire region of Patagonia and they are usually pretty quiet and keep to themselves.
· Laundry – by the end of the trip I was out of clean boxers and socks so I was glad we were going home.
· Showering daily – after a while I realized I was living on a ranch in Patagonia and showering daily was no longer required
· Cars – only trucks. If you don’t have four wheel drive and a lot of ground clearance you are screwed down here. I did see on Subaru station wagon but that was it.
· Email – I had about 70 emails when I got home, about a dozen of which were important.
· Noise – ridiculously quiet
· Traffic – obviously. If you see more than two cars pass the other way on a road, that’s rush hour.

The house we stayed in.

Cole, Paul and I slept in this room.

This is not a joke!