Everyone's Checked In

Miraculously, all family and friends connected to us are now accounted for with only one person left with an uninhabitable apartment. Some are without (regular) water, electricity, phone service but in the big picture, all is well.

Thanks everyone for the emails, the phone calls and for keeping Chile in your thoughts.

Many Family Members Have Checked In

We've heard from Pato's parents who are ok, his brother, sister-in-law and nephew in La Calera are ok, two aunts and an uncle in Santiago are ok

Still waiting for others

Earthquake

There has been a 8.8 magnitude earthquake near Concepcion, Chile. (The earthquake in Haiti was 7.0. The Richter Scale measures exponentially.) Fortunately for Chile, many of the modern buildings are designed to withstand earthquakes. But there are older buildings too.

Here's your geography lesson of the day: Concepcion is south of Santiago. Our house is north of Santiago. We are hopeful that Pato's parents are ok. We do know people in other parts of the country, including Concepcion. We are very anxious to hear from everyone. Of course, it will be a while since communication is down.

So keep Chile in your thoughts today, as well as all of the people across the Pacific who could be affected by the potential tsunami.

Thanks. We'll keep you posted when we have details.

Parting Shots

Happy New Year

I think I mentioned that we went to the coast for New Year's Eve. It's a different world on the coast, and of course, New Year's Eve comes with its own issues. I've never been big on celebrating this particular holiday, but we enjoyed the change in scenery.

There's a long walk and lots of beach between La Serena and Coquimbo with tons of restaurants, condos and hotels.
They have tsunami evacuation route signs which I don't believe I'd ever seen before; I haven't been here since the 2004 tsunami.
Sunsets are quite spectacular on the Pacific coast:
My pictures are not very good, but the fireworks were ... we could see three sets of fireworks from our hotel balcony.
Next morning always looks very different. There were lots of young people still out and about when we went down for breakfast; their day was just finishing up and ours just starting.

The beach in the morning can be a very cloudy. This year's start was no exception. It gives you time to think.

Odds and Ends

I finished a novel last night - Time and Again by Jack Finney. The copyright shows 1970 and the story line involves time travel to the 1880s; the protagonist is in New York City. It was a fun book that I got at my book club Christmas party last year. I was thinking about the differences between 1970 and 1880 and that got me going - thinking about the differences between 1970 and now. It was all kind of mind boggling considering the World Trade Center hadn't been built yet, among other things ... and then I heard a horse clop, clop, clop down the street and I thought about my own time travel...

Next morning I went out to play with my new camera and found this gigantic cactus - perfect for trying out various settings:




We went to Chapilca the other day to try to find homespun yarn (to no avail, alas!). It is a very dry place, except for where the river runs through it. The church is quaint and they've found an excellent use for old tires - a playground outside of the church:
I always love the use of English names for things; so many signs seem totally random:
(doesn't look big time to me!)

And this little shop in Vicuna - named Canabis with pirated Disney princesses painted on the side of the building:
Chile is one of the worst countries on the planet when it comes to pirated stuff - they flagrantly ignore most intellectual property laws.

And a few family shots for posterity ...

The In-laws:
Boy:
Girl:

The Sky

Girl-child and I went to the Mamalluca Observatory the other night - It was a lot of fun.

Because of the almost continuous clear sky here in the Elqui Valley there are a number of observatories, but this is the only one where tourists can sky-gaze. We heard a lot of mind-bending numbers in the talk which we would never be able to remember, but we also got to see Venus, nebulae, clusters and lots of other starry stuff. They also have a meteorite that was found in the Atacama desert and a book of Copernicus´letters:
This maybe gives you an idea of what the sky is like:
It´s a pity we can´t take pictures of the night sky because it is really quite spectacular.

We did spot a cloud yesterday:

And sometimes there is mist in the mountains in the morning:

But mostly it´s very sunny...

Land of Plenty

The Village

I received an e-mail recently telling me that Peralillo does not have a Wikipedia entry which I took, perhaps mistakenly, to be a suggestion that I could make an entry. Frankly, I don't think there's enough material for an article in Wikipedia. So here's an introduction to our humble village...

This is the entry to our property:
And this is Main Street or, for those of you studying Spanish, Calle Principal:Of course, there is a church with a bell-tower:
And lovely windows with wrought iron and lace:

There's always a neighbor who doesn't keep up their property:

We have a fire hydrant:

And a stop sign:
The nicest building in town is the new school, which says something for the direction the country is taking:
And that, my friends, is pretty much the entire village. When I speak of going into town, I'm referring to Vicuña. Today we're going to the biggest city in the region, La Serena.

A Far-Flung Corner of a Far-Flung Country

Points for Kat for recognizing the jacaranda tree out the bedroom window - VERY impressive!

This is basically what the Elqui Valley looks like - very green floor with lots of grapes and other fruits under cultivation. The "hills" as they call them here (being from Minnesota I call them mountains) are very arid; many of them are dotted with cacti:
(thanks, P, for the photo)

Boy-child likes to climb the chirimoya trees - he gets a kick out of being in the country:
Girl-child likes to pretend she's a Hollywood star when poolside:
Needless to say, the pace here is rather slow compared with the U.S. I don't have as much to tell you as you'd probably like to hear. We did go into town today to purchase locally made ice cream, avocados and watermelon. We also ordered empanadas for Christmas which I will try to remember to photograph and post.

I finished the sock I cast on at MSP airport - done in four days! That'll probably never happen again. The first of Boy-child's glittens has been cast on and I may have found a place to purchase local yarn. (When I asked about local stuff, a woman from southern Chile said it was wool from sheep - like that was a bad thing! I told her sheeps' wool would be just fine.)

We ate roast kid for supper (sorry Linda - another baby eaten) which was a first for me. It's a very traditional meal in this part of the country as goats are able to survive on those arid hillsides.

It's pretty much impossible for me to feel Christmas-y in summertime, but Girl-child did put up my in-laws' artificial tree along with a few decorations. We're playing Christmas music and the cookies I brought are very popular. But summertime just isn't Christmastime - makes it all sort of surreal.

Peralillo

NOW I'm on vacation! This is what I woke up to this morning:

To give you an idea of the length of the trip, this is how far I got on the sock that I cast on in MSP airport when we left Friday morning: The colors are way off, but that doesn't really matter for my purposes today - I want to impress on everybody that I've done the leg, the heel and I'm halfway down the foot of the first sock. A pair usually takes me 4-6 weeks to make.

It was a long trip.

For reasons I will not go into here, we took a bus from Santiago to Vicuña which is about 7-8 hours. Now, the bus was actually a lot more comfortable than the plane. The bathrooms on the plane are nicer though. I guess you can't have everything. At any rate, we got here pretty late Saturday. At some point I looked at my ankles and was quite alarmed by their deformed appearance. I am happy to say that now they're almost back to normal .... have to keep in mind on the way back that little ankle excersises are very important...

And for those of you who were weirded out by the first world appearance of everything here, I just want you to know we've stayed traditional with the toaster: And, as Girl-child pointed out this morning, here the eggs come with feathers:

Off to the pool again - gotta get those ankles back!

P.S. Broadband here is not too wide, so if anyone sees important news on the MN Senate seat, please e-mail me.