" Monday Monday pa-laaa, pa-la-la-laaa "
(don’t ask me why this Mamas & the Papas’ song has become my " fight-horrible-Monday-mornings-with-love " anthem…some History class 1-2 maybe?)
DAY 1
(don’t ask me why this Mamas & the Papas’ song has become my " fight-horrible-Monday-mornings-with-love " anthem…some History class 1-2 maybe?)
DAY 1
Of course, waking up before 10 these days has proven to be harder and harder (I know guys, I know… don’t you dare burst my bubble : Uni isn’t starting till the 26th), but I have to admit that today, it’s worth making an effort and throw myself out of bed (literally) at 7:30… today is special because is a holiday Monday!!! Sawah!
My aunt has managed to take a week off and, just like thousands of Santiaguinos who just started their month long summer vacation, off we are, out of the city on Ruta 5 Norte. Destination : El Mar!
A few hours drive through the palta (avocado) fields and the dry hills of the Central Valley, crossing mountains in long dark tunnels and risking our lives sharing the road with fearless Chilean car-operators (I can’t really call them drivers), and we get to the coast, on time for lunch, at Cachagua.
Cachagua… Ahhhh…The sun. The beach. The Pacific. The penguins.
Penguins?
Yeah man, and real ones (remind me to tell you about my personal encounter with one of them)!!! Just next to the beach, on a small protected island, a bunch of Happy Feet are taking it easy under the sun as I watch and wonder why I didn’t know penguins lived in warm water.
Well, you see, that’s the thing: they don’t. No matter how many Gucci bikini-clad swimmers (that place is so clearly and exclusively upper-most-class) dip themselves in it, the Cachagua waters are FREEZING!
But hey, I am Canadian! And not just in the Molson ad way: I have bear blood running in my veins!!!
…although… bears, they sleep in the winter don’t they?
Anyways, after a few unsuccessful attempts, I finally manage to swim (well…I ran in and ran out, the whole thing while screaming like a Backstreet Boys groupie who sees Nick Carter: like really excited in a happy but completely uncontrolled way) for the first time in my life in the great Pacific Ocean.
I’ll never quite understand how Chileans can enjoy chilling in the icy ocean, but I can tell by their perfect tans that they spend some serious time working on it lying down in the sand.
In Rome, do like Romans (is that a proverb or I just made it up?). So here I am, in Chile, doing like the Chileans: trying to sun-tan my North-American-winter-white (that’s a special shade of greenish white) skin to a nice healthy bronze.
The warmth of the sun on my shoulders, the softness of the sand between my toes, the playfulness of the breeze in my hair, the music of the waves in my ears… I close my eyes. Is there anything more relaxing than a nap on the beach?
Well, ten points for me! Sometimes I feel I have a goldfish’s brain… To learn from experiences, like last week painful sunburns I got while hiking in the Cajón? Me? No way! I have a 3-seconds memory!!!
So TS is for Toasted Sarah once again (but that I wouldn’t figure out until the following morning when I almost had a heart attack seeing this red lobster in the mirror).
In the end I did get a new skin colour: it’s now gringo-goes-to-the-beach-act-one-red (that’s a special shade of blueish red).
As the sun slowly goes down, we head to our hotel overlooking the small bay of Zapallar, another high-society summer retreat. The story goes that one rich guy bought all the land surrounding the bay back in the early 20th century and then gave it out to some of his friends, also all fellow top-ten Chilean families members, with only one condition: that they build each their summer "shacks" in a grand and unique style. Our hotel was one of these funky castles (think everything from Polynesian roofs to cubism-inspired structures, classical Greek columns to Art Deco) that you find all around the bay surrounded by gorgeous gardens…
I know, I know, la vida es muy difícil.
Especially when you’re forced to watch the sunset with a Pisco Sour (the typical Chilean cocktail) in your hand…
P.S. The Penguin story:
Do I look that gullible? (No, people from work please do not reply to that question.)
I guess so cause I was once again the one picked on by the waiter (a middle-aged man wishing he was a comedian) who asked whether we felt like touching a real penguin (that’s just one more way to end a lunch innit?).
Uh…yeah, sure… (asking myself, ok, what’s the catch here?)
So here we have Mr. Funny bringing a real but stuffed penguin. We all crack up, take a pic and, as I thought it was over, he asks me whether I want to touch a REAL penguin.
…haha…uh…really?…uh…well…yeah… (now I am not quite sure what he’ll bring)
I see him coming back with a small penguin in his hand. No way! That’s not a real one, it doesn’t even move!! AHHH! It moved!!!! AHHHH!
---found out later that it was a young one that got hurt and that they (the family at the restaurant) had been feeding for two days before they released it later on that afternoon to join its people on the island---
The guy puts it in my hands as I scream (like a Backstreet Boys groupie again).
AND I HAVE A PENGUIN IN MY HANDS!!!!
the end.
The following morning, we are on the road again. We’re going towards the North, the small one as they say, the Norte Chico, and it’s gonna be a long ride. Chile might not be a big country, but it’s a tall one!
Indeed, from north to south, it’s probably as long as Canada can be wide. Needless to say there’s also probably as much variety in the Chilean climate and its ecosystems as we have in the Cold Country. With a Mediterranean-like centre, where olives and vines grow between tall alleys of poplars, a ocean seaside of dry grey hills and cacti, the driest desert in the world as well as one of the wettest area in the world with rainforests, the visitor never gets bored, not even during a 5 hours-long drive. Tested and true.
…there, some pics for you hungry kids of the visual era.
In the end I did get a new skin colour: it’s now gringo-goes-to-the-beach-act-one-red (that’s a special shade of blueish red).
As the sun slowly goes down, we head to our hotel overlooking the small bay of Zapallar, another high-society summer retreat. The story goes that one rich guy bought all the land surrounding the bay back in the early 20th century and then gave it out to some of his friends, also all fellow top-ten Chilean families members, with only one condition: that they build each their summer "shacks" in a grand and unique style. Our hotel was one of these funky castles (think everything from Polynesian roofs to cubism-inspired structures, classical Greek columns to Art Deco) that you find all around the bay surrounded by gorgeous gardens…
I know, I know, la vida es muy difícil.
Especially when you’re forced to watch the sunset with a Pisco Sour (the typical Chilean cocktail) in your hand…
P.S. The Penguin story:
Do I look that gullible? (No, people from work please do not reply to that question.)
I guess so cause I was once again the one picked on by the waiter (a middle-aged man wishing he was a comedian) who asked whether we felt like touching a real penguin (that’s just one more way to end a lunch innit?).
Uh…yeah, sure… (asking myself, ok, what’s the catch here?)
So here we have Mr. Funny bringing a real but stuffed penguin. We all crack up, take a pic and, as I thought it was over, he asks me whether I want to touch a REAL penguin.
…haha…uh…really?…uh…well…yeah… (now I am not quite sure what he’ll bring)
I see him coming back with a small penguin in his hand. No way! That’s not a real one, it doesn’t even move!! AHHH! It moved!!!! AHHHH!
---found out later that it was a young one that got hurt and that they (the family at the restaurant) had been feeding for two days before they released it later on that afternoon to join its people on the island---
The guy puts it in my hands as I scream (like a Backstreet Boys groupie again).
AND I HAVE A PENGUIN IN MY HANDS!!!!
the end.
Sun, Moon, Stars and UFOs
A cosmic experience down in the Valle del Elquí
DAYS 2-3
A cosmic experience down in the Valle del Elquí
DAYS 2-3
The following morning, we are on the road again. We’re going towards the North, the small one as they say, the Norte Chico, and it’s gonna be a long ride. Chile might not be a big country, but it’s a tall one!
Indeed, from north to south, it’s probably as long as Canada can be wide. Needless to say there’s also probably as much variety in the Chilean climate and its ecosystems as we have in the Cold Country. With a Mediterranean-like centre, where olives and vines grow between tall alleys of poplars, a ocean seaside of dry grey hills and cacti, the driest desert in the world as well as one of the wettest area in the world with rainforests, the visitor never gets bored, not even during a 5 hours-long drive. Tested and true.
Reaching La Serena, that we will be visiting on our way back, we leave the coast and enter the Valle del Elquí. Following the Rio Elqui that carves its way across multicoloured desert hills, it’s no wonder that the green irrigated valley is renowned for its mysticism that attracts as many backpackers looking for the untouched lands as hippies looking for the apparently common UFO manifestations. It also has its share of weird sects and gurus who see in this lunar scenery the perfect spot for spiritual awakening. In fact, to the Buddhist monks who established a monastery here, the Elquí would be the exact location where the magnetic flow re-enters the Earth before emerging again from somewhere out in Tibet. Talk about an attractive place…
On top of being the birthplace of most of Chile’s Pisco (that strong alcohol made from distilled grapes famously used in Pisco Sour, or Psycho Power as Fred would say), it’s also the birthplace of the first Latin American winner of a Nobel Prize of Literature, the great poetess Gabriela Mistral (some critics said she wrote even better than the other national literary hero, Pablo Neruda).
On top of being the birthplace of most of Chile’s Pisco (that strong alcohol made from distilled grapes famously used in Pisco Sour, or Psycho Power as Fred would say), it’s also the birthplace of the first Latin American winner of a Nobel Prize of Literature, the great poetess Gabriela Mistral (some critics said she wrote even better than the other national literary hero, Pablo Neruda).
As we finally arrive at another wonderful little hotel, justifiably named Misterios del Elqui, right on time for the traditional sunset Pisco Sour (yeah, our timing’s always perfect), I can tell this place can’t but inspire the most beautiful words.
Spending the following day lizarding (yep, as in I lizard, you lizard, we lizard…) next to the pool (but keeping away from the sun this time…I don’t give a damn about the colour of my skin anymore, I just don’t want it to fall off), eating great food and reading a good book (Pico Iyer: The Global Soul. If there are any Third Culture Kids reading me here, you guys have got to read that!), I am starting to wonder whether I shouldn’t stay up tonight to wait for the UFOs and ask them to make this moment last forever…
So I stayed up that night…didn’t see any UFOs but I did see some seriously starry sky.
I realise how little I know about the Universe, about stars and galaxies, about how small we are and how much there is up there, out there… Anyone here’s an astrophysicist who feels like explaining some of that to me?
I realise how little I know about the Universe, about stars and galaxies, about how small we are and how much there is up there, out there… Anyone here’s an astrophysicist who feels like explaining some of that to me?
Until I figure a bit of this out, I’ll just look at the craters on the moon with binoculars, try to spot the Southern Cross and Orion and draw lines that make funky shapes between this marvellous infinity of bright little spots.
Good times.
Good times.
…there, some pics for you hungry kids of the visual era.
En route for Pisco Elqui
Our first sunset
In the village
Two lovers in front of the village's church (my aunt and uncle celebrated their 31st anniversary on that day, the 31st...love love love)
The very ugly view from one end of the pool
The even uglier view from the other end
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