Some stuff we've worked on

So, while being in Chile, Kevin and I have helped out at bit at a local magazine for ESL students.

I wrote an article about disability in Ghana that can be read here:

http://www.teatime-mag.com/magazines/21-es/

And Kevin did the audio for two articles. Read here:

http://www.teatime-mag.com/magazines/19-es/

And here:

http://www.teatime-mag.com/magazines/16-es/

Valparaiso

We work quite a lot here in Santiago, and sometimes the city life gets to be a lil hectic,  so for our three day weekend (its a Catholic holiday here in Chile) we decided to take a trip to the coast to the artistic city of Valparaiso.  Valparaiso is only a hop skip and a jump (about two hours) from Santiago by bus.  So we boarded a bus on Friday, excited to escape Santiago for the clean ocean air.

Valparaiso is built entirely on hills.  It is truly the most colorful city I have ever visited, brightly colored houses built on stilts cover the hills and beautiful graffiti covers most of the city walls.

As Valparaiso is built on hills, there are Ascensors or Funiculars (i.e. elevators built on tracks) built on the hills to take residents to their homes.

There was even a slide to take down one of the hills instead of stairs!

We stayed at a colorful hostel with bottle cap murals and trapezes hung from the ceiling!

 
Friday night we went to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner (a rare treat in Chile), but vegetarian food seemed more plentiful in Valparaiso than in Santiago--I guess all the artsy fartsy people like their vegetarian food.

Living in Santiago, where the air quality is beyond the danger zone set out by the UN, our lungs thanked us for taking them to the coast.

Tear gas and water cannons.

Hydrosan Dam

     Chile seems to have a thing for protests and the police have a thing for shutting them down as quickly as possible. Our first experience with the protests was a few months ago. Unknown to us, the Chilean people decided to protest against the new dam that the government is trying to build. I was sitting in the common area of our apartment building when the sounds of thousands of people chanting came echoing from the street. One of the guys in the room with me ran off to presumably join and I decided to follow and check out what all the noise was about. Thinking it was a soccer celebration or something I walked out to the street only to find nothing there. 

    

 Slightly upset that I missed whatever it was I walked down the street a little and saw that the police were standing there with their full riot gear on, helmets, shields and pads everywhere, blocking off the street. Thinking it was probably a bad idea to try to get past them I turned around and started walking back when I was met with the protesters. At first all I heard was some chanting, then thousands of people came pouring out of one of side streets, trapping me between them and the police. Ducking up the side street in an attempt to go in a huge circle around them I was faced with more protesters. Street after street I was blocked by protesters until the 5th or 6th block.

Making my way around I finally got back to the apartment area but first I had to cross the street that was freshly tear gassed and water sprayed. The problem with this is that when the tear gas is set off and then they use the water cannons, the tear gas gets into the water and sits on the ground instead of going off into the air. Scarf pulled up to my eyes I made my way across choking and teary eyed. 

     

Britt was caught coming back from class. She was sitting on the metro when there was an announcement on the speakers in the subway car. Not speaking the best Spanish she didn't know what it meant but when she saw everyone closing the windows of the car she figured it couldn't be good. During protests the subways close their gates and sometimes send cars past the exit until things have settled down. Britt luckily was able to make it out of the stop before they locked her in only to have to walk through the tear gas water that I had crossed not minutes ago. 

We then watched from our apartment balcony a hundred people or so started chanting in front of the Enedessa building ( a company involved with the dam somehow). Right when they really started getting into it the military came and water cannoned everyone. They then had cops on motorcycles chasing down some of the more active protesters and arresting them. Quite a show for a Tuesday night.

U. Católica v/s U de Chile

     I got a call from my friend Ricardo one night as me and Britt were getting over strep throat to go see the celebration of the football game. Turns out that U de Chile beat U. Catolica with a 2 point deficit to start ( don't ask me how, soccer rules are strange).  There are three major futbol teams in Chile and this was the championship between two of them. So I walked out to meet him down at the celebration in the square/street. As I am getting closer I start passing more and more people in various states of intoxication, chanting and yelling. After I meet up with Ricardo we make our way to the center where we see thousands of people as seen in the vid below:

People on the roofs, street lights, setting off fireworks and throwing flares. 

But unfortunatly we were not there for long until the police showed up and shut everything down pretty quickly.

     As we were trying to disperse, a cop rolled out a tear gas canister roughly 5 meters away in my direction, I was temped to kick it away but the thought of spending a night in a Chilean jail changed my mind. After getting away and calming down a bit we tried to find a bar but no one would let us in because Ricardo was wearing a soccer jersey and they were not allowing any one with a jersey in. Eventually we found a bar in the very touristy area of Santiago but afterwards we had the same problem trying to get a taxi back home, no soccer fans were going to be picked up by a taxi that night. So we ended up walking back and calling it a sucessfull Sunday night.

Mendoza and back in less than 24 hours.

So seeing as that my visa expired in 3 days and I would not be in the country legally anymore, we decided to take a trip to Mendoza, Argentina. We left Santiago around 2 pm and started our 7 hour bus ride to Mendoza. The scenery was amazing and the road was frightening,100ft drops with no guard rails or barriers.  

There were around 27 of these hairpin turns that our driver took a little to fast for my liking with a tour bus... After the nauseating climb we came to the border where we had to get off the bus and wait in the freezing cold to get our passports stamped at the border. After that it was a 4 hour drive to Mendoza where we had not Argentinian money nor was any of the money changing places still open. Luckily we mangaged to convince our bus company to do some exchanging for us.

A kitty helping us figure out where to go

The hostel we stayed at was a supposed to be a converted mansion but turned out to be a largish house. The next day we rented bikes and took a tour of the town, visiting each of the 5 plazas that they had.

In the main plaza

Making a cool picture even cooler.

After our rushed run around the town we had to practically run back to the bus station to enjoy yet another seven hours of bus and the joy of watching the mask for the second time.

Misadventures in Camping

Last Friday we decided we would go camping on Saturday: typical procrastination.  Well, despite Kevin being the trusty boy scout, we didn’t bring any camping supplies with us to Chile.  That means we decided to go camping with no sleeping bags, Kevin with no hiking shoes, and well, with pretty much nothing but enthusiasm.  [Luckily, we were able to borrow a tent from a friend].

We woke up Saturday morning, bright and early (5 am) to pack.  Yep… to pack the day of…  I brought my traveling backpack and we stuffed it to the brim with supplies.

Poor me… Kevin used me as a pack mule.  [Alright, MAYBE he had a bag too.  And MAYBE, just maybe, it was even heavier than mine].

We met up with our friends and headed on our way to Banos Morales, a 3 hour bus ride from Santiago.  The bus ride was beautiful.  We passed small towns, houses constructed with left over scrap metal and wood, olive groves, and eventually found ourselves traveling down a dirt road lined by aspen trees and the Andes.

We arrived at Banos Morales, a tiny town with a grand total of 10 inhabitants.  Our plan was to hike to the base of a glacier nestled in the Andes and camp there.  The park rangers had other plans.  Evidently a month ago someone broke their femur at the glacier and camping is now prohibited unless you ice pick and climb your way up the glacier.  I find this slightly counter intuitive, but I digress.  Plans altered, we decided we’d just have to camp at the base of Banos Morales. 

After setting up camp, we went to explore the “hot” water springs nearby.  Evidently, “hot” means not glacier cold… In an already chilly day, the springs were a whopping 65 degrees.  Admittedly warmer than the air, however we decided we could pass up the opportunity to swim in chilly radioactive colored water.  Our brave friends, however, lowered themselves into the bubbling orange water, their faces twisted into grimaces.  After ten minutes they couldn’t stand the cold and ran to bundle themselves up in gloves and jackets.

We continued up the road and found ourselves surrounded by the mountains.  It was beautiful, and freezing.  As we walked up the road we passed mines (famously one of Chile’s main economic ventures).  We met a herd of horses, a gaggle of goats and one very friendly mule.

One of our friends, a geology PhD student, led us on a excavation for fossils.  Long ago, the Andes were under water, and fossils of sea creatures can still be found buried within the rocks.  We cracked large rocks open, throwing them against larger rocks, and I was shocked to find the outlines of seashells and sea creatures.

After our excavation, we headed back to camp.  We found that a young boy and his father had moved into the site next to us.  The boy spent a good hour pretending to be a ninja, spying on us from behind trees wearing a ski mask—awesome.  Somehow, we found ourselves in a surpisingly competitive soccer game with this child.  I have to point out that the boy was better at soccer than me, but eventually, he ended up getting a scratch and decided he would rather throw rocks into a nearby stream.  At that point, we traded the boy for the bigger version, his father.

After exerting ourselves with super intense soccer (using a ball that was slightly larger than grapefruit) it was time for dinner.  We huddled around our campfire, ate spaghetti, and drank wine into the night.  Things were going well… until it was time for bed.  As was previously mentioned, we had no sleeping bags.  We brought two tiny blankets with us…to the Andes.  I absolutely FROZE to death that night.

The next morning, tired and cold, we set out on a hike to the glacier.  It was stunningly beautiful, we were completely surrounded by the mountains.  The sun was shining, there were orange hot springs bursting up from the ground (prettier when you don’t plan on climbing into them), and yellow flowers blooming about the trail.  I have to admit, about an hour from the glacier, I decided I would rather sun bathe next to a lake while our fellow hikers trekked to the end of the trail… Call me a wimp, but twas the most glorious nap I ever had!

We finally made our way back to the city, I was sad to leave the beauty of the country, but overjoyed to climb into my warm and comfortable bed!

We are not a blaggers

So since our internet here in Chile is horrible to say the least, Bitt and I are going to try to keep a blog detailing whats going on. So far its been mostly getting setup, finding jobs and waiting to get paid so we haven't gotten to do any really exciting things yet. We have gone out with friends to a few bars, saw a show, tried to go hiking and explored the city.

Our apartment is on the 19th floor of a building that survived the big earthquake last year. You can still see the cracks in the ceiling and walls, but they told us that the foundation was strong and that those were only superficial damages...

The building is over a pretty quiet street, with the exception of the fruit vendor that hangs out on the corner yelling "FFFFRRRUUUUOOOOIIIIIITTTT" early in the mornings.

Lollapolloza (music festival) played the other weekend and even though it was a few miles away, our apartment was lined up just right that we could listen to kanye west from our balcony.


We tried to go hiking last weekend and when I say tried I mean that we really did try. We took a bus from Santiago to a nature preserve near the town of Pirque which ended up taking an hour longer then we expected. When we finally got there we were told that the hiking trail was only 4 kilometers(2.5 miles ish) or so up the road and since we didn't have a car we started walking.

And waking and walking, we ended up stopping after an hour of speed walking because after 15 turns of" it should be right up here" we decided that there was no trail and that the forest ranger was just messing with the Americans. We did get to see a little bit of the Andes and even though the trail was mostly a desert type environment we came across a river.

Well we didn't really come across it, we had to go off trail and go though a hole in the barb wired fence.


So we will try to keep this updated and add lots of pictures but we are probably the worst people to do this. We are going to be going to Argentina pretty soon, not for a vacation, but for me to leave the country. I have to leave every three months to get my visa renewed since I am going to stay on a tourist visa but Britt got her work visa through work.