Notes from the English Department

Rosa y Luna, photo credit:Sandra Edwards

Last night we decided to take the coastal route on the bus ride home from Vina del Mar. We got off far enough from the steps that lead up to our house for a chance to walk along the breakwater. The tide was high and waves splashed over the rocks, their last wisps directly below us. The moon lit the clouds, mottled like doeskin, and the rocks held the sheen of water and foam.

We found a path to a rickety staircase. My husband went down and sat on a lower rung that was right above the tongues of the waves. Susana spoke of how she swam naked with a friend a year ago in the sea, how cold the water was, and how much she wanted to do it again. When Bill climbed up to us, Susana said, "My turn," and glided down the steps, stepping on to the top of the rocks. Waves broke over her feet as she balanced above the water. I have lousy balance; I envied her ability to stand there, poised and laughing, as the waves surrounded her. She came back happy with wet shoes and pant legs. My emotions have been ebbing low. What a gift to watch the sea in the moonlight and to hear laughter in the midst of it.

Today has been the first day I've wanted to write fiction again, after nine months (!) of time off. I've worried that blogging might take the place of making stories and novels. It's so immediate. Satisfying. And after a tap of a key, people can read it! Is the purpose of writing to be read? Or does writing itself, most of which stays in private nooks of computers and journals, the gift? These questions are too facile, but writing is lonely, and if you do it truthfully, hard work. With Internet and blogs, we are in a new world. What would the Bronte sisters do if they had blogs? Walk upon the moors, in the heather, and then come home to blog? Would novels be written?

I'm grateful that I have had the opportunity to be modestly published. I'm grateful for friends and relations who have read manuscripts during times I was still learning to believe in myself as a writer. Yesterday I was contacted by one of my most brilliant students, a young woman named Michelle Berger who was writing novels as a fifth grader. She told me she'd read Heron's Path, and it was the type of novel that she loves. A reader. Great joy. And yet, even without that reader, a writer writes.

The ocean is not far from my door. When it's especially quiet at night, we can hear it as we fall asleep. I open my window in my bedroom when I iron and watch small sailboats, seagulls and, on hot days, the usually smooth surface transformed into whitecaps as far as the horizon. I want to put life in words. I need to put my life in words, even if they're about a girl with six tentacles or two sisters who are not sisters, one of whom turns into a bird to take her real family home. Or to write a blog like I am tonight.

I don't know how this time in a foreign country will transform into fiction, but I begin to believe it will. We return in three months to California, and our life in Chile will be a dream: a cloudy night sky over the sea, saying the words for clouds and fog in Spanish, and watching a friend standing in the foam as waves rush past her feet. I will have these words to make it real.

A Llama, A Lot of Adobe, and a UFO

We missed the UFO that flew over San Pedro de Atacama, a small village that not long ago had no electricity and was as far away from the modern world as you could imagine. It is now the most expensive place in South America to live, a mecca for tourists coming or going into Chile from Bolivia and Argentina. Streets mainly consist of restaurants, stores with items twice as expensive as in Arica, and places to book tours to various natural wonders that surround the town.

We had night of fitfull sleep worrying about our suitcase that a customs official in Arica had put not only on the wrong bus but with the wrong bus company. When we reached Calama,the Tur Bus driver drove the huge bus around town as dawn was breaking and located our bag at the Pullman station. Once in San Pedro, I was getting muscle cramps from being dehydrated from a stomach issue that began in Arica . . . we've seen restaurants in Chile called La Tourista and think No! No! No! . . . and trekking to La Valle de la Luna in 30 degrees Celcius or leaving at 4 a.m. to go to El Tatio Geysers, so high they're below freezing when the tourists arrive, weren't appealing choices. The mother of all bloody noses I got the first night sealed the deal: we were ending our vacation in the pursuit of shade and cerveza.

San Pedro is over 6,000 feet high and like most of the Atacama Desert, it never rains there. Ever. Irrigation water comes from the Andes but there is no potable drinking water. Many of the locals are being priced out of living there as new resorts are put in, salmon is shipped from the coast and prices for food, drinking water and other commodities soar.

The town is made completely of adobe. Even the swankier places being built are using the traditional style. The street below is in the newer section of town.

We stayed at a modest house for a modest price, sleeping beneath a ceiling made the traditional way with small limbs of trees tied together. Our floor was dusty and the outdoor showers cold, but the people who took care of it had an adorable five year old whom we listened to chat away while we laid low in the afternoons hiding from the heat.

This was the threshold to our room which we thought was beautiful because it was so worn.

We decided to visit the town of Toconao, 1000 pesos by local bus, located about forty kilometers away from San Pedro and several hundred feet higher, the cleanest place I've seen in all of Chile. There was NO litter anywhere. The town was charming, the buildings formed from a volcanic stone called laparita .



There is a very pretty Plaza de Armas, as all plazas in Chile seem to be, and a lovely church called Iglesia de San Lucas with a convent with no windows.


One of the doors to the convent made out of a type cypress.


We wandered into a taller, a workshop for handmade sweaters, scarfs, shawls and mittens made from alpaca and llama hair. We met Luisa, her daughter, and her pet llama. She was using cactus spines to knit a small puppet.


Louisa and her llama

She told us to follow the signs to take a walk in the bosque above.

Later as we waited for the bus, we walked to the other side of town and Bill spotted this volcano. It always smolders. We were told that it is the only active volcano in Region Two, but then we were also told it's in Argentina.

In the San Pedro area the light seemed crisper and the land full of a special energy that might make encountering things out of the ordinary possible. Please forgive the science fiction writer in me, but both the cloudless ultra-blue sky and the diamond pinpoints of stars at night made my imagination go to work. I wanted to keep going into Bolvia which was only a few kilometers away and run away from the school year that's facing me. Of course, I hoped for some kind of mystical experience, but somehow I just don't encounter them.

During our first night in San Pedro, we saw a man set up a telescope in the middle of the street. Looking behind me, Venus was was bigger and brighter because of the altitude and clear atmosphere. I thought he was charging money to look through the thing but later that night in the hostel we were told that he was there because something large was moving very fast and irradically. Oh, well. Even though I missed the UFO right above my head, but later that night I finally saw the Southern Cross as I made my way in the dark to the outdoor latrine.

My husband and I have camped in the most isolated places you could imagine in the Nevada desert or along the narrow spine of California between the Sierras and the Nevada state line. You'd think if there were UFOs, we'd have seen one. The only thing I know is that I've met many people, down-to-earth types, who have. More UFOs have been reported in Chile than in any other country. There was one last year right here in Concon, in fact. The caretaker where we live, a woman with no ego, told us that a something huge spun above her head for ten minutes a few years ago, only to vanish within seconds.

Right before we moved to Chile, I met a woman who had just returned from Peru and had this to say about her experience at Lake Titicaca: She and her fellow travelers were getting ready for a walk at the lake where they'd reach a viewpoint just as the sun was rising. It was around 3 a.m. and they were adjusting their cameras, snapping practice shots. People around her started to gasp. She clicked her camera and saw herself on the screen floating transparent but illuminated with a cord that stretched out of the picture reaching back to her. She and some others went back to their hotel and asked about this. The woman at the desk said, Are they your spirits or our spirits? She showed her picture and the woman said, Oh, they're yours. Later as they were reaching their destination and light was beginning to appear, she said three large "crafts" streaked through the sky, shaped unlike any airplane she'd ever seen. They fell then into the lake and disappeared.

Anyway, an interesting story for what it's worth.

We left San Pedro for a 22 hour bus ride through the desert to home. This last shot was taken an hour or so out of Antofagasta, the setting sun on a beautifully barren mountain with nothing but sky above it. It was all I really needed to see.

Arica and Tacna, Peru

Traditional Dancer from Los Diablos, Dancing Fraternity from Bolivia

We hadn't planned on going to Arica when we left home, but in Iquique we decided to go as far north as time allowed. It took five hours on the bus, a snap after our other marathon rides, while we passed more behemoth mines and an oasis or two where melons and olives grew. The bus climbed a steep grade until a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet was below us and then crossed the top of a desolate mesa that stretched for several kilometers. We climbed even higher before making an ear popping plunge to sea level and the city of Arica.

I was glad I had a novel to read (Nancy Kress' Probability Sun) along the way. I looked out the window below us for as long as I could stand it, but when the bus raced around a curve I diverted my eyes and went back to the literary comfort of the possibilty of all of space-time unraveling.

Arica lies just south of the Peruvian border. Russ, a Kiwi who with his wife runs the Sunny Days Hostel, told us that there are two or three rain showers a year at the the end of February which lasts for fifteen or twenty minutes, the entire precipitation for the year. The city's slogan is "The City of Eternal Spring," though it felt like eternal summer while we were there. But that was a good thing. We spent a couple of wonderfully lazy days walking in the morning and then coming back for a siesta of reading and the best naps of summer. The evenings were paradise, warm but with the ocean breeze flowing onshore.

We arrived on the first night of Carvinal Fuerza del Sol by happenstance. We soon learned that dancing fraternities whose participants, mostly indiginous Aymaras from Chile, Peru and Bolivia, compete for the equivalent of 10,000 dollars worth of prizes. Most groups consist of children and adults. They practice every night in their hometowns as precision and creativity are highly valued. Each group had a band and the drums beat like hearts as they wound through the streets, finally ending at the Plaza de Armas where the judging stands were located.

This is the first group we came upon. Many of the people dancing here are elderly and we wondered at their endurance as their costumes seemed to be very heavy. They kept this pace for hours. Even with frequent cups of water, it had to take stamina:

Young children often danced in the front, followed by a drum major (for lack of a better term) and group of pretty young women in short frilly dresses that chanted things like: We're from Tacna, and we're the best. Watch us win the prize. Woooo! as they shimmied down the streets in high heels. Sometimes there were young men dressed in modified conquistador costumes with bells attached to their legs that went ching-ching-ching as they paraded after the young women. A group of mature dancers, usually the largest contingent, was the focal point of the dance, and finally the band would appear with the drum and horn section blasting away, their music mingling with the bands in front and behind them. The farther away from the parade we got, even miles away at our hostel, the beat could still be felt and the music floated to us in a wave of cacophony.

The costumes cost millions of pesos (or their equivalent in soles or bolivianos). Carnivals are held all over the region and the fraternities tour from town to town. This carnival was a family affair, unlike what I imagine Fat Tuesday is like on Bourbon Street. I saw no one drunk and children were out until the early morning hours. There were stands for refreshments, an artisan market, and a dry multi-level fmunicipal fountain and an old train engine that the children climbed on with little supervision.

This young woman charmed us into buying a calendar we didn't need to help support her group.

The Aymara are one of the biggest indigenous cultures in the Americas, consisting of over two million people. Traditional beliefs include a concept of time in which the past is in front of them and the future behind. It is their culture that the coca irradication the United States has pursued in Bolivia has affected the most, devestating their way of life. For them, the coca plant is a mild stimulant that helps them deal with cold, hunger and high altitudes. Bill and I have had matte from the coca plant a few times. I don't get any more of a "high" from it than I do with a cup of English Breakfast tea.

These are quiet people and as I looked at their faces as they danced, or saw women during the day with their long braids, bowler hats--a large shipment of these hats came from England in the 1920s. They were too small and so given to the Aymara's who have worn them ever since-- and colorful skirts, they seemed like the most beautiful people on Earth. I know I'm projecting, but they just appeared to be so connected with each other, and part of something in a way I've never felt as a norteamericana.

The Plaza de Armas in Arica is located beneath El Morro, a huge rock that looms over the city. The plaza is full of palm trees (beware the yeco birds that nest in them), dancing fountains and has an expansive space that sets off the cathedral and the Aduana de Arica, the former custom's office, now a museum. Both buildings are made of cast iron designed and prefabricated by Eiffel in Paris. Arica has been destroyed by both earthquake and tidal waves more than once. Peruvian officials ordered these buildings to withstand disasters, and they have done so. Unfortunately for Peru, Chile wrestled Arica away in the decisive battle of the War of the Pacific in 1880 and the town has been a part of Chile ever since.

Iglesia San Marcos



Interior detail of spiral staircase, Aduana de Arica

This young man from the Chilean Army asked to have his picture taken with us.

We enjoyed our time at the hostel, as we always do. I love the blend of languages and accents. It's a common practice for young people, mostly English, Australians and Germans, but also some French to take at least a year off after college (for some before entering) to travel the world. It's expected by the culture and supported by parents at least in encouragement, if not financially. Many young women travel alone, blithely traveling through places like Bolivia that have proven difficult for many of the older tourist we've met. We meet very few people from the United States.

At Sunny Days, we met a young Australian woman named Ann who lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia working with young men aged 16 to 25 who are learning to transition from institutional life in the hope they won't return to living on the streets. Another Aussie couple, two sweethearts who had just earned their teaching certificate, arrived on our last day to rest before they completed their journey to central Peru where they would also be working with street children for several months.

Found at a flea market in Arica

Perhaps if we had known we'd end up in Arica, we might have brought warmer clothes and made a trip to Parque National Lauca, though we might have had to drink a lot of coca matte as it's over 17,000 feet. I fell asleep one night listening to the young people talk about the altitude pills they'd brought with them (I didn't even know they existed) and their excitement about seeing vicunas, flamingos and bathing in thermal pools. We decided instead to go to the town of Putre, near the park, at a mere 10,000 feet, but once we made up our mind we werer told there was no public transportation on the day we needed to go.

So Tacna, Peru was our next choice. We wanted to go on a train with an open wagon and springboard seats for passengers. It left every Monday. We woke up early; at 6 a.m. the music from the carnival was still going strong as it drifted across town to us. At the railway station, it turned out that, yes, the train went on Mondays, but not on our particular Monday. We ended up taking a bus, disappointed because we were looking forward to the train trip more than the city.

We filled out the customs cards in pencil, which turned out to be VERY BAD. The Chilean border guards were grumpy with us. A woman lent us her pen while we were at the border for new cards. Once in Tacna, we got a cab from the bus station to a mercado Russ suggested we visit. We walked up and down the street bombarded by young men thrusting optomitrist cards at us. We seemed to have landed at eye glass central, had I known I'd have brought my presciption. In the midst of this chaos, we heard a friendly voice. The same woman who had helped us earlier was there with her two daughters and her mother. She told us her name was Gema and that she made false teeth, crowns and bridges in her own lab at home in Arica.

The flat tax for anything bought in Chile, including food, is 19%, so many Aricanos come to Tacna for deals. Gema's mom was in search of silver jewelry and she was looking for supplies for her lab. After shopping and a visit to friends, a trip was planned for Bolivia the next day to go to the dentist. They were headed to the mercado too, which we had mananged to walk past three times.

Later Gema and her family took us to the cathedral. Before they left us there, they told us more than once not to pay more than two and a half soles for a taxi ride. Gema gave us her email address, and with her farewell beso said to contact her the next time we were Arica, we always would have a place to stay.

Madonnas are especially sorrowful in South America

We sat for awhile in the cathedral because it was cool and wondered if the arch next to us really would be seismicaly safe as the sign beneath it was promising. We then crossed over to the plaza above and several young men came rushing at us with shoeshine boxes. Bill said yes. Two boys got close to me insisting my sneakers (with the toe beginning to peal off of one of them) needed to be cleaned. I kept saying No, but they wouldn't stop pestering. Finally, I used my "teacher voice," NO! and they ran off.

Less than a minute later, they came back and quietly sat at my feet. One of them kept touching my shoe and the other one complimented my bag that I had an iron grip on. When Bill's shoes were done, his shoe shiner said, Okay, five, ten dollar American. Bill gave him a little over a dollar in soles. As we walked off, the young man still was scolding us.

We had lunch and then walked back to the bus station. A colectivo driver followed us across the street into the station, hounding us to have him take us back to Chile for 4,000 pesos. We knew that the standard fare was 1,500 and just kept walking. The guy could win a prize for persistance, which is a polite way of saying her was a pain in the ass. He kept up with us until it we went through a gate where a bus for Chile was waiting.

Iquique

Festival Danza America Iquique/Chilean Folklorico- Polynesian Dance

Seven hours to La Serena, twelve to Antofagasta, and another eight to Iquique, all through exquisitely stark desert. In Copiapo, a large town which is a base for mining, I stepped off the bus to ask how long we'd be there. Standing with people who were waiting to retrieve their bags, someone bumped me. Back on the bus, I found that all of my zippers on my backpack had been opened. I had nothing of worth in it and so hadn't been careful. If they wanted my chapstick or tissues they were welcome to them, but it reinforced the need for constant vigilance of bags and purses and pockets.

Quantum of Solace, except for the trash. Some Chileans protested as the James Bond film was being made because the film claimed the desert was in Bolivia.

Strolling down Calle Banquedano in Iquique during our last evening, we saw there was going to be a perfomance which would feature dance troupes from all over South America. The picture above is of the Chilean performers doing one of the most erotic dances I've ever seen. Chile includes parts of Polynesia: the Isla de Pasquas (Easter Islan or Rapa Nui), Isla de Juan Fernandez and Isla Robinson Crusoe, named for the same Robinson Crusue Daniel Defoe wrote about. By the way, Friday never lived there.

Another of this group's perfomances honored the city of Valparaiso which had a section featuring a sailor and his pareja that made me want to smoke a cigarette afterwards. Videos of some of the dances can be found at the end of this blog, however we didn't catch the two I've just describe. I know, darn.

Iquique is morphing into a major beach resort. There are expensive hotels and a casino at the south end of town. Gambling doesn't interest us, so we didn't check these out. On Banquedano, there are beautifully restored Georgian buildings, wooden sidewalks, and restaurants that serve excellent food. We found that you can get real salads in restaurants! It's confusing to us that in a country with such a wealth of fruits and vegetables, where they come cheap in the outdoor ferias, the salads usually consists of finely chopped iceberg lettuce, a slice of tomato and maybe a beet. Even the bread in our hotel had a crusty crust like good French breads. The fact we were hundreds of kilometers from any place made this abundance especially pleasing, but shipping the food is probably not that great for global warming.

The first night we didn't venture off Banquedano. I kept asking Bill, Are we still in Chile? We peeked through a window of the Casino Espanol (not to be confused with the modern one to the south of town) and it looked like what I imagine the Alhambra might be like, intricate mosiacs covering every inch of wall space, but also with elegant tables with candles, fine linen, and stuffy waiters in tuxes.

When Iquique was a boom town in the 19th century, it was said that more Champaign was consumed here than in any other place on Earth. The rich, most whom were English, lived in luxury, while the local population of Indians and Meztizos endured miserable short lives working in the mines, a historical lesson that is too familiar, no?

Above, the clock tower memorial to Arturo Pratt, hero and Chile's most revered martyr of the Battle of Iquique against Peru.

The next day as we walked around the rest of the town, the answer to my question was yes, we were in Chile. Only a block away, Iquique bustled with commerce admist a hodgepodge of shops with their metal doors rolled up, the honking of buses and taxis, car alarms screaming and vendors selling their wares on blankets or in small carts that dotted the streets. I've gotten used to this now and feeling more comfortable with chaos, but in the middle of the hussle we found a pretty courtyard just off the street with benches and shade trees. Crimson bouganvillas hung along the walls, and we rested for quite awhile from the heat and the noise.

Earlier in the day, we took a colectivo through the town to the Mercado Central to find lunch. It was a wild lurching ride. I'm cautious by nature and always look for seat belts. Usually there are none, so rides are exercises in letting go, enjoying the experience and not obsessing on being thrown through the windshield. We wove through the streets, skimmed by micros and squeezed into narrow spaces in the traffic. The next day headline news was about a collision with a collectivo and a micro. We lucked out once again.

I snapped pictures from the back seat.

The butt shot below is a common sight in Chile. There seems to be an obsession with young women's potitos. All summer long there have been news updates about each of the beach resorts from Renaca, near where I live, all the way north to "conditions" in Arica. There are multiple close-ups of the bottoms of young women on each playa, with new ones featured every night. Our friend Norm, the Canuck, said that he saw more cleavage here in six months than in the rest of his life. Well . . . I suppose being from Saskatchewan might be a reason, but he's right. There is a lot. Cleavage and buns here don't rival Brazil but they're definitely a commodity and a national past time.

When we got to the Mercado Central, a barker for an upstairs restaurant attached himself to us and we were whisked to the second level, urged on through another busy restaurant to his smaller one in the back. He was so persistant that I was turned off and didn't want to go. A perky young waitress showed us the menu for the Restaurant Shalom at the same time he was pointing to his tables. Charm won over desperation. Also, almost every table at Restaurant Shalom was full and there was no one in the smaller place. I asked, Gente saben su restaurant es mejor? And she answered, Si, gente saben. (I hope someday to go over my blog when I have access to a Spanish keyboard. Si, I know, needs an accent). My pollo asado was the best I've had here in Chile; afterwards, though, both Bill and I felt bad for not going to the other place. After my initial response, I realized that the franticness of the man had to do with the fact he needed to survive.

Chileans of all social classes love to shop. Flea markets and malls buzz no matter where you go. This mall in Iquique is a tourist mecca, a duty free zone filled with things that didn't interest Bill nor I much. If we wanted a new camera, it would have been the place to go, but all we needed was air conditioning. We hung out just to cool off for an hour or so.

As we walked to the mall, we found some of the worst slums we've seen, rivaling Valparaiso's hillside shacks, just across the street. Corregated tin and cardboard are flung helter skelter and these miniscule houses barely hang on the hillside. I wanted a picture to contrast with the one above, but the taxi ride didn't turn up toward them. I took the photo below on our way out of Iquique, and it gives somewhat of an idea, except imagine two or three hundred crunched together.

Chile has the highest standard of living in South America and is considered a median income country for the world. There is a big middle class here and it's slowly growing. There are government programs to help the best students in the poorest schools go to college. However, the poorest schools lack resources, no lab equipment, for example, so these students still don't compete well with those who go to private schools. Even with good things happening, the gap between the richest and poorests is one of the biggest in the world.

Our bus chugged up a steep ascent as we left Iquique for Arica. We climbed above sand dunes has high as some mountains on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. Hang gliders frolicked above us as we made our way to Arica, another five hours to the north.

So, back to the dance concert. I've never been an aficionada of dance. When my husband suggested we go I said, It sounds better than going back to the hotel and watching TV. He hasn't let me live that down. From ten p.m. to one in the morning, groups from Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Peru and Bolivia entertained the audience with an amazing display of athleticism, drama, proud displays of cultural heritage and down right alegre, complete with a TV announcer who could roll his rrrrrrs longer than anyone I've ever heard. I understood him!!! It was wonderful to finally know exactly what was going on. The comments he made impressed me, as similar ones have done during our time here, in that the people in Chile feel they are Americans too. The United States doesn't have a monopoly on the word.

Before closing this section, I need to say that the generosity of Chilians to foreigners is heartfelt and wonderful to receive. The tickets we got wouldn't let Bill and I sit together. The woman who was in charge of the front of the "house" must have seen the bewilderment on our faces while we were still figuring out if the number on the tickets matched the number on the seats. She took us to the front row where we sat with the managers of the ballet companies AND the alcadesa de Iquique herself.

There are videos below of Bolivian and Argentinian (tango!) dancers.

Ballet Bolivia:




Gauchos from Cordoba, Argentina:

The Chilean dancers doing a traditional cueca:

Tango from Buenas Aires:




This last clip was filmed sideways, but I had to include it. This little boy danced for two hours until he got tired and started to pull on his ears. He fell asleep in his mother's arms for the last half an hour or so. He wins the prize of what I'd most like to take home with me to remember Chile:

La Serena to Antofagasta

Lonely Planet says there's not much to see as you travel through the desert between La Serena and Antofagasta, suggesting that a night bus is a good idea. The guidebook can be helpful but is so wrong on this account. The entire trip was fascinating as the vastness of the Atacama Desert, the driest place in the world, unrolled around us.

We spent the first night of our trip in La Serena, where we have visited twice before, a lovely town about seven hours north of Vina del Mar. The next day we climbed out of the city and watched the ocean fog lace the top of the hills. El Parque National Bosque de Fray Jorge is located south of La Serena and is the only rainforest on Earth where it never rains. The dense camanchaca provides enough moisture for unique trees and plants to grow. Fog is a common companion to the coast of northern Chile, modulating the heat and creating moderate temperatures along the edge of this desert.

Outside of La Serana, the hills are speckled with cactus which look like cousins to the Suroro in Arizona. They shrank as our bus went inland and away from the fog, until only mesquite was left.

Even these became more sparse and disappeared.




Memorials like this are seen every few miles.


Soon the desert was "empty." Sand stretched beneath mountains molded through geological ages. Volcanic ridges rippled at their feet.

Mining in the north of Chile, especially copper mines, is what makes the Chilean economy churn. Copper prices have dropped dramatically over the last year, but there still is profit in it. We passed several operations, the only human interruptions in hours of moonscapes, and then finally arrived late in Antofagasta. The city is huge, stretching for several kilometers along the coast. Antofagasta was founded in 1869 by Bolivia to serve as its main outlet for its mining industry. Chile seized it a decade or so later, and it's still referred to as "captive province" by Bolivians. According to Wikipedia, the city receives only 4 millimeters of rain a year on average, and for forty years it never rained at all.

It was close to midnight, but the bus station and the streets were thick with crowds, car alarms, diesel fumes and barkers selling you-name-it. We dragged our suitcase through the tumult and found a room at a hotel near the station with a collection of perfume bottles behind the clerk's counter.

The next morning we just had time for breakfast and a little CNN Espanol before our bus left for Iquique. Antofagasta has tourist sections, but we wanted to keep going north. There is a Japanese garden, and rock arch off shore called El Portada de Antogasta, a pretty Plaza de Armas, but most of the city seemed industrial gray and tired. I was glad to be on my way.

Chiloe: The Strange and the Beautiful

El Oso, Puñihuil

A beautiful woman emerges from the sea. Fishermen who catch sight of la Pincoyo as she dances along the rocks are snared by her long hair, but she also saves Chilotes from drowning if their boat capsizes. El Picoy, her husband, summons her from the rocky shoreline to dance in a sexual frenzy for him. If she turns toward the ocean, the sea will offer up its abundance to the inhabitants for Isla de Chiloe, but there will be sarcity if she turns toward land.

El Trauce, a tiny and hideously deformed man, lives in the woods. He attacks young women and disflowers them. When they leave his clutches and return to their village, they are always pregnant with his child.Detail from a house in Ancud

El Invunche is created from a baby boy who is given to the brujos, the male witches of the island, or he might be stolen from home. He is raised naked in the darkness of a cave and is given human meat to feed upon and the milk from cats to drink. As he grows,the witches transform him into a monster, piercing one of his legs to his backbone. When he is allowed to leave the cave, he searches for people by smell. When the "clean" ones see him, they are bond to him forever by their fears. Those that can look upon him and not show fear become the brujos. When an invunche dies, the witches indulge on his flesh because of its curative powers.

Isla de Chiloe has a unique mythological and cultural heritage, distinct from the rest of Chile. It's myths incorporate both those of its indigenous people: the Chonos, the islands first human inhabitants, then the Huilliche, a subgroup of the Mapuche, and also from stories that the Spanish brought.

We crossed the Canal Chacao via a short ferry ride where seals rode along the wake of the boat, and went to Ancud, an atmospheric fishing port on the north end of the island. I wanted to disappear there, spend a rainy winter snuggled in a warm wool sweaters, listening to cuecas and seeing what spell the magic of the island might cast on my writing.

Chiloe, at least the parts most tourists see, is a modern place, twenty-first century in many respects except for slow Internet connections and very attuned to the needs of travelers. Plans are underway for tourists to take in more of the traditional life of Chiloe by housing them with island families.

View from our hostel in Ancud

In an earlier posting I wondered why areas of Chile seem colder than in similar latitudes in the northern hemisphere, especially the farther south one travels. It turns out that there is a frigid current off the coast that affects the continent with more precipitation that even the Pacific Northwest. Chiloe is near the 45th parallel (mid-Oregon), but we felt as though we could have been in Alaska on our first evening there.

In the winter it rains up to two to three weeks without stopping, accompanied by strong icy-cold winds. Our hostel was on top of a hill overlooking the city and the sea. Twice in four days, the wind howled for hours, followed by a heavy downpour. It felt like a shortened version of a winter rain storm in northern California, but this was January and the height of summer. The following pictures were taken on the same day, the brooding gray morning and the afternoon of dazzling sunlight.



Ancud had the feeling of a frontier. After all, we were on the edge of Patagonia. Many of the buildings have rough-hewned wood exteriors. The mercado central looked fairly new,though it was also made of wood and captured the towns essence. Here, as in the other port towns, there was plenty of fresh seafood to buy, along with the beautiful handicrafts. Women sat in their stalls, knitting or crocheting when they weren't dealing with customers. Their yarn is hand dyed using tree bark, roots and grasses.

We spoke to a caballero minding his wife's store who told us that the conquest of Chiloe was less bloody than that of most of the Americas. Many of the settlers were farmers from Galicia, folk of small stature and their ways and the native population blended together fairly harmoniously. Many of the native traditions have not been lost as they have in other parts of the world.

Harbor in Ancud

In the morning from my hostel I could see fishing boats off the coast. The harbor in Ancud is full of boats in the water or in dry dock for repair. There were a few drunks sleeping along stone walls. An old woman (was she really old?) giggled like a school girl as she shared a bottle of what looked like whiskey with the two much younger men snuggling next to her. Seagulls cried like the links squeaking on a chain and the saltwater in the air could almost be tasted.

Gypsy Camp

There are two tours that most tourists take. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jesuits and then Franciscans built over three hundred chuches on the island made of native wood. About 80 remain and are now UNESCO World Heritage Sights.



Interior of cathedral in Castro

We chose to visit the penguins in Puñihuil, an hour or so from Ancud on the seaward coast and just north of the Chiloe National Park, where one of the few rain forests in a temperate climate exists. The day was wet and blustery, but as soon as our little boat set out in the channel it stopped raining. Four or five boats from various enterprises on the island line up on the beach. As you can tell from the picture, raingear is available.




An English interpreter was provided for us, a young man from Haiti named Michael who, as our boat was launched, wanted to know how Barack Obama had ever been elected. He said that Haitian never believed that the United States would elect a black man.

Two types of penguins are found in these small islands: the Humboldt and Magellanic. They have their marches just as do their larger cousins in Antactica. The males mate for life, and if a mate dies he will not eat until he finds a new partner. The females have a reputations for fooling around and aren't nearly as devoted.

Red-legged Cormorants share the islands with the penguins.

Here is a video taken from our boat of a group of penguins diving into the water:



We met a young woman named Maria Jose, her mother and nephew at our hostel.



It turns out they live close to us in the Quinta Region. Maria Jose took us to Castro, the capital of Chiloe, a pleasant city that looked very livable. Of course, I'm writing from the perspective of summer when the sky was blue and the breeze off the ocean was cool but not freezing. It was here at the market we found the central room filled with thousands and thousands of tejidas. El Dorado!

> Castro is well-known for the palafitos, houses built on stilts to accomodate the tide.

This strange building (front and back view) took us by surprise. We think it was a museum. Perhaps it was closed for repairs?












What Chile has lacked in cuisine for us, it has more than made up with music. It seeps in every aspect of life here. These performers were in front of the bus station. They're singing a cuecua, traditional Chilean music. The pitch of the woman's voice is a standard motif.



We said goodbye to Maria Jose's family and came back by ourselves to Ancud. We met up again with Shelly, the Canadian chef, and Dee, a friend of hers from England. One our way to find dinner, we came across this concert in the Plaza de Armas. These young people were a part of a summer music camp.



Afterwards, we found a non-greasy version of a chorellano to eat, shared another bottle of red wine, and talked until at least 11:00. We said goodbye at the Plaza de Armas. Bill and I started on our way up the hill to our bed as hundreds of lolos (teenagers) passed us by; their night was just beginning.