Sunday, July 27, 2008

Chile, Day 14: Bonus day in Chile

Surprise, surprise. We did not fly out of Santiago as planned tonight at 7 pm. We boarded Air Canada flight 93 as expected and sat at the loading bay for a half hour or so. Restlessly. Finally the captain announced that the flight had been cancelled because of the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador. Apparently the volcano erupted and spewed an ash cloud that obscured vision at the precise altitude at which our plane was supposed to fly. So they tried for a while to route us around the ash cloud but couldn't (for some reason), so they cancelled the flight. I won't bore you with details of the extreme confusion which followed. If you have never been in this sort of situation before I will warn you: there are an awful lot of lineups and frayed tempers involved. But Air Canada put us all up in hotels for the night, complete with taxi transportation to & from, and a [late] supper and a breakfast tomorrow as well. So I am staying at the Radisson which is definitely not down to my usual standards. We are supposed to fly out tomorrow morning at 10 am. We'll see. Meanwhile, I get an extra night in Chile, compliments of my good friends at Air Canada. Esta bien.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Chile, Day 13: Copiapo and Caldera

I did not get around to writing as much about yesterday as I had hoped; my last working day was a busy one. Once again we had seminar in the morning with the teacher-curriculum-developers, and it really was a good session. We finally all agreed on a combination, rationale, and sequencing of the program modules. We firmed up the career profile a bit. We decided on next steps. There were some excellent ideas put forward by the group. It was great to be able to leave with a sense of the project moving forward.

I spent the afternoon consolidating my papers and printing out a final copy of everything. Then I locked my office one last time, turned in the key, and said goodbye to the staff at CFT. Later that night, the project people took me out for dinner to a wonderful restaurant. We drank pisco sours and ate fresh cebiche and some kinds of fish I've never tried before. No room for dessert.

And today they took me to Caldera. Caldera is a town on the coast, about an hour's drive to the west. The desert landscape on the way to Caldera is hard to describe because there's absolutely nothing like it in Canada to use for comparison. Parts of it are absolutely barren. Apparently scientists have done a lot of studies on the Atacama desert and found, in some parts, no life AT ALL. These areas are being used to test the equipment that is looking for life on Mars. All the way between Copiapo and Caldera there are hills but at times it's hard to tell whether you're looking at a rocky hill or just a big sand dune. There is a strange sort of mist that blurs the boundaries between hills and sky. When the desert stops and the Pacific Ocean begins, you can't believe your eyes: it looks more like a mirage than a body of water.

Did I mention before that the very first railroad in Chile (maybe in South America?) ran between Copiapo and Caldera? Well, it did, and today there was some sort of celebration in Caldera to commemorate that event. People -- men, women, children -- were dressed up in period costumes from the 1850's. We walked around town, browsed the market stalls (mostly selling jewelry made from local minerals and semi-precious stones), and lingered over a great seafood lunch. We visited the church which was designed by M. Eiffel -- the very same guy who designed the Eiffel tower. We strolled on the wharf and looked at the fishing boats and pelicans. Then we drove around the corner to Bahia Inglesa (English Bay), which is a lovely little beach resort community. It is hard to imagine a beach resort in the Atacama desert but Bahia Inglesa really is very beautiful and I would happily come back.

So now I'm back at the hotel, packing things up and checking my email one last time. Tomorrow (assuming all goes according to plan) I'll fly to Santiago, spend the day there, and then head for Toronto. I really am sorry to be leaving Chile (...but I am looking forward to being able to buy a cup of coffee and be understood). Hasta luego!

Chile, Day 12: Tremblor

So I was having my breakfast this morning, in the hotel's 'complimentary breakfast' area and all around people were stirring their tea, popping bread into the toasters, the low-key conversation of people waking up, when all of a sudden there was a rumble and the room started to shake. Everybody froze in place. The rumbling increased for a few seconds, then subsided. After 5 or 6 seconds it stopped; everybody exchanged nervous little smiles, and the morning continued as it had been.

The earth shakes in Chile a lot. I had wondered about that, but when I had asked Franco last week if Chile got a lot of earthquakes, he said, "No, not really..." But the fact is that Chile gets so much of this kind of thing that they don't even bother to call it an 'earthquake' (terremoto) until it hits at least 5 on the Richter scale. Anything less than that is just a 'tremor' (tremblor).

We were talking about it on the ride into work this morning. One of the women said, "You could tell there was going to be a tremor. We had that big rain, remember? Then 2 warm days. The tremors always follow that pattern." There is a lot of culture around earthquakes, both folklore and fact. Dogs will bark furiously just before an earthquake (maybe one more reason why the dogs are so tolerated). Copiapo suffered a huge earthquake back in the 1920's (?) which virtually flattened the town. The Matta house was one of the few larger homes that was left standing; that's why it's used as the regional museum now. In my hotel information brochure, the very first note under 'in case of emergency' is all about earthquakes. It is translated (badly) into English: 'locate you in a safe place, for example under a solid furniture.'

But the rest of the morning was tremor-free and now I am back at the hotel for lunch.

Oops, look at the time! I've got to get back to work. More later.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Chile, Day 11: Work and Politics

I'm afraid you'll find today's post pretty dull unless you are tuned in to the drama and intrigue of curriculum development work. There was a bit of confusion about my ride to work this morning so I ended up walking the 3 km to the Institute, which was fine with me since it was an absolutely beautiful and WARM morning. Halfway along, I had to remove my outer jacket and stuff it into my briefcase.

I received some answers to my queries about the basis for the program from the folks at Niagara; answers which really helped to clarify the project. Using that information, I spent a good part of the afternoon updating the process document which will form part of my final report. This document will (I hope) lay out the steps that need to be followed in the curriculum development process; will identify which steps have been completed, which ones remain, and the timelines that should frame that completion. Then, on my way out the door at 5:15, I was stopped by one of the teachers who had spent his afternoon re-writing the entire semester plan for the new program. It was difficult for me to follow his diagram exactly (since he doesn't speak English) but it looks like he has moved some things around in order to create a clear exit option at the end of the first year. The lack of a vocational exit point at the end of the first year was, I think, a weakness in the original plan so his schedule makes good sense. I just don't know if Niagara is going to go for it at this stage of the game.

I had an interesting talk about politics earlier in the day, with one of the staff who had been to Canada to attend a conference. She had appreciated the luxuriant lifestyle and order of Canada; I told her how I was enjoying the sensibly scaled-down lifestyle and vibrancy of Chile. She didn't see Chile that way. She felt that in the 15 years or so since Chile had returned to democracy, things had gotten out of hand. When they lived under dictatorship, things were kept in tight check but since the dictatorship had ended there had been a rebound effect. Delinquency, drugs... lots of negative aspects had increased. Strange to say, but under the dictatorship some things were better. I can recall hearing similar opinions from people living in post-Communist East Germany and Russia. It seems that democracy is a system that takes some getting used to.

While I was waiting for my ride this morning, I was doing a little web-surfing, trying to find out what factors have helped to shape Chile into the unique country that it is. Part of the reason is sheer geography. Really, when you think of it... Chile is bounded on the north by the driest desert in the world, on the west by the largest ocean in the world, on the east by [almost] the highest mountain range in the world, and on the south by Antartica. It might as well be an island.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Chile, Day 10: la Plaza

Today was a beautiful but hard-working day. We spent most of the morning in seminar, again discussing the steps required to get this new tourism program off the ground. We talked about the preliminary program planning stages (which, everybody agrees, have been completed) and the secondary stage of curriculum development (we're in the middle of that right now). But we never did get to discussing the third stage -- program coordination and quality control -- because we got side-tracked discussing some basic issues inherent in development of the curriculum. Curriculum development (the way I see it, at least) moves forward best when you can answer two essential questions: 1) what will the students at the end of the program know and be able to do? and 2) who are the students who will enter the program at the beginning? Once you understand those two issues, well... curriculum forms the meat in the middle. I think we have a pretty good handle on who the intake students are but there is still some confusion about what the graduates will be prepared to do. In my experience, this is not uncommon in a program which is brand-new for an area. There is a degree of risk and faith involved. I have been communicating with the folks at Niagara to see if we can clarify some of the issues: then I believe we can move forward more easily.

It was so beautiful and warm today that for an hour or so I actually removed my (outer) jacket for a while during the seminar. You can't believe what it's like here on a fine day. I'm not sure I have ever experienced air more clear. The contrast between the barren hills surrounding the town and the blue sky beyond is almost surreal.

I didn't get back to the hotel until almost 6:30 and by then it was almost dark and I was bushed. So I did what anyone would be tempted to do in such a condition: I cruised the Plaza. Really, I'm not sure how a country like Canada can call itself 'developed' without having incorporated the plaza concept. After visiting Ecuador I figured that maybe the reason we didn't have town plazas in Canada was related somehow to our cold weather (blame it on that, sure) but after experiencing Chile I know that's no excuse. Copiapó's Plaza is wonderful and takes up an entire city block. It is surrounded and crisscrossed by broad paved walkways. I say 'paved' but they are actually covered in some kind of local marble tile which is so smooth that you can easily slide on it if you want to. In between the walkways are grassy areas, benches, trees, and street lights. If you were to close your eyes the first thing that would occur to you is the smell: a combination of cotton-candy, popcorn, roasted walnuts, and deep-fried doughnuts. You would also notice the music: there's some incredible Andean music from one corner, a Chilean opera singer who is selling CDs from another corner, and a sort of 'country' style performer, singing live from another corner. The church, of course, faces the plaza and church bells ring every quarter-hour. There are children riding bikes, elderly people feeding pigeons, dogs meeting and greeting each other, and teenagers competing on skateboards. There's usually a young athletic-looking guy who does balancing tricks with a soccer ball, and a small crowd watching him. There are always a few tables with men playing chess. Down one entire side of the Plaza there is a special kind of market called a 'feria': a series of booths with some fairly high-class handicrafts for sale. The prices are mostly fixed and it seems that bargaining is not so encouraged.

So that was my day. Now I'm back in my hotel room and the heater is STILL working (3 days in a row!) Life is good.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Chile, Day 9: una turista en Copiapó

Today I got picked up for work at the usual time but I could tell right away that we were taking an unusual route to the Institute. It wasn't until the truck stopped that I understood we were going to the museum, not to the Institute. This trip had been promised last week but it just hadn't worked out.

The Regional Museum for Atacama is housed in the original home of la Familia Matta. The Matta brothers were major players in Copiapó 150 or so years ago and the house furnishings reflect their status. But the museum also houses artifacts from far distant times. Chile has been populated for thousands of years and over that period there have been six different major conquests. You wouldn't think that an area with barely 12 mm of rain would be that attractive to foreigners but of course it's all about gold. The Incas, for example, left a well-stamped trail through the desert (still visible today) and lots of artifacts. The Spanish conquistadors swooped down along the same route, for the same purpose, from Peru. Apparently the first railroad in South America ran from Copiapó to Caldera (about 50 km westward on the coast). People have been marching through Copiapó for a very long time.

It's interesting for me to see how Chile has developed a distinct cultural identity out of such a diverse ethnic background. The museum guide, when describing the Spanish invasion, summarized the contribution of the Spaniards: language and religion. "And that's why we speak Spanish", he said. He did not say, "And that's why we are Spanish." There have been six such waves of invaders but all have been absorbed into the population in one way or another and it seems that the resultant people have only become more Chilean.

After the museum trip we went for lunch and I finally got to eat an empanada marisco. It's a deep-fried pastry filled with ... seafood, I guess. I did recognize what could have been a shrimp but the rest was pretty mysterious. Never mind, it tasted very good and I really didn't need to know.

At work in the afternoon, we had an interesting discussion about the vocational focus for the graduates of the tourism program. Will they (or should they be) generalist tourism workers prepared for a variety of entry-level positions? Or could they contribute in a new sort of role, a kind of 'tourism facilitator'? Such a person could provide a first line of contact for visitors to an area and offer essential information about what tourism products and opportunities are available and how they can be accessed. Based on my recent experience in Copiapó, a person like this would indeed be providing an essential service. Such discussions are one of the reasons I love curriculum work. You are not assisting just to maintain the status quo, you have the opportunity to help evolve it. It's also one of the reasons why curriculum development works so much better when local people -- rather than just foreign 'experts' -- are in control of the development process.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Chile, Day 8: Lluvia en Copiapo

While hanging around the hotel door, waiting for my ride to work this morning, I noticed that the sidewalk outside was wet. This, in itself, is not such a big deal because business people wash down the sidewalks in front of their places every morning (what with the dogs and all). But then I noticed that the street was wet too. And that water was still dripping from the hotel roof. It took a while for me to realize that it had actually RAINED. Apparently this monumental event happened between 5:30 and 7:30 this morning and somehow I slept right through it.

At the college, people all over were dealing with the rainfall. All of the furniture in the main office had been moved to one side in order for the staff to deal with a big leak in the roof. The carpeting was soaked. In my little office the water was also dripping steadily into one corner. I went to talk to a colleague down the hall who was checking the news on the internet. "Siete millimetres!" He was shaking his head in disbelief. For a place that barely gets 12 mm of rainfall in a year, 7 mm is a lot of precipitation for one day. (For comparison: any place with less than 250 mm per year is classified as a desert. Cranbrook gets almost 400 mm.) "When was the last time this happened?" I asked. He thought for a few moments but couldn't remember, exactly; maybe about 10 years ago.

I recalled a conversation I'd had with Clayton, the fellow with whom I'd had meetings in Santiago last week. He was telling me that when rain falls in the Atacama, it's a problem for people. Some communities, especially, are simply not set up for rain. There is no drainage. House builders do not worry about making the roofs watertight. Many cars don't have functioning windshield wipers. Why bother? The problem is that when it DOES rain, it virtually immobilizes the community. Something like when it snows in Victoria I suppose.

But although it's a problem for people, it's apparently not a problem for all living things. My colleague was telling me that after a big rain like this morning's, the desert becomes alive with flowers. It's a rare event and it takes some time to materialize, but it's astoundingly beautiful. It turns the area into a world-class destination.

Later, I went for a walk around town to have a look. Sure enough, I noticed that none of the buildings have eaves and the puddles don't really drain from the streets. The electricity was out in the shopping mall across the street and there was no running water for a while. But the air was clean and moist and invigorating. I stopped for some coffee and had a piece of 'tres leches', a kind of special cake made with three different kinds of milk. It was very moist -- almost a pudding -- and very delicious.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Chile, Days 6 & 7: a quiet weekend

If you're looking for something interesting you can skip this post: I spent a very quiet and uneventful weekend. According to my itinerary, I was supposed to go on some sort of sightseeing trip yesterday but it didn't happen. So for the past two days I have been walking around Copiapo, practicing my Spanish a bit more, and doing a little curriculum work.

One of my goals while walking around was to spend a little money. Have I mentioned anything about the Chilean money system? It is really quite sensible from a Canadian's point of view. It is not based on the illogical sterling system, as it is in Kenya or Britain, nor is it almost mathematically impossible to convert as it is with the Swedish crowns. There are almost exactly (at the time of this writing) 500 Chilean pesos to the Canadian dollar so monetary calculations are quite simple. To make it even easier, the Chileans write large numbers in the European way (using a period where we would use a comma) so to translate the cost of something into Canadian funds you only have to double it. So, for example, a price of 1.998 Chilean pesos rounds very quickly to about $4 CAN.

Note that I said only that Chilean prices were easy to get a handle on. They are not so easy to pay. You have to imagine the scenario: you are in a supermarket which is very busy, you are in a cashier's lineup which is moving quickly. Before you know it, your purchases have been totalled and the cashier is saying something to you. You guess that she's telling you the total price but of course you can't understand a word she is saying because Chilean Spanish is incomprehensible. It's not just because of my ignorance of the language but also because of the unique qualities of the Chilean accent: "fast and fluid" is what I believe the travel guides will tell you. So you sneak a peek at the cash register and fumble for your money. You pull out a wad of bills and a handful of coins, all unfamiliar, the cashier is waiting and the lineup behind you is restless. So you select a bill which is sure to more than cover the cost. She stares at your handful of coins and says something else and you guess that she's asking something like: "don't you have 287 pesos to round it up?" But she could be saying 28 or even 913 for all you know. So you mumble (as always) "Lo siento; no hablo espanol" and she goodnaturedly hands you the change. ANOTHER handful of change.

So I really needed to spend some change and lighten my purse. I bought an electrical plug converter for 628 pesos and an ice cream cone for 725 pesos and I gave some pesos to some very worthy-looking beggars. The ice cream, by the way, was delicious. It's hard to imagine but Chileans seem to love ice cream even more than we do. I got a big scoop of blackberry flavour and I donated the remains of the cone to (you guessed it) a dog.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Chile, Day 5: Copiapo supermercado

Today was a cold day. I don't mean just 'cool'. Sunrise started out sunny but within moments, it seemed, a thick fog settled in and held the cold in close. In our seminar room this morning we had the laptop and projector running and people huddled around the equipment trying to warm their hands over the ventilation fans. It was SO cold, in fact, that Cindy left the room and came back with a heater. A space heater! I wasn't sure they existed in Copiapo.

We spent the work day moving the curriculum forward. Some aspects of curriculum development are fairly mechanical and no doubt the same everywhere: how many instructional hours do you have to work with? How many courses? How many hours per course? Maximum, minimum? How should the courses be weighted, time-wise? Is 32 hours of instruction per week enough? Too much? We spent some quality time on scheduling and hardly needed the translator.

My time after work is developing a bit of a routine. I return to the hotel and immediately turn the wall heater up full blast. Did I mention that I discovered a wall heater in my room? It is very thin and almost flush with the wall and painted the same colour so I didn't notice it at first. It doesn't produce much heat but no doubt it helps. Then I go out for a walk around the plaza, around the streets, check out the dogs and browse the shops. Then I go to the supermarket and get a bite to eat.

A lot of people (is it mainly women?) wonder what the supermarkets are like in foreign places. If you were somehow led, blindfolded, and released into a Copiapo supermarket, it might take you a few moments to notice that you were not in Canada. But very soon it would occur to you that this store is busy. It is like a Canadian supermarket on the Saturday before Christmas, except these supermarkets are this crowded ALL THE TIME. And you might soon notice that the booze is mixed right in with the groceries. There are a few aisles of alcoholic beverages but you also find stray bottles of whiskey or wine or whatever discarded among the breakfast cereals or bananas or baby foods. You might wonder why the fresh vegetables are so skimpy in both variety and quantity and don't look so healthy. You might really start to suspect something when you saw the display of fresh fat aloe vera leaves, packaged in onion-bags with directions on how to cook them for food or medicinal purposes. Yogurt is a big thing here and the yogurt aisle is huge. Many flavours are familiar but some are not: there's blackberry (blackberry, it seems, is a very popular flavour for a lot of things), chocolate & orange, walnut, and aloe vera flavours too. I honestly had no idea that aloe vera even had a flavour. And finally you might notice that the food is generally packaged less heavily and in smaller quantities than at home. The cost of food is about half (or less) of what a similar item would cost at home, except for the wine which is cheaper still: it's easy to find something for not much more than $1 per liter. Good stuff, too.

The sun goes down around 6 and it gets dark quite quickly. I return to the hotel room (which, by this time, has warmed up a bit), unpack my food purchases and surf for something in English on the TV. After struggling with Spanish all day I'm grateful to rest my ears.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Chile, Day 4: Los perros de Copiapo

It was another working day and not much to tell, really. In the morning I did my presentation for the teacher-students who are developing the new tourism program for Vallenar. I started out by giving them a bit of background about our region, our institution, our programs. My thought was that such an introduction would help to give our particular curriculum perspective some context. In retrospect, it may or may not have been a good idea. I was explaining at one point why our region is so popular: it's the mountains, the forests, the lakes, the great skiing, and the wildlife. They asked about the wildlife. I described the deer, the elk, the moose, mountain goats, bear... There was a brief pause and then someone spoke out "...and in Copiapo we have dogs."

It really struck me funny. This area has so much going for it, touristically, but of course it can be hard to fully appreciate the attraction that your home town has for others. Copiapo has the innate attraction of having the driest desert on earth, right on its doorstep. And being in the centre of (what did I hear?) 40% of the world's copper deposits. And having Pacific Coast beaches only a half-hour or so away. And then there's the pleasure of just walking among the crowds on the streets. The lack of tourism here is, in itself, an attraction.

But although the student this morning meant to make a joke, he's not completely wrong. The dogs truly are amazing. There are so many! Of such variety, too. They wander around the plaza, licking the crumbs of street food off the tiles. They sleep in every little patch of warm sunlight. They group themselves in little packs of threes and fours and chomp at their fleas together. They cross with everybody else at the street corners. They meet each other, sniff, and drift on again all up and down the sidewalks. At night I am occassionally awakened by dogfights but they don't last long. Perhaps they could draw a certain kind of tourist? I'm sure if Rhia were here she would be keen to photograph them.

Everybody, it seems, complains (or at least jokes) about the dogs but it seems a lukewarm contempt. After all, the dogs probably do help to keep the area free of food-litter and they don't really beg for anything. In fact, I have seen people toss bits of sandwich to the dogs while sitting on plaza benches or in the sidewalk cafes. Today I watched a man whose job it is to supervise a parking lot stop to pat and talk to a stray dog. And not all dogs are strays: there are many little shops selling not only dog food but also dog toys and accessories. In the plaza market there is a stall selling nothing but 'ropas por las mascotas', mostly fancy knitted garments for dogs.

It's been a slow evening tonight. I picked up some food from the supermarket -- can't seem to find a good restaurant close by and the menus are a bit intimidating for someone with my ignorance of the language. Later I watched 'Amelie' all in French but with Spanish sub-titles so I was able to be totally confused in TWO languages at once. Fortunately, I know the story so it doesn't matter.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Chile, Day 3: Copiapo holiday

Today was a holiday. This meant two things for me. First, it was a holiday. I got to sleep in and in fact I forced myself to stay in bed as long as I could and as a result, I think I am pretty much caught up from my travelling fatigue. I realize that I've only actually worked a day since arriving here but I also needed the day to catch up on the notes from my meeting in Santiago and from the assignments of yesterday. I had a fairly serious PowerPoint presentation to prepare and of course it had to be run back and forth (via email) to my translator for his input. So it was genuinely a busy and productive day.

Second, not only was it a holiday but, like many holidays, it was a day off for a reason. July 16 is the feast day for Our Lady of Mount Carmel. And la Virgen del Carmen (her other name) is not just any old saint: she is the patron saint of Chile. While on one of my walks today in between PowerPoint edits, I noticed a sign on the cathedral door informing that there would be a procession for la Virgen del Carmen tonight at 6:00. So around 5:30, after picking up something to eat for supper, I headed for the cathedral and followed a trickle of others inside.

The church was already almost half full. At the front of the church, someone was reciting the Rosary in Spanish. She would recite a few lines and the others would complete the prayer: "Santa Maria, madre de Dios..." As the minutes went by and the church continued to fill up, the chant of the parishioners became louder and louder. It was almost hypnotic. The bells outside started to ring and still people came in, filling the back of the church and the side-aisles. From my seat at the back I could no longer see what was happening at the front but eventually the priest and the bishop arrived, spoke for a few minutes, and then headed regally out of the church. I wondered why so few people followed them: wasn't this supposed to be a procession? Then I noticed what everyone else was watching at the front: a life-size statue of la Virgen appeared, carried high on a platform by about ten strong men. As she headed down the aisle, people stepped up to touch the statue, little kids who could see from their parents' shoulders waved, and women prayed as she passed. When they reached the church door, the men struggled to navigate the statue through the doorway because the statue was so high. By this time, of course, I was completely caught up in the crowd and followed with everybody (as if I had a choice!) out into the street.

The procession was like nothing we have in Canada -- not in our corner of BC, at least. I have no idea how many people were involved because from my vantage somewhere in the middle, the procession looked almost endless. We completely filled the street. Even some of the stray dogs joined us. There was a band at the front and another band at the back, both playing completely different music. There were drums, french horns, and other parade instruments. Someone else had a bullhorn and she led the processioners through a series of prayers and hymns. People leaned out of house windows, waved and cheered, and dogs who were not part of the parade barked as we passed. The men carrying la Virgen navigated her carefully under the incredible maze of power cables that crisscrossed above every intersection.

I had had a notion to gradually negotiate my way to the edge of the procession and then slip out when we passed by my hotel (I still had more PowerPoint work to do) but somehow that was impossible. For one thing, the crowd (especially at first) was quite tight and it was hard to move anywhere except in line with everybody else. For another thing, the experience itself was hard to leave. The music (both sets), the chanting, the swaying of la Virgen de Carmen held up high ahead, the dusk gradually turning to night all around, people lighting and re-lighting candles as the wind blew them out, the dogs moving in and out of the procession... it's something to remember. Once again I'm reminded that the wealth we have in Canada doesn't necessarily extend to cultural wealth, not like you can see in some other places. Like Copiapo.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Chile, Days 1 & 2: Santiago and Copiapo

I am sitting here on the bed in my hotel room in Copiapo with my laptop propped against my knees, much too tired to write anything of significance. But I am hopeful that I can maintain a blog during my time in Chile, even if it is only a modest couple of lines on every (or most) nights.

One good thing about writing (or trying to) is that the laptop is, I believe, the only source of heat in my room and it's nice to be holding it close. I am a little chagrined to admit that it really does feel cold here. After all, as Canadians we know better than anybody what cold weather is. I had been checking the weather reports for northern Chile for the past couple of weeks and the temperatures have been hovering in the low 20's during the days; down to the low 'teens during the night. Twenty-four degrees: THAT'S not cold, surely! But it honestly feels like I have skipped summer and landed straight into early autumn. The air is clear and sharp, the leaves are gone from many of the deciduous trees, there is a tinge of wood-smoke in the air, and people everywhere are bundled in scarves, toques, and heavy winter coats. The warm coats really are a necessity because most buildings are not heated. At the college where I am working, everybody sits in their offices, filing papers and typing away on their computers all from within zipped-up bulky jackets.

Another thing I am chagrined about is the mountains. In Cranbrook, we live right up against the Rocky Mountains and we are used to bragging about them to our less-well-endowed visitors. When I have travelled in the past I have brought a few postcards of the Rockies to show others where I live but this time I will be too embarrassed to take them out of my suitcase. The Andes in this neck of the world seem much bigger and more impressive. The mountains backdropping Santiago just take your breath away.

I've been here in Chile less than a day and a half and (given my fatigue after almost 36 hours of travelling to get here) it's hard to see beyond first impressions at this point. The only other part of Latin America that I've seen is Ecuador and I can say that Chile seems much different. It's cooler, of course, and doesn't feel tropical at all in this winter season. And -- in downtown Santiago and in Copiapo, at least -- the streets are paved, sidewalks and public spaces are tiled and clean, people look properous. Even the stray dogs that seem to wander about everywhere are bigger, fatter, and generally look quite happy.

Tomorrow thank goodness is a national holiday: the feast day for the patron saint of Chile. This means a day off (already!) and a chance to sleep in and catch up from all the travelling. I also have to catch up on a bit of work that's accumulated (THAT didn't take long!) but I can't wait to walk around and explore the streets of Copiapo.

[Note: photos for this blog are here.]