El Terremoto (The Earthquake)

Rather than try and re-tell some of the stories from the earthquake and the recent week, here are pieces of e-mails that we've sent to our family as updates...

From 2/27:

Hi all,

Claire and I are okay - thanks for all of the e-mails and support. Electricity has been out but just came back on about an hour ago - cell phones have been unreliable and dropping our efforts to call, but the internet just became available.

You probably know by now the quake was an 8.8 in Concepcion, a city about 6.5 hours south of Santiago. Radio reports are saying that it was everything from a 7.0 to an 8.3 in Santiago.

We woke up in our apartment at 3:40am to lots of shaking. We've become fairly used to small quakes, but this one kept shaking and kept getting worse. Usually they end after about 5 seconds, but this one lasted around a minute, getting stronger the whole time. Things started to fall in our apartment (small bookshelves, wine bottles, etc). The doors to our porch slid open and water was spilling from the pool (right above us) onto our porch and then into our apartment. At first we jumped out of bed and were holding on to the walls of our doorway, but as the shaking continued (and got worse) we grabbed some clothes and considered trying to make our way downstairs (not sure whether to try and get 24 floors down via the stairs or stay in a doorway). In any case, we remained in the apartment and it ended after around a minute. The damage to the apartment was small - most things that fell actually didn't break - mostly just some ripping of wallpaper as cracks formed in the walls.

There were smaller tremors for the rest of the night (one registered as high as a 5.8 on the richter scale). Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep and left the house early this morning to head to school (we had scheduled a bball practice for this morning and couldn't contact any of the girls because the phones were out). There was some damage to the school as well (we're not sure yet how extensive) and all school activities have been suspended until the damage is further assessed.

Right now we're at our friends Ian and Lissa's house closer to school - we have plenty of food and water and the roads and stores for the most part withstood the quake extremely well and things seem like they'll be operating before too long (hopefully!). We now have full electricity and internet (although might be a bit spotty) here at Ian and Lissa's, and we assume things are back on at our apartment as well.

Our love to all, and thanks for the e-mails. We'll call as soon as we get a chance, but it might be a while. We're extremely safe, so don't get worried!

Justin & Claire


From 2/28:

Hi all,

Everything remains good here for Claire and I, although some pretty scary reports of damage are coming in from some of the areas along the coast and closer to the epicenter. We've heard some first-hand accounts from friends that were along the coast for the weekend - the scariest involves some friends who came back down to their car (after fleeing to higher ground to escape a tsunami) to find that it was totaled and moved almost 200m by a wave. Makes us feel very lucky, but also makes us think about the long road ahead for certain sections of the country.

There's been a minimal amount of damage at our school, but enough that school for students has been suspended until at least Tuesday. Teachers will report tomorrow to clean up classrooms and try to get things in order. Lots of tipped over bookshelves, computers that have fallen from desks, ceiling-mounted projectors that are hanging from cables, collapsed ceiling tiles, and for me a whole lot of broken lab equipment. Luckily there are no reported gas or water leaks. I have a feeling some of us will be displaced from certain classrooms until everything is back in order.

We stayed at Ian & Lissa's last night - to be on the safe side we're awaiting 'official' news from our building that everything has been checked and is safe. We went back yesterday afternoon and everything seemed okay. We noticed that most damage to the walls came right around the front door - lots of tears in the wallpaper, and on the outside of the apartment (in the hallway) there is a huge crack around the front door trim.

There have been continuous earthquakes every hour or so since the big one. This morning we actually had a 6.2, which until 2 nights ago would have been the largest Claire and I have ever felt.

Thanks again for all the messages and concern. We'll keep everyone updated!

Love,
J&C

From 3/6:

Hi all,

We thought we'd give another quick update from the last few days - we'll follow it up right away with a handful of pictures as well. On Thursday morning we volunteered with a group called FIMA (www.fima.cl - they normally do coastal pollution clean-ups) to load up our car with supplies that had been donated and drive as part of a 10-car caravan to Curanipe, a city on the coast about 50 miles north of Concepcion that had been slammed with the tsunami that followed last weekend's earthquake. We were pretty impressed to see that one of the local Patagonia stores had donated eight giant trash bags full of brand-new clothing and gear - definitely made future customers out of us. Anyway, the drive to Curanipe would normally take around 5 hours but due to broken overpasses and bridges and damaged stretches of the highway it took closer to 10 hours.


When we got there, the military was directing all supplies to a discoteque (dance club) called El Punto so that they could protect and oversee the distribution process. So from about 9pm until 11pm on Thursday night we unloaded supplies into El Punto - made pretty amusing by the mixture of volunteers, military (with guns), and red and blue lights mixed by a disco ball (the only lights the dance club had).


We knew we might be helping out for a few days and so we camped out back with our tent in the parking lot that night, politely declining the beds they had in a couple of upstairs "bedrooms" at the club (creepy, huh?). Friday morning we woke up and went off with our crew to help put up shelters in a refugee camp. We hadn't seen town until that morning because it had been dark when we arrived the night before, and things looked as bad as we had seen in the pictures - everything even close to the water was completely leveled, and there were about two feet of wood and trash covering the ground everywhere. In contrast, everything that was at least 5 meters or so up the hill was completely fine, and so the roads were safe and easy to navigate.






We arrived at the spot that was supposed to be the camp, but there wasn't anyone there. Either there had been miscommunication or else people had left, so our group headed to the town municipality and they directed us to a hospital near water level that needed clearing. The building's structure was still intact for the most part, but there was about 6 inches of dirt and trash covering everything - we spent about 4 hours clearing it out (even the top shelves of closets were covered in sand and dirt from the tsunami - I can't imagine the amount of water that must have come through) and then headed back to our homebase/silly dance club/El Punto. We got the feeling pretty quickly that the best thing we could do was try to head back to Santiago and hope to make another run with supplies the next day, so we took off.




It took us about 8 hours to get back home, and after some communication with FIMA they decided they didn't have enough manpower for another caravan on Saturday. We had a great dinner at our friend Nicole's apartment and found out about another opportunity to help out in San Antonio and Cartagena (two more coastal towns - about 30 km south of Valparaiso and thus much closer to Santiago) today. So this morning we headed west with a group of friends, and our first stop was a gymnasium-turned-supply center in Cartagena. We unloaded government-prepared supply boxes from a truck, and then half of us split off to go deliver them to houses while the rest of us helped move everything from a damaged jardin infantil (public kindergarten and daycare center) to another, undamaged one about a kilometer further up the hill.



We just got back into Santiago to the news that school will most likely resume on Monday - even though water is still iffy (students are being asked to bring their own water bottles) and electricity might be coming from our diesel generators, it will be nice to get back to a normal routine. Spirits as a whole are very high in Santiago and also in the outlying areas - almost all cars are decorated with so many flags and "viva chile!" paint that it seems like the entire country is headed to some sort of enormous cheerleading competition - and so even though the road to recovery is clearly a long one there is a feeling of solidarity.



We miss everyone and hope that you're all doing well! Hopefully we'll get a chance to talk with everyone soon.

Love,
Justin & Claire

Brazilliant

We just got back from @3 weeks in Brazil and man are we tan. A couple of overall observations to start:

-Brazil is incredibly diverse in every way. The people, the land, the lifestyles. We were mainly in two places (the city of Rio de Janiero and the state of Bahia) which is probably the equivalent of going to NYC and then the outer banks of North Carolina in the US. You don't see most of it and you only get a small snapshot of what the country is all about. It should be noted that we took a 23-hour bus ride between these places.

-Brazilians are pretty friendly but not necessarily outgoing. We never really felt in danger and were smart about keeping our wallets as empty as possible and leaving shiny things at home. That said, we know a lot of travelers that got mugged, often because they were alone.

-Brazil's fruit situation is as good or better than any other country we've been to. AND, cashews are their go-to nut. How awesome is that?

-In Brazil you can buy and drink a beer anywhere you want: beach, street, public bus...More evidence that if the US just relaxed a little everything wouldn't come crumbling down.

-Portuguese is not Spanish. But, most of our communication was a combo of Portuguese, Spanish and English (Portuspanglish) and gesturing. The points usually got across. The phone was impossible.

-Men's and women's hostel experiences are often very different, usually characterized by largely divergent smells and sounds (read: farting and aggressive snoring).

-Caipirinhas, the Brazilian cocktail of choice, are amazing. And they can be made with so much more than just limes. They involve a sugar-cane rum called cachaca (that second c should have a cedilla and is pronounced with an sss sound: ka-sha-sa), fruit, sugar, and ice and they are always tasty.

There were two major phases of the trip: Rio de Janiero with sister Meg and Bahia with sister Meg, brother Andrew "the body", and at times Tim Urban (longtime friend of "the body") and Mauro Rossi (longtime friend of "the Meg").

RIO
We arrived at Rio after a ridiculously long day of weather-impacted travel. All I have to say about this is that if you come to South America, you should try to fly on LAN. They have the most comfortable planes and blow any other airline out of the sky. This day would have been much worse on an American Airlines plane or anyone else. I love you, LAN. Meg bore the brunt of the inconvenience caused by our travel delays as she had decided to patiently wait for 6 hours for us to arrive at the airport in Rio so we could travel to the hostel together. Her 6 hour wait turned into 12 hours and the Rio airport sucks.

Rio in the summer is the muggiest city I've ever been to. You are instantly damp and you will stay this way until you leave Brazil. So be it. This is what happens when you wear the same shirt for three days there:



Second, we got what we liked to call "The Steal of the Century" in terms of our accommodations. This is not because we arrived and said, "wow, this hostel is clean, spacious, cool, and the shower is not reached by tramping down a floor and across the common area" (the opposite of all of these was true). It is because every single hostel, hotel, b&b, etc in Rio TRIPLES their prices for New Year's. One bed in a 6 bed dorm cost upwards of $75 USD a night during this time and they all require a 3-4 night stay...shocking, upsetting, and such a racket. However, we booked our hostel through a third party travel agency that forgot to charge us this enormous mark-up. The long and short: we paid normal prices for our hostel when we absolutely should have been paying triple. The hostel acknowledged that this wasn't our fault and we got the steal of the century.


Here are some of the highlights from Rio:
-There are fresh fruit juice bars all over the place. They basically have a huge counter with about 3 feet of standing room around it and that is it. You walk up, order a ridiculously delicious passionfruit-coconut-banana juice (or some sort of snack), and the gratification is instantaneous.

-Americans have something to learn for the denizens of Rio. Copacabana was the ultimate "come as you are" beach culture and it was awesome. There are a lot of people being exactly themselves and not really concerned with what you are or what you think. Ipanema was a little more concerned with preening (which we concluded the men of Rio are FAR more into than the women), but not really.

-The beaches at Copacabana and Ipanema really are amazing. They are PACKED with people doing all sorts of things: tanning, swimming, playing futbal, volleyball, or foot-volley, lifting weights, preening, prancing, dancing, building sandcastles, eating, drinking, chopping coconuts with machetes... The beaches themselves are long and really lovely for city beaches, framed by cliffs and Miami-like strips of hotels, etc. This was the best people watching experience of my life. And in case you were wondering, it is extremely lame and abnormal to wear clothes and shoes. Speedos are the norm for all men and they are welcome to wear speedos in restaurants without any shoes on. One of our favorite restaurant looks was no shoes, speedo, and shirt that was so long that it covered the speedo, making someone look pants-less. Unfortunately, we did not document this.
Foot-Volley:


Not sure what sunscreen to wear? Easy! Just figure out your skin color, and consult the spf estimator. Justin's category roughly translates as: whitey mc-white-ster. When you get to the pictures from the end of the trip, I invite to come back to this picture to see just how tan Justin got.

-We took a tram ride up Santa Teresa and it was the most buck-wild urban transportation experience we've ever had. Very exciting. The guy giving the high-fives in the video is the driver's assistant. Note the hooting and hollering and look for the death-defying overpass bridge crossing in the beginning. That was VERY real.


-New Year's Eve in Copacabana was an amazing experience. An all night party on the beach with huge stages for live music and dancing, lots of swimming, making little shrines to the goddess of the ocean, drinking, eating and sweating. We don't have pictures because we thought it was probably a good idea to go super-minimal with what we were carrying around. It was estimated that 2 million people were on the Copacabana beach for New Year's Eve and I have no trouble believing this stat. We all agreed that the fireworks at midnight were the most jaw-dropping, awesome, you-will-never-be-able-to-enjoy-normal-fireworks-again experience. I cannot describe how amazing they were. Picture three pasty gringos just standing on the beach with their mouths dangling open. It should be also noted that if this event happened in the US there would be 17 different gates, checkpoints and searches you would have to endure before getting to the beach where there would be more gates, stupids tickets to buy, and things that would prevent you from doing what you wanted. There was nothing of this sort in Brazil and it was just fine.

-Pao de Azucar was a great way to get a glimpse of how Rio is laid out. It is an unbelievably beautiful city with it's harbors, peaks, colonial buildings, and palm trees. The gondola up to Pao de Azucar at sunset was really lovely.



We left Rio for Ilheus, Bahia on a bus. The trip was surprisingly comfortable and quite uneventful. It was actually a cool way to see a lot of the Brazilian countryside. We arrived in about 20 hours time and immediately jumped another bus to Itacare where we met up with Andrew and Tim. Mauro joined us the next day for about four days.

ITACARE:
Itacare is a small town that gives you access to a series of amazing beaches in the state of Bahia. In the last 5 years I think it has expanded substantially and how has a rather hilarious strip of restaurants, bars, acai stands (local fruit made into a italian ice type of thing with granola and banana--very refreshing), beach shops that become a pedestrian walk/circus at night. All this said, it has managed to remain quite low-key. Probably because all of the locals are surfers and beach bums and do not want to toil away any more than the vacationers do. Here's Andrew at the circus/main drag:
This is from the morning we left, but it gives a good idea of what Itacare the town looked like:

It was very hot and immediate alterations to my Rio shirt were necessary:
Highlights from Itacare:

-Brazilian beach food is absolutely awesome. In no particular order: icy cold coconuts that are freshly macheted open so you can drink the coco water, they are then cracked open so you can eat the fresh coco pulp; sticks of salty provolone cheese that are grilled over a small charcoal flame and covered in oregano; chocolate bon bons (I know that sounds weird but who honestly doesn't want chocolate on the beach?); grilled whole fish; cashews; fresh fruit popsicles of coconut, banana, acai; really cold beer (Brazilians are expert coldness insulators, be it for big 40 oz beers or the natural insulation of a whole coconut). What Brazilians have figured out is that it stinks to have to lug coolers of food and drinks to the beach to avoid buying $5 waters and $9 slushies. So they patrol the beaches constantly trying to sell you cheap, delicious food where you sit. And they also know that is equally annoying to lug beach chairs, umbrellas, etc. These things are also made available to you for relatively cheap. Or, you can go budget in lounge in the shade of a palm tree all day.

Beach cheese and coconut!!
This is actually from our next destination but I thought I'd include it in the food section. This thing, the name of which is currently eluding me, was as good as it looks (and to me this looks really yummy):

-Surfing was really fun. After our first day on the cool-guy, awesome surfer beach of getting yelled at by the locals, we migrated to what we referred to as "the nerd beach." It was one beach down, just as beautiful and totally empty. The waves were not as cool-guy as the other beach, but we really aren't surfing cool-guys so this worked beautifully.



-We basically woke up, ate fruit and drank coffee, meandered with our boards to the nerd beach, snacked on beach food, meandered back for a shower, meandered out for dinner, and then meandered home to bed. Everyday. Also, euchre was played. To everyone's surprise, the Finn children did not immediately make the game so miserably competitive that Justin wanted to quit. This is a first.
-Half of the time we were on the circus/strip. Then, we moved over to a great hotel on the beach with amazing views where we all slept terribly for three nights. Hot and buggy. Oh well. Can't win them all.

Hammocking at our first pousada:
View from the second pousada (yes, that slanted ceiling indicates an attic room):


Look at those glowing tans! I promise that everyone wore sunscreen and sat in the shade the whole time. Those of you who know me know that I wear spf 50 or 70. It was way too hot to want to be in the sun but swimming and surfing meant a certain level of exposure:


We moved on from Itacare to Praia do Forte via bus, ferry, then taxi. Praia do Forte is a much more organized, upscale beach town. Where Itacare was pretty seat-of-the-pants yet low key, Praia do Forte took it up about 10 notches in terms of fanciness. We all actually had a bit of culture shock upon arrival. The beaches were long and reef protected. It was also significantly safer feeling (and more expensive) than Itacare. Still beautiful.

Meg and I are fans of breaching from way back:
Visit to sea turtle reserve station:

View from some ruins of an old Portuguese castle:
Wow. Big.
Floating in a tranquil reef-protected pool:
Beach sitting:Rival or kindred spirit?

We had three days in Praia do Forte in a great hostel before hopping a taxi, to a plane, to a bus, to a plane, to a taxi and now we are back in our apartment in Santiago, thinking about our trip to Patagonia in three days. We're a little worried we are getting kicked out of our Barbie's Dreamhouse Apartment because we got a cryptic email from our landlord wanting to come by and "discuss the apartment." We're worried that he is selling or wants to move back in. We'll keep you updated.