Salta, Sarah, and the World Cup

We're down to our last week of school, and in less than a week we'll be heading back to Chicago to start our winter break. Leaves have been turning red and the snow is back on the mountains, so it's been a pretty beautiful last couple of months in Santiago. Here's a shot of the city from our apartment a few days ago:


In April we met up with my dad and Lynda in Argentina. We went to Salta, which is a town in the eastern foothills of the Andes on the north side of the country. It's known for mining, but in the past few years it's become a pretty big tourist destination because of the hiking, food, and history.

The mountains in Salta have a lot of different minerals and so the colors are pretty spectacular:


We took a trip up into the high-altitude plains to check out one of the world's largest salt flats - it stretched for miles and miles in every direction:



We were excited to have Sarah come into town last month for a 3-day weekend where we spent our time hiking in Cajon de Maipo and wine tasting in Casa Blanca.




Last weekend we made our last trip of the year to Buenos Aires with our friends Ian and Lissa. I was excited to see this mural for Gaucho Gil, my favorite (and the most underrated) gaucho in Argentine history. Legend has it that he was supposed to be hanged for stealing cows from the rich and giving them to the poor. Just before his death, he supposedly gave a policeman one last chance to release him, and warned that if he didn't the guy's son would soon get gravely sick and die. The policeman got angry and slit Gil's throat, and then his son soon fell sick. He set up memorials for Gil and prayed that his son recover. The kid got better, and since then it's been tradition for some Argentine's to set up memorials for sick family and friends with Gil's name on them:


Last night was a despedida (going-away party) for the Nido people that are leaving - people were free to play music and so Claire and I played a few songs with our friend Brett (and I got to play on a full drum kit for the first time in two years!). I'm pretty sure our version of Come On Feel The Noise was the crowd favorite.


Like everyone else here, we're excited about the World Cup! Go USA! (We're also hoping for a strong showing from Chile - we'll be watching the entire game as full school during an assembly on Wednesday.)

We hope all is well at home, and we're looking forward to seeing everyone soon! We'll likely try and get a temporary cell phone while we're in the States, but in the meantime you can always call our US skype-line at 773.546.9300.

Patagonia, Buenos Aires, and Iguazu

The earthquake hit so early in the semester that we never had the chance to make a post of our last big trips of the summer: Patagonia and then Buenos Aires.

We started by flying into Punta Arenas and taking a boat to a penguin ("pinguino") colony on an island called Isla Magdalena. Walking around with pinguinos = hilarious. Everywhere we went there were tiny little penguins waddling around in pairs, and lots of times with unruly little baby or adolescent pinguinos in tow. This picture gives an idea of the number of penguins on the island:




From Punta Arenas we took a bus north to Puerto Natales and then on to Torres del Paine. Torres del Paine ("Towers of Paine") is one of the better-known parks in Chile and has a hiking trail called the W that wraps around the mountains and into the three valleys. It took us about 4 days to cover the entire trail. We had all sorts of weather, but here are some pics from the sunnier days:


We also ran into our friends Ian and Lissa on the 3rd day:


Some llamas and then nandu (ostrich-like birds) we saw near the park:



From Torres del Paine we took a bus back down to Puerto Natales and then on to Calafate, Argentina. From Calafate we took a trip to the Petito Moreno glacier:




After a couple days in Calafate we took another bus north to El Chalten, Argentina. El Chalten has mountain tower-peaks similar to those in Torres del Paine (the most famous is called Mount Fitzroy), but the clouds never lifted while we were there and so we never actually had a glimpse of the peaks. Here's a shot of the town of El Chalten from one of the trails:


From El Chalten we spent a day in Puerto Natales before heading back to Punta Arenas. Puerto Natales is known for the fossils of Giant Sloths that have been found in caves near the beach.



We caught a flight from Punta Arenas to Buenos Aires via Santiago. In BA we met up with Kris and Terry - Kris had found a couple of great apartments for us to stay in throughout our time there. The first was in Palermo Soho and the second was right in the middle of Recoletta.

Kris and Claire with new bags from a store in Palermo Soho:


From BA we took a flight up to the Iguazu Falls and checked out what seemed like miles and miles of waterfalls from every angle imaginable. Some incredible views:










Some of the animals in Iguazu:



On our second-to-last day in Buenos Aires we took a boat to Colonia, Uruguay for the afternoon. It was a cold and rainy day in Colonia and so we spent most of the afternoon sampling Uruguayan cuisine - here's the traditional sandwich, called a "chivito". Pretty intense:

The summer couldn't have been better, and we feel extremely fortunate for all the traveling we were able to do.

We truly appreciate all of the messages and well-wishes that people have passed on to us over the weeks since the earthquake. We miss you all, and we send our love!

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