Cusco, Peru

We woke up bright and early for our flight to Cusco to start the trek to Machu Picchu. It is recommended that you take it easy for a day when arriving to Cusco because of the altitude. That wasn't hard for us, since we woke up at 5:30 to catch our flight. We all went to our rooms at the lovely Aranwa Boutique Hotel and took a nap. After napping, we dined on a fabulous lunch of causas, ají de gallina and alpaca tenderloin. Who knew that they eat alpaca anywhere in the world?

Trey wasn't feeling well, so we thought it was best to get him some drugs before his trip was ruined by a nasty cough. What an experience that was! We ended up wandering out of the touristy area of Cusco to find a clinic so that he could get on an antibiotic. I got to serve as his translator with the doctor. All was going well until the doctor asked me "¿Él ha recibido una inyección de antibióticos antes?" or in English, "Has he ever gotten a shot of antibiotics before?" Trey assumed if he said yes that he would get out of this form of treatment for some reason. Next thing we knew we were on our way downstairs to a pharmacy to collect a syringe and two little vials of medicine. Trey certainly got his taste I Peruvian medicine in Cusco!

We had a fabulous dinner at Cioccilini and turned in early for another short night before heading to the Sacred Valley the next day.

Rapa Nui

What better way could there be to spend Easter weekend than a trip to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as the locals call it. Three friends and I took the opportunity to turn a 3 day weekend into a 5 day weekend and headed west. Thursday morning was a bit of a nightmare as a result of a mechanical problem on our flight. A 9:15 departure turned into a 6:30 PM departure ruining our first afternoon on the island. Four days on the island turned out to be enough time, however to see everything on the island.

We started off by venturing to the volcano at Orongo on Friday morning. At the top of the volcano, you can actually look down and see inside. The volcano has been dormant for a long time, so now there is just a calm lake in the crater. It was really pretty! There were also all these old boat-shaped houses where the native Rapa Nui people used to stay during their annual Birdman contest. Legend has it that they would collect all of the island's virgins at the top of the volcano and bring in a gynecologist to examine them to ensure that they were actually virgins. Once they passed the "test" they were taken to a cave for 8 months to lighten their skin so that they were fit to marry the winner of the Birdman contest.

We spent the afternoon touring the island looking at the giant heads. The heads were constructed between 800 and 1500 AD by the native Rapa Nui people, who most likely are of Polynesian decent. They were so obsessed with the construction of the statues that they exhausted all of the resources on the island to the point of near extinction. After a tiring day of hiking and sight-seeing, we bought some wine and perched atop a cliff to watch the sunset.

Saturday morning, we woke early to head out for scuba diving. The water in Easter Island, according to my Fodor's guide, is arguably the clearest water in the world. The dive shop we went through for the dive had positioned a fake Moia underwater for divers to take photographs with. It was run by some funny French men, which turned out to be in our favor, since Sole and Roxane (two of my travel-mates) speak fluent French. I don't know that they would have had a slot for us otherwise, since we didn't book until the day before!

The afternoon and following day were filled with more statue-viewing and touring around the island. We visited the quarry where the Rapa Nui people carved the statues. In the quarry, there are still 397 statues in various stages of carving. Only 288 of the 887 total statues ever actually made it to their platforms, or "ahus" to be erected. Another 92 statues have been found between the quarry and their final destination, left behind after the Rapa Nui ran out of the resources required to get them where they were meant to be. What a pity! We also visited the island's small museum to brush up on some history (including the facts detailed in this paragraph). We watched the sunset on Anakena beach on Sunday evening while enjoying more Chilean wine.

Day of the Young Combatant

I arrived at work this morning and received an email with the subject line "Flexible departure today." I began to read the email, curious about what exciting event could mean that we would get to go home early, which led me on an internet hunt about a few different things.

First, what does the word desmanes mean in english? Thanks to wordreference.com, I was able to come up with the following:

desmán sustantivo masculino

1. (exceso, abuso) outrage, excess;
   los desmanes cometidos durante la guerra the excesses o outrages committed during the war;
   los desmanes de los hinchas the disorderly (o violent etc) behavior of the fans

Hmm...this doesn't sound good. To give you an idea of the whole content of the email the whole Santiago office received from the Director of Human Resources, I have taken the liberty of translating it below for you.

Dear colleagues,

Estimados colegas:

Due to the fact that there is a possibility that riots may occur in certain sectors of the city, as in years past on this day, those who believe that they may face personal risks and need to arrive home earlier may leave at 5:00 PM.

Debido a que existe la posibilidad de que ocurran desmanesen ciertos sectores de la ciudad, como en otros años en esta fecha, quienespiensen que pueden afrontar riesgos personales y necesiten llegar más tempranoa sus domicilios, pueden retirarse desde las 17:00 en adelante.

We are confident that those who make this decision do so responsibly and with the prior authorization of their supervisors.

Confiamos en que quienes tomen esta decisión lo haránresponsablemente y con la debida autorización previa de sus jefaturas.

Greetings and be careful,

Saludos y cuídense,

Roberto Gejman

Socio| Director deDesarrollo de Personas

After reading that and discovering the meaing of desmanes, my next question was what sectors were these outrages going to happen in?? Fortunately, I was able to find an article in one of the Santiago online newspapers that described the parts of the city where police are going to be stationed, as those areas are predicted to be "problematic." My neighborhood is nowhere near any of them. Phew.

My final question was what the heck people were going to be rioting about? What is so special about March 29 in Chile? Thanks to my friend Wikipedia, I had my answer to that too! According to wikipedia, today is Día del Joven Combatiente, or in other words, "Day of the Young Combatant."

Day of the Young Combatant (Spanish: Día del joven combatiente) is a non-official commemoration day, celebrated each March 29th in Chile. It commemorates the assassination of the brothers Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo, which occurred on March 29th, 1985 during the military regime era in Chile. The commemoration has evolved into a day of protest manifested in some urban areas of the country. The center of the protests is in the Villa Francia neighborhood, in Estación Central Commune of western Santiago.

So, I am now going to continue playing detective to figure out who the Vergara brother are, because I am pretty sure there is no relation to Sophia Vergara. Personally, I think protesting 27 years later about an assassination is a strange way to show your disdain for violence in the past, but like I have said before, I rarely understand the reason many things happen in Chile. What I do know, is that I will be skipping the Happy Hour I had planned on going to tonight and staying indoors.

EARTHQUAKE!!

Friday night I was rudely awaken from my slumbers at 4:30 AM by a strange swaying feeling. I soon realized that the building was shaking. Earthquake!! I immediately started texting my friends to see if anyone else had woken up and felt it. Sure enough, we were all freaking out. It must have lasted at least 30 seconds. I went online in the morning when I got up to find out where and how strong it was. It was just 50 miles north of Santiago and was a 5.3! I am pretty sure it was the strongest earthquake I have ever felt, and I have been in quite a few after living in California for 7 years, until...

...fast forward until 7:30 tonight. I had just gotten out of a movie and was in a store very similar to Ikea with my friend Emma, when all of a sudden, we were looking at some furniture and I looked at her and said, "I think the world is moving." Sure enough, it was! This time it lasted for about 45 seconds and felt much stronger. I wish I had never discovered http://ssn.dgf.uchile.cl/ because I immediately go there anytime I feel the earth move to find out how strong the earthquake was. This one was about 200 miles from Santiago and was a 6.8! That is really big! It's a good thing I looked up what to do in case of an earthquake after what happened on Friday night. It's too bad there were no door frames in the store I was at. People started panicking and running around the store like crazy. There was a manager trying to calm them down unsuccessfully. Now that it has passed, I am mostly just upset that I left my cart in the store and went home. I really could have used that full-length mirror...

Señor Patrick's Day

I've realized this week that despite the large population of Catholics in Santiago, the patron saint of...green beer? does not happen to be one of the saints they tend to celebrate.

Have no fear! The expats are here! And in full force. I'm going to a party tonight properly named "St Paddy's Day Con Gringos." We have all prepared our best green outfits to show the Chileans how to celebrate a day very dear to gringos. I think I may have already spotted a leprechaun or two tiptoeing around the city leading them to a pot of gold.

Último fin de semana en la playa



View from our apartment window

In Chilean fashion, everyone tends to do the same exact thing at the same exact thing. This is not limited to going to the bank at 9 am, shopping on the first weekend of the month, or withdrawing cash on the first day of the month (I went to 4 ATMs this week before finding one that still had money in it!). The trend includes going to the beach during the month of February. Officially, summer is considered over on February 28th (or 29th this year). I guess that means we are bending the rules a little, but it's still hot so the Santiaguinos are still vacating the hustle and bustle of city life and escaping to the beach.

Enjoying breakfast aat Kaffeklatsh, a cute little German restaurant on the water

My friends, Jackie, Jen, Marga, and Perla, and I decided to follow the Chileans to Reñaca this weekend o soak up the sun one more time. We rented an apartment up on a cliff overlooking the ocean in a great building with three pools including one that has a bar in it a la Mexico. To get to the beach from our post above the sea, there is a funicular to carry you down/up. 



Reñaca sunset

This morning, we accidentally got into a broken funicular which could have ended poorly, however a funny little man came to our rescue and we were soon sitting by the water enjoying a pitcher of beer and delicious empanadas. After lunch we headed to the beach for the last sun damage until next summer. Dinner resulted in some bad table wine and pisco sour at a restaurant called Pacifico that I will never return to, but we had a great day aside from a few bones in my congor eel.





Jen and I at dinner

Another birthday disaster

Since I was out of town on the actual date of my birthday, my friend Lester (born on February 19) and I decided to throw a joint party together last weekend. We rented a 20 person bus to pick us up at Lester's at 10 AM and take us to Reñaca for a fun-filled day at the beach, followed by a night out on the town. The day was anything BUT what we had planned.

First of all, when you tell anyone to arrive at a certain time in Chile, you should always lie. "The bus is leaving at 10 AM" somehow gets translated to "Please arrive at noon." By noon, we were finally on the road and excited for our day of fun. Reñaca is approximately an hour and half from Santiago, so we should have been on the beach in no time.

12:45 PM - Flat tire #1
I got off the bus to talk to the driver (since I was the one who arranged for the bus) and see what the situation was. He assured me that it was no problem and that roadside assistance could put on the spare for us in no time. Chile truly does have unusually uncharacteristically quick response time for roadside troubles. They make Triple A look like amateurs! About 45 minutes later, we were back on our way.

Roadside assistance at work!

2:15 PM - Flat tire #2
Seriously? Again? I couldn't believe it. At this point, we had been boozing a bit on the bus and people started to get a bit restless. Roadside assistance came again, but we no longer had a spare. They also didn't have the right tire. A second roadside assistance truck came shortly after to come to our rescue. During all of this, a few people from the bus decided to go exploring (on the highway??). After the tire had been replaced, our missing friends located, and a heated conversation with the owner of the bus company, we were back on our way....or so we thought.

Could this be real??

4:00 PM - Flat tires #3 & #4
Double blow out! You have got to be kidding me! I was getting a bit furious at this point. One flat, I can understand. Two, sounds like bad luck. Four? That's just unreal! We had it at this point. I called the bus company, demanded that they send a new bus to take us home at the end of the day, and made an executive decision that we were not getting back on this Scooby-doo mobile. Four taxis passed by luckily for our group to hop in and head to the beach. At this point, we were only about 15 minutes from our destination (approximately 4 1/2 hours after leaving Santiago). So much for a short bus ride!

Finally having fun at Sunset Club

The rest of the day went without problems, unless you can count the birthday boy falling asleep in the bar as a problem. We unfortunately never made it to the beach, but spent the afternoon and evening at Sunset Club, a really fun club on the beach. The owner listened to my request and sent a new bus to take us home around 11:30 PM. This bus actually had tires that could stay inflated for more than 20 minutes, and we made it back to Santiago safely by 1 AM.

Oscar, the owner of the bus company, called me first thing on Monday morning to "lavar su cara" (literally wash his face) for everything that had happened. I explained to him that I would not be making the remaining deposit of USD $200 that I still owed him for the bus, which he understood. He offered me a good discount and a 2012 bus for the next time I want to rent a party bus to go somewhere...ya. We´ll see about that.