Not The First Earthquake

I am a surprisingly linear person for being so disorganized and forgetful. I know it has been 6 months since we went to Chile, and 3 months since I posted on this blog, but I cannot stand to just skip ahead to current events. So here is a post I started writing on March 17th. Maybe I can finish it with less detail and just get it the heck done, since my memory has largely fogged over already:






While we were in Chiloé, we took a "day-hike" to one of the most gorgeous places I have been. We drove to the western side of the island, then took a boat across a river (from the north bank to the south) down to nearly the mouth at the Pacific. The crazy thing about this river is that it didn't use to be quite so low and wide. The world's biggest ever recorded earthquake in 1960 sank the whole valley something like 6 meters (of course John claimed everything was 6 meters). We got out and told the boat driver we would be back by 6 pm and started walking. We walked past a farm and through a field with a cow (I hope it was a cow and not a bull)(where we also saw an amazing red-blooming tree of some kind) to avoid some of the worst mud of a very muddy trail.







After about a quarter mile we came out onto a bluff overlooking the longest empty beach ever. It was amazing. I thought, "We're there! That was easy." Yeah, no. Kate and John point at the far headland with an island cut off the end of it (can you see it in the distance?) and say "That's where we're going." It doesn't look so far. Yeah, no.




We start walking along the beach where we see amazingly large leathery kelp, enormous whale bones, beautiful huge sea urchin shells, a shipwreck and even a real life message in a bottle!



































We walked up over the closer headland through a seemingly endless sea of these red and green fern-like things.




It turns out they were about the only vegetation that could stand up to the ...




...(wait for it) ...





... COWS! Remember, the only way to get to this area is to walk (or ride a horse) and there was a herd of cows (and a barn) happily munching away!






So we walk on and on after passing the cows. When we went through areas with trees that meant going through their DEEP mud. Luckily there was one gorgeous view after another. After about 1 1/2 hours John started to say "We're almost there!" Yeah, no.

Finally we top the final hill and there it is --yeah, yeah!--Parque Ahuenco. The tide was too high to get out to the island with the Humboldt Penguins, but I could see them through the binoculars! We also saw a pair of Steamer Ducks. They are so funny--big huge gray things that don't even fly.

Taking up the strand again in JUNE here:
We had a well deserved lunch with the caretaker of the property in her little cabin. Not much of a house, but amazing views! If you want to live in the middle of absolutely nowhere for awhile, let me know. They have a hard time keeping reliable caretakers for very long stretches of time at such a remote place. If you stay for more than an afternoon the caretakers come meet you with horses to carry your big packs. There's nowhere for the horses to run away to, so they just run on the beach looking like they should be in the movies. The caretakers listen to the radio at noon every day and if someone is coming it's announced on the radio. So many people live on little islands and things around southern Chile, without any TV or phones or much in the way of electricity or mail delivery, that's the only way they know what's going on. Even kids' high school exam scores are announced!



After lunch, guess what? We turned around and walked back. A little food and a swig or two of beer in my tummy made it more bearable, but we really had to hustle. Our feet and lower legs and some of our backsides which shall remain nameless were well coated in mud and ox poop by the time we got back to the boat landing. We didn't make it back to the boat until a bit after 7pm. The boat driver was starting to worry. I guess an hour late is starting to be significant even in Chile.



On the short drive back to John's sister's house we stopped at a little campsite/hostel/rental cabin place which is trying to run mostly on solar and wind power.











You can really see the sunken landscape from their view.












On the road agin then we saw a pudu, an adorable little deer like creature that only lives in southern Chile.






I was SO glad to get back to the comfort of Joan and Dan's summer house and Joan's delicious warm meals and pisco sours and ohuitas (after dinner warming digestive fresh herb teas; not sure of spelling though)! Ahh, comfort after "adversity."

We should all be so lucky as to have a gnarly day-hike be the hardest thing we have to face. Remember to donate to Doctors Without Borders (click on the Knitters Without Borders link to the right) or your favorite humanitarian relief charity regularly.

More on Chile

Yes, our friends (and their cat, dog and duck) are OK. Valparaíso experienced several minutes of 7.0 shaking--which was apparently pretty darned terrifying, but Kate and John's house held together, as did their science labs. John's mom, who is 89 and lives in Santiago, was also OK. Many of the science labs in Santiago were wrecked however. The water in Valp'o has to keep getting turned off for repairs, and of course the cities you hear about on the news are in real trouble; the small towns that were swept out to sea by the tsunami are largely just gone.... There are still aftershocks happening as well. It's bad.

We are all so thankful that the people we know survived (again!), but it has been hard to think about glibly posting more photos of our excellent adventure in this situation. Maybe it's important to get the word out about Chile even more though, so I'll work on it.

In the meantime, please make a (another?) donation to Doctors Without Borders (linked trough that red and brown and white Knitter woman drawing in the right sidebar) or the Red Cross or another legitimate emergency relief organization. People need help everywhere these days it seems.

Tell people you love them.

Mission Impossible

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: narrow down 535 photos to a manageable amount for your blog without putting the readers who aren't your mother to sleep:


Well, the Andes are too big to leave out, so I'll start there. This is as much as we saw them, but even from an airplane they were quite impressive. This was taken on a flight to Chiloé, which is the first big chunk that has gotten detached down where Chile starts to turn into an archipelago on the South-West coast. How did we ever choose where to spend our limited time in this diverse country, you ask? John and his sister Joan grew up in Chile, so Joan and her husband, Dan, decided to purchase a vacation home down there near a little town called Dalcahue (which means the place where dalca--traditional boats--are made), where one of the members of one of their oldest and closest "family friends family" lives with her Chilean husband and their family. It was nice to have such a fine reason to choose this attractive, yet mellow region, which may be easily overlooked by most tourists.

Kate and John arranged for us all to fly down to Puerto Montt where we rented a car and drove to the ferry to Chiloé. John informed us that for years there has been a huge political debate about building a bridge across this channel. The Pan-American Highway goes across on the ferries (see the semi?), but the water is swift, shifty and very deep, so that's basically impossible and would wreck the marine environment/cost a ton to build, but they have to talk about it every few years. Political wrangling over boondoggles is alive and well everywhere I guess.
Anyhow, Seth and I love ferries and had a great time on our crossing. We saw PENGUINS swimming along nearby and humongous pelicans and some sea lions and it was sunny and it was our second full day in Chile and it was sunny and we were happy. Well, we were happy except that by now I had realized I didn't have my binoculars and I wanted to beat my head against hard stationary objects in self-chastisement every time I saw anything cool a bit far away. [When we made it home to Eugene after 3 weeks of this feeling, it turns out that we think maybe they were stolen from my bag while it was lost for a day on our way there. Still a bummer, but at least not my fault!]




One of the larger towns on the north side of the island is called Ancud. We had a great time exploring the market, buying cheese, and machas (clam-like deliciousness). Although it looked really cool, we did not buy any dried shellfish or dried kelp. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures at our first feria artesenal. It had the best knit wear and woven items of all the places we eventually visited there. When we got out of the car, I thought we were just looking for a cake for the niece's birthday. That taught me not to carry my camera everywhere! The yarn was all quickly spun singles of rough wool (very rainy down there, not good for fine fiber sheep), but the designs were quite creative. Here I am just now modeling some of my purchases.
That incredible hand-woven, bi-color shawl with elegant crocheted edging cost under $20!! The socks were $3!

In general we found the things that were only for tourists, such as hotels, to be a bit spendy for what you got, but all the things intended mostly for regular Chileans, such as socks and food, to be relatively affordable.





Dan and Joan's house is like summer camp, one big room with a kitchen, dining and sitting area at one end, than a bunch of twin beds separated by big window blinds in between. I was so excited because I never got to go to summer camp. Ok, so maybe their house is a little spiffier than most camp cabins. Still, I had fun living my little fantasy. This is a tidal channel and when the tide goes out dozens of birds swim or fly in to do their bird things on the mudflats. Nifty gulls, a big hawkish thing called a caracara, parrots, black neck swans, and many more. Mom would love sitting with her morning coffee and bird watching out the big front window. I know I did. People who know me well will laugh to hear I was always among the first 3 people up while I was down there! Didn't want to miss a second of summer camp.

One of our field trips was to go with the up the hill neighbor, Michael to the mussel farm that he helps manage. It was huge. We learned all about the life cycle of the mussel and the mechanics of farming them. Each of these rows of floats has TEN kilometers of line attached up and down in loops 10 meters deep.We saw all sorts of groovy gooey squirmy sea creatures/plants among the mussels. Quite a few folks sampled the mussels raw with lemon juice and declared them delicious. I'll have to take their words for it!Nothing like a bright orange P.F.D. to make one look one's best.

After we got off the little boat we wandered up the little hill in the little hamlet and looked at the little old church. The shingles all over Chiloé are amazing. There are several profiles, but this is the only place I took close up photos. The shingles are made of a type of wood that is from a slow growing tree (whose name I've forgotten..Kate?) which can live for 3,000 years. It is of course quite rare now, and it's use is supposed to be tightly regulated, but there are loopholes (surprise, surprise). The shingles really do last a long time. What a patina. The churches all have this beautifully simple yet graceful aspect to them.

The graveyard was the most amazing jumble of a place I'd ever been. One of my 5th graders described it this way: "It looks like they just did it themselves!" This was a pretty shocking idea to an American kid, and it describes it perfectly.



Other nifty things in Chiloé were the giant gunnera plants

and the seaweed that looked like plastic which people would collect to sell for agar production.




Such a rich environment. Too bad the ozone hole is right down there. Put on that sunscreen.
Oh, and don't forget the neighbors' sheep who wander about the adjoining property! Like I said, they aren't the finest wool, but they are apparently quite sturdy and yield plenty of wool for the ferias arteseñales (artisan craft markets) to be quite well stocked with woolen items.


They also use various local plants to make woven animals and trivets--which retain their lovely naturally grassy scent.

It was nice to see so many things that were clearly locally made. It always makes me sad when I travel and see that Chinese made trinkets have replaced local handcraft. There's some of that in Chile of course, but it seemed much less common than in Mexico. Also there are mostly just regular stores. There are big groceries and department stores, but they haven't taken over every community like the big red-T or the bigger W-mart chains have here.

Wake up! There's plenty more where this came from. Go make yourself a cup of nice strong fair-trade organic shade-grown coffee, and gird yourself for the next installment!

Knitters Without Borders--Chile on pause

So, Seth has a 1st cousin once removed who is in his mid-twenties and who is married to a Haitian woman who was there visiting her family, who lives pretty much on the epicenter of the earthquake, when the Earthquake happened. After a few nail-biting days where he managed to get into Haiti via the Dom. Rep. and through some pretty twisty routes /sketchy means, he managed to find his wife and 5 month old baby and his in-laws who were all miraculously still alive. Of course, many friends and relatives did not survive this horrible event, but we are thankful that the people with whom we are most directly connected survived at least. Although some of them chose to move to some property in the country where they are trying to grow organic coffee, some decided to stay in town among the wreckage to salvage what they can of their former lives.

It certainly changes the face of a disaster to know someone who was directly involved. Why we as a species spend so much time and energy fighting with each other when we can't even deal with what nature throws at us, I will never understand.

Even if you aren't a knitter, you might enjoy clicking on that icon to the right over there and reading about one of the greatest-knit-bloggers-of-our-time's efforts to raise money for Doctor's Without Borders. If you are a knitter and somehow haven't heard of it, here you go. Of course everyone is encouraged to donate to Doctor's Without Borders. They were already in Haiti when the Earthquake hit, so I figure they're a good choice for donations because they already had relationships with the Haitians and supply networks, which, although severely compromised, are probably easier to rebuild than to build. I have always appreciated the bravery and religious/political neutrality of this organization when it comes to providing relief services all over the world.

fleece and love, LauraRose

Summer in Winter

Seth and I just got back from 3 weeks in the southern hemisphere, in Chile. Although I knew intellectually before I went that it would be summer there, and managed to pack some sandals, I still took my long johns along! It turns out that Solstice in December means SUMMER Solstice with the really long days and nice weather and all. It really does. Wow. Now, I realize that many of you contend with real winter unlike those of us spoiled enough to live in the Pacific Northwest, but soggy, foggy, cloudy, soggy, foggy, cloudy, rainy weather is still not SUMMER. It was pretty darned cool to experience it for really truly.

I can't fit all 535 photos that I took on here, so I'll try to pare it down a bit! I may only be able to do a section of the trip at a time, or you will be completely overwhelmed. I can go onandonandonandonandon about it.

We stayed with a wonderful couple, Kate and John, who we know through Seth's dad Charles because they are scientists.

They are much more than just brilliant developmental scientists however. They are also incredibly fun, funny, generous, thoughtful, active and creative people with an excellent aesthetic sense (art pieces shown individually were created by Kate) whom I feel privileged to consider true friends now after spending so much time with them (it was that or arch enemies after that much time I guess).

They live in Valparaíso, a crazy steep, crazy colorful and generally a bit rough and tumble port city. It's Chile's largest port and was extremely important for trade ships in Pre-Panama Canal Days. It has astoundingly beautiful old homes, though many are in fairly poor condition.

Kate and John restored a 1910 (?) house which was built largely of Douglas Fir (they call it Pino Oregón there) which came down in empty ships from the Pacific Northwest as ballast!

You think it's hard to restore a house here, try doing anything quality construction wise in Chile.


To top it all off, Kate and John decided to put in this big solar heated water/ thermal mass system so they could have some heat stored up for winter (which theoretically does happen there also--similar weather to San Francisco). Kate learned how to do it and taught the maestros (carpenters). A woman in a plumbing store is pretty darned radical there. A woman teaching the maestros what to do is unheard of.

Chile, meet Kate.
















Valparaíso would have gotten pretty short shrift from us if Kate and John hadn't been there to give us pointers and the calm oasis of their gorgeous home. "Valp'o has it charms, though they are rather hidden at times," as John put it. The view over the bay was certainly charming. you could watch the container ships being un/loaded from Kate and John's cupola room.


They have a dry dock ship that sinks down 12 meters for the ships needing fixing to float in or out. The ascensores (inclines) reminded me of Pittsburgh, but there are 15 instead of two or three. They are all about 100-120 years old, and several don't function anymore, but the ones that do are SO much fun.
You really need them too, because walking up the steep hills over and over just ain't gonna happen.

I could go onandonandonandonandon, and we have barely gotten started. If you want to see a few more photos, click on the flickr link to the right under "links I like."

Chao for now.