Reserva para doce: Valle del Elqui

Hi all,

Here, Thursdays off become long weekends. And long weekends become opportunities to explore more of Chile.

Two weeks ago, I sent a casual message to a friend about how it would be fun to travel to the Elqui Valley this upcoming long weekend. Four days later, we were on a bus with ten other friends from our program heading north, into the desert.

The trip came together incredibly quickly and really required me to give up a lot of my "plan it weeks ahead so you know exactly what's going to happen instincts." I actually had a bus ticket in hand before I knew where I was sleeping when I got there! The trip itself was worth all of the stress, uncertainty that came with the frantic flurry of activity that was the two days before it.

We left early on a Thursday morning from the bus station in Viña del Mar. After six hours on the bus, we arrived in La Serena, one of the bigger cities in northern Chile. There, we found our hostel and sorted out the physical logistics of housing 12 people in a space meant for 6 and the costs of our stay with the slippery dueño of the hostel.

Because Thursday was a national religious holiday, most everything in La Serena was closed. We did however, get to walk around the city and hit the two things I really wanted to see. First, a huge Japanese garden complete with bonsai tress, a stream, and a rock garden. And second, the beach, which  we reached just in time for sunset and combing through the mounds of shells and rocks deposited by the rough surf (ok I admit, that might have just been me collecting while the others looked for a place for dinner).

Some of the girls at the Japanese Gardens

Pacific shell collecting

After a cramped night (who says you can't sleep 3 to a double bed and 2 to a fold-out couch!), we were off early in the morning to Vicuña, a main jumping off point to the string of little towns that make up Valle del Elqui. There, the bus dropped us off at the end of a dirt road that we hoped led up to our second hostel. After walking for a few minutes, the sound of the dueño's car tearing down the road, breaking the otherwise complete silence of the valley, confirmed that we were in fact, in the correct part of the middle of nowhere.

The dueño, Mehrdad, an Iranian immigrant and bahai'i missionary, turned out to be incredible sweet, welcoming, and helpful. His little hotel was beautiful, clean, and peaceful and he graciously allowed us little perks like a $2 lunch he'd cooked himself and a free late check-out (if you could even call running out the gate  and down the dirt road to catch the last bus back to civilization yelling thanks and well wishes over your shoulder a "check-out").

The road leading to our hostel

It's for sale if anyone's interested!

After lunch on Saturday, we caught a bus to a village called Montegrande, the village where Chilean hero Gabriela Mistral (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1945/mistral-bio.html) grew up. There, we visited her tiny museum (it's incredible that a woman of such importance only has a two tiny displays in her honor) and grave-site on a beautiful hill above the village. The inscription on her tomb stone was the only thing that could rival the beauty of the site:

Lo que el alma 

hace for su cuerpo

es lo que el artista

hace para su pueblo.

- Gabriela Mistral

(What the soul

does for the body

is that which the artist

does for her village.)

My wonderful group of fellow travelers

The river where we had our picnic

After a picnic lunch by the beautiful river that runs through the valley, we caught the bus back to Vicuña, the departing point for a start-gazing tour at the Mamalluca Observatory. Because the moon was nearly full, we weren't able to see quite the show everyone raves about. But, the act of looking through a telescope to see hundreds of stars in an otherwise black patch of sky was eye-opening. Also, I got this awesome photo of the moon:

Through the telescope

The next morning, after a wonderful breakfast all together, we caught yet another bus to the village of Pisco Elqui, one of the most remote villages in the valley known for its famous Mistral Pisco Distillery. The village was quiet, picturesque, and full of craft markets, bike rental shops, cafes, and hostels catering to the younger, backpacking crowd.

The main plaza of Pisco Elqui

The day passed so quickly, that before we knew it, it was time to jump on the bus back, grab our things from the hostel, and jump on yet another bus back to la Serena, where we waited for yet another bus to take us overnight back to Viña del Mar, where I caught a final bus back to Valparaíso, where I arrived home with the final stragglers from the bars and the rising sun. 

What a trip it was. What I'll remember most will not be not the stars we almost saw, the way you can feel the dessert air drying out your insides as it comes into your lungs, or the Spanish I learned out of absolute necessity. 

Instead, it will be the bus rides through the Elqui Valley. It will be the array of life right before my eyes. It will be the swaying of the bus as it round another bend and leans way to close to the edge of a cliff. It will be the lingering sounds of the English and wavering, labored  Spanish of my friends mixed with the flowing, effortless Spanish of the locals, and the sputtering, rumbling noise of the bus that seemed to mimic us both. It will be the consciousness of our starkly opposed reasons for being there: travel and life, adventure and consistency, wonder and routine. And finally, it will be the impossible, quiet excitement that overcame me when I realized that if only for one more heart-wrenching turn, we were all on the same bus.

Love to all.

(Reserva para doce means "reservation for twelve" - a phrase I found myself using quite a bit over the weekend.)

Unimos el barrio

Two weekends ago, I woke up early on a Saturday morning and tried to decide which of the slim selection of clothes I'd brought with me were painting clothes. None of them were. But now, I am in possession of a complete painting outfit.

That happened over the course of six solid hours of sanding, priming, and painting with an organization called Jab Valparaíso. They are a charity composed of young people who literally paint social change.  Their entire philosophy is based in the belief that indifference feeds poverty. Slowly, brush stoke by brush stroke and building by building, they are transforming the neighborhood of Viento Sur, a cluster of low-income housing units on one of Valparaíso's outlying hills.

On the day that I painted, over 30 volunteers from my university (exchange students and Chileans) jointed with volunteers from the organization and neighbors to paint two giant blocks of apartment building.

Here is a before picture:

From Jab: Valpo (I can't take credit for having the foresight to bring a camera)

After a safety talk in their cramped office, harnessing up, adjusting helmets, and absolutely not introductory lesson for those of us (me!) who has never sanded, primed, and painted a building before, my group of six climbed the scaffolding into the bitter-cold wind and began.

Things I learned:

- When sanding on a lower floor, you must not look up if you want to avoid an eyeful of dust from above

- Painting clothes imply shoes, so don't wear your only pair unless you are fully prepared to embrace the given color (my sneakers now have lovely creamsicle orange accents)

- A unhealthy lack of fear of heights will earn you major points with your Chilean supervisor who doesn't want to paint the top floor

- A giant speaker balanced on the sill of an open window of a neighboring apartment is the best sound system

- There is nothing better than a hot cup of tea to warm your hands as you admire your hard work

All in all, the day flew by. I loved the small interactions I got to have with the people of the neighborhood who painted with us, made the entire group a wonderful lunch, and blasted salsa music for us all day. 

And seeing the end result was moving. With some paint and collective effort, we'd generated a complete transformation in not only the way the neighborhood looked, but how it felt. The energy of the place had changed completely and I will never forget the smiles I saw on the children's faces.

Here's the end product:

At the end of the day, needless to say, I felt on top of the world. Or at least, very much a part of it.

Love to all.

(Unimos el barrio means "we unite the neighborhood," the slogan of Jab Valparaíso)

Arte por todos lados

Hola todos,

They said that time would speed up quickly, and oh my it has. During the weekend and school week that have passed since I last wrote, a week of real life has passed. But, it wouldn't be Valpo if that week wasn't sprinkled with moments that stop me in my tracks, overcome by total disbelief that I am actually in this scene, this moment, this life.

Last Friday night, a friend and I went wandering around two of the better known, artsy hills of Valpo. There, the street art that coats most of this city transformed from firmas (the phrase here for tagging") and graffiti to beautiful murals. Some are sad, some are beautiful, and some are completely beyond my understanding. Here's some photos to illustrate the difference:

Graffiti we found one morning on the outside of my house

These are actual hanging plants, but I wanted to include them too

I love how they work the features of the landscape into the art

What you can't tell from this picture is how cracked and not at all smooth this surface is

Piano stairs! I found them!

Hormigas that lead you to a candy shop on the top of the hill

The next day, I did something incredibly out of character: I went to a samba class. I was so apprehensive and hesitant about the whole thing, but ended up loving every second of it. The teacher and Chilean students in the class were so friendly and helpful. The joy they brought to every movement and their total absortion in the beat was completely infectious. The whole class, which took place in a park on a hill right on the ocean, was an incredible display of Chilean culture. I would never have guessed that you could get over 50 college-aged kids together on a Saturday evening to dance and play music. But that's what this was. 

Also, the sunset during the walk home was completely surreal. Here's some photos that don't even do it justice:

Samba group

From Sunday on, I was faced with a rather unfortunate part of my particular reality: getting sick. The list of things it can be attributed to is quite long: the initial dramatic temperature change from Maryland summer to Chilean winter, the temperature change that happens every day here between morning and afternoon and again between afternoon and evening, and the lovely severe allergies I inherited from my dad. Being constantly cold and in the midst of allergy attack-like sneezing and coughing has been rough. After a lot of persuading (thanks, Josh!), I braved half miming, half describing my symptoms to the pharmacist in order to buy medicine. With the help of my Chilean cough-syrup and ibuprofen, a literal pitcher lemon-honey-herb tea Rosa has been making me drink, and a lot of rest, I am beginning to feel better. I will never cease being grateful for central heating and tissues that I'm not allergic to when I return to the US.

In the mean time, I have been sorting out my Chilean classes. Because of the strike, classes have been unique in an unexpected way. I can tell it is a struggle for all involved to have a class composed entirely of non-native speaking foreigners who may not have any background knowledge in the subject. Professors are confused by lack of interest (ie: a mix of lack of comprehension of what in the world they're saying and of the subject matter) and students are generally baffled and thrown off by the unexpected dynamic. 

I, however, consider myself very luck in the courses I'm taking. They are:

Language, Cognition, and Society

Adolescent Psychology

Social Education (my favorite)

Contemporary Chilean History and Cultural Geography

and Mountain Sports (which includes 3 weekend-long trekking expeditions!)

Cool, right? 

I will leave you with some of the stunning views from my window:

After the only rain I've seen here - look at the ocean!!!

With love from a far.

(The title here: art everywhere!)