Valparaíso... in Photos

Just because I loved the city so much... here are a few extras

Valpo... te amo

5213 11.1287 This past weekend Morgan, Tina and I decided to take a trip to the city of Valparaíso. Buses run from Santiago every 10 minutes or so, cost about $7, and the trip is an hour and a half- super facil (easy)!

Valparaíso is a city of hills surrounding a still very industrial port city. Ships used to come here to be serviced and painted, and the workers would use left over paint for their houses. Today almost every building is a lemon yellow, cotton-candy pink, or of course a sea blue. Not surprisingly, the art scene here is really strong and there are murals and mosaics everywhere you walk and there is music coming out of many windows. We stopped in a café for afternoon coffee, and Morgan decided to bust out her piano skills on the dusty, semi-functional instrument in the corner. I guess there must be something in the air!

The city is an absolute maze. We had booked a hostel in advance and the directions were to get to a plaza, go behind the department store, make a left at the red house, a right at the pink house, and look for a green doorway that was the entrance to an ascensor (elevator, or in this case a funicular, a little tram that goes up and down the hills). We were dubious of this treasure hunt, but actually found our way sin problema.

We spent most of the day wandering up and down the cerros (hills), risking the slightly rickety ascensors- some of them were built in the 18oo’s! We found a great place for lunch, an even better place for ice cream, did some shopping, met a friendly dog who played tour guide for an hour, and took a zillion photos (being a tourist can be so much fun!). At one point we were taking pictures of a cute dog sleeping on a ledge, and a group of taxi drivers waved us across the street to show us something lindo (cute). We were all a little dubious, but it turned out to be a giant fluffy cat sleeping on its back and all stretched out! It was really cute and funny, and they all seemed to be more entertained with how entertained WE were and started teasing the cat with a towel. That is a close second to my favorite “cat in a box!” and also “dog in a box!”

We met up with Dominik, a German medical student traveling on his summer holiday, and the four of us ventured out to find a Thai restaurant we saw earlier (we have yet to find a Thai place in Santiago. Oh how I miss Marnee Thai being steps from my front door!) Sadly, the place was totally booked for the night. We promptly made reservations for the following day, but then had to find a new place to eat.

The Valpo gods must have been smiling down on us, because we ended up at Vinila, a cozy restaurant that specializes in authentic Chilean food with a modern twist. The waiter came over and explained each of the 6 dishes to us in great detail- in Spanish of course. And we understood it ALL!! Cow tongue (lengua de vaca), conejo (rabbit), something with seaweed (alga), salmon with a crust of tea, and of course, codorniz relleno con queso Philadelphia y membrillo- quail stuffed with cream cheese and a type of firm quince marmalade. No joke- when you combine food words with animal words and speak clearly, the three of us are amazing at Spanish! When you say, hello, good morning, I hope you have a pleasant day, we will stare open mouthed and confused. At least we have the important stuff down…

Because they probably didn’t believe we understood, the chef came over and went through everything again in a mix of Spanish and English. Tina decided to try the quail, and when it came out it was the smallest plate of food EVER. The little quail looked like it was trying to crawl off the plate, but was the size of a parakeet or little lovebird. We all were dying of laughter, especially when she realized it was even harder to eat than it was to look at. The waiter told her to use her hands, and when she refused he drew her a picture of a hand, just to clarify.

The rest of the food was delicious, and both the waiter and chef then gave us recommendations of the best places to go out drinking and dancing including directions (at the bottom of the hill walk towards the ocean, turn left at the second street and right just after, go down the first set of stairs, look for the unmarked door and ask for Lucas…) However, we had plans to go to the oldest bar in Valpo where there is a band with an accordion player. It really doesn’t get more entertaining!

The next morning we went to the poet Pablo Neruda’s house just up the hill from our hostel. One of the best things I have seen! The man had a great sense of humor and a great sense of style. The views from all the windows were incredible, and all of the things he collected were fantastical. My favorite was a large whit porcelain cow tureen from Italy that he filled with punch for his parties. Genius!!

We meandered over to our lunch spot and had amazing vistas of the hills and the sea. Thai food did not disappoint- my rice even came with the image of an elephant dusted on it in spices! Yummm.

On our way to the bus station we met the cutest, tiniest puppy in the world. A perfect end to a perfect weekend!

El Bosque de Fray Jorge

On our last afternoon, Tina, Morgan, and I finally hiked up to the forest fragments

There are just a couple of areas on top of the mountains by the coast where there are forests like those in the South of Chile- very different from the semi-arid landscape we were used to working in!

They get the perfect combination of cloud and rain to sustain them

The vegetation was so different from just down the mountain!

And who knew- we were so close to the ocean the whole time we were in a desert!

We met Juan when he was finishing up his work for the morning

And he explained a lot about the forest and the plants. He's worked in this park for 20 years!

We took a beautiful path back to the cabin, through fields of wildflowers with cactus. Bizarre.

And of course, our last day wouldn't be complete without another guanaco sighting!

Fray Jorge- in Photos

Many, many sunrises in the field

One of our favorite things to do was pull cactus spines out of our hiking boots with pliers. Not even joking.

Sad Cactus

We had to drive to the city of La Serena, about 1.5 hrs away, for groceries every few days (there was no refrigeration in the cabin, so everything that needed to stay cold went in the cupboard). In La Serena we discovered a fantastic supermarket called Jumbo. On our first visit, these girls were giving out free samples of Miller Genuine Draft. And clearly dressed up like Uncle Sam and an albino Statue of Liberty. Oh, also at Jumbo, we would buy 2 kilos of cheese to last us 5 days. That's about 4.5 pounds of cheese. It was amazing.

After grocery shopping we went to dinner and the beach!

Sometimes in the cabin we would have Spanish lessons with Professor Raul. Other times we would have Cafe Literario (book club) where we read out loud and discussed Martin Rivas (the first novel written in Chile and a super popular period TV show. We watch it whenever we can on our one channel, and decided to all buy the book for when we were out of TV range)

When the girls did night telemetry, the boys had to cook dinner. Sometimes we came home to candle light and wine! Usually we wrote "recetas" on the whiteboard to make sure there would also be something edible...

This is why there are fragments of cloud forest!

The bathtub outside of our cabin (un baño al fresco). One day there were other researchers coming to the park, and as we drove up to our cabin I remarked "Oh- there's a truck in our driveway." And a second later "OH- there's a man in our bathtub!" Thus, Bañera Juan got his nickname (amongst ourselves).

This was the day the muffler fell off the truck...

Luckily we got it reattached before the 6 hour drive back to Santiago. I don't think it would have fit very well. Chao Fray Jorge!

Guanaco Ataque!

In addition to adorable small mammals, Chile is home to some pretty awesome large ones as well! Most people have heard of llamas and alpacas, but their wild relatives, guanacos, still roam parts of South America. There are two families of them in Fray Jorge and we were really hoping to catch a glimpse of one of them. We spotted them on a hill a ways away one morning and felt really lucky. Little did we know...Morgan's awesome attack picture

Guanaco ataque! We were all on the hill doing telemetry one day, and a guanaco ran through our valley! It was so cool! We were just getting over how exciting it was, when the guanaco reappeared over the ridge in front of us, followed by another one- who was chasing it! They raced back through the valley, heading directly at us. I was standing with Morgan and Loren, and we all thought we were actually going to get run over. Which would have been terrible, but also kind of awesome! At the last minute, the guanacos changed their course and thundered past us.

As if this wasn't enough excitement, maybe half an hour later I spotted one guanaco about 15m from where Morgan and I were standing. It was near a big dead cactus looking into the valley behind us. It reared up twice, then trotted back through our degu valley and out of sight. Crazy guanacos!


After this we continued seeing guanacos pretty often, sometimes alone and sometimes a whole group. We liked to joke that the guanacos were stalking us and were going to attack, and the night before Tina, Morgan, and I spent the day alone in the field we were having our usual laughs about guanaco attacks, when Juan decided to tell us stories about the rogue guanaco that roamed the park years ago. This young male would sneak up on unsuspecting tourists and bite them or charge them! All of a sudden, guanaco attacks were not quite so funny to us. Luckily, we made it out of the park unscathed. Sneaky guanacos!

Abrocoma Amor

Morgan, me and Tina are thiiiiiiis excited!

In Fray Jorge I found, hands down, the new love of my life. It's name is Abrocoma, it has giant ears, nubby toes, and it loves to cuddle.

Abrocoma was cleaning his face while I was holding him!

From the first day in the cabin Tina, Morgan, and I became obsessed with seeing an abrocoma. These rodents are usually active at night, were supposed to be very docile (tranquilo), bigger than degus, and very sweet. We talked about abrocomas all of the time, went outside at night and peered under the porch in search of them, and joked about "accidentally" setting traps to see if we could get one. I even got nicknamed "Abrocoma" because I have a furry hat I wear when it is really cold.

LOVE

One morning we were trapping at a new site and- best thing ever! There was an abrocoma in one of the traps I was checking!!! We abandoned the degus and Tina, Morgan, and I fawned over the little guy for about an hour. After five thousand photos, a lot of cuddles and a couple of kisses, I had to resist the urge to put him in my pocket and we let him go back to his home. Best wild animal ever!!

Goodbye abrocoma. You are the best!!