Field Trip to the Andes

We took the truck to Cajón del Maipo this weekend, a valley of the Río Volcan. The road heads East towards Argentina, and after turning into a rutted dirt track, abruptly ends in the “town” of Baños Morales which houses the entrance to Monumento Natural El Morado, a small National Park. In the summer you can hike to a lake with views of Glacier San Francisco, but with the danger of avalanches in the winter, you can only get as far as Cerro el Morado, which is a stunning peak, especially covered in snow.

We hiked up the mountain in the snow for about an hour. It was a gorgeous winter day with the sun shining and a cold win- perfect walking conditions. On our way back down Morgan (from Minnesota) taught us proper “penguin sliding” techniques. It involves flopping on your belly and sliding down steep icy hills. Pretty much the best thing ever.

On the drive home we stopped at a little semi-hidden café Monica remembered from when she was here last year. It was like walking into a hobbit hole with small doors and ceilings and little tables. It had incredible hot chocolate and cakes, and Michael ordered 2 desserts and the poor little old lady who brought us our food nearly died from surprise and delight.

Practical Spanish 101

Learning Spanish in a classroom can never really prepare you for life in a foreign country, especially doing biology fieldwork every day. I have begun to put together a dictionary of my own most commonly used Spanish phrases from sitting on a hill everyday, using telemetry to track radio collared degus, watching owls and foxes, and walking around town. Here is a sampling of the collected works:

Oh chasquido! = Oh snap! As in, “oh snap, owl! You just tried to eat my degu!”

Oh Chasquido! (proper noun) = name given to said burrowing owl

Tu travieso pequen = you naughty burrowing owl (usually in reference to Oh Chasquido)

Phantasma degu = ghost degu (we think he was eaten by Oh Chasquido a few days ago)

(Searching Oh Chasquido's burrow for the remains of Phantasma Degu, who we are now quite certain got eaten)

Cortecésped degu = lawnmower degu (his radio signal sounds like he is mowing the lawn)

Extraterrestre degu= alien degu (sounds like an aliean)

Taxista degu = taxi driver degu (we pick up some taxi driver static on this degu frequency)

*For fantastic drawings of our favorite degus, check out Morgan's blog!!!

El zoro = the fox

Bocando = snack (update. Apparently in Chile, "snack" is also used, as is aperitivo which is harder for us to say and thus not as popular).

Perro con Manoplas = Mitten Dog (the oldest, fattest dog who has incredibly fluffy paws that look like mittens)

Juliano = Military Dog (not really vocabulary, but actually his name. We know that because he has a military name tag sewn onto the back of his military dog jacket. He also usually wears a purple scarf, depending on how cold it is).

Play time!

(We bought light up Chile horns to wear during their match, even though we couldn't watch it. We did, however, listen to the end of it on the radio driving home from the field. A true test of Spanish vocabulary is listening to the radio!)






In the last week I have spent almost every day in the field, doing radio telemetry and tracking degu movements. In the time off from the field I have watched as many World Cup games as possible (adios Chile, England, and USA :( ). We discovered a fantastic pizza place with trees growing through the building. We also tried the "national soda", Pap, which has the most unfortunate name ever, and a color and taste to match. Yuck.

Morgan and I had an exciting night involving soccer, pub food, dessert with absurdly large utensils, a grocery shopping trip that resulted in a giant bag of mustard which was a) chosen not only for its giant size and amazing cheap-ness, but also because there is a picture of a fried piece of chicken with a face drawn on it with mustard and b) when asking some local colleagues what to do with a giant bag of condiment once it is opened, were informed that those are for restaurants and not normal houses. So now we have about 6 months worth of slightly weird tasting mustard in a bag that cannot be resealed in our fridge.

Also on the way home from our very exciting game/pub/grocery store/riding the metro night, we arrived in front of our apartment to find a small crowd of people taking pictures of some guy. So we naturally decided to take a picture as well, because clearly he was famous or something. One of the guys from the crowd came over and asked if we had taken a photo. Morgan replied yes, and asked who the person was. Guy was surprised we didn’t know, and explained he is the singer from the Screaming Trees, a grunge band from the 80s. Seeing our blank looks he added- “from Queens of the Stone Age” and we said ohhhh, we’ve heard of them! So we had a semi-famous person sighting to top it all off!

San Cristobal

Last weekend we went up the big, BIG hill, San Cristobal, in Santiago on a funicular railway!

Michael, Morgan, Monica & Tina

Monica has palm tree hair!

The semi-clear day

The giant statue of Virgin Mary you can see from most parts of the city

He was so cute!

I Finally Saw a Degu!

Tina, Loren & Michael looking for degus

Sunday was our first day in the field. We got the truck, it stopped raining, and there was no riotous football on the schedule. All of us new kids went out with Loren to Rinconada, which is a little less than an hour from downtown Santiago. It is an interesting matorral (equivalent to the chaparral of California) landscape with acacia trees and some really large cacti. It actually looks a lot like parts of California.

Degu burrow with "runways"

We saw lots of degus running around and their burrow systems with little “runways” between holes. We practiced our radio telemetry skills by hiding a little radio collar like the ones that have been put on some of the animals and I got to “be a degu” and run around the field while Morgan tried to track me. Michael also decided to be one with the coruro (the subterranean rodents he and Monica are studying) and was crawling on the hillside for a better look.

Michael sneaking up on coruro

In our field site we saw a couple of eagles, a ton of hawkish looking birds called caracaras and even a burrowing owl! He was cute and very grumpy.

Morgan with the radio tower to track degus

Chilean Food Update

I have discovered my new favorite Chilean food. It is called patatas duquesas. They are little fried mashed potato balls- like mashed potatoes inside a French fry and reminiscient of a Cheeto cheese puff. Amazing.

Also, Morgan ordered the biggest sandwich I have ever seen. Called the Frica Gigante, it was advertised under the heading “tengo hambre, mucho hambre” and boy were they NOT kidding! It was pretty much the best thing ever!

Mágico

On Friday we spent all day in our coffee shop (@SNS) right across from Universidad de Catolica. It is the best place because they have wi-fi we can use for free all day, giant flat screen tvs that show all the World Cup matches, really nice people working there (we know all of them now since we are there every day) and really tasty fresh fruit juices (jugos). We watched the exciting USA game and the not so exciting England game, went out for dinner with the whole group, and got home pretty late.

Tina, Michael, Monica, & Morgan at the cafe

When we came home something seemed strange. Our shoes by the front door were in a different place. Our floor looked… shiney. The blanket on the couch had been folded, the couch itself looked… vacuumed. Someone had come in and… cleaned? Naturally we ran all over the apartment (and checked to make sure everything was still there. It was) and exclaimed in awe at the novelty of having an unknown and wholly unexpected cleaning person. We emailed our landlord and found out it is part of our rent. Awesome! So we took a lot of pictures of our clean place, and figured the apartment would be sparkling again in two weeks.

Morgan is confused by the clean apartment

And then tonight we came home, walked in the door, and I said- did we move our shoes again? And, with more confusion and slightly less delight, we realized our apartment had been cleaned AGAIN today. And it is only Monday. So we are back to not understanding pretty much everything that goes on in this country again.