La Serena

This weekend all the gringos went up to La Serena, a town with lots of beaches and churches with interesting architecture. It was a trip already paid for with our program fees, so even more fun! I swam in the very cold ocean, made a huge nacho feast with friends because we miss Mexican food, went to a pretty Japanese garden, and briefly experienced the strangest internet café ever—“Infernet”, which was Hell-themed and had a grim reaper in the doorway and homemade devils and flames on the ceilings.

We drove through the Valle de Elqui, which is known for its pisco vineyards. Part of it was dammed up to create a beautiful lake with blue-green water. In this area we went to a restaurant that cooks everything with solar ovens. The birthplace of Nobel Prize-winning poet Gabriela Mistral is in a nearby town, so we went to a museum honoring her. We also took a trip to an observatory called Mamalluca (great name), and I got to see the craters on the moon and four moons of Jupiter with a telescope! Plus the guys who explained the astronomical stuff to us played us a concert at the end (for some reason?) with Andean flutes, etc.

On the way back to Viña del Mar, we stopped at Parque Nacional Fray Jorge, which is the desert but right by the ocean. There is a perpetual fog on top of the mountains closest to the shore, and this creates a microclimate similar to the climate of the south of Chile, which I guess would be like a temperate rainforest; except it doesn’t actually rain soooo I don’t know what you would call it. It was beautiful and really interesting because all the plants get their water from the cloud, so they’ve adapted to that. Plus it was bizarre because the rest of the park was sunny and dry!

Now I’m back and this week I have two news reports to film and edit for Television Journalism. One is with two Chilean students, about the financial and general problems that public hospitals are having in Chile, so we’re going to a hospital to interview a doctor (hopefully) and patients. The other is my final project that I’m doing by myself, about what the international students think about Chileans. I finished all the interviewing and now have to edit it. Unbelievably, I only have two more weeks of classes after this one, so it’s time to wrap up school!

Sand Dunes in Con Con

I have been here for over 3 months, and just last week I finally went to Con Con and Reñaca, which are the beach towns north of Viña del Mar. There are some amazing sand dunes that we climbed, with views of all of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar and even the rural country north of the cities. It was a cloudy day but the view was still incredible. Running down the sand dunes was also fun! Climbing back up was a lot harder.

Right below the dunes were some large rocks on the shoreline, so we climbed around them, too (we were in a climbing mood). There was black volcanic rock and a lighter-colored rock, and you could see where the volcanic rock had oozed into the cracks in the other rock and hardened. I had never seen anything like it before! The waves were crashing in all around us. We also saw a rock with about 40 sea lions on it. The last thing we did in Con Con was get an empanada because the best empanadas are supposed to be there—and yes, my crab and cheese one was muy rica.

Yesterday…I was a bunch of grapes (un racimo de uvas) for Halloween. My little sister Victoria and my mom Ximena helped me out a lot. Ximena sewed the balloons to a shirt and Victoria helped me paint the leaves for my head and also painted my face—which I thought was a little bit much but I went along with it. I went to a party thrown by the Chilean host brother of a friend…I was one of 3 finalists in a very informal costume contest, so I guess it turned out pretty well!