What we've been up to lately...

We've been pretty busy since we got back from our summer trip in February. Our German friends Thomas and Kathryn, who we bumped into various times while we were traveling, came to stay with us in Vina for a few days, before heading north. We showed them around Vina and Valparaiso - here we are on one of the ascensores.




In March we went to Santiago to visit our friends Clayton and Petra, who had just moved there from Vina. Here is the beautiful couple celebrating at their engagement party. They're getting married in May.

A typical "asado" (roast or barbeque) at Clay and Petra's party



Although we were sad to see Clayton and Petra move, on a positive note, we got their awesome apartment! Here's Jo in the living room- see the balcony?


Here's a view from the balcony before the week of forest fires...



...and here's the same view during the forest fires. The city was enclosed in a thick cloud of smoke for a week, the sun was a distant red blob and it rained ashes for days...


Here's our full sized kitchen! (for Chile it is huge!)


The "dining room"

In February we also celebrated our friend Daniel's birthday. Here's Jo and Claudia making pulpitos (little octupi) - you cut up hot dogs and slice the ends open so that when you boil them in water they open up like little tentacles. Do they taste better? I don't know, I don't eat pig...but they sure look cool!


Here's Jack, Daniel, Patrick and Paolo at Daniel's birthday party.

Here's a group of gringo friends in the elevator at our moving in party at the new apartment


Jack has been DJing a lot since we've been back. Here we are with our friend Margaret.



My colleague, Laura, a fellow English teacher, celebrated her birthday - she invited some colleagues over for food and drinks and cake.


School has been a little chaotic for Jo. Every week her schedule has been changed and the last few weeks the students have been on strike due to, among other things, rising bus prices. Many days she has shown up for school only to discover that the students have taken the day off! The nice thing is that she is still doing her cooking classes, which she loves!, and she doesn't have classes on Mondays.

Antofagasta, Chile

Shortly after our big trip to the South of Chile my friend Mikiphone arranged a gig for he and I in the northern city of Antofagasta. Antofagasta, 5th biggest city in Chile, is a bustling and bright city set in the middle of one of the driest deserts in the world, The Atacama. Originally founded as a marine port, Antofagasta's primary bread winner now is the mining industry and it is often said to be one of the wealthiest cities in Chile.



The Event Flyer - Good billing, eh?

In order to to get from Vina to Antofagasta, Miki and I took a "semi-cama" bus, which is a double- decker bus with large, recliner-like seats. The idea is that you can sleep comfortably during the brutal 19 hour trip through the bleak, northern desert. Well, that may work for those of a somewhat smaller stature, however, for a 6 foot 4 gringo with size 14 shoes it's another story all together. I have to admit it was infinitely better than the typical bus, but I have a feeling that the engineers behind these seats had someone of a different size in mind.

The Semi-Cama phenomena... if I were only a foot and a half shorter!


After 5 bad movies and a rough nights sleep I woke at 8 am sharp to find that we had arrived on Mars... When I picture the "desert" I picture cactus, tumbleweeds and the occasional oasis, but in the Atacama, desert means absolute nothingness. Dirty sand, rolling hills, and more dirty sand. No water, no plants... NOTHING! and it goes on for hours and hours. The sheer size and bleakness of the landscape was unbelievable.

Mars... I mean the Atacama desert.


Upon arrival to Antofagasta, I was surprised by the lively city and it's clean, bright streets and public spaces. One senses a certain zest for life on the boulevards, and a lack of fear of the sun which shines 360 days a year. In fact, when I asked one of the event organizers about how often it rains he laughed and said
"well.... it rained once here in the 80's, but the it was a real disaster because the houses started sliding down the hillsides". Hard to fathom for someone from Oregon!





After a nap at our hotel, Miki and I headed to the waterfront to check out the fish market and port.

El Puerto


A large group of lobos marinos (sea lions) spend their afternoons entertaining tourists as they battle for scraps of fish tossed from the dock.


The less common but much cuter "perro marino" cooling off at one of the towns central plazas


Me enjoying an incredibly fresh, cheap and delicious empanada de mariscos filled with all sorts of unidentifiable but really tasty shellfish. So good I had to go back for seconds!


Posing in front of some impressive art on display in the old train station.



The show wasn't as big of a success as we had hoped, but we still had a great time playing, got to see a little of the great north, and met some really cool people.