Saturday, December 09, 2006
Chill...ean out
Greetings from La Serena, supposedly a great beach town in Northern Chile. We wouldn´t know, as we spent all day searchnig for plants, but we got to drive for miles along the coast, which was heavenly and reminded me of driving the 101 along the California coast with Keri. In fact, Chile reminds me more and more of the States and California in particular. It is the exact same Mediterranean climate that is found in California, ( and South Africa and Australia and the real Med), with similar plants. Great mountains (occationally you can glimps the enormous snowy mountains in the distance). Flying over the Andes from Argentina was spectacular...bowls of snow and jagged pinnacles of rock...truly impenetrable. I can now see why Chile is so skinny...really, you can´t get past those mountains.
Chile is Way different from Argentina, which is kind of nice because I like to be able to feel like I´ve been to different places and makes for great late night conversations with Matt. We think we like Argentina more, as Chileans are not nearly as warm or hospitable, though they tend to be more to the point. It has many more rules, which means we have to start obeying the speed limit again and can´t think about bribing cops if we are stopped. Matt doesn´t mind too much, as we have an automatic car again, which makes a huge difference. Oh, and it is much more expensive....but with currancy of 10000 pesos and greater being chucked around for everything, it is hard to do the math and realize what we are spending. Chile eats more vegetables, which I love, but i think Matt misses the all out meatfest.
Again, random Catholic holidays screwed us over...last time it was a regional festival in Argentina commemorating the appearance of the Virgen that caused us to drive all night, and this time it was the holiday of the Immaculate Conception (I guess Jesus formed in about two weeks) that caused the roads north of Santiago to jam with cars of people heading to Viña del Mar and other beachy places. We drove at a snails crawl for hours to a very sketchy town to pass our first night i Chile.
Puya are SO easy to come by here. In fact, they are the dominant vegetation in some places. We missed a good bloom year for the ever present P. chilensis, but we found a great peninsula loaded with P. venusta right out in the ocean on the swanky beach of Zapallar. It was the easiest, perhaps best day of collecting of all. We walked along the beachpath, admiring these mansions with very creative architecture (some sort of Nordic cabin next to 1960s California chic), then found a this area covered in Puya and hummingbirds. We got to watch the largest hummer on earth, Puya gigas (large as a robin, with long wings), feeding and resting....one of my dreams fulfilled! Later, we drove to the entrance of a national park (not entering, as we didn´t have permits), and saw a whole hillside of giant blue PUya berteroniana in full bloom! We saw a woodpecker trying to peck at it, a goatsucker bird nesting in it, and again the big hummer doing its thing) Spectacular.
Today we hung out with a local botanist who works for the Chilean seed bank. He helped us find a new species (which I was relieved to see is a new species) named for my old advisors old advisor Amy Gilmartin. Beautiful plant growing in the cracks of rock heaps overlooking the beach. He brought his very spoiled son along, who was cute enough, but drank all of Diego´s juice at lunch and his dad did nothing to stop it! He also spoon fed the eight year old when he wouldn´t eat. I swear, people are crazy ridiculous about their kids down here. I noticed that too in Ecuador. I have never seen anyone use a harsh word with children and they are constantly praised and coddled, called ¨my life or my love¨. All commercials portray children as angelic and perfect (contrast with the stressed out mother of American commercials putting up with her children´s shenanigans). Weird.
It is also weird to think that these people have a hot Christmas in the middle of their summer vacation. We really can´t get used to seeing Christmas trees when we are baking in the midday heat. I can´t really think about the cold and dark of the Northern Hemisphere either, though I am getting a bit excited to return home. We have just TWO more species to go! TOmorrow we will head back towards Santiago and maybe go to the Concha Y Toro vineyard....drink some Castillero del Diablo and think of us!
Love,
Rachel
Chile is Way different from Argentina, which is kind of nice because I like to be able to feel like I´ve been to different places and makes for great late night conversations with Matt. We think we like Argentina more, as Chileans are not nearly as warm or hospitable, though they tend to be more to the point. It has many more rules, which means we have to start obeying the speed limit again and can´t think about bribing cops if we are stopped. Matt doesn´t mind too much, as we have an automatic car again, which makes a huge difference. Oh, and it is much more expensive....but with currancy of 10000 pesos and greater being chucked around for everything, it is hard to do the math and realize what we are spending. Chile eats more vegetables, which I love, but i think Matt misses the all out meatfest.
Again, random Catholic holidays screwed us over...last time it was a regional festival in Argentina commemorating the appearance of the Virgen that caused us to drive all night, and this time it was the holiday of the Immaculate Conception (I guess Jesus formed in about two weeks) that caused the roads north of Santiago to jam with cars of people heading to Viña del Mar and other beachy places. We drove at a snails crawl for hours to a very sketchy town to pass our first night i Chile.
Puya are SO easy to come by here. In fact, they are the dominant vegetation in some places. We missed a good bloom year for the ever present P. chilensis, but we found a great peninsula loaded with P. venusta right out in the ocean on the swanky beach of Zapallar. It was the easiest, perhaps best day of collecting of all. We walked along the beachpath, admiring these mansions with very creative architecture (some sort of Nordic cabin next to 1960s California chic), then found a this area covered in Puya and hummingbirds. We got to watch the largest hummer on earth, Puya gigas (large as a robin, with long wings), feeding and resting....one of my dreams fulfilled! Later, we drove to the entrance of a national park (not entering, as we didn´t have permits), and saw a whole hillside of giant blue PUya berteroniana in full bloom! We saw a woodpecker trying to peck at it, a goatsucker bird nesting in it, and again the big hummer doing its thing) Spectacular.
Today we hung out with a local botanist who works for the Chilean seed bank. He helped us find a new species (which I was relieved to see is a new species) named for my old advisors old advisor Amy Gilmartin. Beautiful plant growing in the cracks of rock heaps overlooking the beach. He brought his very spoiled son along, who was cute enough, but drank all of Diego´s juice at lunch and his dad did nothing to stop it! He also spoon fed the eight year old when he wouldn´t eat. I swear, people are crazy ridiculous about their kids down here. I noticed that too in Ecuador. I have never seen anyone use a harsh word with children and they are constantly praised and coddled, called ¨my life or my love¨. All commercials portray children as angelic and perfect (contrast with the stressed out mother of American commercials putting up with her children´s shenanigans). Weird.
It is also weird to think that these people have a hot Christmas in the middle of their summer vacation. We really can´t get used to seeing Christmas trees when we are baking in the midday heat. I can´t really think about the cold and dark of the Northern Hemisphere either, though I am getting a bit excited to return home. We have just TWO more species to go! TOmorrow we will head back towards Santiago and maybe go to the Concha Y Toro vineyard....drink some Castillero del Diablo and think of us!
Love,
Rachel
# posted by Rachel Jabaily @ 6:18 PM 
