…of my recent trip to the lovely island of Chiloe, in the south of Chile.  It’s so green and pleasant and beautiful that, in some cases, it almost looks like a painting.

Click on the pics to see them full-size.

A very nice “milcao” vendor, whose favorite hat happens to be his Michgan State baseball cap.  Go, Spartans!  (This pic was taken just for you, Vane!)

A view of the village of Achao on the island of Quinchao (one of Chiloe’s smaller islands).

Not a very fun pic, but one of only 2 that were taken of me on the trip (since, you know, I had the camera and was traveling alone).  This pic is proof that I walked all the way to the microscopic village of Chequian, and NOT Quinchao, as I had intended.  Chiloe’s churches are famous for being made entirely of wood, including their exterior wood shingles.  I wanted to see the oldest of all such churches, located in Quinchao. Turns out I took a wrong turn, and 2 hours later I got to see the following shack of a church instead (which might as well have been the oldest church in Chiloe, from the looks of it):

Back in civilization as Chiloe knows it, I dropped by Castro’s port to see a typical chilote “palafito” structure (basically, a house–or, in this case, restaurant–on stilts).  Many of Chiloe’s palafitos have been destroyed by earthquakes, but some remain here and there.

A lone fisherman in the picturesque village of Chonchi. 

Here’s a fun food game for all of you: it’s called “Name That Condiment!” Scenario #1: You’re eating a fresh, raw salad, with shredded lettuce, carrots, celery, maybe a little tomato.  It’s drenched in lemon juice, salt, and oil, but it could still use a good douse of ________.  Scenario #2: You’re enjoying your dinner of chicken stewed with peas and carrots, over a bed of fried potatoes, and while it’s delicious, you just wish you had a little ________ to top it off.  Scenario #3: You’ve been kicking back a few beers with your friends and get the late-night munchies.  You’re eating a Chilean-style hot dog, complete with tomatoes and avocado, but before you can dig in, you need to find some _________, a.s.a.p.  Now it’s time to NAME… THAT… CONDIMENT!!!!  If you’re a Chilean worth your salt (and, believe me, you know how vital that seasoning is), you know that the answer is, of course… MAYONNAISE!  Yes, over the past few months I have seen mayo on all of the dishes mentioned above, and I have, admittedly, been guilty of turning perfectly healthy food into a fat-laden, mayonnaisey, delicious mess.  Yum!  (Trust me, you gotta try it before you knock it.)  

OK, now that that culinary detour is over, it’s time to get down to business.  First order of business is to address the somewhat, er, sporadic nature of my blogging.  Clearly, folks, this is not a weekly blog.  This is more of a keep-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-waiting-for-the-next-post kind of blog.  J  It took me a while to come to terms with this myself, but I am now at a point where I can openly admit that I suck at blogging.  So check in on me every now and then when you’re looking to put off that TPS report for a few more minutes.  Maybe you’ll find a new post!  And then again, maybe you won’t.  You should be working anyway. 

Second order of business is…business—i.e., my job!  Finally, I am in a position to speak somewhat intelligently about what it is I do here (besides travel and take salsa classes, that is).  I’m working at an NGO whose mission is to promote women’s reproductive and sexual health and rights in Chile—basically, we think it’d be just swell if all women had access to contraceptives and to safe, legal abortions, and we do stuff to try to make that happen.  (***Note: Any opinions expressed in this blog are my own personal opinions, given as a feminist working independently in Chile.  They are in no way reflective of the positions of any organizations in Chile or elsewhere***).

Our work recently has centered around the latest reproductive rights fiasco in Chile—i.e., the prohibition of the morning-after pill on the grounds of its unconstitutionality.  So, we’ve marched, we’ve protested, we’ve organized, and we think it’s working!  For instance, word leaked out that the Constitutional Court’s original draft of the ban included intrauterine devices (IUDs) and many contraceptive pills, but public response was so outrageous that the Court retracted a bit and decided to ban only the morning-after pill.  Truth is, we won’t know exactly what’s in and what’s out until April 22^nd, when the official decree is supposed to come out.  Feminists and social activists all over Chile are organizing massive protests for that day.  Let’s hope our voices are heard!  If not, we might have to appeal to an international court to get this ruling overturned.  Sigh…

There’s so much more left to say about my work here!  But this post is long-winded as it is, and I’m sure I’ve alienated four-fifths of my audience by now.  Stay tuned for a more visually dynamic post soon!

Finally, a blog post!  No one is more shocked than I am that my workload suddenly quadrupled overnight.  We were gearing up for the internationally-recognized Women’s Day (March 8), during which we marched and protested and handed out fliers on emergency contraception (more to come on my work next week).  But, we’ve hit a tiny lull again, so here I am, trying to post as many pictures as I can in order to retain the interest of my reading-averse audience (Ian, you’re the .5 of my 2.5 readers).

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So it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’m settling in nicely to my new city, Valparaiso–Valpo, for short.  It’s a port city (hence the name of “Porteños” that is assigned to its residents) and has an unusual layout.  There’s a flat downtown area, “El Plan,” which starts at the ocean’s edge and goes up to the foot of the hills, or “cerros,” that surround the downtown area.  Each cerro has a different name and a different character—sort of like different neighborhoods or sections of town.

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Same view, at night.

Overall, Valpo has a very laid-back, anything-goes vibe.  Its sister city, Viña del Mar, is right next door and feels much more resort-oriented and, well, a bit pretentious.  Although some people think Viña is prettier, Valpo seems more unassuming and sincere to me, and I feel much more comfortable here.  After going to Viña or Santiago for the day it’s nice to return to Valpo and feel like I can finally let down my guard and relax into my surroundings.  The nightlife is right up my alley, as it seems that people go out to enjoy each others’ company rather than to enter the meat market.

The main plaza in Viña del Mar, Valpo’s sister city

The beautiful cathedral off of Viña’s main plaza (located next to a gigantic department store)

During the day it’s fun to go up the cerros in the ancient hillside “acensores,” or elevators (which always seem to me like they’re going to bust at any second).  From any cerro you get an amazing view of the city and the ocean.  The ocean is littered with boats and ships, all just sort of sitting on top of the water.  It looks like a real-live game of Battleship.  Sometimes when I walk out of my house and see the view, I think to myself, “I can’t believe this is where I live!”

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The view from my bedroom!  Notice the ocean and the ships in the background.  Fun fact: the cactus you see, which is in our front yard, can supposedly be boiled down into an extremely potent hallucinogenic substance.  Every now and then teenagers show up and ask for a piece of the cactus, which is not native to this region and is hard to come by.  Sorry, kids, you’ll have to get your peyote elsewhere…

The houses in Valpo are painted all different colors, which I love! This is a view of the main street (lined by a white cement railing) that leads up to the area in which I live.

Speaking of where I live, it’s in a house about halfway up one of the more residential hills, Cerro Mariposa (which means “Butterfly Hill”).  I’m super close to the downtown area, as I basically just have to go down the hill via a stone stairway, and I’m there.  It’s on the way back up that the 155 stairs seem interminable, sort of like trying to climb a downward-moving escalator.  If any of you are trying to achieve the “buns of steel” look, move to Valpo. 

Part of the never-ending stairway that connects my hill to the downtown area.

The first side street off of the main street (pictured above) that leads towards my house.  These 3 stooges are pushing a refrigerator up the street.  Sucks to be them!

The street I live on is fairly nondescript, and from the outside gate you’d never know that inside there’s a sizeable house inhabited by 11 people—that’s right, here are 11 of us here: Marisol and Mario (the main couple), their 2 children, Mario’s mom, Mario’s grandmother and grandfather (who are separated and live in separate but adjoining bedrooms, which I think is hilarious), 1 Chilean university student, 2 U.S. exchange students, and me.  Oh, and the 2 cats. 

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The same street shown above (with the refrigerator guys), only from the top of the street, looking down.  If you come up this street and round the corner, you’ll see:

My street!  My house is behind the stone wall on the right.  The reddish wooden door that you can barely see (about halfway up, on the right) is the outside gate.

Most of the family lives in the main house, while 3 of us students live in the little “penthouse” they’ve built in their patio area.  We have a small living area and a bathroom in the penthouse, but no kitchen.  It’s nice that I can be with the family in the main house whenever I want, but I can always sneak away into my room for total privacy.  I eat lunch (the main meal in Chile) with the family pretty much every day, and it’s so hard to stop eating—the food is really good!  Marisol is an excellent Chilean cook.  Plus, it’s pretty surreal that every day at 2:00 p.m. someone yells up to me, “Jessica, time to eat!”  And I go down to discover that, magically, there is a delicious, homemade meal waiting for me.  Um…. OK! 

The main house (and to the left you see the “penthouse” where my bedroom is located).

The penthouse.   My bedroom is the middle one–and no, I do not have cacti growing on my windowsill–it’s the reflection of the afore-mentioned hallucinogenic cactus.

My bedroom, which I love.  You’ll all be shocked to know that I’ve maintained this state of orderliness for nearly 3 weeks now.  (Leah, notice the bamboo-covered TV.  And Jen, that’s my plant!)

Looking down from my bedroom you can see the front yard / patio (and the edge of the main house). Whenever weather permits, we eat lunch at the outside table, which is awesome.  The swing is used most frequently by Leyla, who likes to curl up on it for her cat naps:

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Leyla, exploring

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Free, the other resident feline.  That poor little lizard isn’t gonna last much longer–Free’s quite the huntress.

Despite how well I’m settling in, there are a couple of downsides to living in Valpo.  One is that there are very few places to run.  In La Serena I went running at the Avenida del Mar, a beach that is flat and miles and miles long, and only 5 minutes away from my grandparents’ house.  I could run on the paved walkways or right down by the water.  It’s an amazing experience to run barefoot by the shore and then dive into the ocean at the end!  Valpo doesn’t have a beach to speak of, as its coastline is full of gigantic docks and ships, and its streets are crowded, steep, and full of stray dogs that can be territorial, at times.

The other downside is that there is very little tango in Valpo.  The few teachers I’ve found dance what I’ll call “street tango”—meaning, they’ve picked it up here or there, and they make it work, but they don’t focus much on technique.  I miss my Saint Louis tango teachers and friends!  I’m still planning on taking some classes here, so as not to lose the few skills I have, but I’ll probably have to wait until Buenos Aires before I get the chance to really study tango again.

I can’t take swing classes here, either, as swing doesn’t really exist in Chile.  So, I’ve taken up salsa instead.  I’m not passionately drawn to the dance, but I have a lot of fun at my salsa classes and I’m meeting new people, so I’m sticking with it.  My teacher cracks me up!  He runs the classes like a boot camp.  After the warm-up, during which he’s slyly sizing up everyone, he separates us into three groups: the “you suck” group, the “you suck less” group, and the “you might actually amount to something, someday” group, as I think of them (really, more like beginner, intermediate, and advanced).  I’m in the intermediate group, which is the largest.  He then partners us up and teaches us some new footwork, which we are instructed to do over, and over, and over….  If someone doesn’t get it right, he yells at them from across the room, “Hey, it’s your RIGHT foot!  What–do you not know your left from your right?”  And if you still don’t get it after 3 tries, he kicks you out and demotes you to the beginner class!  Hahahaha, I laugh so much during that class.  The amazing thing is that there are more men than women, which is a nice change.  For once, I get to dance during the whole class, while the men have to rotate out and wait their turn. 

Fabrizio, Silvia, Juan, Juana, Fausto, and Giordano–family members who live in Viña del Mar.

With my cousin, Giuseppe (who also lives in Viña) at his girlfriend’s birthday party.  For the record: I was completely sober, but the same cannot be said for my cousin.

Well, there is so much more to write about (my host family, my crazy job, my self-guided tours of the city), but that will have to wait for the next installment—which I hope to post by the end of the week.  I miss you all, and think of you often.  Stay warm, and enjoy the chance to drink some hot chocolate! 

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Here are some random pics from a nocturnal surf competition that I went to with Giuseppe and his girlfriend, Mariela.

These are the lights they used to give the surfers some visibility. Halfway through the competition the lights went out, and the poor surfers were left blinded in the ocean, with gigantic, scary waves crashing over them.

Same structure, from the front

That white blur is one of the best surfers in Chile.

Hang ten!

To my 2.5 faithful readers: I realize this is supposed to be a weekly blog, and it’s now been nearly 2 weeks since I posted.  I had nothing to do, and suddenly my work here just took off!  I promise that I will have a shiny new post by Thursday, at the latest.  I have lots to tell!

Pre-Chile haircut. Thanks, Cris!