To the Desert!

In order to address certain conerns that have been voiced, I have not recently been kidnapped (though it IS a joke among the gringos here in Taltal that we have often been secuestrado, that is cajoled, convinced or carried off in various ways to attend events with our host families). In the sense of guerrilleras with M-16s and scraggly beards though, there has been no such activity. There has been a lot of activity in general though, so Í'll do what I can to fill you in on a little of life in the past weeks here in Chile.

Its so strange to say "past weeks." Wierd to think that I have been in Chile for over a month. Thankfully, I spent the last of those weeks actually doing something productive. But more about that later. First you need to know where exactly I have been while I have been doing nothing and how it is I got there, why it was I was idle, and what I did with the downtime.

The last entry here left Max and I getting back the hostel in Santiago just in time to hustle our stuff out of the storage room and onto the bus heading to Antofagasta, the capital city of Region II. In Chile, rather than states they have these regions (13 in all) which people usually refer to by their numbers. Roughly, the numbers start with Region I in the North, through XII in the far South, with the Region Metropolitania--the capital Santiago, near the middle of the country--thrown in numberless for good measure. As far as I gather, Santiago was designated as its own region about the same time as they decided to officially switch from numbers to names like, "Los Lagos" (The Lakes), "La Region Atacama" (named for the desert), and our own Region II: Antofagasta (named for the aforementioned principal city). And it was with good reason that they gave the capital its own regional status. Something like 6 of the 12 million people in the country live there. Like I said, in spite of the less formulaesque names, people still widely use the numbers to refer to regions, even the high school kid who took us on a hike today up the cerros (hills) that surround our town.

Orientation in Antofagasta with the other 16 volunteers stationed
in my region, and our director Carla Fuentes (2nd from left).

As you can guess, being in Region II puts us pretty far North. That meant a 20 hour bus ride from Santiago to Antofagasta. 20 hours on a bus in South America probably does not sound like anything anyone would want to do, but the bus situation is actually really nice in Chile. They use the buses much more than in the States, so maybe because of this, and because Chile is one of the most economically/politically developed countries in S.A., the bus system is pretty advanced. For our marathon drive, we took a "salon-cama" bus complete with almost-full-tilting seats, footboards, headphone jacks to get audio for the movies they played, 3 "snacks" and 1 "meal," and a ticker that buzzed whenever the driver exceeded the 100km/hr (60mph) speed limit set, I think, by the bus company.


Thus riding in style, I plugged my phones in and spent the majority of the waking part of the trip watching movies--a pleasure I rarely get to indulge in. Apparently I missed some nice scenery, but most of the time all I saw out my window was dusty brown flatness punctuated by dusty brown hilliness. I kept wondering why anyone would want to live near this sort of life-sapping landscape. The main answer is minerals. Apparently when the Incas were dominating the continent they decided there wasn't really any reason to come past what is now the Northern border of Chile. By the early 1900's however, when man had discovered heavy machinery and saltpeter, Northern Chile became a hot commodity. Beneath all that dead looking dirt and rock, you see, there were all kinds of minables waiting to be tapped and shipped over to England and Germany for lush profits. This is actually the source of a lot of the stories associated with the pub that is opening on the back end of my house...But the pub and stories will have to wait because we still haven't even gotten to Antofagasta!

What I saw outside my bus window

When we did start the approach, I figured that maybe--since at 250,000 people Antofagasta is the biggest city in the region--the blankness would be broken up by well-cultivated, enchanting civilization. I thought about my visit to Spain, where it seems like most cities employ half their labor force in sweeping and washing the streets and sidewalks; where 30 minutes after the raucous gay-day parade that passed through Madrid, the little Street Zambonis were busily brushing and scrubbing all traces of human activity from the pavement. So Antofagasta will be really nice, right? Not quite. Everyone seems to agree (even the natives) that Antofagasta is pretty fea (ugly). It seems like the dust of the desert blows right up to the ocean, giving the city a dulling tint no one bothers to wipe away.

The ocean helps a little

The lack of scenic satisfaction didn't stop a few of us from taking a jog along the coast, or all of us from enjoying the regional orientation with Carla Fuentes--our regional coordinator. And I have to confess that it was pretty awesome to go up to my 5th story hostel room with a bottle of beer (Cristal--the Budwieser of Chile) and spend my evening relaxing on the top bunk, tooling around on my buddy's computer, with the sound of the waves playing right outside my balcony.

View from the hostel: so not everything in Anto. is ugly

The next afternoon we boarded the 4 hour bus for Taltal, where we arrived at about 8pm. I have to confess that my first impression, and the one that stuck with me for quite some time, was quite similar to my first impression of Antofagasta. I remember a Sunday about a week later playing "baby futbol" (roughly equivalent to smallbox) with some kids and looking around at the same blank pale brown and thinking, "Man, this landscape cannot be good for personal interior development."


Back in the bus though, something was happening (qeue corny dramatic music). I don't think I had felt seriously nervous about anything to do with my trip until we pulled into the station that evening and I had gathered my stuff and was moving to the exit. We could see that some of the people there were waiting for us, and this sensation that had been coming on me gradually, got really strong "You will be spending the next six months of your life with one of these families. Are you going to get along with these people? Will they like you? Oh man. This feels a lot like jumping into a cold mountain river or giving blood. Stand up straight. Good first impression. Oh man. Go!"