Hello from Maine

Oh, it's been a long time since I have written here. What a lot of life there has been since then.

At Christmastime my brother and his family flew up from Chile. His family now includes an ADORABLE chubby cheeked baby. The little baby stole all of our hearts and you can imagine our fears when we woke last Saturday morning to the news that their world had just been shaken beyond imagination.

I saw the news on-line at 5 a.m. and after reading the newswires and watching CNN for 20 minutes decided that I should wake up my parents. The village of Alhue is located about 100 miles as the crow flies from the epicenter of that monster 8.8 earthquake. I wrote quite a bit about Alhue in 2008 when we traveled there for my brother's wedding. Charlie and I headed over to my parents' house to set up Chile Information Central. Between the internet and CNN we were able to gather quite a bit of information but not until our skype icon bounced were we able to learn anything about our family.

Brother had been working in Mexico and was flying back to Chile as the earthquake struck. He was re-routed and landed at the very northern part of the country--some 1500 kilometers from home. He was able to chat with us through skype from the airport and re-assure us. He had little information about his family except that his wife had cut her feet on glass getting out of the house but that everyone was safe. Over the next twenty four hours, he made his way home and we have heard from him sporadically since then. The family is safe but the village is very damaged. All of the adobe buildings crumbled and even the new construction has suffered. They are currently living and sleeping in the courtyard to avoid the risk of the aftershocks and eating their laying hens.

Life can be unexpected and so very frightening sometimes.

One more wedding!

In April, my family traveled to Chile to witness Brother's marriage to Luz Maria. The wedding was elegant and moving with a full wedding mass in a lovely adobe church and an all-night fiesta with a full orchestra.

This week, they are in Maine and Brother thought that it would be a good thing to solemnize their marriage in the United States---so guess what? We're going to have a wedding tomorrow!!!

I've only officiated two weddings--I'm not sure how the first turned out because the couple was from out of state, but the second one....well, it didn't really take, shall we say. So, I'm a little nervous about my ability to pronounce anyone man and wife but am willing to give it another shot.

Amity is going to come and translate and any other River Valley Bloggers who are interested in joining us at 7 p.m. Thursday at my house are welcome!

Suggestions and ideas are welcome in e-mail or comments.

Santiago

On Saturday morning, we left my parents behind for another week with Brother. C and I caught a ride for the long 3 hours from Villa Alhue to Santiago so that we could explore the city before our nighttime flight back to the United States. At the airport we stored our bags and found a taxi to take us downtown.

Our driver spoke a little English and wanted to practice. He drove around showing us the important sights and asking questions about pronunciations and contractions. Eventually he dropped us off by a statue of Pedro de Valdivia and gave us explicit instructions to call him when we we were ready (he even gave us the pesos for the pay phone) and he would pick us up in that exact spot and take us back to the airport. He repeated those instructions several times and we were planning to follow them to the letter.

We saw many sights including the Presidential Palace and statues of various leaders including Salvador Allende. We enjoyed watching street musicians and performers and walked through a book fair and what we thought might be some sort of recruitment fair for the military.

The city was very exciting and the architecture was old world Europe and beautiful. Finally, though, our feet which had taken us up mountains and across a dance floor and all over the historic district of Santiago started to wear out, so we called our driver and went to the precise spot where he had dropped us off.

While leaning against a building and resting as we waited, I noticed a man on a bicycle in a pink silk outfit--I thought that might be something my daughter would enjoy seeing so I snapped a picture--BIG MISTAKE. He was a street performer--a mime--we don't have those in Dixfield.

He did not need any more encouragement than the click of my camera to come over to where we waited in our precise spot and begin performing.

I think that he realized we were waiting for a taxi so he stopped every one that came by. He was very entertaining even if we did become part of his props. I put my camera away, hoping that without encouragement he would move on--but he didn't. A large crowd gathered--maybe 300 maybe more--who knows. We couldn't walk away because we were to be picked up in that precise spot. I tried my best to melt into the sidewalk but C, who is the best sport in the world, played along and got plenty of applause from the crowd when finally our taxi arrived. C handed the mime some pesos and then the mime opened the front passenger door of the taxi , stood on the edge and wrapped himself in a red, white and blue scarf and saluted the crowd. It was about the funniest thing that I have ever seen.

Home now, only a few snow piles remain on the north side of the house--the kitties, the bunny and the houseplants all survived and tomorrow it's back to the real world. What an adventure it was! Thanks for sharing it with me.

The Fiesta

Brother's bride encouraged a friend of hers to build a venue for celebrations in Villa Alhue--the happy couple provided the start up funds by agreeing to hold their wedding reception there. The construction is sticks woven together, filled in with adobe and covered with cement.

It is a large room with plenty of area for tables and dancing. The last of it was finished the day of the wedding.

The ceiling was made of linen draped and tacked to the rafters. It was a nice effect.

The meal was delicious with grilled chicken and beef and plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit. Brother even had the caterer make southern sweet iced tea to go along with the Chilean wine.

After we ate, we danced to the strong Latin beat from the orchestra. I was self-conscious and concerned about not knowing how to dance in Chile, but C assured me that we should just jump in and do our own thing--we did and had a great time. Brother said "Wow, you two are good--do you dance a lot in Maine?" I thought that was funny because actually we don't ever dance in Maine--we hike, we shovel snow, we watch Jeopardy! and baseball but we don't ever dance.

We never made it to the cake cutting, as we had an early ride to Santiago to start our journey home and Mom and Dad were ready to go back to the guest house but we did manage to kick up our heals until after 1 a.m.--a new record for us.

The Wedding

The wedding was truly beautiful. The church in Villa Alhue is an adobe structure that dates back 300 years to the settlement of the valley for its agricultural resources--long before anyone discovered that the mountains contained a heart of gold.

After the 1985 earthquake, the church was rebuilt.

The wedding mass was entirely in Spanish--Brother had considerately given us a printed version in English but I didn't follow it, preferring to watch and let the beautiful, faintly familiar words flow around me.

Mothers are very important in Spanish society and in the wedding program, Brother's name was written with his surname (our father's name) followed by our mother's maiden name. He was given in marriage by our mother who walked him down the aisle.




It was truly beautiful and I wish them the very best of happiness.

Food

I could live forever on fruit, vegetables and bread and Chile is the right place for all of the above! We have passed acres and acres of plums, avacodos, corn, kiwis, strawberries, wine grapes, table grapes, pomegranate, citrus, tomatoes, olives and probably other things that I didn't even notice.

One delicious dish is creamed corn cooked inside of the corn husk--it is so yummy. Unfortunately, Brother's patience for translation does not seem to extend to recipes so I am not sure what was in it other than corn.

Another dish that I am enjoying is called Chilean Salad and is made of tomatoes and onion--you can't go wrong with that--I imagine that there is more to it than just the tomatoes and onion, but until I find a Chilean cookbook in English I am out of luck.

The bread is baked daily in outdoor adobe ovens. Today while walking around town with my dad we came across a lady making empanadas and she was kind enough to let us watch and take pictures--or at least we think she said we could. We theorized that she made a fire in the oven early in the day and let the adobe get very hot then when the fire was just down to coals she banked the coals around the edges of the oven and put the empanadas in. But Brother wasn't with us and so I'm not real sure about the method--in other words don't try it at home and say "Beth said this would work"

The wedding starts tonight at 8:30 p.m.--the wedding fiesta is afterward and the orchestra is booked until 5 a.m. We're a long way from Dixfield where it's lights out at 9 p.m.

Seeing the Cordillera

After our nearly disastrous hike on Tuesday, we spent a day nursing our wounds and studying Google Earth. Then on Thursday we decided to try again.

The rest of the family was busy figuring out the flowers for the wedding and various other things that confused me so C and I headed back up the mountain using the route that we had discovered on the way down two days earlier.

We started out at 2:30 p.m. and set a turnaround time for 5 p.m. since it is full dark here by 7. By 4:30 we had climbed high enough to see over the Coastal Range and to the mountains of my dreams--the Andes--rising up into the sky like clouds. By 5 we were at the summit and I was the happiest lady in the world.

I can remember once on a car trip when I was a little girl crying as I looked out the window upon realizing that the mountains that I had been looking at were actually clouds--this time they were really mountains and no tears were shed.

Bricks

While driving back from the coast on Wednesday, we noticed some men beside the road making bricks. Being curious folks by nature, we stopped and learned how bricks are made in Chile (and probably a lot of other places in the world.)

First mud and sawdust are put into this pit and a horse is attached to an implement that stirs the mud The horse walks around and around the pit to distribute the sawdust evenly throughout the mud.

Then the mud is shaped into bricks one by one and stacked to dry. After they air dry, the bricks are stacked in a pyre that is covered with mud and a fire is lit between the brick stacks. The fire is kept burning for four days and then it takes another eight days before they are cool enough to be handled.

This pyre contains 10,000 bricks and while the men keep the fire burning they are also getting the next one ready to be lit while the first one cools.

Pablo Neruda

On Wednesday we made our way to Isla Negra and the ocean-front home of the great 20th century poet, Pablo Neruda. Neruda had three homes in Chile. One in Santiago, one in Valparaiso and his favorite one in Isla Negra with its spectacular view of the Pacific coast. The home is now a museum and we were able to get an english speaking tour guide to take us through it.

The home was designed like a ship and the living room contains enormous figureheads salvaged from ships from all over the world. The figureheads are arranged in various locations around the large two story room but they are all oriented toward the sea which is part of the room through the floor to ceiling western windows.

Neruda was a collector and the home contains impressive collections of butterflies, moths and seashells among other things.

In his study there is a desk that he made from the hatch door of a ship. The story is that he was laying in bed and saw it floating out on the surf and told his wife, "Here comes my desk." He went down to the rocks and waited several hours until it made landfall.

Neruda is significantly mentioned in Isabel Allende's 1982 novel, House of Spirits as The Poet. He was renowned for his verses of love and inspiration for political change.

Hiking Villa Alhue

Villa Alhue is surrounded by mountains of the coastal range. On Tuesday, C and I decided to explore and hike up into the one closest to the village. It is a cirque-shaped (kind of wrap around mountain ridge) and our plan was to head up through the center and climb the headwall wherever it looked most feasible.

There was no path, but we followed an animal trail as far as we could. Brother's cocker spaniel followed us. We kept expecting the pup to turn back but he stayed with us through thick and thin.

Eventually the animal trail dwindled and we headed up through increasing steepness using different landmarks for a guide--a rock for a while, or a cluster of brush. The top was always visible because there were no trees. We scrambled up through terrain that we did not want to go down. Our hope was that when we gained the ridge we would find a better way down.

The sun was beating down on us and I was pretty dizzy from the sun and the exertion--but then disaster struck. As we climbed the headwall we entered an area of solid yucca. With no way to get down our only hope was to go up despite the shredding of our skin. For a while it was possible to use the exposed roots for support and only get slightly cut up but eventually we got to a place where the roots had been burned by a lightning strike or something and we could no longer depend on them and had to use our hands and legs on the spiky yucca plants themselves.

We were both dripping blood and on our last bit of strength when Charlie said he saw a tree ahead that was on the ridge. With a tree to give me hope, I focused on that and we made it, collapsing on the top. The oranges in our backpack rejuvenated us enough to really enjoy the spectacular view. We shared our water with the pup that had stayed with us through it all.

As C had hoped, from the top we were able to find a much better route down the mountain. We made our way back to Villa Alhue dirty, bloody but very happy.

Villa Alhue

Villa Alhue was destroyed in an earthquake that struck central Chile in March of 1985. Some buildings have been rebuilt using materials salvaged from the old buildings and some were never rebuilt. The evidence of the earthquake is everywhere.

At 3 a.m., we were awoken to the ground trembling. A regular phenomenon here but one that we had never experienced before.


Texican asked about my mama and papa, Here is a picture of them under the grape arbor showing pictures of their world of snow to the family.

The people here are lovely and generous. They have good manners that bridge our language barriers but I wish that I had taken the time to learn more than pleasantries in Spanish so that I could really get to know them.

Today we are heading to Isla Negra on the coast to visit a museum and home of Pablo Neruda.

On the way back from the coast, we hope to stop in San Pedro and see a group from the Untied States who are here to help build a church. I learned of them in a comment from Rondi at May's Day

Chile -- Day 1

Hola, Friends!
We arrived in Santiago Sunday morning and circumnavigated the Coastal Range until we arrived in the Alhue Valley and the tiny village of Villa Alhue where Brother now lives. His family greeted us with a feast of native dishes which we ate beneath a grape arbor.

After lunch one of the young boys climbed an avacado tree and brought us fresh avacados. Later we climbed up into the hills and they picked fresh pomegranates which we ate as we hiked to a shrine. With Brother being the only one who was bi-lingual, we still managed to all smile and nod and laugh a lot together.

After we walked into the hills, we met again under the grape arbor for more food as the full moon and the Southern Cross lit the skies. Someone produced a guitar and C strummed a few chords until we realized that everyone was saying "Hotel California" then "Eagles" then Creedance, then Elvis. I guess certain words transcend translation. We spent hours singing and clapping to old Rock and Roll.

Sunday Sunrise

This was Sunday's sunrise over the Dixfield hills. Next Sunday, we will be flying through the sunrise over the Andes as we prepare to land in Santiago.

Brother has bought plane tickets for our parents and for C and me so that we can celebrate his wedding and new life in a small village in central Chile.

When Brother and I were young, there was a map of the world pinned up on the wall by our kitchen table. He and I sat on opposite sides of the table and against the wall. His seat was by South America and mine was near Africa. I wonder if all those childhood years of comfort food coupled with the appealing visual of that 2700 mile tendril of a country contributed to him finding happiness in Chile?

My traveling companions are all seasoned international travelers, I am not. My last foray from North America was an April, 1986 trip to England during which the United States launched an air raid against Libya. That was the beginning of the days of scary air travel. There was a concern about our plane on the return trip and the passengers were taken off for 3 hours as the plane was searched. Our luggage was put on the tarmac and we had to go out and identify each piece. It was a quiet and tense flight. The passengers all applauded when we landed safely in Atlanta.

But that was then.

Brother has arranged for our seats on the plane to be on the side that will show the sun rising over the Andes. We will see Aconcagua. At 22,841 feet Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. Have I ever said how much I love mountains?

We will see places that I can barely imagine, places that are now home to the only other person who shares my parents.

Ines of My Soul

I have long been an admirer of Isabel Allende's books and was delighted to find that her latest book, Ines of My Soul is about a famous conquistadora of Chile who in the mid-16th century helps to build the city of Santiago.

The book begins with this fascinating woman's youth in Spain where she marries a man, Juan de Malaga, who leaves her in Spain to pursue riches in the Americas.

After several years in Spain as a "widow of the Americas", Ines negotiates a permit that will allow her to travel across the ocean to join her husband. Upon arriving, she follows information of his whereabouts and travels through the Continent until she learns that her husband died in the battle of Las Salinas. Believing that her husband was pursuing gold--not war--and not wiling to accept the word of others, she travels to Cuzco, Peru, to find out for herself if her husband has died. She learns that all Spanish men were conscripted into battle and that both soldiers and prospecters share a thirst for gold and conquest.

Now a widow in Cuzco, Ines set up a business using her skills as a seamstress and cook and made a living providing for the population. While in Cuzco, she begins a love affair with Pedro de Valdivia and with him sets out to conquer the territory of Chile. The travel from Cuzco through the vast Atacama Desert and hostile territory to the beauiful hills and valleys of the Mapocho river region where the group establishes the city of Santiago took thirteen months.

The court of the Inquisition extends its reach to prosecute Pedro de Valdivia--a married man with a wife in Spain--for his relationship with Ines. The records from his trial provided much of the information that Isabel Allende was able to use in her book.

Ines' perspective from the end of her life, full of the long-term implications of the conquistador's actions, and filtered through the prism of Isabel Allende's wonderful imagination, gives a response to the violent events that are associated with conquest.

The book was enjoyable to me for its historical perspective and geographical information. My favorite Isabel Allende books remain House of Spirits and Eva Luna but I would recommend this one to readers who enjoy history and adventure.

Aconcagua

Aconcagua--the highest mountain in the Americas

It's 22,841 feet and in Argentina near its border with Chile and dominates the skyline west of Santiago.

Sometimes I see clouds and think for a moment they might be mountains.
I wish I could see mountains and think for a moment they might be clouds.