Rodeos and Volcanoes

When I had only been in Chile for a few months, I would title posts things like, "Day Three" or "Three Weeks." Now I feel like I should be doing the opposite of that. If I switched to that system, this post would be called "Forty-Nine Days." That doesn't roll of the tongue as well as "Rodeos and Volcanoes" does, though. And it's a bit too heavy for my taste. I've been catching myself avoiding thinking about my return. I am excited to go back, but it will mean saying goodbye to lots of good friends.

With such little time left in Chile, I've been doing all that I can to make the most of it. I spend almost every day with friends, often Chileans. I've taken day trips to see things that I hadn't seen yet. One of these trips included a day at the National Rodeo with my host grandfather and brother.

The national sport of Chile is the Chilean rodeo. It is massively popular. So popular, in fact, that in 2004, more Chileans attended rodeos than professional soccer matches. Rodeos here are pretty different from a rodeo you might see in North America. In a Chilean rodeo, a pair of "cowboys" (called Huasos here) chase a cow around an arena and use their horses to slam the cow into predetermined points in the wall. Points are given to the pair of huasos depending on what part of the cow is pinned against the wall. The cow usually collapses from exhaustion and needs to be stabbed with a sharp stick, kicked, or have sand thrown in its eyes before it gets up and is chased again.
I really did enjoy taking part in such a unique cultural experience (and missing school), but it was hard for me to not see it as animal abuse.

The national sport

While what I usually see in public places is a sea of brown hair, at the rodeo I saw a sea of tan and gray hats. The huaso garb is clearly defined and extravagantly priced. The essential (obligatory for the riders) huaso outfit consists of: boots with spurs, pin-striped pants or jeans, a checkered button-up shirt (cigarettes in the chest pocket are typical but not required), a tight-fitting jacket, a sash, a poncho, and the most important part, the gorro, or hat. I was shocked by how Chileans treat their gorros. They need to be picked up a certain way as to not bend the brim. They need special holders as to not bend the brim. No one can wear another person's gorro, as they are all custom-made. I was a little less surprised by the care of these little-used clothing items when I learned how much they all cost. Chileans will shell out thousands of dollars for a genuine huaso outfit, even if they only use it once a year (or less). I couldn't help feeling like it was a little absurd, all of these city-slickers (myself included) dressing up in their four-layer costume in 90 degree weather.

Fun fact: The underside of a huaso's poncho actually burns hotter than the surface of the sun.

Speaking of heat, it's time to move on to the second part of this blog. Pictures are much more interesting than words when it comes to volcanoes, so I'll tone it back a bit.

Some of my friends at school joke that I brought bad luck. This is the third volcanic eruption since I arrived here. There have been other natural disasters in my time here, like the 6.6 earthquake on my first day and the flooding in the North.

This particular volcano, Calbuco, erupted twice in a 24 hour period this week. This is the first time that it has erupted in 40 years. The ash cloud seen here and above reached 10 km into the sky. 

While it made for some good photos, this was, after all, a "disaster." Over 4,000 people were evacuated from their homes around the volcano. 

A lot of the ash was carried by the wind east to Argentina. In parts of both Argentina and Chile, people can't leave their houses without using face-masks. They are preparing for a possible third eruption.

I'll end this blog with a shout out to my good friends Rachel and Jimmy, who I had a fun weekend with and who asked me to include them in my next post. Rachel doesn't know what she wants me to say, but she "definitely called a shout out on the seth blog." Jimmy asked me to "just mention how hardcore he is." Jimmy is actually pretty hardcore. He will be returning to the United States (or at least most of the way there) by bus. He will be leaving in mid-May, which will give him about a month of travel time. Jimmy has invited me several times to join him on his trip, on which he will be raising money for charity by talking to local Rotary Clubs, but unfortunately, there's no way I can make it.

Fire, Flood, Foca

I apologize for my long absence. School has started back up, and with it basketball. That means that I have had neither time to write nor things to write about. But I just got back from a few days at the beach, and there have been some interesting events around the country this month, so I'll try to scrape something together.

Happy Easter! I hope you had a fun and meaningful holiday. I spent my weekend with my host family in Concon. It was a nice time. While there, between eating seafood and walking on the beach, I found time to admire some of the giant sand dunes. 

Like this one. That is a 17 story building.

Wanting to get a closer look, I decided to climb one. An hour later I was at the top, completely covered in sweat and sand. My shoes were so full of sand that it was hurting my feet. I couldn't believe how big these dunes were.

So tired at this point.

Turns out, Chile is home to the second biggest sand dunes in the world (Peru, our neighbor to the north, has got us beat with "The Everest of the Desert"). The biggest of the big are found in the Atacama desert, in Northern Chile. The Atacama holds another record, being the driest place on earth. In fact, there are some parts of it that received no rain between the years 1570 and 1971. That's over 400 years without rain!

You might remember, if you read my last post, that there was a pretty impressive volcanic eruption in Villarica, a popular tourist destination in the South of Chile. The volcano goes by the name of Villarica as well, but the natives call it Rucapillan, which means "House of the Spirit." The volcano's last major eruption was in 1971, but since March 3rd of this year, the volcano has been pretty consistently active. The initial eruption (shown below) triggered the evacuation of thousands of people. Since then, people have decided that the volcano poses no real threat and the general attitude of the towns surrounding it is one of excitement. I was just watching the news and I saw a woman being interviewed by a reporter. In the background was the volcano, spewing smoke and lava, and this woman was just talking about how exciting it was for their town because of the tourists that it will bring in.

Attracting tourists since 1971

On an equally exciting but much more tragic note, there has been massive flooding in the North of Chile. When I say massive, I mean massive. Ridiculous amounts of rain fell in the Atacama Region in late March. Being a desert, that part of the country was not at all ready for it. 25 people have died, and four times that many are missing. I've seen videos of trucks and houses being washed down the street like they're nothing. I've seen pictures of bodies washed out of cemeteries and into yards. It's a really awful situation. One of the worst parts of it is that so few people know about it outside of Chile. There is a Wikipedia page, but it has next to no information. I'll post some pictures so you can get an idea.

The Aftermath

This flooding has made me think about a couple of things that I hadn't before. One of them is that it makes me realize how awful the Johnstown Flood (I'm from Johnstown) must have been. About 25 people have died in the North, and after looking at some of the videos, I can't imaging how a flood could get much worse. But the Johnstown Flood killed over 2,000 people. That blows my mind more than ever now.

Shout out to my hometown

It's also made me think about how news spreads in a country. This is a big disaster, and the whole country is very aware of it. That is something that we don't see very much in the United States, being such a large country (Chile is 7% the size of the US). For example, because the United States is so big, if you're from New York you might not even hear about a disaster that kills 20 or 30 people on the West Coast. Like that landslide last year. What landslide? Exactly.

There is the opposite problem going on in most of the rest of the country. In February a fire destroyed almost 80 square miles of ancient forest in Patagonia. Last month, there was a wildfire near Vina Del Mar that took 200 firefighters several days to put out. Last year, there was a huge fire that destroyed over 3,000 homes in Valparaiso. The list goes on and on. Farmers in the South are suffering because their crops can't grow. There are several bridges here in Santiago that go over nothing, as the rivers dried up years ago.

In case you've ever wanted to know what 3,000 houses on fire in a world heritage site look like

Back to the positive side of things, the Chilean Pacific has a thriving seal population that has yet to be affected by drought, fire, or flood. Here are some pictures.

Originally spotted from halfway up the dune. I could actually hear them before I could see them.

"Foca" means seal, for those English-speakers who have made it this far.