I'm on the island of Chiloé, in southern Chile, in the small peaceful town of Quemche, overlooking the colorful wooden boats the people use to scratch a living from the sea. In the distance there is a snow covered volcano.
I write now from my hospedaje. Many people have a hospedaje sign on a window, advertising they will offer a room. My room cost $14 (7,000 pesos) and has private bath, TV, ocean view, and breakfast is included. The meager breakfast was instant coffee, bread and butter, and some "cheese". The fat owner sat watching futbol on a giant plasma TV, quite out of place with the fisherman theme, while I stared at the ocean with my Nescafé. Real coffee is a bit rare in Chile for some odd reason.
Today I´m going to make my way north to a town called Puertto Montt where I will catch a long distance ferry (www.navimag.com) that will take me to the southern tip of Chile. There I can expect to see massive glaciers, fjords, penguins, unspoiled wilderness…and bitter cold. I´ll be on the boat for 4 or 5 days. We´ll see how my stomach likes rocking back and forth for that long!
My Spanish, or Castellano as they call it, is getting to a point to where I can talk to people at length which is making this trip much more interesting. Now I can get around alone confidently. When I ask questions I can understand the response, rather than nodding and smiling, not knowing what the heck they just said, as I did for the first couple months.
For me, meeting local people is the fun of traveling. For example, a couple days ago, in a city called Valdivia, I wondered into a cool little shop, started chatting with the owner about the history of the town. In 1960, there was a massive, massive earthquake, one of the biggest in recorded history that basically changed the landscape of southern Chile. A huge tsunami wiped out many towns. Valdivia was one of the places that was destroyed. Roberto, the man that owned the shop showed me footage of the wreckage that followed the earthquake, or terrimotto. Ships were washed miles inland where they sit today, rivers were blocked by massive landslides, the entire town of Valdivia sank three feet!
Before I left the shop, Roberto and Sandra invited me to their house the next day for lunch. They live on a bluff overlooking the ocean next to a historical Spanish fort. They make their living as artists, working with metal, wood, fabric, leather, paper, silk screening, poetry, etc. All by hand, using old techniques, for example, Robert has thousands of little metal letters that he arranges, heats up, and stamps into leather for binding books. Their house was a creative space with several tiny, orderly workspaces, each dealing with a different craft. They learned the technical aspects of their art by backpacking around South America in 1992, studying with different artists, for about a year. They made money while traveling by selling handwritten poetry. Roberto said he was hungry most of the trip. Super interesting folks!!
You can see some photos of my day with Roberto, Sandra, and their son at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jackdcarrier/CasaDeRobertoYSandra
They have a blog with a bunch of photos of their work at: http://tienda-taller-denosotros.blogspot.com
Yesterday I met another interesting guy named Carlos Aguilar, a 79 year young man that was working away on a giant piece of wood with a handsaw, as he has for the last 60 years or more. He makes model ships, exact replicas of famous historic vessels. His ships are around the world with high-end collectors and in museums. He is small man with eyebrows that have grown over his eyes like bangs. His hands were stubby and knobby from working with hand tools day after day. We talked for a couple hours, at least, about everything from his desire to learn English, to how the French seems less friendly than people from other parts of the world, to how he wants to keep learning and living until the day he dies. His circular workshop was inside a replica Spanish lookout tower that overlooked the ocean. Just outside his door was a huge whale skeleton.
Again, you can see photos of me and Carlos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jackdcarrier/ConversationWithAShipBuilder
Ok, all for now.
Saludos!
Jack
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