A sort of homecoming

March 2013

Hello everybody,
We are back blogging - because we went back to Chile!  We took a couple of weeks to visit our friends and "Family" in Castro, on the island of Chiloé, after an absence of a year and a half.  It was wonderful!  Much to our delight, we remembered everyone, everyone remembered us, and we had better weather than we had any reason to hope for.

The first change we noticed: Our little town of Castro is now served by LAN, the Chilean national airline!  They have a few flights a day into a new little airport just north of town.  Unfortunately for us, flights there from Santiago and Puerto Montt sold out in a matter of hours - so we got to relive our first arrival in Castro, but with much more knowledge and much nicer weather.  It was better this way...

After 24 hours of travel by car, planes, and car again, we finally arrived at Tía Victoria's Sunday evening for an asado.  A lot of the family was there, and everyone looked the same - except for Diego: his time as a conservatory student in Santiago has inspired him to grow a big beard.  Victoria cooked up some yummy lamb, potatoes, and Chilean salad - it was as if we had never left.  Surprisingly, we found that we were able to understand everyone's speech as well if not better than when we left two years ago, but after all the traveling, our speech wasn't coming as easily.  We took our leave and headed down to Margot's house in Chonchi, which we used as a base of operations for our visit.

Anyone who has visited my sister Anne's house or knows Lisa's friend and colleague Lori is familiar with the concept of "Chaos House": The door is always open, cousins and friends wander in and out at all hours, and it's the social center of the family and the neighborhood.  Margot's house is Chaos House of Chonchi, bolstered by the fact that Margot's sister and brother and their families live in houses on either side of hers - so there are lots of cousins who come over to play every day.

 It was a fun way to stay, and we got to know their lives better.  They have a nice view of the church from their house.  Roberto enjoyed some quality time watching TV and playing video games with Chelo and Nacho, and Gabi got to help the cousins make a birthday cake for Pity (Margot's husband).

  After spending Monday recovering, sleeping in and catching up. we headed in to Castro Tuesday after a leisurely brunch  to attend to a few errands (get the cell phone working again, check out the tourist info center for special events) and visits (the Frutería Tía remembered us and gave everyone gran brazos = big hugs).  The cathedral got a new coat of paint! and everything looked fresh and shiny.  We hung out in the Plaza de Armas to see if we could recognize anyone.  We were not disappointed: Within half an hour, several of Lisa's former students came through, along with two friends with their families, including the bus driver Jose who took Roberto under his wing.  Jose has a better job now driving an employee bus for a salmon company.  We checked out the local micros and recognized only two of the drivers.  Unsurprisingly, it's a high-turnover job.
The empenada ladies recognized us too.  Also Roberto's friend Jose Luis from his 1st grade class and his mum.

On the way back, to get some nap time for the kids, we drove along Mike's favorite bike ride way up in the hills along a ridge to get a fantastic view east across the islands and the Golfo de Corcovado to see the jagged mountains and snow-capped volcanoes of the Cordillera de los Andes.  Lisa got a chance to see why Mike liked this particular ride so much, and Mike recalled learning and enjoying the peaks: from Volcán Yates in the north, to the big rounded dome of Michinmahuida, with the still-steaming peak and bare gray fire-blasted slopes of Volcán Chaiten just to the south, to the near-perfect jagged peak of Corcovado looming over the water and the snow-capped peaks of Volcán Nevado and Melimoyu in the far south.

Wednesday we went to Margot and Pity's house on Lago Huillinco, to hang out some more on the beach. Roberto's friend Jose Luis's family has a house two doors down, so he came by with his cousins and the kids played on the beach and in the tower that Pidy built for Nacho and which is shared by everyone.  Lisa and Mike took kayaks out for a quick paddle around the area.  A great time was had by all!

We came back for a surprise birthday party for Pity - what fun!  The next day we went back out and stayed overnight.  During the day we headed out to Cucao and Rahue to enjoy the beach.  Cucao was overrun with mochileros (backpackers) - it's a Thing to Do for college-age kids to hitchhike their way across Chile down to Chiloé and out to the beach, where they can pack into campgrounds with hundreds of their fellow travelers.  The locals are not thrilled at the invasion, because the kids don't spend any money: they hitch rides and cook on the beach.  It was quite a scene, but now that we're parents, we're really not part of that scene any more...  Generally nice folks, though.

We took advantage of the fact that we had a car and went a few miles south to Rahue, which is famous for fossils. 

We came across two or three groups of men panning the beach gravel for gold!  They told us that the early Spaniards had supposedly found a little gold there, so now there are still a few hardy prospectors sifting the mud for a few flakes.  We enjoyed the nice weather and the baby horses in a field next to the beach.






It was nearly a full moon, so the tides were higher and lower than usual - which means that it's possible to gather machas, another variety of clam. They're sort of between a razor clam (navahueta) and a regular clam (almeja) and are yummy in their own way.  The time to get them is during a full moon or new moon when the low tide is very low, as they live in deeper water than the other clams.  We asked a random person waiting for the bus where we might find someone selling some, and he just happened to have a big mesh bag full.  For a few dollars we got more than we could possibly eat.  We took them back to Huillinco and cooked 'em up - yum!

Friday: Paddle Lago Huillinco some more, then return for Date Night!  We relived the glory days of local babysitters.  Margot watched the kids while we headed into Castro to hang out at our favorite spots.  First, a Kunstmann Gran Torobayo (schopp = on tap) at Otto Schopp.  They'd gone a little upscale, with brighter lights and new menus, but the rest of the experience was the same: just a comfortable hangout bar.  We saw a few acquaintances walk by and exchanged hugs and kisses.

We then headed over to our favorite restaurant Sacho to see our friends Sandra, Maria Eugenia, and Mabel who wait tables there.  Sandra was out sick, but Maria Eugenia and Mabel welcomed us with the usual Pisco Sour split into two glasses.  They also informed us that the restaurant had changed hands and that they were the new owners!  We couldn't be happier for them...  They brought us yummy appetizers: our favorite crab in cream, and typical dinners of congrio (conger eel) and salmon.  It felt like old times...

Our friend Sherry, who owns the house next to Mike's in Somerville, is on a yearlong trip here and there around the world (though so far only in South America - why would anyone want to go elsewhere?) - and was in Punta Arenas.  We invited her to join us, so she hopped on a flight to Puerto Montt, and we met her at the bus station in Castro!  She joined us at Sacho for dessert and introductions to our friends.  She spent the next week with us - and she and Margot got along so well that she stayed on at Margot's house for a few days after we left!

Saturday we had to revisit another old routine, so we went to the Feria Campesenal to meet Lisa's fish lady and her family and so Sherry could experience the craziness that is Castro's market.  (Another part of the routine: It was raining.)  We picked up some yummy jams - rhubarb/raspberry, grosella (like gooseberry), and murta (like lingonberries, sort of).  It was also a fun reminder of the time when we lived here.

Later we headed out with Sherry, Margot, and Gabi to Cucao to try to dig our own machas. The way to find them is with your feet: Twist your legs to work your feet into the sand and feel for them with your toes.  It's the macha dance!  Unfortunately, empty shells feel the same as machas...







We each found three or four and got pretty wet in the process.

Two other men harvested a large bag of them, but we noticed that they were wearing wet suits and were in water up to their shoulders...


We went back to Chonchi, where Margot made a yummy soup from our hard-earned and easily-purchased machas.





We were just about to head back to Huillinco when Margot reminded us that it was the end-of-summer full moon fireworks!  It was raining at the scheduled time, so they didn't go until midnight.  Friends and cousins came over to watch, so of course there had a party afterward.  Pity and his friend Pepe asked themselves the question: Does Mike ever get drunk?  They were feeding Mike a steady supply of the Jack Daniels that we brought Pity for his birthday, good Chilean wine, cheap Chilean beer, and the local liqueur, which is a bit sweet, quite good, and rather sneaky, hoping to get him desordenado (out of control).  Nice try, guys...  A good thing that came out of it is that Pepe offered us an overnight at his beach house in Lelbun, southeast of Chonchi along the shore.  We took him up on it the next day!  More on that in the next post.