Blog 4

Over spring break I got to go to Chile for seven days. I'm a geologist, so I went down there and spent a lot of time working in the field and taking measurements and samples to be analyzed here at UT. Naturally, this was an amazing trip. I know I'm the only geologist, but seeing the Andes was amazing, and we spent the whole time in the Atacama Desert, which is the driest place in the world. We were based out of San Pedro de Atacama, a very small town about an hour away from a town with an airport, and about three hours away from anything that could be called a city. It was completely different from anything I've ever experienced. We stayed in a "hotel," but it was more like a hostel, or a motel. My room was the only one without an attached bathroom (it was also the only one made of plywood with a screen only attached on one side and blinds you could see through) so that meant getting up at dawn every morning to go outside where the community bathrooms, showers, and sinks were. Since Chile is in the southern hemisphere, it was fall there, and pretty cold most of the time (cold for a Texan, at least). We were up at dawn every morning, spent all day in the field, and returned to the Tahka Tahka (our hotel) at sundown every day. It was exhausting, but worth it.

The people of San Pedro were really nice, especially to the girls. The men really liked us--there were catcalls every few feet, but then I was the only blond girl in the whole town. All the shop owners loved us, and usually the owner of whatever restaurant we were in ate with us for a little while. They don't speak as much english in San Pedro as in other areas of Chile, so my Spanish got a lot of exercises. I think I did really well. The verbs I knew were all really useful, and my friends who knew more spanish than I did would fill in the nouns I needed to know. Honestly, the hardest thing to understand was when people said numbers, like telling me what time it was or how much something was. I almost never understood them on the first (or second) try.

We spent one day at a mine called El Abra. The people there loved us because we were geologist. I think several of my friends may intern there. We had a translator, and he spent a lot of time talking to me about how it was to live in Calama, which was the town with an airport, and a mining town. The mine has buses that run to and from the city every morning and night to transport their workers. The thing I thought was weird was that the workers had to be searched every day when leaving. I don't know why, it was only a copper mine. Anyway, it was really interesting listening to him, and he taught me a few phrases to say when people hit on me. It was a lot of fun. When I left, he kissed me on both cheeks, which surprised me, and made me laugh, because we both had on hard hats and it was a rather awkward affair. But then a lot of the other mine workers kissed my cheeks too, and so did several people in San Pedro. At first I didn't like it because I had been getting so many catcalls, but these were married men and completely platonic. So then I got used to it, and honestly I kind of liked it because then I could tell if they really liked me and thought I was nice or not.

So Chile was amazing. I want to go back and visit the southern portion and see the penguins. We saw lots of llamas while we were there, but not much else. It is the driest place on earth!