Musings from a vineyard

Oh no! I almost erased all the previous "practice" blogs when I tried to clean up a bit - thank goodness there is the "return" arrow that allowed me to get everything back.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you decide to write a blog entry after walking home through a vineyard around midnight, an almost-full moon lighting the way, Orion, loyal companion though he may be even in the southern hemisphere, a bit mixed up, standing on his head; after a dinner of tacu tacu with seafood in a creamy sauce at a Peruvian restaurant here in Santa Cruz on the Chilean wine road. Well, it's probably not the tacu tacu that did it, and not the lucuma tostada (toasted eggfruit) I had for dessert, either. If anything, I could attribute it to the three bottles of Laura Harding wine we shared among the four of us over the course of about three hours.

The four of us: that means Johann, and two agronomists of Bayer Crop Sciences who are spending time here in Chile - Temuco, to be exact - to work with Chilean seed companies and farmers to produce canola seed that is to be grown in Canada in 2011 . We met up with Andrew and Kelsey the day before yesterday at Chillan, about 400 k south of Santiago.

To get there was the first test of our theory that we could travel through Chile by bus without speaking much Spanish.
We landed in Santiago on Monday and spent a couple of nights at the hostel "Rio Amazonas" not so far from downtown. This was a recommendation from Magnus and Courtney who had stayed there last year, and it proved to be a wonderful place to start out from. While it was not in any way luxurious it was totally adequate, had a lot of atmosphere, was in a great location, and we felt very much at home.
It was an ideal place to start our adventure, as we had to walk only a few blocks to the metro which took us into the vicinity of pretty well everything we wanted to see. We both realized very soon that our travels in Argentina, our stay in Buenos Aires, a couple of years ago had made it a lot easier for us this time: we felt a lot more confident than we did the first little while then.
Our explorations of the city worked out more or less well. A strike by municipal workers prevented us from visiting the National Library, a supposedly amazing building with a wonderful collection of early South American literature, and the bigger of the two landmark hills of Santiago, San Cristobal, and with it the Botanic and Zoological Garden. Garbage removal was also very erratic during this time which gave the city a dirtier appearance than it probably would like to present to visitors. Anywhere else we went so far we were amazed at the cleanliness and orderliness we found, the amount of workers dedicated to picking up, sweeping,  and tidying.
We did see the smaller of the two hills, Santa Lucia, very close to downtown. A maze of walkways leads up to the top from which one has a good view of the surrounding city, though not much beyond: haze (pollution?) hides the mighty Andes from view much of the time.

After getting acclimatized, adapting easily to the relaxed pace this country has to some, though not quite the same degree as its neighbour Argentina, we were ready to move slowly south towards the city of Chillan where we were to meet Andrew and Kelsey. Our friendly hostel host called a taxi for us, and without a whole lot of trouble we managed to get on the bus to Talca, a city of almost 200,000 about 400 km to the south.

I was a bit shocked at my own unsensitivity, or maybe simply forgetfulness: we explored the core of this city on foot, and while I noticed the many building projects that were going on, the rubble piles lying around here and there, the cracks in the often old buildings, it didn't occur to me that this was damage from February's  earthquake until the hotel owner mentioned it when we checked out the next morning. How little we are affected by things beyond our immediate periphery of vision! Here in Talca, only about a hundred kilometres from the epicentre, the damage was extensive. Our hostess told us that she, her husband and son had been thrown to the ground from the force of the earthquake, and that part of their building had been damaged, too, though they were very lucky compared to many. Not far from us, she said, not a single house was left standing within a whole block. Please consider to come back another time - to see what our city is capable of offering, was the silent implication. How could I not feel guilty for not even noticing!

It opened my eyes for the next part of the journey, at least, and while the damage in Chillan is by far not as much there is still some.

And yet, it is not the earthquake damage, or even the potential for another quake, that made the biggest impression on me so far. If I were to describe Chilewith one word - the Chile we saw so far, which is a good part of the central third, it is, without a doubt, fertile. The rich volcanic soil nourishes the most amazing plant growth, from sunflower and sugarbeet fields to fruit orchards and vineyards, from the mora (blackberry) hedges lining the dusty dirt roads, thick and forbidding as barbed wire, to the thick green canopy of interlocking weeping willow branches in river valleys and depressions. Wherever there is water it will grow - and wherever there is none soil will be bare and very dry.

There is so much I could talk about, from touring canola fields to tasting wine, and at some point I will, but for now this will do.

Tomorrow we will leave the luxurious surroundings we found ourselves in because somebody else had made reservations for us here at the Hotel Terra Vina in Santa Cruz, with a view of grapevines in the front yard and the snow capped peaks of the Andes in the background.

It will be an "adventure day" where we will try to make our way from here to Isla Negra by bus - except there is no even remotely direct bus as far as we can see right now. It will be interesting to tackle this task without much Spanish, but the way is as important, if not more, than getting there, isn't it?

What will be waiting for us at this place that is neither an island nor black? Pablo Neruda would know: he, after all, lived here for about twenty years of his life, inspired time and again by the ocean, the wind, the araucarias, his fellow countrymen, and love.

With luck, I, too, will hear the voice of what called to him.

Actually, I believe I have started to hear it already: it is the voice of a beautiful country cradled - and sometimes battered - between the mighty forces of mountains and ocean.

It is the voice of Chile.