My New Office

This week, my second at Gemini, I moved out of my temporary space into my permanent office. My desk isn't quite ready (there is still quite a bit of musical chairs going on) but I settled into another empty spot in the office, just to get the feel for it. The picture above is actually a view from my office; I would say that looking out over the Pacific Ocean is a fairly large upgrade from staring at the back end of a football stadium.

I also got to meet and chat with my new office mate, Etienne. Etienne found out that I was interested in nature photography and very enthusiastically showed me his extensive birding site. His photos are pretty remarkable; I'm fairly sure he could have a career as a nature photographer if he wanted. Instead he studies brown dwarfs, objects that are just a bit larger than Jupiter-like planets and just a bit smaller than the smallest stars. (He's very good at that too!) He also works on NICI, a special new instrument at Gemini that will find planets around stars other than our sun. Besides the bird pictures, he's also got quite a bit of photography of his baby daughter, Heloise, and his wife Myriam.

Almost immediately after settling into my office, I found out that I would be going up for my first solo run at the telescope at the beginning of December. Since I know absolutely nothing about the instruments, the telescope, etc. I decided that I needed to schedule my first training run as soon as possible. Fortunately, Etienne is observing next week and he's agreed to show me the ropes. So I'm already planning my first nighttime trip to the mountain!

Of course, I've met many new people besides Etienne; at Gemini there are plenty of opportunities to socialize. Every Wednesdays, the science staff gets together for "Science Coffee" and chats (over coffee and cookies, of course!) about interesting science results that we've seen or (hopefully) produced. Gemini also has a monthly meeting to celebrate all the birthdays that took place during the month. The "Birthday Celebration" is followed by a nice spread of food including sushi, cake, empanadas, etc. It's clear that they work very hard on a very positive morale here and go out of their way to make sure everyone knows each other and feels important to the observatory.

So far I'm really enjoying my time here. It will be interesting to see what next week brings!

First Days at Gemini

On September 22nd, two weeks after we arrived in Chile, I started my first day of work. Beginning in a new place is always a crazy experience, but after spending seven years at Florida and knowing everything about everyone, it was particularly odd to not know where I was going, what I was doing, or who I was meeting. I haven’t had that sensation in a while.

At first, I didn’t have much of an office. Gemini is in the midst of some renovation, so I found myself in a temporarily space. I didn’t stay in my seat for long though - I had so many meetings to go to on my first day that I barely even saw “my” desk, so it was no big loss. Still, someone had very thoughtfully laid out notepads, pens, and various other office supplies for me. I even had a phone programmed with my name and voicemail. After sharing an office (and a phone) with at least five other graduate students for seven years, this was quite a change.

The Gemini Headquarters in La Serena

My overall first impression was that Gemini Observatory is really well-organized - and I realized very quickly that it needed to be. For the uninitiated, Gemini South is one of the world’s largest telescopes - in fact it is the 8th largest. Every second of nighttime operations is worth $1. In other words, losing one night due to mechanical failures, disorganization, or poor communication costs at least $30,000.

Given this price tag, Gemini has a responsibility to make sure observations at night go as smoothly as possible. This translates into a giant complex of engineers, astronomers, and staff making sure that things are where they need to be, when they need to be there. It also means a more business-like approach and a LOT of meetings! Still people manage to have fun at work and the observatory is willing to spend the money to make sure that everyone has the tools needed to do a good job. In fact, Bernadette, who is the head of science, told me to order myself a new laptop!

Besides that, I was also scheduled for a driver’s training course. Not only would I get to drive around dirt roads with a professional driver, I was going to take my first trip since my interview out to Cerro Pachon, the mountain that is home to Gemini South. Given the efficiency at Gemini, it was unsurprising that my training had already been scheduled...for Wednesday! I was really excited because I’d heard that Danielle, the professional driver was a lot of fun. I also found out that the entire desert was in bloom, a rare event, and that the mountains on the way to Pachon were covered in flowers. I anticipated a really great day driving around learning more about operating a car on mountain roads.

Unfortunately, while this dirt-encrusted adventure *sounded* awesome, especially for someone who was a tom-boy for most of her life, the reality was dominated by some severe car sickness; I was nauseous the entire time. Danielle took us to a course that he had set up in the mountains near Pachon. Among other things, we practiced slalom and spun the car out to get a feel for how to regain control if the back-end of the car loses traction. We also went up and down a fairly step little hill to understand how the vehicle handles. I was ok while I was driving, although I found that I was too nervous to really love the experience. When my fellow trainees started to drive, my stomach began to lurch. By the end I was miserably green.

Once we stopped for “lunch” (a cup of coke for me and a few bites of pasta) I did get to take some shots of the dome against a back-drop of snowy mountains I confessed to Danielle that I'd had better days and I think he felt bad that I wasn’t enjoying myself much. He stopped several times to let me get out, have some fresh air and take marvelous pictures of the mountainsides in bloom. So after all the drama, I did end up with a pretty memorable day.

Vicuña y Elqui Valley

After a very busy day on Thursday and a fantastic BBQ on Friday at the home of some new friends, we decided to take a relaxing drive into the Elqui Valley.

Just outside of La Serena, the Elqui is a sprawling valley at the foothills of the Andes and one of the most famous wine-producing regions in Northern Chile. The Elqui Valley’s main export is pisco, used for the national drink, the Pisco Sour. Pisco Sour is a mix of lemon or lime juice, sugar, pisco, and egg white in “just the right amounts”. Of course the “right amount” varies widely depending on who you talk to and which part of the country you are in. Since one of our many goals before we leave Chile is to learn how to make a mean Pisco Sour, we decided a trip to the valley (in the name of research, of course) would be useful.

We drove out of town on Route 41 following the path of the Elqui River for 15 minutes. It wasn’t long before we started to see signs of majestic mountains and rolling hills not far in the distance.


After 10 minutes more of driving we began to head a little higher into the Puclaro region. Here the Elqui river is damed by the Puclaro Dam and forms a gigantic reservoir. The dam was built to break the cycle of flood and draught, insuring that the valley would have a controlled water supply. With a consistent water source, the area has turned into a fruit-farmers paradise; papaya, citrus, and (of course) grapes are all grown in the fertile valley.






Besides the fact that the ride in our little red Toyota was a little on the bumpy side, it was one of the most enjoyable rides we’ve taken in quite a while. In Florida, we never went for a Sunday drive; with flat roads and uninspiring scenery there was nothing to see. Here, we ached for a jaunt into the foothills of the Andes. We both thought driving over the mountains into the unknown was a perfect way to spend a day.

Before we even realized it, we were most of the way to Vicuña. Vicuña is a small mountain town, made famous by being the birthplace of Nobel Prize winning poet, Gabriel Mistral. Gabriel Mistral reminds me a bit of Emily Dickinson; while not nearly as isolated, she wrote about many human conditions that she herself never experienced (marriage, children, etc). Whatever your thoughts on her work, Mistral is a national hero, and Vicuña is her birthplace. The Gabriel Mistral museum is there and the town has prospered as a tourist attraction. David and I decided that we would turn off the road and visit since our drive had taken us so close.


In Vicuña we found what we expected, a quiet little place with gorgeous views of the mountains, a few lovely little shops to catch tourists’ eyes, and a well maintained Plaza de Armas. We parked the car and immediately stumbled upon a Natural Science Museum. It was filled with a small collection of butterflies, beetles, shells, minerals, rocks, and stuffed animals. The displays were old and the floors squeaky; but it was only marginally worse-off than many of the displays at National Parks across the Southwest US. I particularly liked the collection of Morpho butterflies from all over S. America, although it was disheartening to find that not one was a native of Chile. David was fascinated by the iridescent beetles.

After exploring the museum for a bit and walking by a number of street vendors, we decided to get a snack before heading home. We had heard bad things about Chilean ice-cream (our friend James told us it melted into puddles of oil, which did not sound appetizing), but we saw a small place that claimed to be “Artisanal” so we decided to take a chance. We paid 500 pesos or about $1 for a fairly large scope of ice cream that turned out to be some of the best we’ve ever had. I got pistachio while David had papaya. Both were more akin to sorbet or sherbet than ice cream with less dairy and more flavor.




So our Sunday drive was a huge success. We want to head back soon to visit the Mistral museum, browse the shops of local artisans, and try a different flavor of ice cream!

Dieciocho Parte Dos

After a day of eating and shopping with our friend Beth at the Pampilla in Coquimbo, a walk through a gorgeous Japanese garden, and a tour of downtown La Serena, David and I returned to our Apart-Hotel for what we thought would be a quiet evening. It was an absolutely gorgeous day though, one of the sunniest we’d had in a week, and I really wanted to take a nice stroll on the beach. So after grabbing some jackets, we walked down to the “boardwalk”.

What we saw surprised us. Now that I think back on it, I’m not sure why. What do people in the U.S. do on their Independence Day? Go to the beach, of course! The fact that it is just rounding on Spring here did not stop Chileans from enjoying the seashore. But instead of sunbathing and swimming, they’ve taken to a different Independence Day pastime - kite flying. The beach was covered with hundreds of families all up and down the shoreline with beautiful kites. I was really excited; David and I love flying kites, but the only significant breezes in Gainesville usually came with names (Frances, Jeanne, etc.) and generally flying a kite in a hurricane will win you a Darwin Award.




Sadly, our really awesome, high quality-kite is packed away in a windless crate on a boat. We had to settle with shelling out $4 for a really crappy, albeit functional, kite. We found a little spot on the beach and started our kite flying. Everything was going fine until we ran out of string and belatedly realized that the end was not attached to anything. This resulted in David diving all over the beach after a loose kite, while I collapsed on the sand laughing; not really helpful I know, but it was a little ridiculous at the time.

So, we flew our kite on the beach until the sun went down. I got some amazing pictures of the David and the sunset before it was time to pack our little kite away for another day.





Being that this is our blog, I’m sure you can guess what comes next. Food! After a lovely evening on the beach and a full day exploring our surroundings we found ourselves quite hungry. I wasn’t willing to tear myself away from the ocean to go home and eat at our house, so we decided to find a place to eat on the beach. After walking around for quite a bit, we formulated a plan: get empanadas to-go from a nearby restaurant and make a picnic on the beach.

This was a ridiculously good idea. Imagine if you will eating hot, crispy handmade empanadas filled with a variety of fresh ingredients in front of crashing waves on a cold Spring night. The empanadas were made to order, and we tried a crazy collection of fillings including clam, goat cheese, chorizo and mushroom, artichoke and bacon, and good old ham and cheese. We found a table at an empty ice cream restaurant that faced the ocean and had a magnificent dinner. We also made friends with one of the one million dogs roaming around La Serena; this one (surprisingly) belonged to someone and so, didn’t get any treats from us. This didn’t stop him from laying out our feet for 45 minutes hoping we would drop something. Unfortunately for him, these empanadas were so good, even if we had dropped a bit, I think he would have had to fight David for the recovery.

So after a long day of Fairs, gardens, plazas, kite-flying, and eating we finally called it a day. Looking back on it, I can say that this was the type of holiday that only a German tourist plans (you know, Grand Canyon on Wednesday, Yellowstone on Thursday, Disney World on Friday) We were in over our heads all day, but managed to keep ourselves above water anyway; it may have been the pork we had for lunch, the company of a good friend, the graciousness of the Chilean people or all of the above that kept us going.

Dieciocho Parte Uno

Like the US, Chile has its own Independence Day, commemorating the day they declared independence from Spain. Generally this celebration lasts for much longer than a day; in fact Chilean flags were plastered all over the city for the entire month of September and every weekend during the month some demonstration or party can be easily spotted. That being said, the 18th of September, almost universally referred to as Dieciocho, is the official holiday. The 2 - 3 days surrounding it are the culmination of a month of partying and are usually very boisterous.

By lucky coincidence, my start date at Gemini was a few days after Dieciocho, practically guaranteeing that we would in Chile for the holiday. That was fine by us; one of the best ways to learn about a culture is to find out exactly how they party and which alcoholic drinks and food are involved. We were told that if we really wanted to celebrate like a Chilean, we should go to the Pampilla, the mother of all parties in Coquimbo. Coquimbo is the next town over from La Serena. It figures quite heavily in many of my pictures; a few years ago the city built a giant sculpture, the “Cross of the Third Millennium” which catches the eye whenever anyone stares out at the Pacific. (David is opposed to “catches the eye”; he thinks it doesn’t convey the magnitude of it’s hideousness, but more on that later).

A picture of Coquimbo and the Cross from La Serena

So what’s the best way to fit in while traveling in the heady, meat-loving culture of Chile; travel with a Vegan! Seriously, our friend Beth (said vegan) just happened to be observing at Gemini and would be in La Serena for the holiday. We were thrilled and offered to take her to the Pompilla, with the warning that it would probably involve eating large quantities of dead animals. Beth was a great sport; she really wanted to go and promised to eat beforehand (granola or whatever poor unsuspecting fruit vegans murder for their breakfast). In all seriousness, she’s our favorite kind of vegan/vegetarian; the kind that will sit happily by eating a tofu burger while we gnaw on pork or beef ribs; the live-and-let-live vegan (shouldn’t that be all of them?)

So, with Beth in tow, we went to the Pompilla. What we thought might be a crazy and drunken party turned out to be a Fair. Rides for the kids, lots of vendors selling stuff, and entire restaurant-like tents set up with giant (GIANT) Parrilladas (see the entry entitled Meat). David walked around for a bit before using his sixth-meat-sense to settle on one. We went inside and sat down and were greeted by a very helpful waiter, who in true Chilean-waiter fashion recommended the most expensive thing on the menu - the “Special Parrilladas”. We had already learned our lesson (again, see Meat) and being as we were without the prerequisite rugby team required to finish such a meal, decided to pass and order something else. In this case, David and I split ONE plate of pork ribs with sides. For Beth, I very helpfully ordered “Pollo sin Pollo” or “chicken without chicken”. This got a surprised look from the waiter (and a hurt look for the griller) but we managed to get it across that Beth didn’t eat meat and just wanted the sides.

Our meat (and veggies) arrived to the table and were, as suspected, fantastic. For some reason the potato salad in Chile is universally awesome. Beth, realizing that her cause was lost, decided to ramp down into plane ole’ vegetarian mode; being a realist, she often does this when traveling abroad. She ate the potato salad and a strange concoction of black beans and raw onions. We did the same and thoroughly enjoyed our meal in the shade of the tent, drinking our sugar sweetened Coke.

The Pompilla in Coquimbo

Our friend Beth

After eating we wondered around the fair. Beth, a semi-professional belly dancer in her spare time (you’ve got to love astronomers!) was thrilled by the variety and inexpensiveness of the jewelry; she bought gifts for friends as well as a plethora of necklaces and rings to finish off some of her elaborate costumes. The most exotic of these was a beautiful copper necklace purchased off of two questionable characters. As our friend Deborah has famously pointed out, there is an inverse relationship between how often a hippie has bathed and how much they want to hug you; these guys were at the rather smelly tail of the hippie distribution. After asking first me and then Beth to marry them, David gallantly pretended to be with both of us to keep us from trouble. This got the response, in Spanish, “You can’t have both!”. To which he replied “I can and I do”. While patently untrue, that got him a little respect and kept Beth and me from getting mauled. After much haggling (in Spanish) and finding out that the copper was from old telephone wires (which made it even cooler), Beth walked away with a stunning, hand-made copper necklace set with a gorgeous natural stone for $15; well worth the hippie-hugs.

After stopping for a bit and snapping pictures of the alpaca, we decided it was time to be heading on our way. We realized that we were probably leaving before the event truly started; it was only 2 pm and the Pompilla wasn’t even close to set up. Later on in the night the partying, with music, dancing, an amusement park for the kids, and lots of food and alcohol, really starts. But we were a little worried about our small car being boxed in by all-night party-goers and Beth had a plane to catch. So we left the Pompilla and headed back to La Serena.

A mountain of cars at the Pompilla

This was far from the end of our day, however. We took Beth to downtown La Serena. While driving around in the rather dead city, we came across the famed Japanese garden, Kokoro No Niwa. We thought that it would be closed for the holiday, but in fact it was open. For $1.20 each, we entered the lovely little haven and spent a while relaxing and snapping pictures (including the obligatory one with the little red bridge. If you don’t take a picture of the bridge, apparently they won’t let you leave).





Beth wanted to see the Plaza de Armas, the center of the city and we obliged. We stopped at a few more vendors, mostly to admire the bargains that we got in Coquimbo. We took pictures of the great water fountain in the Plaza and wondered around the cobblestone alleys of the city before dropping Beth off to the Recinto, where we waited with her for her taxi to the airport.

The beautiful fountain in the Plaza de Armas in La Serena

For most people this would have been an end to a wonderful day; dropping our friend off after an adventure in Coquimbo, a walk in a Japanese garden, and a peaceful, relaxing time in the Plaza de Armas, avoiding small children in motorized Power Wheels who were trying to run us over. But no, the adventure continued after Beth had left town! Stayed tuned for Dieciocho, Parte Dos.

El Gourmet

A tiny little note today
To tell you all of El Gourmet,
A modest bistro right nearby
The headquarters of Gemini

We went for lunch at half past noon,
Which in this land, is much too soon.
But we were hungry, not a shock;
David’s gut was out of stock

Though natives eat at later hours,
We sat and ordered pisco sours
And glanced around the empty room;
Silent as the cliche’ tomb.

What we heard next, did quite astound --
Not half-gnawed words, but complete sound!
Unlike the clipped Chilean lingo
Someone talking like a gringo!

The manager had stopped to chat,
Speaking English, but no expat.
He was friends with our friend James,
So we smiled and exchanged names.

“Juan Pablo - like two Popes of old”
“Michelle and David”, we extolled
He asked us why we were in town
We told him we were settling down!

I replied, with lots of flare:
He’s from Mar-Y-Land...Bel Air
I’m from Jersey, outside Philly,
But now we both reside in Chile!

And with this, his smile grew
We talked and talked, the hour flew
Love of food and wine we share
Soon enough, he grabbed a chair

It nice to have a conversation
With someone from another nation
To hear them talk about their home
And places you “have got” to roam

But in the midst of all the chatter
We forgot a tiny matter
We’d ordered not a single plate
And David’s gut was quite irate!

Juan Pablo knew of just the fix
A menu came and then chopsticks
Asian was the meal du jour
To David’s ill, he had the cure

Carpaccio of salmon first
Pisco then to quench the thirst
A sushi roll, enjoyed sin fork
A plate of gyoza, made of pork

The food was great, which was no shock
The freshest fish, THAT we could grok
Then afterwards, the nicest treat
“Come to my house sometime and eat”

So ends our tale of lunch that day
A grand success we have to say
The best surprise, a “Gourmet” friend
A great way for a meal to end!

Caballos y Bailando

We’d originally thought that we might head to the Japanese Garden today, but just as we were about to leave, my friend Nicole e-mailed us to tell us about an Independence Day celebration in the Parque de Valdivia. The festival promised to have food, costumes, dancing, and a horse show. We figured this would be an ideal way to spend a day, so we asked Nicole for directions to the park and drove to that part of town.

I know Nicole from my past trips to La Serena. She works at CTIO (the other observatory besides Gemini on the Recinto) as the instrument scientist for ISPI, the camera that I used to take a good portion of my thesis data. I originally met her in Scotland when I was there for an SPIE meeting. She’s always been one to cheer me on and she offered me a lot of support when I was struggling with graduate school. I knew that she was an excellent horse rider and I really wanted to see her in action; since she was in the horse portion of the show this seemed like a good opportunity.

The park had soccer fields, a roller hockey rink, and surprisingly, a small zoo. A few cages with a variety of birds and animals were littered around the area - they had among other things, an owl or two, an emu, an ostrich, a peacock and peahen, an eagle, and two large condors. There was also a guanaco, sheep, deer, rabbits, and guinea pigs. After looking around for a few minutes we walked toward the main performance area where groups of children, dressed in a variety of costumes were dancing.

On our way we passed a small area of tents filled with people selling food. We decided to stop for lunch. We bought almuerzo for $2 - one plate of food with salad, pebre, the “best potato salad ever” (according to David), rice with saffron, and a shish kabob. The surprise was that we were handed a real plate and silverware. It’s a nice feeling to walk into a park in the middle of a festival and be trusted not to run off with the dishes.

Food stands at the festival

Traditional Chilean dance

Boys dressed as cabelleros, dancing

We had a great time watching the dancing. We were surprised at the number of boys and teenagers who were dressed up and in the program; our honest thought was that you wouldn’t see either in the US. Perhaps dancing in Chile, which is much more a part of the culture, is considered more macho than it is in the States, which makes it socially acceptable for men and boys to dance without being labeled “sissies”. After a good portion of the dancing was over, a more organized “show” started. This featured a “reenactment” of the defeat of the native Mapuche tribes by the Spanish conquistadors. The dancing was great and the horse-riding conquistadors (including Nicole) were very talented. At one point the horses were galloping extremely fast in a tight ring around the dancing Mapuche; I’m sure it took great skill to make sure no one was trampled!

Conquistadors pursuing the Mapuche

The only part we thought was a tad sketchy was when the Mapuches suddenly (and bloodlessly) “converted” to Christianity and began following a robe- wearing priest. We’re pretty sure the reality was a little less G rated but, well what can one expect. We see the same sort of thing back home. The only US holiday with any mention of Native Americans is Thanksgiving, where we make little kids perform in plays, dress up like Pilgrims and “Indians”, and sit around a table together. I doubt that later on, once the parents go home, teachers make them reenact the Trail of Tears or the Battle of Little Big Horn. The conquerors always tend to gloss over the bloodier parts.

After the reenactment, there was a demonstration with the horses. Five of the riders ran a slalom, scooping up baskets of flowers at the end and distributing them to members of the audience. Next, there was another bit with little kids dancing. At one point, one of the horse riders donned a wolf or dog hat and chased the kids across the field - we had no idea what was going on but it was obviously some fairy tale or tradition and was rather cute. Then, a few teenaged girls and boys did a formal dance in ballroom-style clothing. Afterwards, the young women stayed on the field and partnered with the horse riders in another formal dance. I could imagine that at one time, rich young girls learned these styles of dance in order to be formally presented to society, (but that is just a guess on my part).

Horse rider with basket of flowers

School children dancing

Formal dance with seated rider and young woman

The most impressive bit of horse riding was next. Each rider had one of the past or present flags of Chile (there were several throughout the nation’s history). Carrying the flags, the riders performed all manner of intricate riding patterns including sidestepping the horses in a line, riding in giant figure eights, and crossing each other’s paths at a full gallop. This was my favorite part of the show.

Fancy footwork with flags

Nicole carries one of the early flags of Chile

The riders saved some of the more daring footwork until immediately after shedding the flags. First, they lined the horses up in a horizontal row and rotated the entire line about one end, keeping the horses in formation. Then, (and this was David’s favorite part), the herded a cow around the ring between two of the horses. I thought this was just completely amazing.

The real "cowboys"

At about this time, the show was winding down and my feet were incredibly cold. Knowing that it was getting late and we needed a few things from the grocery store, we decided to leave a bit early.

A “few things from the grocery store” turned into a bit of a challenge as apparently everyone and their hermano shops on Saturday night. We were determined to persevere despite the lines, because we decided that the perfect end to our completely Chilean day would be to make our first pisco sours. This required pisco, limes, sugar, and eggs, in the correct proportion. Of course, “the correct proportion” is a subject of hot debate. After some discussion, we settled on one seemingly reasonable recipe, and after standing in line for about 45 minutes (which required changing lanes 3 times as checkers either closed down right before us or ran into major problems with other customers) we purchased our pisco supplies and headed back to our Apart-Hotel.

Back home, we juiced about 20 limes with David’s new citrus reamer (recently purchased at La Recova), made a simple syrup (our less cook-savvy friends are likely to think this is rocket science or something, really it’s just sugar and water, so calm down), dumped everything into a giant glass filled with pisco, and added an egg white and ice. Unfortunately we were lacking a shaker, so we made due with what we had, which was simply a pitcher. We carefully shook the drink for a while and PRESTO our first pisco sours. For those of you that think the egg white sounds a little gross, you should know that this is what makes the drink so great. When you shake everything, the egg white foams up; when you pour the creation into a glass, you end up with a wonderful froth covering the top of the drink.

For those of you that still think this sounds gross - all we can recommend is that when you come to visit, you close your eyes while we make your drink. We’ll lie and tell you it’s something else, if you like.

If you know anything about making a pisco sour and are wondering where the bitters are, they are sitting on a shelf in the grocery store. The reason for this is that the one drop of bitters that the recipe calls for, which we think is virtually undetectable, costs $6 a bottle, which is more than the pisco costs. We aren’t usually penny pinchers, but this ridiculous. If we have to pick between making more pisco sours and adding one drop of bitters to the few we make, we’ll go with more pisco sours. We think most Chileans would understand (especially since most of the pisco sours we’ve had here in restaurants have also deleted the bitters). We wish we had pictures to show you, but the pisco sours went as fast as they came. You’ll have to come and see us if you want to know what they final product looked like.

Gran Pacifico Apart-Hotel

We found out yesterday that we need to give up our passports for three weeks so that they can be sent off to the Chilean office that will issue us our semi- permanent work and spousal visas. We understood the situation, but being without a passport in a foreign country is not a prospect that sat well with either of us. To remedy the situation, Evelyn suggested making notarized photo copies; for most purposes in Chile, these will act like the real deal and make it easier to replace our original passports if something goes horribly wrong.

To expedite this process, which would be quite hard to do without a Spanish speaker present, Evelyn accompanied us to the notary. The most amusing part of this story -- after poking her head into the notary’s office, Evelyn declared it was “too busy”. Her elegant solution was to walk two buildings down to the SECOND notary office. If this line had been too long, apparently, we would have headed to a THIRD. This row of notaries, unlike anything I’d seen in the US, really nailed home the Chilean love of documentation. At the end of the process we each had a photocopy of our passport with two stamps and an embossment. I considered this to be lucky, as each office had about 100 different stamps and several embossing tools. The fact that none of these places actually had a line of any sort, just a gaggle of people waving paperwork at the counters, was rather an amusing juxtaposition to the orderly and necessary stamps on all our documents.

Other than buying some international stamps and getting our passports notarized, we had a quiet day. We did a little shopping and exploring and then came home to our apart-hotel. Yes, the Gran Pacifico Apart-Hotel. We’re not sure what’s up with this, it seems to be a very Chilean thing to use English words in key places (the Tobacco Shop in the grocery store or The Coffee Shoppe in the mall). An even better idea is (apparently) to combine English words however one likes. We get the impression that the Chileans thought that if a place was half-apartment, half-hotel that Apart-Hotel would work as a descriptor. We’re not quite sure why they didn’t use Apart-otel, Apartel, or the ever popular Homent.

Besides the semi-odd name, we like our place. There is no central heating, just a space heater. The heater has a tank of gas hooked up to. To run it, we pop open the tank, click a button to create a spark, and turn a dial to ramp up the gas. Ceramic tiles capture and re-radiate the heat. The space heater works really well to warm cold feet and the charm of having a metal canister of gas in your home never fades! The real joy was when the very helpful maid left it on while we were away; we were just glad that Puck didn’t catch his tail on fire. Up to that point, we really hadn’t planned to use the thing, but realizing that our house didn’t explode in the 5 hours it was left unattended, we decided to go with the flow - the gas flow that is.

The parents have asked for a “tour” of the place, and so to oblige, we took pictures. Entering the apartment, one immediately hits the kitchen, which is so small it can’t fit a half refrigerator. It has charming curtains which dangle directly into the gas flame, but we have resolved that as best we can. In all seriousness, it’s a fine kitchen to cook simple meals; all that we can really do with our modest “set” of pots and pans (Set being one pot and pan, respectively). In a way, it’s really nice - even if David totals the kitchen it only takes five minutes to clean up! Honestly, I’m just happy to be able to cook at all; eating out every night would be no fun.

Our tiny kitchen is so small...

...the refrigerator has to be in a separate little room!

Next to the kitchen is an empty room. It looks like it could have been a dining room, but I call it the “refrigerator-cat room”. No, we haven’t chilled Puck! We put the cat’s stuff here, as there isn’t a lot of room for it otherwise. The only other thing in the space is the refrigerator that won’t fit in the kitchen.

Next we enter the living/dining room.

The living room


The dining room

The table is just fine, although the chairs are strangely low, making eating a little uncomfortable. Still we enjoy breakfast here every morning. The living room has all-wicker furniture, again, not a favorite, but certainly good enough for sitting and relaxing. The view (which is the picture at the very top) is certainly nothing to scoff at.

Going upstairs, we have a fine bathroom, a “master” bedroom, and a “kids” bedroom. Right now the kids bedroom is being used for our clothes and luggage storage. Meanwhile we are spending most of our time in the master bedroom. It’s the most comfortable room in the house, with a nice view of the ocean.

The very clean, modern bathroom

The master bedroom (and Radar)

Generally, I judge places on their bathrooms. Nicely appointed bedrooms don’t mean much to me if the bathroom is gross. If the bathroom is clean and new, I can forgive poor decor, old carpeting, etc. The bathroom in our apart-hotel is clean, modern, and nice. A few odd things (both David and I can see over the shower curtain bar in the bathtub) but overall, better quality than our bathrooms in Cobblestone. Oh, Gran-Pacific Apart-hotel, your sins have been forgiven!

The view from our bedroom

Puck loves the second bedroom!

From the outside, looking in