Tales

15 February

We arrived in Punta Arenas yesterday.  We had to wake up and leave the farm at about 6 AM, drive an hour to the airport, return the rental car and board a  plane.  We vastly over estimated how long that would take us to accomplish, because Chileans don’t really seem to get moving until about 10 AM. So even being in a big city, and a big airport, things didn’t really open until about 930.  

We have attempted to adapt to the Chilean time schedule, and have done pretty well. The kids now regularly sleep until 830 or 900 am.  We often don’t eat dinner until eight at night. We have even instituted the idea of a “siesta” instead of a “nap”, which the kids embrace fondly.  I suspect this is some language that will follow us home, because a siesta sounds much less threatening than a nap. The reasons for this are unclear to me.

At any rate, the siesta is strong here. Less so than our brief time in Argentina, but still strong. Shops are often closed in the late afternoon and do not open until five or six. Restaurants sometimes don’t open until eight at night for dinner.

Aaron and I have been reading “In Patagonia”.  Our friend loaned us the hard copy before we left, but we didn’t bring it because we just didn’t understand until we got here. So we bought the e-book. We have been going chapter by chapter, and I am enjoying the travel log style. Though it reminds me that there are some smaller taIes I have not yet shared here on this blog.  In no particular order:

1. A couple weeks ago, at the farm, Aaron was really wanting a haircut. One evening we went for dinner at a buffet style restaurant in Ensenada. I think we were actually part of the lunch crowd, because it was about 530, though we considered it dinner. Our server rushed over a little after we were seated, because he was told “there are gringos here”.  He spoke excellent English, so he must have been the go-to.  He apologized, saying he was in the middle of a haircut, because a hair stylist comes once a month from Puerto Varas to give all the staff haircuts. Aaron joked that he needs a haircut, so he understands, and our server suggested he go sit with the hairstylist as well.  So we ended our meal with the kids playing outside, while Aaron got a haircut in the corner. Of course our children ruined some of this by dumping sand in a pool they found outside. Nothing goes that smoothly.  Not to mention the dachshund that tried to bite our kids in he restaurant who th owner SWORE was 20 years old.
2. Our last week at the farm we met a lovely couple from Santiago. They had three children, roughly 11, 8 and 4.  They invited us for dinner twice in the week they were there.  They both spoke good English and endured our attempts at Spanish.  It was so wonderful to just chat with friendly people about this country we’ve spent the last 1.5 months in.  We could ask all our questions about the education system, health care, poverty, etc.  During our conversation, hubs figured out that the nickname he’d chosen for himself in Spanish class back in high school,Mongo, which he has occasionally used here because the locals find his given name difficult to pronounce, is basically a rude word for “slow one” in Spanish.  Gabi and Rodrigo, our Chilean friends, could barely speak they were laughing so hard while they explained this to us.  We also talked at great length about how odd we find each other’s dinner times, and when Rodrigo talked amazedly about a work trip to the US where there was a dinner held at 5:30, I may have blushed when confessing that would be my preferred time to eat, or even earlier.
3. I’m sure there are more small stories.  Such as when we asked MJ what the branches of the military are and she said “the Air Force,  the Army, the Military and the Life Guards.  I will endeavor to keep writing them down.