Grand Torre Santiago

When I was in Santiago last week serving on a Fulbright selection committee, I took this picture:

I'd seen this building before-well, pretty much you'd be blind to miss it-but was able to get a good picture of it this time. I particularly like the old church in the foreground for a bit of contrast. I found out from Alex Peterson, a Fulbrighter who lives in Santiago this is the tallest building in South America. Notice the sort of fin-like projections at the top? They were put in place Alex said, when it appeared that another building on the continent was going to be taller. I haven't been in the Torre yet, but understand a huge mall is located there. So if the urge to shop in a mall ever hits me (ha!), I'll know where to go.

Our latest little quake in Viña last week was a 4.3, and my 7th floor office swayed rather noticeably. Bet it would be quite interesting to be on the top floor  of the Torre (there are 64 above ground and 6 below ground floors)!

Cédula Purgatory

As I lay in bed this morning, summoning up the will to throw back the covers and let cold air in, the bed began to rock gently. I think the earthquake gods were warning me of a rough day to come. (This particular quake was about 260 k NW of us, and was a 5.4).

I planned on spending the day on a few errands, but the bulk of it was intended for some intensive prep work for the 3 lectures I've been invited to do next week at the University of La Serena. I suggested to Steve we stop and retrieve our cédulas, which we'd spent hours on over a month ago. What's a cédula you ask? It is an identity card. Here's a visual for you. No, ours are not in this bunch.

A Little Background

Up until March of this year, if a tourist entered Chile,  s/he paid a big fat "reciprocity fee." Citizens of certain countries paid, because Chileans needed to pay to enter those countries. Well, since that fee was 160 each, we opted for the route of getting special visas which were free to Fulbrighters and their families. This turned out to be a lot of work, from the 6 hours I spent one Saturday last year scanning and uploading documents to going to the Chilean Consulate in January to formalize things in person. But, the added bonus of this visa was we would not have to leave the county after 3 months in order to come back in to renew as tourists had to. I didn't fancy a long, long bus ride over the Andes in winter to Argentina to renew the regular tourist visas. I thought all my visa work was time consuming, foolish, foolish me. Read on, sweet reader, read on.

And then...

The US added Chile to the visa waiver program, and the damn reciprocity fee was dropped. March 1st. Just days after we entered the country. Oh, and now you can renew the 3 month tourist visa in Chile for 100 bucks, I've heard (please, if you are traveling to Chile and reading this CHECK to find out what applies to you, as requirements change!) so no more going over to Argentina for a re-entry renewal anymore either.

So, you bored yet?

Back to today. We'd taken all required docs to the Civil Registry office at the end of February. Steve and I were able to turn our stuff in, get our fingers scanned etc., but Joel and I had to come back another day. Turned out he needed a set of my documents because he is considered my dependent. Blah, blah, blah. Fast forward to today. We arrive at the Civil Registry office and...you should read Steve's blog for what transpired next. Remember, his link is to the left. After leaving very, very frustrated, I briefly contemplated not doing anything. This was a passing fancy-no way did I want to show up at the airport without required documents.

On to the International Police

Where I found the office I wanted was closed for lunch. It takes about 20-30 minutes to get there, so you can imagine my frustration. I felt like crying, but I didn't. I decided to shake it off-I mean, it was a beautiful, warm sunny day, I know that people get through these hoops all the time...On the way back to the metro, I stopped at a corner store to get some of the photo copies I needed (multiple copies of various pages of my passport). I vented a bit to the nice lady making my copies. She then refused to let me pay, saying she wanted me to have a good impression of Chile. Then I DID get tears in my eyes!

Home and back

Eventually I went home, did a little work, then made the trip back to the PDI. Everything was fixed for free! I actually suspect that the police had screwed this up, something about Steve's and Joel's document dates of entry having to match my dates because they are my official dependents...even though they didn't enter the country with me. Such a mystery this is.

On my way back, I tried to stop by the corner store again, because I'd gotten a small gift for the Nice Xerox Lady, but it was closed. Hopped a bus, started home and WHAM! An SUV hit us. Don't worry no one was hurt. Seriously, at this point I was cracking up. What a crazy day!

The vehicles pulled over. We waited a bit. Gestures were made, phones came out. Everyone got off the bus when they saw another micro pull up about 1/2 a block away. I stood on the sidewalk and watched, since no way did I want to try to smash onto the other very full bus with the rest of the passengers. Suddenly, the driver of my bus waved his passengers to return, everyone ran back from bus number two, we boarded again and even sat in our original seats.

So for those of you imagining that my life is full of adventures here, you are right! Just not the kind of adventures you think. I now have to cancel class Monday morning and return to the Civil Registry again. Wish me luck, I apparently do need it!

oh, and just as I was about to post this, we got a really good shake-I checked the Chile seismology site (ONEMI), and it was listed as a V on the intensity scale. (Moderate, not damage). Not Richter scale up yet, but I'm guessing about a 5.6 or so.

Update:

It was a 5.8 according to ONEMI, centered about and hour and 15 minutes away. USGS said 5.4, but I tend to go with Chile's reporting service. They are closer, and presumably more accurate

Iquique Earthquake and Tsunami Alert, April 1 2014

Thank you to everyone who has asked about how we are doing after hearing about the very strong earthquake 99 kilometers off the coast of northern Chile last night. It registered as 8.2, and was felt over a wide area, including in La Paz, Bolivia. We did not feel it, as we are 1,740 kilometres, or 1, 081 miles away.
Screen shot form USGS, showing the 36 quakes that have happened in the last 24 hours near Iquique:

The first we knew about this was around 9:20 p.m. or so, when we heard an unusual number of fire and police sirens and public announcements out on the street. I said to Steve "Hey, there is something going on", and he checked out the window, but couldn't see anything. We figured there was some sort of ruckus on Alvarez, the street we live on. At the same time, I went online to check my email once more before shutting down before bed, and saw several alerts from the USGS earthquake and tsunami alert service I subscribe to.

When we saw how big the quake was, and that a tsunami warning had been issued, I sent an email which some of you got, letting you know we were fine. At the same time, the inter-building phone rang, and we were told to go to the 25th floor, where there is a roof deck. So we got Joel up, I grabbed our emergency bag, a blanket and my computer, and off we went. It was a beautiful night, clear and fairly warm, as we gathered with other folks from lower floors to wait and see what would happen.

After watching the view and activity on the street for a while, I went down to the 15th floor where Tim, another Fulbrighter and his girlfriend Melanie live. They invited us in, and we spend about 45 minutes with them, watching reports and looking online to find out what was going on. We went back downstairs around 10:30 when it became clear that the tsunami was very small in our area, and was confined to the beach.

We are about 10 blocks away from the ocean, and Alvarez slopes up to where our building is (Alvarez, 132, if you want to google map it) Our place is on the 4th floor, which is actually above where water can reach. I believed I discussed my reasons for choosing this area in a previous post: It is close to Joel's school and at the very edge of the inundation zone, where water levels would reach about a 3 feet if there were a large tsunami.

Classes were suspended for today everywhere along the coast, including my university and Joel's school. This may seem strange, as the threat of a tsunami is over. But from what I understand, this was done soon after the warnings, when people were ordered to evacuate. At that point, not much was known as to the size of the tsunami, so better to simply cancel and wait and see.

So this morning, we went off the the fish dock, as we'd planned, with Joel in tow. We suspected the local fishermen would not have been out, since they fish at night and bring their catch in early in the morning. This did prove to be the case, everything was very quiet at Portales today. There was one merchant open, and we bought some of the fish that is trucked in daily from other places. The highlight of the trip was taking the fish heads and guts after our fish were cleaned for us, and feeding them to the sea lions that were in the ocean under the dock. I've heard that on a typical day, barrels of fish guts go over the edge of the pier. No wonder the sea lions hang out there! Take a look at Steve's blog link later, as he got some pictures of the mini feeding frenzy we created.

So, all in all, the whole country is breathing a huge sigh of relief. If the quake had been about 30 miles closer, we would have been dealing with a terrible tragedy.

Shake, rattle and roll

Before this morning, the last earthquake I felt was several years ago in the middle of the night in Peoria, when a fairly strong quake occurred in southern Illinois. I thought Steve was snoring then, and poked him until the bed stopped vibrating. There was no mistaking what woke us up at 1:37 a.m. this morning for snoring. It was a 5.3 or 5.4, depending on what website you look at. The epicenter was fairly close, only about 30 minutes from here, and it went on for about 10 seconds which got our attention, but was over before we got out of bed. Joel slept through it!

I took my camera to school today so I could get a few pictures around campus.

Here's a picture of the front gate-fairly unassuming looking place from this side.

But behind the school, there is a lovely lagoon (lake). These next pictures were taken from the balcony on the seventh floor of my building, which is where my office is. The first is looking across to the Sausalito Stadium. Viña is a sister city to Sausalito, CA, and named the area where my campus is for that town.

The next picture down shows the new skate-board park on campus. There are also two new grass tennis courts, and a soccer field. None of these seem to be open yet.

A little cat I've seen a couple of times in the same spot, across the street from campus, where I wait for my colectivo in the afternoons. 

 And right next door, another one: