A Wild Adventure North

It was great to have Nana, Sally and the kids, and Jan come and visit us for a week. We sure had a lot of good laughs and some very memorable adventures.

All but Jan arrived on Saturday morning and the first thing the kids did was head right for the pool. Temperatures in Chicago were still hovering around zero; notice the big smiles on those formerly-frozen faces. Then we enjoyed a lunch of typical Chilean food: empanadas and pastel de choclo, washed down with some delicious all-natural fruit juices: frutilla, melón, piña, and chirimoya. That night our friend Paola (a.k.a. the bird lady) came to brief us on the exciting trip we would soon be taking to the third region in the north of the country, to the coastal desert. Here's her website which explains this and other trips she leads around Chile: www.meteoritos.cl/naturalista. She showed us a powerpoint about the small fishing village of Caleta de Chañaral where we would be staying and photos of some of the wildlife we could expect to see. I have always wanted to see whales and when I heard that a large group of them had recently been hanging out near the village I became very hopeful. And I can still remember seeing Lucas' face light up when he saw the photo of the penguins that breed on the nearby island we would be visiting. Lucas, my nephew, has a special interest in penguins, and when I learned they would be coming to visit us in Chile I specifically worked out this trip with him in mind. After Paola's presentation we were all real fired up about our trip the next day. Now we just had to hope that Jan would indeed arrive in time. As an employee of United, she travels stand-by and was supposed to have arrived on Friday but had still not made it.

Well, happily Jan did arrive on time and we set off late Sunday morning in the big, white van, luggage piled high and the radio blasting our traveling theme song: "We're Not the Jet Set", sung by John Prine and Iris DeMent. It was so nice having my mom, sister, niece and nephew, and friend/sister Jan with me in Chile after all these months living away from home; we were all so excited to be together, our exhuberance showed in our singing and laughing.

We made a stop in Los Vilos for a picnic lunch looking out at the sea. I remembered having read about Los Vilos as the small beach town in northern Chile where, incredibly, three different sets of deciduplets had been born to three different families. Imagine our surprise when, sitting there on the coast enjoying our lunch, whom should we see but the infamous youngsters walking by. The three ladies with the thirty children, all boys and many dressed alike, were truly quite a sight. Jan and Sally just stared, mouths agape. Now, don't tell me you're as gullible as Jan and my sister!!

It was on to La Serena to a beautiful hacienda-style hotel where we would stay the night before setting off for the fishing village. La Serena is a nice seaside city that I would someday like to return to and spend more time there. But I will insist on ordering my own dinner, thank you. No intermediaries, like the ever-helpful woman from the hotel, who turned the simple task of ordering a meal into a comedy befitting the Three Stooges. Even with her "help" (or perhaps as a result of it), Sarah's vegetarian spinach ravioli arrived with very detectable portions of meat inside. The waiter persisted in denying there was any carne in her ravioli until we dissected it in front of him, showing him the not-so-small morsels of meat. Ordering a vegetarian meal in Chile is, like so many other things, un poco complicado.

The landscape was slowly changing. We were headed to the third region, the transitional zone known as el norte chico (the little north). Several hours further north was el norte grande (the great north), where the landscape would change further becoming the Atacama Desert, the driest place on our planet, where there is no plant life to speak of. Here, in the third region, we saw the copiapóa cactus, an endangered species, in bloom. I would love to see this desert sometime in full flower, a sight of breathtaking beauty I am told happens every four or five years. On a pit stop along the road, one of us got very intimate with a cactus when, losing her balance while in a rather precarious position, she fell right into the unforgiving plant. It sure looked funny, but having to pick several needles out of her arms, we quickly stifled our laughter. Also, it was here that we got stuck in the sand with the van. I wasn't sure we were going to get over the hill and to the village. Paola and Rodrigo were in one four-wheel drive jeep, and another couple who were to be our guides and cooks on the trip, Andrea and Pablo, were in another jeep and making it through the sand with little difficulty. Our big van, however, got to some very loose, sandy terrain where it just spun its wheels. Just another of those priceless moments when our guests could be heard muttering, "This is more than I bargained for!"

Finally, we did arrive to our cabin near the sea and, after enjoying a nice meal at the restaurant a few steps from our cabin, wasted no time in going out to the water to explore. Luckily we had our invaluable guide Paola who, besides being an ornithologist, is also a biology teacher, and was able to help point out all sorts of interesting creatures. Some were so tiny we would have missed them completely, like the baby crab the size of the tip of your finger. She also showed us shark eggs, starfish, sea anemone, and beautiful birds, such as the oyster catcher, kelp gull and snowy egret, as we waded out through the chilly water and dense seaweed to a little island. While we went exploring, Andrea and Pablo were setting up their camp, and Rodrigo, after slipping into his wet suit, went, spear in hand, and submerged himself in the water. A couple of hours later, as we were returning from our explorations, Rodrigo was just coming out of the water with about six good-sized fish tied to a line.

That night we enjoyed a delicious dinner of ceviche, potatoes, salad and the fresh catch of the day. Looking up at the night sky we couldn't believe how clear it was and how many stars could be seen. Rodrigo pointed out the Southern Cross to us. Like our Big Dipper in the north, this is the constellation used to get your bearings in the southern hemisphere. He showed us how to follow the stars in the cross which point to the south. Due to the clear skies in this part of the country and the sparse population, several internationally renowned observatories are located not far from here. Before returning home from this trip up north, we made a late-night visit to one, Mamalluca, and saw an incredible view of Saturn through the telescope there.

The next morning we awoke, not knowing what a fantastic boat ride was in store for us that day. The nine of us and Paola boarded the little fishing boat with our captain and his first mate. We were afraid Nana's back wasn't going to hold up on the three-hour ride out to sea, so we put one of our beach chairs between two rows of benches, and there she sat like Cleopatra traveling down the Nile.

Not an hour into our trip, we began to see whales, not far off in the distance but swimming all around us! The captain cut the motor and we would sit in the middle of the sea in total silence, waiting until suddenly a huge whale would surface nearby, a giant spray of water shooting out of his blow-hole. One swam right under us, through the clear water I could see him, two or three times the size of our boat. Another surfaced and swam a bit right alongside us, not five feet away. And yet another swam up and did a flip out of the water over onto his belly, right in front of us. There were probably a dozen whales in the vicinity, putting on a spectacular show for us that I'm sure none of us will ever forget; it was simply magical.

From there we went on to Isla Chañaral and circled it, as sea lions and dolphins playfully checked us out. The island is a National Wildlife Reserve, and people are not allowed to disembark. As a result, of course, the island is teeming with wildlife, undisturbed by humans. On the island we saw the shy Humboldt Penguins (Lucas' favorite!), who would start to waddle away as soon as our boat approached, and also a massive colony of sea lions. I can still remember first hearing the roaring sound of those sea lions and then, as we rounded the bend, the sight of the entire side of the island covered with them. They were fascinating to watch: some sliding down into the water while others struggled to make their way up, pairs of the thick-necked males fighting, an area that appeared to be the day care: several female sea lions looking on at a whole pile of young pups (literally, a pile, with some stacked on top of others). Everyone agreed, this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Click here to see videos of the whales and sea lions we saw:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/SeaCreatureVideos

Click here to view more photos from this trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/TripNorthWithFamily