16 August 2010

Chao Chile!

Well I’m back in the U.S. now after leaving Chile last night. The last week there I spent finishing up some work and helping Monica out with her coruro trapping. I got to handle two coruros one day!

Last day at Rinconada

Also, on Wednesday was Monica’s birthday, so a bunch of us went out to dinner at a nice

restaurant called De Cangrejo a Conejo (from crab to rabbit). I had a really yummy crab meat and cheese bake thing.

Mmmmm. Other than that, this week I bought some souvenirs and lots of cookies to bring home, and revisited some of my favorite places in the city. Saturday night we went out to Tiramisú for my last night, and I got the bacon and egg pizza again (yum!) and we all shared a supercopa and another ice cream dessert.

Super good! Sunday morning we all went to visit La Chascona, Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago. It was also very eclectic, but sadly many of the original items etc. were destroyed by the military coup. Definitely worth the visit, but I think La Sebastiana is my favorite. The other girls are going to try visit Isla Negra (his third house in Chile) and it is supposed to be beautiful also. Oh, and Saturday night Juliano was back and we took some photos with him and I said goodbye!

And now I am Raleigh, NC getting ready to start my master’s program. It’s definitely going to be an interesting transition coming from Chile. I already miss Santiago and everyone there. They promised to skype me a lot so we can have Martín Rivas book club some more. And if the actors from Martín Rivas come to Tina’s birthday party (long story) I might have to go back!!! Until next time!

10 August 2010

Weekend in Valparaíso! So this past weekend Tina, Rachel, and I decided to take a trip to Valparaíso, about an hour outside of Santiago, on the coast. We took a bus from Santiago on Saturday morning and got there around 11am. It was so beautiful! Very different from Santiago! It is a port town right on the ocean, and it is made up almost completely of small hills, which are covered in colorful houses. When we got there we rode the funicular up the cerro(hill) that the hostel we were staying at. Super nice hostel!!!

It had a nice shared living area with a fireplace, a kitchen/dining area, and nice outdoor patio thing too! Anyways so we dropped off our things there and spent the morning/afternoon wandering around the city – lots of stair climbing was involved. We stopped for lunch at a cute café and then were persuaded into buying ice cream cones by the nice lady handing out samples. It was so good!!! We spent more of the afternoon wandering around and buying a few souvenirs,

then later had dinner at a restaurant called Vinilo which had some pretty good authentic “Chilean” food. Tina thought it would be fun to order codorniz relleno de queso Philadelphia y membrillo (quail stuffed with cream cheese and quince) which turned out to be smaller than we expected…so we pretty much laughed about it all through dinner. It had such tiny wings!!! Hahahahaha. Sunday we got up and went to see La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda’s house in Valpo. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside, but it was awesome! Very colorful and full of fun/strange stuff that Neruda collected.

Then we went to lunch at a Thai restaurant (OMG YUM) and afterwards headed back to Santiago. Sunday night we had a going away dinner for Michael at Tiramisú (with supercopas of course!)because he left on Monday. ¡Que triste! We will all miss you Michael! Good luck at school!

9 August 2010

As promised, a blog about the animals in Fray Jorge!!! First and foremost, of course, were the degus that we were trapping and studying while staying at the park. For an awesome explanation of the actual work we did, see Rachel's blog on the subject. Degus are the cutest!

However, everyone had been telling us about an animal called the abrocoma (or chinchilla rat) that was the calmest wild animal ever, (plus really cute!),

so everyday we were hoping to catch one of those as well. About the second week at Fray Jorge we were lucky enough to catch one!! And Rachel, Tina, and I spent about 30 minutes holding it and taking photos. It was definitely the calmest wild animal I have ever seen, it would just sit in our hands and let us pet it and cuddle it! Pretty much the best thing ever!

One of the last days we were trapping we managed to catch a number of different things, including degus, some birds, a small mouse, and a nother rodent which we couldn't identify. At the time we thought it was just a small mammal that we were unfamiliar with, it looked a bit like a mix between a

degu and an abrocoma, and we just took some

photos and let it go. However, after showing the photos to a number of people, we still aren't really sure what it was, so we call it the "degrocoma" (degu + abrocoma). It was bigger than a degu or abrocoma and it had huge ears that were flat against its head. Anyone have any ideas?

Another thing that we were really excited about (of course)

were the guanacos!! They are wild ungulates related to llamas and are somewhat elusive. Many visitors to the park do not see any guanacos, as there are only two small groups of them along with a few solitary individuals. So lucky people that we were, we saw guanacos all of the time!!! One of the first times we saw the guanacos close up, they were across the valley from us at our study site, and two of them actually ran across the valley towards us! So exciting! After that we made jokes about the guanacos planning attacks against us, until Juan told us that guanacos have actually attacked people. Then I was a little

more wary of them...

Other than that we saw lots of zorro (foxes),

other birds, and lizards, including this one that lived under our house!

August 3rd 2010

Wow!!! About time for an update! Well we arrived back in Santiago on Friday night after a succesful 2.5 weeks collecting data at Fray Jorge National Park. We managed to accomplish everything we had set out to do, and definitely had lots of fun doing it! There is definitely too much to put in one blog post, so I will likely stretch it out over a few. And of course, I took TONS more photos that won't all fit on here, but you can check out my facebook album.

So the group of us that traveled to Fray Jorge was Loren, Raúl, Rachel, Tina, and me. We stayed in the park the whole time at a cabin used by many biological researchers. Most of the time that we were there, another man who worked at the park, Juan, was also staying in the cabin with us. And he was the best cook ever!!!! He would cook for us all the time and then we would gobble down the food in seconds. The last night we were there he made the best fried fish EVER that we are going to attempt (and probably fail) to recreate at home.

The park was also beautiful, and we definitely the warmer weather there as compared to here in Santiago. Our study area was in the semi-arid part of the park and it would get pretty warm in the afternoons (perfect for naps between telemetry rounds). We spent a few days capturing and collaring degus, and then about a week of telemetry and afterwards another few days of trapping to recover collars. I will probably have a separate a blog just for all of the animals there! Hmm anyways we have a lot of catching up to do, but we finally have internet in our apartment! So hopefully more blog updates soon. I can't believe I have less than two weeks left here :( It has gone by so fast!