Monday, Monday (It doesn't even feel like Monday)

I am afraid breakfast here is going to get old; they have the same things every day: eggs with ham, bread and sandwich meat, a selection of native fruits (which are actually really good), yogurt, cereal, and two choices of jugos. After breakfast, we waited for a half an hour for our bus to show up, but even with that delay, we were ten minutes early to our first appointment.

The first stop was the Emiliana Vinyards, which is an organic vineyard focusing on natural ways to bring out the best flavors out of the grapes. It was actually really cool, the very little we saw of it. They have 1000 jectors (2.5 acres per jector) total, but only some part of that in this particular valley. They focus on biodynamic farming, which means they try and create their own ecosystem that is especially designed to naturally enhance the grapes. They own animals like chickens, alpacas, horses, sheep, etc., which they use the manure to fertilize the plants; they grow special flowers in special areas, harvest them, then treat them a certain way with the fertilizer to help boost the compost; they believe that the human component is also important, so they have a community garden they allow their employees to tend and other projects to take on. For example, they make organic wool from the alpacas, and cheese and chocolate from milk and cocoa, and other side projects. I was hoping they would let us take some sips of wine, but the school cannot buy alcohol, so we just had cheese and chocolate. The coolest part of the vineyard was the propellers scattered throughout the fields; they use them to prevent freezing when the valley gets too cold.

We hopped back on the bus and drove another hour-ish to the beautiful port city of Valparaíso. We did a semi-bus tour of the city; we got there, then drove to the top of the hills and walked down aways. The view was beautiful! The sky was very blue, lined with colorful houses. We would catch glimpses of the ocean as we weaved through the streets of stone. We walked a historic route (I don’t really know why it’s historic or popular. There wasn’t really that much besides a neat view and a strange house), then took this rickety elevator, met back up with our bus, and drove to lunch.

The restaurant was also high in the hills surrounding the mar, but on the other side. We had a super delicious meal. We had chirimolla, which is a fruit drink that I don’t like very much, but is very common, ceviche, which is fish cured in lemon juice, a mahi mahi filet, and a muy rico desert, but I cannot remember the name of it. It had the consistency of jello and pudding babies, covered with raspberries and raspberry sauce with a stick of dark chocolate.  I saw the bill (the school paid for the meal), and it was about $50 a person for the 3 courses. BUT IT WAS SO GOOD.

I bet that we will spend more time than we would like to on the bus. We traveled for another hour to Quillota, which is a quiet agricultural area. We met an awesome hombre who owns and runs the family avocado farm. They talked about their investments, their growth process, and their challenges in the market. It was cool to just ask questions of an entrepreneur who works hard everyday to make sure they can support them selves and those they employ.  I really enjoyed that visit.

When we were at the Emiliana vinyards, we had a professor from La Universidad Catolica de Valparaíso join us. He looks just like the professor from Jurassic Park, and we sang the theme song and made raptor noises all day. He facilitated the tour of the avocado farm, then took us to his center where he does his research. He is a leader of innovation. He has developed a system and methodology to encourage a culture of innovation. At first, his lecture about his work seemed socialistic (which stuck with most of the others in the group), but after he explained more, it really just seemed like a way of facilitating the creation of new ideas, which I really liked. He is currently working in horticulture, but in the past, he worked with traffic planners implementing his system. The details are too boring for a blog post, but I really enjoyed what he had to say. It was way bad timing though. It was the end of a very long day, it was dark (because it’s almost the longest day up top, it’s almost the shortest day down here), and we were all tired and wanted to get to our hotel. We graciously listened, graciously ate his cookies and juice, graciously used his bathrooms, then graciously left without getting attacked by dinosaurs.

We piled on the bus with about two hours ahead of us before we made it back to the hotel. We were maybe a half an hour into it when we heard a loud BANG and a bump, signaling that a tire had blew. We pulled over, and the inside of the driver’s dually had popped. I’m not sure why they didn’t just drive on it, but they pulled us out of the bus on the side of the interstate and changed the tire. It was way fun though. Because it was unplanned, we were able to loosen up and just mingle with everybody. The best part was that we were able to see the night sky! That was one of my goals while we were out here! I wanted to look and see how different it was not having familiar constellations and stars to point out. It was so beautiful! We were in the middle of nowhere, so there were no lights except from the cars on the autopista. The stars shone in no peculiar fashion, but it was awesome to just partake and bask in the fact that I am on the other side of the world. The most famous constellation in the southern hemisphere is the Southern Cross, which hotdog way points north and south, and hamburger way points east and west. You can only see it south of the equator, which makes it special to be here.

The bus was fixed, the drive was taken, and now the beds are calling. I stayed up way later than I should have, but our group is getting really close, and I love to be a part of it. (Pictured: Me, Nate, Natalie, Erin (ha sorry), Shannon, Susana)