Tales of an accidental backpacker

I´ve been wearing the same shoes every day for nearly six weeks. A pair of hiking boots. When I tie the laces a puff of dust releases into the air. These boots have crossed the world´s driest desert, squashed through muddy jungle, sunk into pampa swamps, braved the frenetic streets of South American metropolises and trekked around some of the world´s highest mountains.

In the past 40 days I´ve learned that it´s possible to live with only two pairs of jeans and two T-shirts. I´ve gotten used to the way my face looks without make-up. My daily routine no longer includes body lotion and perfume. I´ve forgotten how my hair feels when blown out long and smooth with a hair dryer. I´ve gone days without encountering a mirror. Or checking my e-mail or logging on Facebook.

My eyebrows need tweezed, my hair is desperate for a conditioning and my cuticles are a disaster. My back aches from lugging around my heavy backpack, which contains my current livelihood and I therefore protect at all costs. After weeks of traveling between 2,500 and 5,000 meters above sea level, I´m used to gasping for breath. My once oily skin is dry, and my once voluminous hair is almost flat in the thin, dusty air.

Yet through all of this I´ve never gone to bed without washing my face, brushing my teeth, and God bless my orthodontist, putting in my retainers. Sometimes that meant splashing river water on my face, getting out my toothbrush in bus station bathrooms splattered with vomit and diarrhea or scrubbing my retainers in a possibly snake-infested jungle fountain. And, may my dermatologist read this, I never stepped out into the oppressive mountain sun without lathering myself in sunblock and even donning an embarrassing safari hat I bought in the black market on the streets of La Paz before a spontaneous jungle expedition.

I can´t remember bathrooms with toilet paper and soap or with doors that even shut, besides lock. I sigh with relief if water actually flows from the faucet, always cold. I´ve accepted that sometimes baño means a hole in the ground with two footprints in front. I automatically hold my breath when I enter a bathroom and come out breathless like I´ve just finished a sprint. I´ll have to train myself to flush toilet paper again instead of tossing it in an overflowing basket.

Hot showers are a luxurious surprise. A hot shower with good pressure is an extravagance that I´ve encountered only once on this journey. I try to recall what it was like to drink water safe from the tap or buy produce from the market without fearing for my health. Or to accept change without worrying that it´s counterfeit.

I´ve learned to wash my socks and underwear in hostel sinks. I´ve discovered that almost no price is ever fixed, whether it´s a hostel, tour or earrings. I´m now wise enough to request a seat toward the front of the bus after suffering nights bouncing over the wheel on unpaved roads with cold air and exhaust fumes blowing in from the iced-over window that wouldn´t close. And I´ve found out that even if I have my bus ticket, I won´t be allowed to board unless I´ve paid for the right to access the terminal.

I wake up between 6 and 7:30 a.m., sometimes as early as 3 a.m. if an excursion requires it. I go to bed between 9 and 10 p.m., sometimes as early as 7:30 p.m. if I´m exhausted and there´s no electricity. My typical breakfast is bread and jam. My budged lunch and dinner usually consist of soup followed by rice, potatoes and chicken. (However, I tried llama in San Pedro de Atacama and ate lots of fried bananas in Bolivia.)

Every meal is served with coca tea, made from the same leaves as cocaine but sharing none of the illicit drug´s affects. (The people in this part of the world have been planting, chewing and drinking the plant for thousands of years, believing it to possess dozens of medicinal benefits essential for the hostile, high altitude conditions.)

I shake my head at the realization that I´ve been traveling through South America with a backpack for more than a month. It will be 42 days when I fly back to Santiago. Eighteen of them alone. I´ve been in three countries, 12 cities, 14 beds and one tent. I´ve suffered bone-chilling zero-degree temperatures with blustering winds on desert nights and steamy, 90-degree jungle days. I´m 1,667 miles from my home in Valparaíso, Chile with more than 900 photos on my camera´s memory card. I´ve had conversations with people from Sweden, Bolivia, Austrailia, Peru, New Zealand, Chile, Austria, Canada, Germany, England, Poland, France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Japan, Belgium, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Israel, the Czech Republic and Brazil.

I crossed the world´s driest desert in a jeep. I went into the jungle. I traveled down the world´s most dangerous road. I´ve seen geysers, volcanoes, lakes of every color, deadly mines, ancient ruins, pampas, some of the world´s highest mountains and deepest canyons and the world´s largest salt flat. I´ve rafted on canyon rivers, trekked in the Cordillera Blanca, canoed on tropical lakes and mountain biked in the Andes.

I visited villages where electricity and running water have yet to arrive, where mules are used for transport and radios for communication. Communities where Spanish is a second language, if spoken at all, and Aymara and Quechua peoples still hold true to their pre-Inca and Inca dress, food and faith.

In six weeks I´ve had no less than five adventures of a lifetime. Please don´t think I´m bragging. I´m just in awe of my blessings. I´m fully aware that I´m utterly unworthy of any of this -- I´m not especially daring or outgoing. I wear makeup and love shopping and read fashion magazines. I don´t know East from West and bought my first big backpack on the street in Chile two days before I left.

Nothing was planned. This has been an unanticipated, undreamed of gift, the most spectacular trip I´ve experienced thus far, just in time for my quarter-of-a-century birthday.

And now I´m left the unrelenting urge to tell you all about it.

A weekend in El Norte Chico: The mystical Valle de Elqui

En el valle de Elqui, ceñido
de cien montañas o de más,
que como ofrendas o tributos
arden en rojo y azafrán

I turned in a 10-page analysis on Gabriela Mistral’s poetry the week after I explored the Elqui Valley where the Nobel-Prize winning poet grew up. The narrow slice of paradise protected by looming desert mountains on either side inspired dozens of her poems. Although Mistral left behind her humble beginnings in rural South America to travel the world as a foreign diplomat and live in Madrid, Nice, Naples, Lisbon and Santa Barbara, she insisted that the grand azure sky, oppressive sunshine and voluptuous figs of her childhood home would always define her.

The Elqui Valley is in Chile’s Norte Chico, or “Little North,” about six hours up from the port of Valparaíso. In the lush basin farmers harvest a mouthwatering list of produce including avocados, papaya and olives. The sunny skies drenching the vineyards make for the sweetest grapes in the country, ideal for the production of the national drink, pisco (similar to brandy).

 
The air in the sleepy towns of Pisco Elqui and Vicuña smells sweet. The fragrance drifts from the tiny, juicy grapes drooping down the terraces and the mandarins adorning the trees. Coral and amethyst blossoms and golden leaves punctuate the rugged, sandy panorama. The strong sunlight casts a warm glow on the rugged landscape and the rustic steeples. And speaking of steeples, the buttercup yellow church with aqua trim in the flourishing main plaza of Pisco Elqui is storybook perfection. I found myself comparing the tranquil and mystical atmosphere to New Mexico -- The two regions share colonial and adobe architecture, lots of cacti and a majestic mountain panorama. 

In both towns my friends and I, an exchange student from South Dakota and a couple from Versailles, France, lingered over the spread of artesenia in the markets, boutiques and sidewalks. I'm currently obsessed with stocking up on woolen winter accessories hand knitted with fleece from Chile’s sheep farms. But instead of cold weather gear I picked out a pair of delicate lapislázuli dangles, the semi-precious gem mined in Chile similar to turquoise but royal blue. I resisted the urge to buy a jar of papaya marmalade or manjar with walnuts but finished off a half-kilo bag of raisins, which were mouth-puckeringly sweet dried grapes just plucked from the vine, stems and all.

The region’s clear skies (averaging more than 300 sunny days a year) make it a choice destination for the highest-tech U.S. and European astronomical observatories, where astrophysicists make the majority of current discoveries. We toured the Mamalluca site because it offers night stargazing to the public. It's the most visited facility despite being one of the oldest and smallest because of its accessibility. The big-time observatories open occasionally for daytime (No looking at stars! I was so disappointed when I called.) tours that must be booked months in advance. 

 

Our little guide left us all dumbfounded with a Powerpoint presentation on the vastness of the universe and the mortality of our solar system, making me nostalgic for my two semesters of honors astronomy with my genteel NASA-employed physics professor. Then he made Star Wars Jokes after we climbed upstairs to take turns peering into the telescopes for glimpses of Saturn’s rings, galactic clumps and details of the lunar surface. Outside we shivered in the damp night air and contemplated the unfamiliarity of the Southern Hemisphere sky. I'd just spotted the Southern Cross when we had to descend the hill early after a veil clouds suddenly concealed the stars.

Our last day we toured a garden-like pisco factory deep in the midst of beige, leviathan mountains with snow-crusted peaks in the distance before returning to our home base La Serena two hours away. La Serena is a pleasant colonial city known for Chile’s oldest, most elegant churches and breezy beaches. That night on the overnight bus trip home our bus broke down. We were stuck from 4 to 7 a.m. in the middle of a desolate nowhere, with rugged coastline on our left and sandy hills dotted with cacti on our right. 


... Now that I'm reading up for my upcoming trip to Bolivia I think the delay was a warm up for the misadventures to come in the true Third World.

Falling for Chile

El Cajón de Maipo -- outside Santiago. Whenever I have a rough day, I look back on these past (almost!) three months and remember why I can't stay mad at Chile.

Welcome to the World of Rotary: Service Above Self

The gray-haired Chilean man with round glasses stepped down from the podium and thrust the microphone in my face. I sat in the front of the ballroom of the Hotel Militar Coraceros, behind a long table with a plate of half-eaten noodle casserole with breadcrumb topping in front of me. I nervously tapped the binder of class notes at my feet. A visiting Rotary International director from Tucson was set to present a complex earthquake fund proposal heavy with Rotary jargon. He wanted me to translate. I looked into the crowd of men in suits and gulped. “Gracias,” I began. 

My Rotary host counselor Dan Luis Martinez invited me to the Viña del Mar club lunch meeting a week earlier. I’d prepared a photo-heavy PowerPoint presentation, which I'd saved it to my Macbook. I’d toted the laptop on the wild bus ride and up the steep hill to my class in Sausalito that morning. Several of the students glanced at me when I walked in the classroom that morning dressed in black pants, ballerina flats and a pink sweater that stood out among the Chilean college student uniform of distressed jeans, destroyed sneakers and bomber jackets. 

I slipped out early to walk down the hill to the Rotary meeting conveniently located 10 minutes away in a hotel on a quiet leafy street in Viña, a new location due to earthquake damages in their traditional meeting spot. I entered the lobby and tracked down my counselor in the crowd of mingling men in suits. I quickly realized that I was the only woman present among the dignified men, average age 75. 

 

A waiter passed around a tray of drinks, and I passed up the pisco sour for what looked like a fancy latte. The circle of men surrounding me quickly warned me that it contained alcohol. While the men sipped their drinks my host counselor introduced me to the president of one of the many clubs in Valparaíso. The gracious gentleman invited me attend one of his club meetings. Next the district governor handed me his card and offered to help me with anything I needed during my stay in Chile.   

The friendly Rotarians dialed up their hearing aids and practiced their English with me, asking me where I was from and what I was studying. They wanted me to meet the Rotary International director  visiting Chile from Arizona. All the while I engaged in the Rotary custom of exchanging cards with everyone I met. (Thanks to my Charleston sponsor club for giving me a stack of beautiful, professional business cards!)

Some of the Rotarians suggested I get in touch with the Valparaíso Rotaract club. I actually made contact with the group, a Rotary sponsored served organization for young people, before I left the States. I’m looking forward to meeting with them Friday evening and adding a Rotary-affiliated service project to my current volunteer activities at La Católica. 

After the three-course lunch the members stood to sing the solemn Rotary anthem. The meeting commenced with a presentation on community projects from the youngest member present. Afterward they asked me to stand and briefly introduce myself before the other American's presentation.

I thanked them for the invitation and expressed how grateful I was to finally get in touch with Rotary and how blessed I feel to be given this opportunity to study in Chile this year through the generosity of Rotary. In conclusion I presented them with the club banner from the Charleston club (I must say I’m proud of the pretty and colorful design depicting Broad Street).

After the two-and-a-half-hour meeting I was running late for my next class, but one of the hospitable Rotarians offered to drop me off at the university on his way into Valparaíso. Traveling between the two cities via car instead of jolting bus offered a new experience. As we sped on the highway I gazed out the window watching waves crash against the rocks below the castles and resorts of Viña as the sun glimmered and ships sailed on the cobalt sea. Thank you Rotary, I thought.

On the Argentine Capital

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Buenos Aires, where I lived for half of 2007. Three years later I have mixed emotions on returning to the cosmopolitan South American metropolis. You could even say I'm nervous. There I had some of my highest highs and my lowest lows.

I liked Barcelona, Santiago and Madrid just fine, but as elegant or sophisticated as those cities could be, they lacked that certain energy. Buenos Aires throbs with it. I don't know if it's the ongoing history of economic and political struggle and protest, the passionate fusion of Latin American and Italian cultures or all the sensual Tango, but that city has something.

At 21, Buenos Aires swept me off my feet. I swooned for the chocolate amargo ice cream delivered by motorbike. At night my friends and I sipped Malbec and ate gooey pizza topped with salsa blanca and chorizo or bowls of creamy gnocchi on breezy sidewalks. I'd fly across the sprawling city in cheap colectivos and taxis, always clutching my Guia T. In the mornings I'd run laps in the Bosques de Palermo, admiring the rose garden and trying not to stare at all the affectionate couples and the bronzed, scantily clad joggers and inline skaters.

In the evenings I'd drink mate, charging up for the night ahead. While we'd wait in line to get in a boliche I'd stare at the silicone enhancements and genetic miracles ahead of us, barely concealed under thin layers of Lycra. Then we'd dance the night away and leave the still raging club to catch a bus home at dawn.

I'm remembering the afternoons I walked up and down avenidas Santa Fe and 9 de Julio, passing Plaza de Mayo and contemplating the protests or the marching madres de los desparecidos. I can still recite the barrios: hip Palermo, charming San Telmo, elegant Recoleta, chaotic Constitución, gritty Abasto, residential Belgrano, colorful La Boca and modern Puerto Madero.

Buenos Aires -- the land of Jorge Luis Borges, Maradona and Evita Perón. The capital of dulce de leche and chorripan. The massive city of mullets and make outs, full of dog walkers and green parks. Where tiny old ladies walk their little dogs at 3 a.m. dressed in fur coats and the men in the market belt out Italian love ballads. The land of vos y "zsho," a country where a thong is the equivalent of a swimsuit and no part of a cow is left uneaten. The place where I could afford blow outs and waxes and spent my weekends hiding my shock in avant-garde art galleries and sipping cortados in Victorian cafes.

I'm afraid I won't want to come back to the Pacific side of the continent. Even though I suspect I'll soon have similar emotions about Valparaíso, right now I'm oh-so ready to escape so I can put on a dress and take lots of pictures without fearing for my life. I plan to buy loads of books without going broke. I'm going to admire all the design and fashion, all too absent in my current home.

And after going to bed hungry in Chile I'm looking forward to escaping to a country where dinner is a meal, even if served at 11 p.m.

Bienvenido a Vaparaíso

I'm alone in my 12th-floor apartment. Through the curtains I can see the city lights spreading over the hills and reflecting on the ocean. I've closed the glass doors to block out the howling traffic and squawking seagulls. I sip a glass of fine Chilean wine (from a bargain $6 bottle) and bite into the bread I picked up at the packed bakery on my way home from class this evening smeared with the 25-cent avocado I bought at the market yesterday. A professor told me that Chileans are the world's second largest consumers of bread, after France.

I can only laugh when I remember my daily routine in college included a solo run through downtown Charleston, in shorts no less. Now the idea of stepping outside my front door with an iPod is hilarious. It's hard to imagine I used to march around in a skirt and heels. Or how I wore bags that didn't strap across my chest and whipped out my wallet with abandon rather than scrounging coins out of my pocket. I fantasize about buying myself a big diamond ring when I get back to the States and flashing it daily. 

Yesterday on the bus I blinked when I saw a rat running across a telephone wire. Later from my patio I spotted a large mammal wriggling in the ocean, which my roommate's friends confirmed was a sea lion. I'm not so sure because it looked bigger than the cars whizzing by on Avenida Errazuriz. Then at 10 p.m. I passed a group of transvestite prostitutes huddled on the corner two blocks from my apartment tower. In the building across the street I could see college students listening to a lecture on the second floor. (Valparaíso alone has nine universities, and a there's a slew of other institutions of higher education in the surrounding region.)

Downtown Valparaíso shady men who act like they've never seen a pair of green eyes barrel me with piropos, hisses and comments. They don't mind urinating, spitting and scratching themselves in the street either. My feet are always dirty and calloused from the already filthy, now earthquake shattered sidewalks. The other night I walked along the coast of the tidier, less intimidating city of Viña del Mar with a friend, passing the apartment I almost rented and thinking about what could have been.

But just when I decide I don't want to inhale another breath of fumes from cruddy cars or trip over another pile of grime, Valparaíso casts its spell on me. When I climb up a cerro and catch a glimpse of the cerulean bay and the ramshackle spread of colorful houses below, I almost have to catch my breath. 

Last week a friend (a potential roommate I met in Santiago) led me around the city, where she's studied law the past five years. First we made a trip to the market to pick up the ingredients for our lunch of assorted baked vegetables over multi-grain rice with salad. We took the precarious antique elevators up the hills and admired the decaying mansions and graffiti murals. We visited Nobel-prize winning poet (and Chilean national hero) Pablo Neruda's whimsical house, La Sebastiana. The panoramic vistas would inspire anyone to write a few lines of verse.

After a steep descent back down to el plan (the flat city center) we stopped for a long browse in a thrift store loaded with antiques, where I bought a chocolate suede '70s era purse for $4. When we passed the port we jumped on an almost private boat tour of the bay in the golden evening sun, gazing out at the miles of sandy and rugged coast and the massive sea lions napping on the rocks.

On the way home we stopped at a couple of university-run, avant-guarde cultural centers because the official museums and art galleries remain closed indefinitely after the earthquake. Catalina pointed out her favorite cafes, bars, used bookstores and bakeries. We wandered past an artisan market along a dusty could-be-elegant plaza and took a break at the hip bohemian bar El Ritual to share some banana-orange-infused red wine.

Then we said chao, and I walked up the dozen flights of stairs (the one functioning elevator in the 27-story tower has to be strained, and I'm practicing in case I move to a hill with staircases) to my comfortable and modern apartment with a breezy balcony and my closet-sized bedroom with an ocean view. My roommate is a 24-year-old Chilean design student in the Universidad de Valparaíso who's always giving me directions to my far-flung classes and teaching me modismos, Chilean slang. 

So when I'm not busing between cities to my classes, I take refuge from the dizzying streets of Valpo in my little kitchen -- roasting beets, carrots, and zucchini; caramelizing pumpkin with curry and ginger; or reading a Gabriel Marquez novel at the bar. (Notice I'm not cooking with recipes because apparently it's not a Chilean custom to use measuring cups or spoons or even scales to measure grams.) My mornings start with 30 minutes on a rickety elliptical, watching the ships on the sparkling aqua water through the open window in the little room by the pool my condominium calls the gimnasio. (A list of statistics we read in one of my classes found that something like 90 percent of Chileans don't work out on a regular basis. Yet somehow they've avoided the obesity epidemic, more impressive still as they're rumored to be the world's third largest consumers of mayo.)

 In the meantime I practice rolling my r's with the phrase Erre con erre cigarro, erre con erre barril, Rápido corren los carros, los carros del ferrocarril. I can't leave Chile without mastering the Hispanic alveolar trill. I'm contemplating small pleasures, like how I finally found Febreeze, in Jumbo, the Chilean version of Wal-Mart. I'm the freak non-smoker among Chilean students, and now I can socialize without doing laundry everyday. 

Now if I could only locate some soy milk. Or an affordable perculator or French press. The powdered Nescafe they serve here just doesn't cut it.

Rotary update: Six weeks after my February arrival to Chile I've made my first Rotarian contact -- One historic earthquake, a chaotic tsunami alert and dozens of aftershocks later. Dr. Dan Martínez invited me to his refined home on a main avenue in Viña del Mar for an elegant Chilean once, evening tea, with his wife Telma, 24-year-old granddaughter and her friend. I exchanged numbers with the two younger women who also study at the Universidad Católica, the second-most prestigious university in the country. Dan and Telma gave me a little flag from their club and showed me pictures from their trips to international Rotary conferences in the States. Now I'm waiting for an invitation to one of their club meetings so I can make my Rotary debut and give my third (of a required seven) presentation.

Back to the libros

Two years later, and I'm back to class. I might be a capable, 24-year-old adult this time around, but that hasn't kicked my jitters. The day after I moved to Valparaiso I started my orientation for foreign students in a modern building down the street belonging to the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso. South American universities consist of faculty buildings spread throughout a city (or in this case three cities) rather than the North American concept of sprawling, landscaped campuses. That morning I met the four other exchange students in my group of independents, those of us who came to Chile without a study abroad program offered by a private agency or university. We were two Americans, a Japanese guy and two German girls, ages 23-28.

Our student monitor, Natalia, reminisced about the culture shock and linguistic difficulties she'd survived during the six months she'd studied in Mexico earlier this year. Then she led us to an auditorium with the other 260 exchange students (66 percent of the foreign students in the university of 14,000 come from the U.S.) where we listened to important deans present speeches peppered with earthquake history and facts. Afterward we headed to the balcony, where we snacked on avocado and tomato sandwiches and jugos naturales (sugary juice) while watching Chilean folk dance performances accompanied by an impressive live band. The dancers changed costumes four times to perform dances from various regions of Chile, including a saucy number from Valparaiso.

During the next orientation session I got my results from the nerve-wracking Spanish exams and signed up for classes. In a chaotic room, a student representing each department sat at a table ready to answer our questions and enroll us in our courses. I sat down at every table (well except mathematics, engineering, science and business -- anything with earning potential) to interrogate the monitors about the most engaging and entertaining classes in their departments taught by professors with clear spoken Spanish and an empathy for foreign students. So, now I'm signed up for classes in five different departments. And I'm looking forward to all of them, although I have a month to drop and add classes to find my ideal combination.

1. Literature: Intro to the Latin American Detective Novel
2. Physical Education: Personal Health and Active Living
3. Art: Basic Concepts of Cinematic Language
4. Journalism: Multimedia Journalism or Graphic design (still deciding)
5. Architecture: American Workshop: Urban Spaces
6. Art: Paper Making Workshop
7. Art: Human Experience in the Ideas of 20th Century Art

This week, I started classes and realized that while two of them are a 10-minute walk to the historic Casa Central in gritty downtown, the other four are 20-40 minutes away by bus. Oh, how fondly I remember the days of biking to class in Charleston. Now I fear for my life squished on maniacal buses or walking the edges of the taped off sidewalks of post-earthquake Valpo.

Tuesday night I realized that I'd have to wake up at 6 a.m. to get to my journalism class on time. I walked the streets the next morning in the dark and avoided shifty figures as I waited nearly 30 minutes to catch a bus with standing room only to the Curauma campus nearly 40 minutes away. I arrived to the giant modern building at exactly 8:15 a.m. to find the classroom empty and locked. The professor showed up around 9 a.m. to hand us the syllabus and dismiss the class.

The next day I bussed to my art class only to discover after 30 minutes of frantically searching the streets and berating my ability to survive in a foreign country that the faculty had moved 20 minutes away to the Miraflores neighborhood due to earthquake damages. When I arrived an hour late I found out class had been canceled for a professors' meeting.

In the meantime I'm waiting. Waiting for classes to really start. Waiting for the university gym to open and the fitness classes to begin. Waiting to get the schedules for the language exchanges, volunteer projects, and photography workshop I signed up for during orientation. Waiting for Rotary to contact me so I can start attending meetings and giving presentations. And most impatiently, waiting for the water heater repairs in my apartment after two weeks of cold showers.

I used to say the only thing holding me back from joining the Peace Corps was the almost certain absence of hot showers. God is laughing at me.

(images courtesy of derechopucv.com and ceefilosofia.blogspot.com)

Tsunami Alert: Gringa en trauma

I stirred my oatmeal over the gas flame, contemplating how late I'd arrive to my orientation for foreign students in the university's Casa Central 10 short blocks up the street. That's when the rumbling started. Since moving to a 12th floor  apartment two days earlier I'd been bracing myself for replicas, aftershocks from the massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile two weeks earlier.

The overhead lamps swung back and forth, the glasses rattled in the cabinets, the floor trembled and the giant glass windows facing the ocean shook. I had the sensation of swaying in the high rise apartment tower. My heart raced as I switched off the gas and ran to the door where I'd left my keys in the lock so I could quickly place myself beneath the door frame. About a minute passed before the shaking stopped.

I wondered if I should run downstairs. I didn't know if I'd just experienced a significant earthquake or just a moderate temblor (tremor) heightened by my location on the 12th floor. I glanced in the hallway in search of neighbors to consult, but it seems I'm the only occupant in my hall. So I took the most illogical course of action: I gobbled up my breakfast, brushed my teeth, touched up my mascara and even scrubbed my retainers before rushing out the door. But before I could make an exit I heard the low murmur of the lamps swaying and the dishes vibrating. This time the trembling seemed even longer. I heard the whole building moving.

In a twisted way there's something enthralling about earthquakes -- the earth suddenly feels so alive. There's a sentiment of connection. After riding dozens of roller coasters and thrill rides in my adolescence it feels almost gentle. But the destruction the vibrations wreak on human civilization reminds us of the fragility of our existence.

Scared and alone, I ran down the dozen flights of stairs to the lobby. I tried to get the concierge's attention but he was on the phone with a burdened expression on his face and ignored me. People fled out the door before I could say anything. I asked a hysterical girl what was going on. "Viene una tsunami!" she shrieked between sobs.

Her mother and older sister ran in, frantic and crying. They all sprinted out the door, and I followed. Before they jumped in a taxi I asked if I could get in too. We piled in the car, with their big, smelly basset hound howling and trying to scramble out the window. I yanked out an infant car seat to make room and kept it on my lap. In the streets people ran toward the hills -- janitors, office workers, vendors and children. Some were sobbing and screaming as the sirens blared and horns honked. Our car barely moved in the traffic-choked streets. The women in the car cried out how they didn't want to die, how we would all lose everything in our apartment overlooking the sea. They screamed "Tsunami!" out the window as we passed fist-fighting thugs and shouting police officers. I couldn't understand the car radio in the chaos.

My heart pounded as I tried to calm the women, although I had no idea what was going on. I fought back tears as I tried to call the owners of my apartment and my host family in Santiago, but the phone lines had collapsed. Just like us, the people running in the streets kept looking back toward the ocean to see if the wave was coming. I stared back at my apartment building, thinking about my Mac and Nikon and all the belongings I'd stuffed into my suitcases with so much thought and care four weeks earlier. I accepted that they were all gone, that I'd have to find a new home. If the apartment didn't collapse it would be inhabitable. I wondered if I would have to leave Chile. I was living the most terrifying experience of my live thus far.

The car was making no progress, and I asked if we should get out and run instead. Thankfully the driver ignored me. Instead he went against traffic to a more distant hill where we quickly sped up and up through dingier and dingier neighborhoods until we felt that the maremoto wouldn't sweep us away. After we parked I realized that we hadn't been in a taxi, but a private car with a generous and remarkably calm business man who'd fled his office in Valparaiso. On the hillside we talked to the neighbors, a group of women who worked in waste management. They invited us into their warehouse to watch the news.

The earthquakes (up to 6.9 on the Richter scale) jolted Chile as the new president Sebastian Piñera was sworn in at an inaugural ceremony in the National Congress in Valparaiso blocks away from my apartment, with an audience of international diplomats and journalists. Piñera is the first elected right-wing leader 50 years after a repressive military dictatorship ruled the country, killing and torturing thousands citizens. (I'm not taking a political stance at this point in light of my ignorance of Chilean politics. I'll only acknowledge the new president's intelligence as he has a doctorate in economics from Harvard and is a millionaire entrepreneur.)

The tsunami alert remained in effect, so the women in the warehouse served us lunch. My apartment neighbors told me they weren't returning to the building that night, and I shouldn't either. When the tsunami advisory ended we drove back into the city, and they insisted I pack a bag and go with them to stay with a friend who lived on a hill. The chaotic center had converted into a ghost town, with all the businesses closed for the day. Although I didn't consider them the ideal emergency company considering their exemplified tendencies toward hysteria, they convinced me I would sleep through another tsunami alert if I stayed the night alone.

So that's how I ended up spending an uncomfortable night in a humble house in a neighborhood of wild dogs and feral cats. The next morning I made it back down to the city in time to sign up for classes in the university.

Still, every so often I tense up and look for swaying lamps. I don't know when the tremors are real or when it's my imagination. Scientists say the aftershocks from Chile's big quake will last up to a year, which is beyond the date of my departure flight. However, I now know that a tsunami is highly improbable in Valparaiso, and I think I'm safe in my building as it survived the big quake and therefore should hold up in the weaker replicas.

Basically, I'm in for a seismic year.

Life unexpected: La vida inesperada

I planned to spend my final week in Chile's elegant capital Santiago exploring the Museo de Artes Visuales, the ritzy outlying neighborhoods, and the Parque Forestal, the last sites on my to-see list. I mentally prepared to leave my leafy and sunny Providencia neighborhood and the comfort of my bustling host family for a new city -- Viña del Mar.

I'd made finding an apartment my mission, having arrived to a foreign continent with only four weeks to locate housing in a city two hours away with no prior knowledge of price ranges, neighborhoods, transportation or lease contracts. After weeks of frantically searching through Internet postings and interrogating professors that culminated in a rushed visit to the resort city of Viña, I'd found an apartment in a new tower (by an artificial lake!) half a block away from the beach. With a pool, a gym and sweeping ocean view from two generous patios, everything about it was luxe.

The Feb. 27 earthquake didn't severely affect anyone I know -- I only heard stories about co-workers and cousins whose families had lost everything in the South. However, after the natural disaster I soon realized that my year in Chile wouldn't go as planned. My host family insisted I remain hunkered in the house during the following days. Even though that seismic night passed without any panic or tears on my part, I've felt like I'm carrying a heavy backpack ever since. I'm grateful rather than fearful, but living with a family dealing with post traumatic stress and the constant flow of damning news reports took its toll.

Four days before my planned move to the coast of Viña del Mar to start classes at the Universidad Católica de Valparaiso I got the news that I'd have to look for another place to live. I felt so incredibly alone. I now had to find a room in an apartment with strangers, in a hectic period when shaken-up residents in apartment towers were scramming to move into solid houses and residents of older houses were quickly renting modern apartments; when the few students who hadn't solidified their housing plans months earlier had returned home to be with their families rather than staying in their university city to show their apartments to potential roommates.

But I made it my life's goal to move myself to school on time, spending my days staring at the computer screen and making bus trips back and forth between the two cities. I visited some houses that should have been condemned, with putrid, horror-movie worthy rooms, but I also met some of the most hospitable people I've ever encountered. They'd offer me a bed in their house until I found a place. After I told them I wasn't interested in their apartment they'd still insist in showing me around the city to the other rooms on my list. And they all gave me their phone numbers in case I ever needed anything.

Monday (only two days late) I moved into an apartment, not in the modern beach city of Viña del Mar as planned, but in the gritty neighboring historic port city of Valparaíso. The apartment is small but comfortable and modern. The terrace with the bay view and the familiar American kitchenette sold me. I'm eagerly waiting for my Chilean roommate to move back in next week. The surrounding neighborhood is not a place I should ever be walking through alone at night, and that's disconcerting. But the main highway connecting Valparaíso to its sister city Viña is right outside my front door, with transportation at all hours. I'm hoping that the earthquake repairs in the building happen soon because I miss hot water and more than one functioning elevator would be convenient. But I can't complain when half of the city went without any water the past three days, and further south people are homeless.

I'm still soaking up Valparaíso. The surrounding hills I've explored (so far I've opted to climb up the impossible staircases and vertical streets instead of paying for the antique elevators, an indication of masochistic tendencies, perhaps?) have confirmed the adjective 'breathtaking' that I've read in every guidebook. The spectacular views of the bay and the ramshackle city built on the surrounding hillsides are bewitching. The quirky and colorful neighborhoods spilling on the hilltops are World Heritage sites, and besides their official historic value they have a bohemian charm and energy like no other place I've traveled. These are streets with proper multi-colored British mansions with flower boxes lined near hippie-ish cafes. Streets with elegant restaurants on steep slopes that end in a flamboyant graffiti wall murals leading to 19th century Anglican churches or eccentric castle-mansions turned museums. And did I mention the views?

As far as the center of Valparaíso, well it's grungy, compatible with the disagreeable image the average North American has of a South American city. Ugly modern (Valpo was the epicenter of the devastating 1906 quake and before that victim of a Spanish naval attack) buildings stand beside decrepit Victorian palaces from the port's glory days. My favorite guidebook cliche, "crumbling grandeur" was written for this city. There's too many abandoned warehouses, stray dogs and litter for my taste, but maybe this jewel (in the rough) of the Pacific will win me over before the year's up. For now braving the streets isn't a pleasant stroll. My wrist is sore from clutching my bag so tightly. The maniacal buses, called micros, are a third-world experience. But on a brighter note, my daily routine now includes a trip to the intimidating  city market to stock up on the rainbow mountains of gleaming produce on sale for mere cents and a stop by the bakery for fresh bread.

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up here. I have the next nine months to figure out why.

El terromoto de una vida

Last night I waited in the lobby of a restaurant bar in the Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago, where I was spending time with my language school classmates, including my two closest friends who were set to leave the country the next day. I wanted someone to share a taxi with me back to our Providencia neighborhood. Meanwhile my Brazilian friend Betaña started to tear up thinking about how we might never see each other again. I tried to comfort her, feeling shaky myself, from exhaustion and the recalcitrant illness I'd tried to kick all week, annoyed that I'd wasted my $2,000 pesos on that Red Bull I'd ordered earlier.

That's when the floor trembled. I noticed the vibrations that rattled the building right away, but my professors and host family had told me that minor temblores are common in Chile, one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet. However the trembling only intensified. With the passing seconds we could hear the building shaking, bottles breaking. The lights went out. I grabbed my Brazilian friend Evan in a death grip hug, and we didn't let go. They say the quake lasted less than two minutes, but that's a long time when the earth beneath your feet is bouncing, when your mind is racing to recall earthquake safety protocols, whether you should crouch under one of the empty tables or run outside in the street so not to be crushed alive in the building, when suddenly news reports about thousands dead, missing or trapped in Haiti seem all too real.

It was 3:30 a.m., and you might ask why I would be out and about at such an ungodly hour, but you must understand that for Chileans this a perfectly reasonable time to be out on a Friday night, as the proper dinner party at my host family's house yesterday didn't start until nearly 11 p.m. I can assure you that the neighborhood was packed with (mostly) respectable citizens.

Afterward I had the urge to cry but couldn't. Without any taxis or buses, we walked home with the full moon serving as our only light most of the way. We didn't encounter any panic or chaos, but it was a long two hours before I made it back to my house. We maneuvered the sidewalks littered with broken glass, fallen telephone poles, broken bricks and caved in walls. Even crossing the street without stoplights was tricky. It was chilly, I was desperate for a bathroom and a drink of water, and my bronze flats weren't made for distance walking. The ambulances wailing and car radios blaring news only added to the state of emergency atmosphere. Evan offered to walk me to my house, which is 20 minutes away from where everyone else lives.

(As I'm writing this I felt another mild temblor, or replica as they call them here.)

It was so dark that we couldn't read the street signs and ended up lost. Occasionally someone would pass us in the shadows, and my heart would race as I imagined a looter taking advantage of the situation. I finally arrived at my candle-lit doorstep to find my host family and seven children and two dogs huddled in the living room. "Te hemos llamado mil veces!" they explained. Although most cell phone communication had been interrupted, they'd entered my room and stepped over all my belongings and the broken glass strewn in the floor to find my mobile phone box with my number on it in a drawer.

We didn't go to bed until dawn. The Chileans I was with were in a deeper state of shock than I was, with reason. They had babies and small children and other family members to worry about. Some of them lived on the 13th floor of an apartment building, and they'd felt the tower sway, breaking their windows and knocking over their flat screen TV and lamps. They could only huddle under a doorway while they clutched their three daughters.

Our lights didn't come back on until the next morning. The electricity grid in Chile is programmed to automatically turn off in the event of earthquakes above 6.0 on the Richter Scale, and this one was an 8.8, 100 times greater than the 7.0 quake that devastated Haiti in January. In fact it was the fifth largest earthquake since 1900. But so far in Chile about 400 deaths have been reported in comparison to the 250,000 in Haiti. This has a lot to do with the advanced engineering and strict earthquake-proof construction codes here along with the organized relief infrastructure. Bordered by the Andes cordillera, Chile is one of the most seismically active places on earth (funny how I don't remember ever reading that before now). The strongest earthquake ever measured occurred here in 1960, a 9.5, and another disastrous quake hit in 1985. In fact three of the 10 most powerful earthquakes in recorded history have occurred in Chile, today's disaster included. Chile is a developed nation with its own disaster fund rather than an impoverished, overpopulated state, so the two recent earthquake situations aren't comparable.

Although the TV news shows images of fallen bridges and a church with a collapsed steeple here in Santiago, everyone I know is safe. Our house only suffered one crack in the wall. South of us in Chile's second largest city Concepcion, which is closer to the earthquake's 22-mile deep epicenter, the damage and suffering are on another level, especially in the poorest areas. This evening we sat around the table in the patio to say prayers for those in the south who have lost so much and to give thanks that we are all safe.