Desert Snow

After a rest shift in Santiago, I went up to the desert again for working. As usual, I fly to Antofagasta and from there a bus takes us to Paranal. As the trip starts very early in the morning, people normally sleep in the plane and in the bus. I am no different, the excitement times are already gone and the desert views don't change that much. I woke up in the middle of the trip, I felt cold and cursed the driver for turning off the heating. Suddenly, I look through a breach in the bus curtains and see something odd, white stripes in a normally brown landscape. As I open the curtains, I realize that the desert was sprinkled with snow! It was hard to believe, the so-called driest desert in the world hit by frozen water, but it was there to see. The hills were covered in white, while the area closer to the road had still some stripes of snow. The Andean range in the background was completely white in a beautifully surreal scenery. Rain and snow in the desert are phenomena that happen once every ten years or so! As we approached the observatory, the snow disappeared and only some spots on the higher altitudes could be seen. However, when we reached the gate and looked up to cerro Paranal, where the telescopes stand, there was a surprisingly white hill, sprinkled with snow and still covered in clouds! It had snowed the night before, apparently the weather changed completely in half an hour, as usually happens. In that morning a lot of the snow had already melted, it was apparently totally covered in snow. The telescopes were not opened for a couple of nights, until all water dried, and the road up to the telescopes was also closed that morning due to security reasons. In Antofagasta, it apparently rained heavily for a while as well, which left a big mess, since the desert cities are not prepared for rain. It never rains... until it rains!

Reality Shows

The time of reality shows is far from gone in Chile. TV channels fight for audience between them, each one with its own kind of show. One of them started a series of reality shows, where people live in a particular historical time, with the existent conditions and technology and the same outfit of those times. The first one was called 1810 and they are now starting the 1910. The name obviously states the time they live in. Next year, the 2010 will go out, celebrating the bicentenario, Chile's 200 years. These realities involve celebrities invited to participate and they compete among them to win a prize of 50 million pesos, something like 65,000 Euro. But I don't see TV here, so how do I know all this? Things happen...

Just another Tuesday, coming down from Paranal and drinking a beer with the colleagues at the Antofagasta airport. They announce the plane arrival (which is the same that takes us back to Santiago) and we go in the line for boarding. Suddenly, I see a girl coming out of the toilet with a strange outfit. While I was trying to decipher what was that costume about, a colleague stares at her and says "Wow, that's Pamela Diaz!". I see... and who the hell is Pamela Diaz? Apparently, a famous actress in Chile. When I look around, I see many many people wearing the same weird outfits, together with a huge crew and cameras. "They are the ones from the reality!", someone says. "They were shooting here in the North of Chile." All this excitement and I had simply no idea of who they all were. I offered myself to take some pictures to my colleagues with their famous people, but they didn't want. We were flying together with all this television crew of people, which couldn't be for sure more boring than a normal flight. I entered the plane and took my 14A seat, next to the window. Afterwards, a colleague comes and sits by the aisle. We had one seat left in the middle and we joked about Pamela Diaz sitting there. Well, it wasn't her, but suddenly the TV people started coming and this gorgeous girl in a strange costume stops right at our side. "14B, it's here." My colleague immediately stood up for her to pass while I meticulously removed the seatbelt from the seat opening space for her to sit. She kindly thanked and smiled, looked at me and smiled again and then whispered something, which I, for ethical reasons, will not reveal. In a few more seconds, I heard her moaning a few words in Portuguese. She was Brazilian, what are the odds?! "So you speak Portuguese as well!", I said in my native accent. "Yes, I am Brazilian!", she answered in that sexy Brazilian accent. This was definitely my most entertaining flight in Chile, after that detour to Mendoza, last year. I got to know all that about the reality show, that they had been shooting in the North and they would now move to a place, where they would be isolated from the outer world during three months and where the reality would start. There I was, in the middle of famous people that I had never heard about and appearing in some shootings they did inside the plane. I was probably the last person she talked to before entering the show. I kissed her goodbye and wished her the best luck for the show. I promised to cheer for her, maybe this time I start watching some TV...

Violeta Parra

A couple of days ago, I saw in one of my Portuguese friend's messenger a reference to one of the most famous songs of Violeta Parra, which reminded me that I promised a post about her long time ago. She is, together with Victor Jara, one of the most remarkable and widely known Chilean artists. Violeta was a singer, poet, painter, sculptor and ceramist, and gave a lot to Chilean culture and folk music. Her story is however tragic. Like many artists, she was never well accepted and understood in Chile and was more successful abroad than in her own country. Adding that to a failed relationship, she became depressed and finally committed suicide. She is now a symbol and has a permanent exhibition of her legacy in La Moneda's museum in Santiago. Her most famous song is Gracias a La Vida, but others like La Carta or Run Run Se Fue Pa'l Norte, the latter written after the departure of her loved one, are also worth to listen (see below).



La Carta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUAfWKLX438
Run Run Se Fue Pa'l Norte: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ9CeICphL8