San Franciscans in Santiago: New Years Blessings from South America!

Family and Friends,

Thinking of you all and missing our community on this first day of 2015 - may this new year bring the blessings of health, joy and justice to you and those you love!

It's 85 degrees here in Santiago de Chile, and we just returned from a 2-week trip exploring the lake country and Chiloé Island in the southern part of the country with Reuben's parents. We didn't get all the way down to Antarctica, but are hoping to do that soon. We are so grateful to Gail and Harold (aka mom and dad) for making the long trip and for helping us with our first big adventure outside the city.

The lake country is amazingly beautiful, especially at this time of year when many Chileans escape there for summer vacation. Erika was especially happy to be on a boat most of the time - the trip re-awakened her love of the ocean and everything water-related. Reuben got to see his penguins - and he also made friends with some other creatures as well (see pictures). From Santiago, we traveled by plane to Puerto Montt, a big port town. In Puerto Montt, we boarded a boat that took us on a 6 day journey through the Chacao Channel and the Chiloé Sea, around Chiloé Island and down to the Laguna San Rafael National Park. We spent a whole day exploring the San Rafael glacier, a breathtaking island of ice that dips into the surrounding lake.

From Laguna San Rafael, we sailed back up to Chiloé island, spending a day in the capital city of Castro (where we visited a purple and yellow church that could have easily been in the Castro, San Francisco). The cities in the Lake Country are mostly smaller fishing villages scattered across the islands of the archipelago. Castro is an exception, and with about 50,000 residents, is one of Chile's medium-large cities. The city center is vibrant and full of hills like SF - some areas look quite a bit like neighborhoods in North Beach.

Sailing back to Puerto Montt, we were accompanied by some dolphins and a couple of sea lions, and we passed by some in-water salmon fisheries. Once back, we spent a day in Puerto Varas and in Ancud, visiting the penguins who live on the small island, before beginning our drive about 800 miles back to Santiago.

On our drive, we made several stops to explore the regions between Los Lagos (Lake Country) and Metro Santiago. Stops included:

- Frutillar: Small town with heavy influence of German settlers and famous for its annual summer music festival in Jan/Feb. The town is home to the Teatro del Lago which must be an incredible place to see performances since it's all windows and looks out over the water. We're planning to go back for the Semanas Musicales.

- Valdivia: A great university town on the river where we met some very friendly sea lions who "help" at the fish market every day. Will post a video of the ongoing brawl between the local dogs and their sea lion neighbors.

- Temuco: The fourth largest city in the country and home to the largest Mapuche market. The Mapuche people are the largest indigenous community in Chile, and their influence is everywhere.

- Talca: Beautiful respite at the foot of the Andes where we stayed at a hostel/farm/garden called Casa Chueca (note pictures with farm animals).

- Valparaiso: The seaside city that reminds us most of San Francisco with its hills and colorful buildings -- and young hipsters. Spending the day there the day before Christmas was exciting -- lots of shoppers, street musicians, open-air markets, and of course, friendly dogs. We almost took one home, but resisted.

Now that we are back in Santiago, we are gearing up for a summer schedule that includes Spanish school, yoga and writing for Erika, writing and researching for Reuben and a little bit more travel. Since Reuben's classes don't start again until early March, we will have some much-needed down time together to get to know Santiago better, rest and make some plans for the next 6 months. In the meantime, though, we got a big taste of Chilean-style new years -- LOTS of street partying, alcohol and more fireworks than we have ever seen.

We are missing our community very much this holiday season -- the past month didn't quite feel like December, both because of the heat and because we are far away from all of you. Know that we are thinking of you and would love updates from home. We have reliable internet here, and Erika is working on keeping up to date with Facebook and this blog. Moving forward, we hope that entries will start to have more reflections about our time here rather than reports on our comings and goings - we had a lot to cover this time around. Hope you'll visit this page again soon!

Enjoy the photos.

With love and gratitude,

E & R