Last days on the beach

In the middle of March summer is nearly over in La Serena, and the ‘Camanchaca’, the cold fog over the ocean, re-appears in the morning. The masses of tourists are finally gone and the locals and we finally have the beaches for ourselves again. The baby will come soon now, and we decide to enjoy a weekend on the beautiful beach in Totoralillo, some 20 minutes driving South of La Serena.

A sandy beach is the only way to lie on your belly when you are nine months pregnant! Simply dig a big hole and finally, finally you can lie flat and have the sun shine on your back!

No way you’d say that Karianne is highly pregnant! Sandy beaches make it possible :-)

Nice but cooooold!

Karianne says “I’m outta here! Enough is enough!”. Why does antarctic water have to flow up to 29 degrees latitude? Imagine the Mediterranean Sea had 14 degrees in summer, Italy, Greece, Spain and Turkey would have gone bancrupt a looong time ago!

Summer is nearly over, and the cold fog the locals call “Camanchaca” creeps back up to the shore, rolling over the nearby city of Coquimbo.

On the way to Totoralillo beach we have to pass through Coquimbo, after which the highway climbs a hill. From there we have a quite impressive view of the show displayed by the Camanchaca this midday.

The fog literally ended where the waves broke, making for a very impressive scenery.

The Chilean holidays are over, and all the hordes of tourists disappeared. The Chilenos back to Santiago, and the Argentinos back to their side of the Andes mountains. Finally we have our space for ourselves again, and life in La Serena is back to normal.

Ice cold fog, a burning hot sun, and a beautiful beach all for ourselves. Just the right thing we need before heading off to Santiago to get our baby (and a new life).

Half an hour later the sun wins and the warm air pushes the freezing fog further and further out into the sea. Our goose pimples disappear instantly.

A few km South of Totoralillo is the private luxury resort of Las Tacas, which you can see in the background. An apartment there costs up to EUR 350 a night. While the owners of the place can deny access by car, they can’t keep you from walking to the beach. By law, all beaches in Chile belong to the people and be accessed freely! Off-season, the place is totally deserted.

The South Pacific showing itself from the calm and pretty side.

Chilean nights

Chileans love dogs, not so much as pets as we Europeans do, but more as guard dogs. They are kept outside and can run around freely in the garden or backyard. And they bark. Preferably at night. A lot. Across the street, our neighbour’s most recent acquisition last year was a sweet puppy we befriended quickly. Now it is a big brown beast locked away out of sight in the backyard, with a deep and loud voice that penetrates walls and windows alike. Last night at something like 2:45 he started again, barked himself into a mad fury and did not stop anymore. He barked so madly, WOUFWOUFWOUF, that after 20 minutes even our neighbour’s car alarm went off, UIUIUIUIUIUIUIUIUIUIUI, which our neighbour turned off from within his bedroom with the remote key, three quick WUITWUITWUIT. The dog continues WOUFWOUFWOUF, car alarm goes off, is switched off again, for about another ten minutes. Then, instead of having a bright moment and going outside and calming his mad down (or shutting him up), our neighbour decides to repeatedly lock and unlock his car remotely, to distract his stupid dog. The car alarm correspondingly answers with a quick warning, MEPMEP, or a friendly BIPBIPBIP, being activated and deactivated. Dog continues even more madly, WAOUFWAOUFWAOUF (bold face, 60pt fonts).

By now it is about 3:10, we are widely awake, and so are the two dogs of our other two neighbours on our side of the street. Not big dogs, but those tiny creatures with unnerving voices: WIF-WIF-WIF-WIF coming from across the wall to the right, and ‘ARF’ARF’ARF’ARF from across the rear wall. WOUFWOUFWOUF from the other side of the street, together with howling UIUIUIUIUIUIUI, WUITWUIT, and QUICKQUOCK, QUOCKQUICK car noises. That’s it, we had enough, can’t take anymore. Karianne hasn’t been sleeping well for a long time being sucker-punched by our wild yet unborn baby, I’m still somewhat sleep deprived from my last night shift up the mountain, and we have been pretty stressed out with work and our upcoming move to a new house and baby stuff in general. I fill two buckets with 8-10 liters of cold water and step outside. One bucket stays at the door, the other one I carry across the street where the mad WOUFWOUFWOUF is coming from, answered by another loud WOWOWOWOW from yet another dog. I can’t throw the water at the first dog as he is hidden out of sight. I yell two loud bad spanish swear words (which I am not going to repeat here) at my neighbour’s dog (and his owner’s bedroom window, who is still busy to switch on/off his car alarm to calm down his dog which makes the dog even madder). Then I walk around the corner to throw the water at the other stupid idiot WOWOWOW dog.

I haven’t even made 10 steps when a Pickup full with three kids and several more grown-ups stops across the other side of the streets and asks me for directions. At 3:xx in the morning. I step towards the driver’s door, with my flip-flops, a bucket of water, and probably a pretty stupid face. The driver does not seem to think that anything about this situation seems very odd or unnatural, and waves a piece of paper at me. It has a road name scribbled on it, a square and arrow pointing at the square drawn on it. Nothing else. My tired brain tries to make sense of it (actually, of everything), while all the mad barking is still going on, and the driver is waving with both arms and pointing in all directions. About a minute later a Taxi driver comes from the other direction out of nowhere, says through the open window without being asked that “he found it”, and speeds off, followed by the pickup. I’m left alone again, surrounded by barking, in the middle of the night, with a bucket of water, thinking I’m in the wrong movie.

The other dog I wanted to throw the water at proves to be beyond reach as well, so I go back home into our backyard, step onto our bench and peep across the wall where the ‘ARF’ARF’ARF’ARF is coming from. The dog sees my head, goes ‘ARF’ARF’ARF’ARF twice as loud and twice as fast and with more vigor. Then suddenly, with every second ‘ARF, he makes a few steps backwards, obviously remembering that Karianne has thrown a glass of water at him before. I can’t toss 8 liters of water 20 meters wide, so I step down from the bench and hide again behind the wall. The barking comes nearer quickly, I step back onto the bench and throw all the water at that little bastard. Most of it misses, but he’s getting a good share. Scared by suddenly being soaked and the loud splash of the water he runs away, whining AYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY. That feels GOOOOOD!!! I want more!! I am grabbing the other bucket of water to deal with the even more annoying WIF-WIF-WIF-WIF across the other wall, but he is out of sight. I go back to see whether the already wet dog is in for another share, but now my neighbour is outside looking at me in wonder. He says something I don’t understand and I disappear again, going back to bed, yelling once more at our neighbour (and his dog) across the street to shut the %$§” up.

10 minutes later, back in bed, the search light of a very bright torch pierces through our living room right into our bedroom, like a robber looking for prey. Apparently our neighbour, whose dog I made wet, climbed a ladder and shines his torch into our backyard!! What’s going on now?? Turned out it wasn’t our neighbour but a security or police officer, whom our neighbor called. Apparently, when he saw my head for a second while saying that sentence I did not understand, he must have figured I was a robber emptying our house, and called the police (which is nice of him). The officer was very friendly, and things got sorted out quickly.

The night was gone. Karianne went watching a movie at 4 in the morning and came back to bed at 6.

Today, two days later, I checked whether the stupid little dog learnt his lesson. I stick my head over the wall, he (or she) sees me, I say “Yes, you! Remember me?”. The eyes go wide, the tail goes between the legs, and off he ran as far away as he could whining loudly. Obviously he did remember his lesson. Now, if could only get hold of that big dog…

Our water buckets are filled!

Random pics

I thought I’d show you a bit of random photos from our last few months here just to keep you updated Please click Permalink at the bottom right to see all my comments too!

Almost there!

We are eagerly waiting for our baby to arrive. The baby clothes have been washed and put in the dresser, car seat and stroller have been bought (and brought to Chile, as we couldn’t find a car seat here that we liked/trusted). We are counting weeks until our little baby boy is here, and I am counting days until I am no longer pregnant..

Apart from feeling so sick in the beginning, the pregnancy has been quite ok. However now I’m fed up. I am starting having trouble falling asleep, both in the evening as well as when I wake up in the middle of the night from barking dogs, loud neighbours (they’re having holidays and accordingly so should the rest of the world!), or simply from having to pee.. It’s difficult to find a comfortable position, and when I finally do the baby starts kicking since apparently my comfy position is interfering with his freedom of movement (he’s quite stubborn, just like his parents, and doesn’t stop moving until I turn over). I did get 8.5 hours of sleep last night, though, only interrupted by one (and only one!) bathroom break, so I’m hoping the sleeping thing is changing back to the better. Everything else in my body seems to constantly change, so why shouldn’t this?!

Regarding my food issue – after that doctor’s appointment we went through a weekend where I never felt full, until I decided that I would cut my sugar intake and otherwise eat like normal, which has always been quite healthy. Going back to normal amounts of fat made me feel full again, and cutting the sugar (read Pepsi and chocolate) turned out to be a real success. Our last doctor’s appointment I had actually lost 1/2 kg! Yay me!

The baby is still “big”, though, and our doctor is concerned that if he keeps up this speed of growth he’ll be 4 kg at birth! Wait a minute – 4 kg?! I thought he was talking about a big baby?! I was about that size! That’s not big! We never really believed him when he said Chilean babies are the same size as North-American/European babies, but now we are no longer worried. When he said big I thought he meant like a 4.5-5 kg baby I also compared clothes bought here in Chile to clothes I brought back from Europe, and it turns out that same-sized clothes are consistently considered for babies 3 months older here. Chilean babies are definitely smaller than European babies!

On another note, we are moving soon! We got a house on the Recinto, the fenced-in area where our offices are as well as houses for rent for employees. We have been on the waiting list from I got my job offer, and with people moving finally we got a house there! We really wanted one because they are properly heated (Chilean houses have no heating whatsoever, last winter we ended up using only our bedroom because the rest of the house was so cold), much bigger (lots of space for visitors!), and much cheaper than average La Serena renting prices. The house also has a yard which will be very nice in summer. They are currently doing a lot of maintenance and renovations to the house so we’re not quite sure when we can move in, but we’re hoping it will be before the baby comes.. We’ll let you know as soon as we get a move-in date!

Again, please click Permalink at the bottom right. I inserted some old photos from my early days of pregnancy that don’t make much sense without my comments!

Ruta Antakari

Early in November, Karianne’s aunt Wenche and uncle Bjørn visited (our first visitors, and hopefully not the last ones!). One weekend we decided to travel a bit into “the valley”, that is “Valle de Elqui”, a lush and beautiful valley extending to the East from La Serena. It gets a lot of water from the neighbouring mountains (on which La Serena depends on) and can generally be considered as the last really green outpost before the Atacama desert starts in the North.
50 km from La Serena is the small village of Vicuña, from which a small unpaved path departs South, climbing over a ridge and down again towards a tiny remote village called Rio Hurtado. From there one can go West towards Andacollo, making a big turn around the observatories.

In 1450 these places were already inhabited and connected by the Incas, and the path between them is called Ruta Antakari (“path of the great copper man”). Back then the Incas dug out a lot of metal in this area. In particular Andacollo was the main source of gold for the Inca empire. Today, Andacollo is still a mining village with a huge open-pit (“Tagebau” in German) gold and copper mine (“Carmen de Andacollo”). A lot of the miners live in La Serena. Also, from Ruta Antakari a lot of tiny paths can be seen leading apparently to nowhere in the mountains, often just ending in a small black hole. These are private little gold mines, a very common sight in Chile.

We went from Vicuña to a desolated and forgotten Rio Hurtado (no pictures there), and planned to go back to La Serena via Andacollo. However, the unpaved path to Rio Hurtado quickly became so gruelling and axle-twisting that it took much longer than we expected, so we skipped Andacollo and headed for the highway instead. Our little afternoon road trip, planned 3-4 hours, lasted 9 hours in the end. Our visitors were happy though, so mission accomplished!

(If you want to read the image descriptions, click on ‘Permalink’ at the bottom right of each image. This is brings you back to the old gallery style).

Update

Hi – we’re back! After a long period with not much blogging we will try to keep you a bit more updated from now on..!

First things first, both the baby and I are doing well. During December we went to Santiago for the big ultrasound / doppler scan that is usually done in the middle of a pregnancy. All is perfect with the baby, the flow in the umbilical cord is very good, the placenta is in a good position, etc. However they did tell us that the baby’s head and bowel circumference measurements are on the big side. The doctor asked me several times if I was sure about the dates (which I am!), because these measurements indicated that the baby was 2 weeks older than my due date indicates. However the femur measurement (the bone between the butt and the knee) is in agreement with the due date, and since I am so sure he didn’t want to change my due date.

Last week, the day after we came back from Europe, we had an appointment with our regular doctor. He was not happy with my latest weight gain and the size of the baby (too big!).. I guess I have Christmas to blame So from now on I am cutting as much sugar as possible, although it is difficult seeing as we are in a country that puts sugar in everything.. We have found one type of orange juice that contains no sugar so I’m drinking that plus water. Although I guess cutting soda and chocolate/candy completely will help a lot My doctor also wanted me to cut fat and carbs, so only low-fat milk for me from now on! I have tried eating a bit less, or eating a bit slower, but I that has proven very difficult as it only left me hungry all the time.. Snacking on veggies and fruit instead of cookies isn’t all that bad, though!

La Serena – Colo Colo 2:6

Today the La Serena Soccer team played against Colo Colo in the Chilean playoffs. This is about the equivalent of “Hirschhausen FC” playing against “Bayern München”, or a VW beetle competing against a race car. Colo Colo is from Santiago, and the Chilean president (and billionaire) Sebastian Piñera owns a significant fraction of the club (as he does with LAN Chile airline, Scandinavian Airlines, a Chilean TV channel, etc etc). Certain similarities with former Italian premier Berlusconi are at hand, but Piñero sold his stocks temporarily into some trusted fund so he has no influence onto these companies during his time as president. But I get carried away…

We went with our friends Andrea and Dan and Katie, and Daniel and Anna joined as well. So there were 4 tall blond women in the middle of the tribune, two of them pretty pregnant, which attracted the attention of a La Serena TV camera man before the game started. Underdog La Serena scored a quick goal in the first minute, which left most people in the stadium speechless for a second. Colo Colo drew even a few minutes later, then La Serena made another one, and then two more by Colo Colo. The first half was pretty even between the teams, counting 2:3. In the second half La Serena almost managed the 3:3, but only almost, and then Colo Colo finished them off 2:6. By the time the last goal happened, the stadium operator switched off the big (and only half functioning) electronic message board such that nobody would see the humiliating 2:6.

I think La Serena citizens weren’t too disappointed. Half of them are Colo Colo fans anyway, and the other half supports Universidad Catolica (the other big Santiago team) when La Serena isn’t playing. The tribune we were sitting in had mostly La Serena fans, but towards the end more and more people cheered for Colo Colo. As long as goals were scored it didn’t really matter who did. The real La Serena fans were probably disappointed at the end of the game, and police kept them apart from the much larger crowd of Colo Colo fans. Actually, they kept them locked in the stadium until everyone else has left

“wordpress” messed up their software again. To see the images in the gallery properly WITH descriptions, you have to click on the first image, then click on ‘Permalink’ just at the bottom right of the picture. This will make you leave the silly carousel view.