Back from Chiloé

Last week our group traveled south to the Island of Chiloé.  In all, it’s about a 20-hour bus ride, but we made stops along the way to break it up a bit.  The first day, Saturday, we left Viña in the morning and drove for like 9 hours to the city of Concepción where we spent the night in a hostel.  Sunday morning we left Concepción and drove to Lota, an old mining town.

 

 In Lota, we toured the “Chiflon del Diablo” (The devil’s whistle) coal-mine that's no longer in use, but is now open to tourists.  That was kind of neat because we put on helmets with headlights (like real miners) and walked through parts of the mine, which goes underground

about 140 feet and then turns and goes underneath the ocean floor.  While we were in the bus on the way to the mine we watched a video called Subterra (Underground) about life in Lota during the early 1900’s.  In the town of Lota during this period, the mine was all that existed, so that’s where all the men worked.  There were no labor laws back then so it was basically mandatory to put in 14+ hour workdays six days a week doing extremely labor-intensive work unless you were physically unable to do so.  Even those who physically shouldn’t be doing such work did because they needed to eat.  The workers got paid in tokens that could only be used at the company store.  Because miners were paid so poorly, families often had to take male children out of school to work in the mine at young ages just to afford food.  Workers often died young from black-lung disease or from frequent accidents that occurred in the mine (explosions/cave-ins).  From the late 1800’s to when the mine closed in 1997, thousands of workers had died either due to accidents or diseases caused by working in the mine.  In a way, touring the mine was more like touring a massive tomb than it was like touring an industrial work place due to how many people have died inside of it over the years.   

 The owner of the mine in the early 1900’s was a North American (a Gringo, as they say here). He and his family had one mansion in Lota and another one in Santiago.  The movie Subterra is a documentary that depicts life in Lota during this time based on the writings of Baldomero Lillo, the company store tenant who kept a diary that focused on the sufferings of the miners and their families.  In the movie, the workers form a workers’ union and elect Baldomero to lead them.  They write a list of demands for the owner such as reducing the workday to 12 hours and banning child labor in the mine.  These humble demands are met, but the mine continues its operation as a death camp. 

Eventually the Chilean government took over the mine until it was closed in 1997.  Watching the video made me appreciate not being a miner!  When we toured the mine, I was reminded of an episode of the Discovery Channel program Dirty Jobs.  In this episode, Mike Rowe spends a workweek with a miner from West Virginia in a West Virginian coalmine.  These workers put in a grueling, labor-intensive 10-12 hour workday six days a week and often come from a long line of miners.  One big difference between these miners and the miners from Lota in the 1900s is that the West Virginian miners are raking in over $60,000 a year for their labors and, fortunately, they’re not forced to spend that money in a company store!  We left Lota and drove to Villarrica where we spent the second night.             

 

On Monday morning, we left Villarica and drove the rest of the way to Chiloe.  Before crossing the ferry to get to the island of Chiloe, we had lunch in the city of Angelmó.  The southern part of Chile is known for having really good seafood so, naturally, that’s what a lot of people had for lunch in Angelmó.  Fortunately for me, I’m not such a big fan of seafood.  I say “fortunately” because many who had seafood got sick. 

After lunch, our bus crossed on the ferry to Chiloe and we set out to find the house that the girls were to stay at.  The girls and guys had to be separated the two nights we spent in Chiloe because there wasn’t enough room for the whole group to stay at one house.

 

The houses that we stayed at were kind of like a bread-and-breakfast type set up.  They were out in the boonies with rural families.  The guys’ house was pretty big and had a bunch of small rooms for us to stay in.  The family is apparently used to having large groups of people stay with them; they definitely know how to cook for large crowds and are generous with their provisions.  We stayed with them two nights.  The first night we had a big dinner

accompanied with wine and then some of us stayed up for a while conversing.

 The second day (election Tuesday), we drove around the Island of Chiloe in our big bus.  The landscape was gorgeous.  We were supposed to see 3 historical wooden colonial churches, but we only saw 1 because the other 2 were closed for construction, which we discovered when we got to them.  Nonetheless, it was a pretty drive.  

During the evening the whole group came over to the guys’

 house for Curanto prepared by the rural family we stayed with.  Curanto is a type of food that is typical of southern Chile.  It’s a custom that comes from the indigenous peoples of that region.  To make it, basically you make a big camp fire hole in the ground, get a fire going and then form layers of food over the fire—first the meats and chicken, then, on the top layer, sea food and clams.  Between layers they put some type of leaves in there for flavoring.  Then you cover everything with some type of a fire-retardant tarp and let it cook for a few hours.  That was another feast, with wine of course—very good!  

We were then all excited for the election.  Since we were with a rural family out in the boonies, we didn’t get CNN or anything.  But, we did get some Chilean news station on one of the three channels that came in and it provided coverage of the election in Spanish.  I went to bed because I didn’t want to stay up all night watching it. 

 

On Wednesday morning, after breakfast and a walk through the woods, we left our rural family’s house and drove to Castro, one of the main cities on the island of Chiloe, where we had lunch. Then, with our bus, we boarded a ferry back to the main land, stopped for a while at the artisanal fair and started driving to Puerto Montt, where we spent the night in a cabin.  

We left Puerto Montt in the morning after breakfast and started driving towards the city of Valdivia.  On the way, we stopped at an old military fort.  Once we got close to Valdivia, we stopped at the Kunstmann brewery, where we had lunch.  After lunch we went on a tour of the brewery.  Kuntsmann is a well-known Chilean beer.  German immigrants started the brewery at the beginning of the century (go figure!).  In the south of Chile, there is a strong German presence because many Germans immigrated to the southern part of Chile in the late 1800’s (kind of like Minnesota!).  Therefore, it’s not uncommon to see German food on the menu in restaurants in this region.  We spent the night in Valdivia and left on Friday morning for Curico, where we spent the next night. 

 

Saturday morning we went to this huge museum in Curico and wandered around the main plaza before boarding the bus to head back to Viña.  We got back to Viña at about 6 in the evening.  For other photos from the trip click here.

 

This past week has been kind of crazy for my host family.  My host dad’s father has been sick with cancer and this past week he got gravely ill.  Thus, my host family has been spending a lot of time at the hospital and helping out my host dad’s mom.  Don't like to end on a sad note, but on Friday, his dad past away and I went with to the funeral today (Saturday).