CATORCE/ Claro y Bajo (Pale and Short)

One of the first things I always notice after arriving in Chile is being looked at. This is especially obvious in enclosed spaces like the subway in Santiago. Every time I glance up, it seems, someone is looking at me. Or seems to be commenting about me to someone else. Or am I paranoid? I don’t think so. Most of the tourists in Chile are from Europe, Canada, or Australia, not the United States, so people ask if we’re German, or French (“French!” I think, “go ahead, think I’m French!”). I find myself noticing Michael’s pale eyes, his pale skin. At home I’m used to seeing him as darker than me, more olive-skinned, with more green and brown in his hazel eyes than my blue-green-gold mixture. But, in a world of black hair, very dark eyes, and pale-olive- to brown-skinned people—and especially now that Michael is white-haired—we are both very pale there. When I see another pale-skinned, fair-haired (rubio) or, especially, a pale-eyed person in Chile, I am invariably, automatically drawn to look. Because the pale human colors contrast so dramatically with the surrounding human coloration. And then I think, “That’s me, I’m looking at what I look like, and this is what happens when Chileans look at me.”

The range of color variation in physical appearance is pretty narrow among these 4th-graders (Lucy's first class of students) in Chile.
—Photo by Lucy Engle.

I’m used to fitting in, appearance-wise, or imagining I have control over when I fit in and when I don’t—by what I wear, for instance. In Chile, I don’t have a choice: I don’t fit in, I can’t hide, and I’m always looked at because of being in the “pale” category. Except, I noticed, on the last few days in Santiago—on the subway with Lucy—when I was aware of people not looking at me: I suspect middle-aged female paleness is trumped by young-adult female paleness, and they were looking at her instead.

In the late 1970s, when Michael was in library school, we lived in student housing in Kalamazoo, MI, with young families from all over the world, mostly Saudi Arabians and Iranis. A group of Middle Eastern kids asked me one day why our toddler Anna had such blonde hair when Michael’s and mine was darker. I told them our hair used to be Anna’s color, and they looked confused; they all had the same black hair as their parents. And when my sister Sig visited—she had very long, orangey-red hair—a group of Saudi kids couldn’t keep from touching it. They asked me, “What did she use to make it that color? henna?” I said, "No, it just grows that color." “But, what did she do to make it that color?” they asked again. My answer obviously didn’t make sense. On the other end of the color spectrum, a twelve-year-old Icelandic girl, Anna Rut, with yellow-blonde hair, used to come by and ask to take Anna Rose to the playground for an hour. I think she liked walking around the apartment complex hand in hand with a toddler who could have been her little sister.

Many Chilean women add blonde highlights, or red, to their naturally dark hair. This is an especially common choice for middle-aged women—President Michelle Bachelet is a visible example. So, we look a bit alike, Chilean middle-aged women and me, except for eye and skin color. Performers and models in ads also tend toward blonder hair. An even more extreme version, in another context, is the use of Caucasian coloration—and facial features—in Japanese animation characters (even in the films of Hiyao Miyazaki, a great director). What does it mean for a dark-haired, dark-eyed culture to adopt the appearance of northern people from European colonial cultures and the United States? Part of me feels uneasy, even though the “chosen” appearance is my own. I wonder if there’s a positive side to the phenomenon, an aspect of cultural globalization? Or, maybe there’s just an inherent magnetism, either attraction or repulsion, or both mixed up together, in every manifestation of difference.

Am I short or tall here? It depends.

The other thing I notice a lot in Chile is that I’m short. Why this awareness in a culture where I’m actually more in the middle height range? It doesn’t make logical sense. But I feel very aware of my small stature in Chile. The only explanation I can think of is Kate’s impression that, since short people are always looking up in relation to others, over time we begin to imagine that “looking up” is actually “looking straight across.” At home, I find that I’m regularly off in judging others’ heights, assuming they’re shorter than they are, maybe even shorter than me, when in fact they’re usually taller. Maybe I notice being short in Chile because I’m in denial about being short in my own, taller culture. In Chile, in this appearance category, I fit right in, I’m smack in the middle, and I belong without question.

—Jane

TRECE/ Aves o Pájaros (Birds)

The river valley cut through rainforest burgeoning with ferny undergrowth, the silence punctuated by the musical prattle of the chucao, a smallish bird with a vertical tail, its trill part of the daily background noise.
—Sara Wheeler, Travels in a Thin Country

WARNING: If you are not an avid birdwatcher, you might want to skip to the link to special bird sounds in the last paragraph of the post.

We brought binoculars to Chile for the first time on this trip, along with Birds of Chile, by Alvaro Jaramillo, an excellent field guide. There’s nothing like starting from scratch, when even the most ordinary birds are new and exciting. We identified more than 45 bird species on the trip. Some highlights:

Black-crowned night-heron (huiaravo), in two locations, a group of juveniles asleep in a tree we happened to collapse under for a rest in the shade in the Jardín Botánico de la Universidad de Austral, right in Valdivia (they were so close, one shat and missed Michael’s face by inches), and an adult pair at dusk near the furthest western point of our travels into the Andes, toward Argentina, on the shore of Lago Maihue.

Endangered red-legged cormorant (lile), hundreds of them nesting on a series of haystack rocks just off the Pacific coast at Pilolcura, the end-of-the-dirt-road beach north of Niebla.

Black-necked swan (cisne de cuello negro), viewed from Lucy’s house on Río Valdivia, all along Río Cruces, and at the mouth of Lago Maihue. Their population dropped a few years ago due to pollution from a pulp plant up the river. Following a round of environmental protests, pulp production was restricted for a time, and the swans’ number have now increased dramatically. But we were told that the pulp mill has again been allowed to return to full production. In 2007, when Michelle Bachelet visited Valdivia and spoke near the Feria Fluvial, we saw protesters dressed in dramatic black swan costumes (reminiscent of Bjork’s swan dress at the Oscars), loudly advocating for more permanent protection for the swans, but it hasn’t happened yet. They are graceful and majestic birds, very beautiful to see along the rivers, so I hope they will have a chance to continue to thrive.

On the way back toward Niebla from Playa Pilolcura, we happened to stop in a grassy parking lot above another beach, Playa Misión, and within an hour saw: rufous-collared sparrow (chincol); long-tailed meadowlark (loica or lloica—the Mapuches tell a legend about this bird), a male-female pair, the male has a bright crimson breast; spectacled tyrant (run-run), a robin-sized black bird with white outer primaries, white eyes surrounded by startling, round, pale-lemon “spectacles” and a sharp yellow-white bill; and grassland yellow finch (chirihue), a large flock of them.

Where the mouth of the Río Calcurrupe spills out of Lago Maihue, we watched a long close-up of a ringed kingfisher (martín pescador), with startling orange breast; many black-necked swans; yellow-billed pintail (pato jergón grande); a snowy egret (garza chica); many more grassland finches; and—seen by Lucy and Eduardo—a flock of parakeets, either the austral (cachaña) or slender-billed (choroy).

There is only one common hummingbird in the Valdivia area, the green-backed firecrown (picaflor chico), and we did see one, feeding on slender, crimson four-o’clocks in a willow brake along the Río Cau Cau in the Botanical Garden. But unfortunately the mid-day light was so bright and blinding that I can only say we knew we had seen a hummingbird and what kind it must be, rather than that we “saw” it. I look forward to many better views.

Along the rivers of Valdivia, we saw the white-necked heron or cocoi (garza cuca—the largest of the Chilean herons, equivalent to our great blue heron but grayer), great egret (garza grande), snowy egret, white-winged coot (tagua chica), falcon or southern caracara (traro), black vulture (jote de cabeza negra), and great grebe (huala).

In towns and fields: Chilean mockingbird (tenca), roufous-tailed plant-cutter (rara), Patagonian sierra-finch (cometocino patagónico), black-chinned siskin (jilguero), rock dove (paloma—kernels of popcorn sold on the street are called palomitas), and Chilean pigeon (torcaza)—a beautiful purple dove.

On Pacific beaches: Peruvian pelican (pelícano), osprey (aguila de pescadora), dark-bellied cincloides (churrete), whimbrel (zarapita), blackish oystercatcher (pilpilén negro), South American tern (gaviotín sudamericano), and elegant tern (gaviotín elegante).

Jenny and Michael at Las Lanzas.

In Santiago: monk parakeet (cotorra), after meeting Eduardo’s mother Jenny and sister Carolina for coffee at Las Lanzas, a café in Plaza Ñuñoa. Jenny introduced us to the cortado, “striped” coffee, with a layer of espresso, a layer of heated milk, a layer of whipped cream—very tasty. We heard about Carolina’s cooking school classes and the family’s experience buying an apartment in Santiago for Sebastián, Carolina, and Alejandra. The conversation shifted from English to Spanish and back again.

Carolina at Las Lanzas.

When we walked back to Jenny’s new car, alongside the plaza, there was a luscious monk parakeet walking across the windshield wipers. As we exclaimed and wondered how to entice the bird off the car, a parking attendant strode up (they track parked cars and arrive for payment as you return), gently scooped up the bird in his hand, and offered us a close look before releasing it toward the trees. It was deep lime-green on the back, fading to warm yellow under the belly, with a bright yellow, curved beak—a richly tropical sight. We noticed, then, many parakeets chirping in the tall, sequoia-like alerce trees above. In Birds of Chile, Alvaro Jaramillo comments on the monk parakeet: “Cagebird escapee that is quickly colonizing Santiago. Builds large colonial stick nests, often in city parks.”

A bandurria.

Everywhere in and around Valdivia, including Lucy’s yard: the ever-present ibis (bandurria), southern lap-wing (queltehue o treile), chimango caracara (tiuque—a small, brown urban hawk that walks like a chicken), white-crested elaenia (fío-fío), southern house wren (chercán), austral thrush (zorzal), Chilean swallow (golondrina chilena), and tufted tit-tyrant (cachudito o torito).

We haven’t seen a condor (cóndor), but on this trip I did hear a story about them. Pedro, a friend of Lucy and Edo’s, described seeing condors for the first time, hiking at about 3,000 meters (about 10,000 feet) with his wife Evalina and father. They were unbelievably large, Pedro said, and were obviously drawn together to eat something dead on the mountainside. I asked how many. “Nineteen,” he said. “My father counted them. He is 70, grew up in Chile, and had never seen any condors before.”

At Parque Oncol: Michael and Lucy saw the beautiful black-throated huet-huet (hued-hued de sur). And we heard, all along our hike in the parque up to the viewpoint on Cerro Oncol, another haunting, mysterious bird sound in deep thickets of bamboo, without ever actually seeing the bird. We would wait and watch, over and over, but never saw it—very frustrating. And from that point on the trip, we continued to hear that mystery bird sound in virtually every other non-urban location. “There’s the mystery bird, again,” one of us would say, “damn.” You can hear this mystery bird sound yourself at the Parque Oncol website, as it’s one of the background sounds for the site: http://www.parqueoncol.cl/. Wait through the initial round of bird sound—chirps with a ticking sound behind—followed by the sound of running water … and then comes the mystery bird sound, a sharp whortle, repeated after a pause. We suspect this is the sound of the chucao tapaculo (chucao). Jaramillo describes the sound this way: “Unmistakeable, explosive song, accented at beginning, crr-CHU’Chu’ Chu’chu’chu, lasting nearly 1 s and repeated infrequently.” See what you think. The next bird song after the chucao is, I think, the sound of the black-throated huet-huet, which ends on a descending series. I hope to confirm these identifications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

—Jane

DOCE/ The Christmas Office Party, Chilean Style

The language institute where Lucy teaches English held an office Christmas party one evening, and we were invited. Since the three of us—Lucy, Jane, and I—had already eaten, we conspired to arrive at a later hour to miss the main part of the meal. When we did arrive a little after 9 o’clock, still early by Chilean standards, we were warmly greeted with hugs and kisses, from all of the fifteen or so staff members in attendance.

This is the standard Chilean greeting ritual: between two women and between women and men, every person stands and hugs and kisses the new arrivals one by one. This happens again upon departure. Male-to-male greetings vary from handshakes among acquaintances to hugs among extended family.

The party tables were laid out end to end in a long hallway on the first floor of the converted two-story house. The remains of the meal still occupied the table, mainly the bones and meat of a lamb, empty wine bottles, and leftover potatoes and salads in serving dishes.

The lamb had been raised by the boss for the occasion, butchered by the assistant jefe of the institute, and then roasted on a spit in the back yard of the institute building that afternoon, using the wood of a dead fruit tree from the yard cut earlier.

Inside, the fluorescent lighting lent a somewhat unfestive air to an otherwise lively gathering. There were three other English teachers besides Lucy, and the two nearest us were fluent and eager to practice their English with us. We in turn were eager to practice our Spanish with the Spanish-speaking teaching and administrative staff. As we talked, we were amply supplied with Chilean wine by the jefe. It seemed like he was getting us up to speed with the rest of the crowd.

The founder and current chief of the institute reminded me of Ricky Gervais in the British version of The Office. Talkative, lively, teasing, and a bit too chummy perhaps, but, unlike Gervais’s character, this guy is a passionate entrepreneur who saw a need and started his own successful business to fill it. When we asked about the origin of the institute, one of the staff pointed to the institute’s seal on the wall. Even though I've forgotten the details, I remember the pride in the jefe's voice as he explained each of the elements in the seal's iconography.

The evening rolled along until the penultimate activity, the giving of the gifts, following the amigo secreto (secret Santa) format. One of the staff pulled gifts from a large bag in the hallway beyond the head of the table and the recipient went to the head, opened the gift, posed for a photo with gift in hand, and then tried to guess the name of the giver.

The first few gifts were innocuous enough, but toward the end, things picked up a bit. The women received soft, feminine things: scented candles, body lotions, etc. The guys got macho gifts culminating in a carved wooden Mapuche joke figure, apparently a standard item in Chile, which, when manipulated properly, displayed a large erection. Not your typical office fare in the United States.

Near the end of the gift opening, the boss’s present to one of the young women was a rather large box with a picture of a DVD player on the outside. There were lots of oohs and aahs from the staff, while at the same time it was clear that the gift was not actually a DVD player. Inside the DVD box was a series of nested, ever-smaller boxes ending in a very small box containing a coffee cup with a photo of the boss on the side. The recipient didn’t know quite what to say, nor did anyone else. There was an awkward silence. Was their boss really this narcissistic? In a piece of fine comedic timing, the boss waited just long enough for the reaction and then, holding up the cup for everyone to see, he removed his photo which, it turned out, had been printed on a piece of paper and taped to the cup. Underneath, on the cup itself, was an attractive photo of the young woman. Everyone laughed with relief. The unfolding humor of the situation was a delicate mixture of embarrassment and familiarity.

The boss broke out the champagne de piña, poured over chirimoya ice cream. Bottoms up. After the champagne course, we excused ourselves along with some of the other staff, followed by the usual departure hugs and kisses. Lucy, our designated driver, took us home. We left with a inside view of a Chilean workplace that is rowdier, warmer, and more sexually explicit than our northern version.

—Michael