Monday 18 April 2011
Picking chilli in Chile!
The other weekend I spent in the countryside near cholchol with a family who we know through a teacher at school. I have spent other weekends with them before. I love the life in the campo. The gardens full of fresh veg, chickens and their young running round the garden and dinner cooked on a real open fire! This weekend I helped pick chillis! We went round to one of the familys friends house. They had rows and rows of chilli plants all dripping with green chillis. We all got to work picking them. Daniela (the 20 year old daughter) not so much as she is used to doing it every year and unlike me the prospect of picking chillis didnt really excite her very much. We ended up picking a huge bucket full. At home me and the mum sewed them all together so they would dry out in the sun the next day. After they had been put out in the sun for a day they all turned really pretty oranges, reds and yellows even though that morning they had all been green! For dinner we at tomatoes with chilli, bread with chilli and soup with chilli. Chileans are crazy for chilli, good thing I am too!
Wednesday 2 March 2011
¡Travels!
Well I´ve just got back from 2months straight travelling. What an amazing and surreal experience it was. The Children in Chile have this time off from school for their summer holidays so dont go thinking we were mising any teaching! First stop was Valparaiso which is around an hour outside the capital of Chile. It is said to be the biggest celebration in South America so it was an obvious choice for all 18 of the volunteers in chile. It was nice to see everyone again after we had been split up since we had arrived in Chile. The fireworks were really spectacular and I´ve seen alot after growing up in Edinburgh! After New year we stayed in Santiago for a few days before heading for Argentina. Me and 7 other volunteers got a mini bus to Mendoza the wine capital of Argentina! We did a wine tour on bikes which envoled cycling from one vineyard to the next. I dont like wine so I much preferred the chocolate factories that were on the route too. We then took an 18 hour bus journey from Cordoba, Argentina up to Asunción, Paraguay. Asunción wasnt much of a capital although we did day trips to some beautiful towns outside the capital. We then took a bus straight through Parguay to Iguazu falls. Iguazu Falls is so big that it borders Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. It’s where the river falls over 75-80m drop to make a massive waterfall and it was really amazing, set in a rainforst type setting with hundreds of beautiful butterflies flying around. We took a speed boat under the falls which was both terrifying and brilliant.
Then we took an 18 hr bus down to the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, and spent 5 days there seeing the city (and it’s thunderstorms!) and it was a lovely capital city. One of my highlights was the huge weekend market,San Telmo market, which is set along a very, very, very long street. At the end I was exhausted!
We (just me and Leona, the other 6 stayed in B.Aires) then got a boat to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay, across the delta where we saw the annual Uruguayan carnival. It was at night (cos it was too hot to do it in the day) and lasted a good 5 hours, it was full of people dancing, playing the bongo drums, and people waving big flags with lots of colours. We then headed up the east coast deliberatly missing out all the beaches where the rich and famous spend their holidays and opted for small beach towns.
We headed back to Buenos Aires to take a 20 hour bus back to Santiago,Chile. Here I met two other volunteers and we flew down to Punta Arenas, the most southern city in Chile. We then headed for Torres Del Paine where we did a 5day hike. I dont think I quite knew what I was in for when I started. All I can say is I am glad I had my experiece from Duke of Edinburgh. It was very physically challenging as we had all our tents, food and clothes on our backs. But the trek was worth it as what you saw you would never beable to get to using any other transport. We were also lucky with the weather as it normally always rain but it didnt once while we were there. The first night we camped next to a huge glaciar. On our last morning we got up at 4in the morning to trek up to see the sunrise on the Torres. We brought our sleeping bags and our cooker and watched the sunrise cosy and with a cup of tea!Also in Patagonia we went horse riding in the Patagonian hills. Our next stop was Chiloe, a Big island in the south of Chile. Two other Project Trust voluteers live and work here so we were lucky to be able to stay with one of them and their Chilean family. We managed to rent a car and did a tour of the whole Island. It is truely beautiful I plan to come back on a long weekend. We did a penguin boat tour which was great and our tour guide who didnt speak english kept summarising everything he had said in Spanish into one word in English as he thought we didnt understand!
This last week of my holidays I have spent with the family of one of the teachers at school who live in the countryside near CholChol. It is one of my favourite places in the world, it is just so calm and relaxing. I helped out a little on the farm fixing a gate, collecting wood and helping with the new born chicks. I fell in love with one of the kittens and couldnt stop picking it up even when I got loads of flea bites from it! It was the perfect end to an amazing 2 months. Now Im back I dont actually believe how much I´ve seen and where Ive been, although I don´t think I ever will.
R xxx
Then we took an 18 hr bus down to the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, and spent 5 days there seeing the city (and it’s thunderstorms!) and it was a lovely capital city. One of my highlights was the huge weekend market,San Telmo market, which is set along a very, very, very long street. At the end I was exhausted!
We (just me and Leona, the other 6 stayed in B.Aires) then got a boat to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay, across the delta where we saw the annual Uruguayan carnival. It was at night (cos it was too hot to do it in the day) and lasted a good 5 hours, it was full of people dancing, playing the bongo drums, and people waving big flags with lots of colours. We then headed up the east coast deliberatly missing out all the beaches where the rich and famous spend their holidays and opted for small beach towns.
We headed back to Buenos Aires to take a 20 hour bus back to Santiago,Chile. Here I met two other volunteers and we flew down to Punta Arenas, the most southern city in Chile. We then headed for Torres Del Paine where we did a 5day hike. I dont think I quite knew what I was in for when I started. All I can say is I am glad I had my experiece from Duke of Edinburgh. It was very physically challenging as we had all our tents, food and clothes on our backs. But the trek was worth it as what you saw you would never beable to get to using any other transport. We were also lucky with the weather as it normally always rain but it didnt once while we were there. The first night we camped next to a huge glaciar. On our last morning we got up at 4in the morning to trek up to see the sunrise on the Torres. We brought our sleeping bags and our cooker and watched the sunrise cosy and with a cup of tea!Also in Patagonia we went horse riding in the Patagonian hills. Our next stop was Chiloe, a Big island in the south of Chile. Two other Project Trust voluteers live and work here so we were lucky to be able to stay with one of them and their Chilean family. We managed to rent a car and did a tour of the whole Island. It is truely beautiful I plan to come back on a long weekend. We did a penguin boat tour which was great and our tour guide who didnt speak english kept summarising everything he had said in Spanish into one word in English as he thought we didnt understand!
This last week of my holidays I have spent with the family of one of the teachers at school who live in the countryside near CholChol. It is one of my favourite places in the world, it is just so calm and relaxing. I helped out a little on the farm fixing a gate, collecting wood and helping with the new born chicks. I fell in love with one of the kittens and couldnt stop picking it up even when I got loads of flea bites from it! It was the perfect end to an amazing 2 months. Now Im back I dont actually believe how much I´ve seen and where Ive been, although I don´t think I ever will.
R xxx
Tuesday 28 December 2010
Monday 27 December 2010
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