Several weeks ago while you folks at home were celebrating Columbus Day, we also celebrated a public holiday here that's is referred to as Dia de la Raza. This day in some Latin American countries might be seen as a counter to Columbus Day, but in talking to some of the Chilean teachers here they said that they prefer to think of it as neutrally as possible and just celebrate the discovery of the Americas.
For this long weekend I ventured about 6 hours north to La Serena, a popular vacation and beach area that sits adjacent to the beautiful Elqui Valley. I wanted to visit before the tourist season, and although it was very cloudy and a little cold, I managed to spend most of the trip seeing some of the clearest blue skies that I've even seen in my life. The skies here are so clear that this area is home to many international observatories, and although this time I didn't have the opportunity to to take a tour, just star-gazing and identifying constellations myself that I haven't seen for ages made the trip worthwhile.
Vicuna, one of the smaller towns that composes this valley is also the birthplace of the famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in literature. We had the chance to visit the tiny museum dedicated to her, and almost missed this opportunity since the time had changed the night before and we didn't realize it. The man kept telling us that the museum was closing at one o'clock, and I kept thinking that this was odd since it appeared to only be 11:45.
We also visited Pisco Mistral in Pisco Elqui, stopped in for a tour and tried some pisco, a liquor distilled from grapes, (you can see the vines pictured below) and most famously present here in Chile in a drink called pisco sours. Delicious!
I was so wiped out from that last long weekend that this time I decided to take the opposite approach and spend my long weekend for Dia de Todos Los Santos right here in Santiago. This Catholic holiday is celebrated on November 1st to honor all of the saints, both known and unknown and is marked by mass visits to the cemetaries. This morning I read in the publimetro newspaper that between Sunday and Monday about 700,000 people visited the Cementario General de Santiago. I asked some of my adults students this morning about how/if they celebrate and some said that they always go to the cemetary, others never do, and some usually go but didn't go yesterday since it was so hot.
I can attest to the heat yesterday, as I was out riding around on my bike quite a bit and at times felt a little light headed. It was a great weekend to get caught up on rest, read, spend some quiet time, and Skype since everyone else here at the house was away at the beach. I plan to relax as much as I can right now on the weekends since I'm working so much during the week and save up my travel time for the upcoming summer months!
