¿Cachai?

“Si, gracias” I responded with an emphatic nod when the flight attendant asked me if I wanted water. I took the water nonchalantly, trying not to smirk. Did she even notice that I was speaking Spanish? I was feeling a mixture of relief and pride that I had understood her question and had thought to answer in en español, and growing elation, I was speaking already! How hard could this be?

I arrived in Chile hoping that the seven years of Spanish class that I had taken from 6eme to Tle wouldn’t prove to have been completely wasted. I hoped that the fact that I was able to semi-converse in Spanish with the handful of Spanish volunteers at the Zeehondencreche in Pieterburen meant that I still had some grasp over the language despite the fact I hadn’t really heard or studied it in over five years. I hoped that I really do have a knack for languages as everyone tells me I do when they hear that I am trilingual. My faith and fear of failure in my language speaking ability had accompanied me all the way into Santiago. In the airport, I saw that I could I read the Spanish sign for “salida” (exit) , and I held my own in the short conversation with the border control official no problemo. I thought maybe I remembered more than I thought I did.

Despite the fact that I was buoyed by my half-remembered Spanish language foundation, I soon realized the key ingredient that would be necessary if I were to successfully be immersed in foreign country and language: concentration. The problem with going to a place where solely Spanish is spoken, is that they speak Spanish, all the time. All the time!! I had forgotten how much energy it takes to understand a language that you can understand only if you concentrate hard on the meaning of the words and on the structure of the sentences; but if you let your concentration waver for a moment, you lose the thread of the entire conversation. I think the last time that I had experienced this state of linguistic fuzziness was in 1ere when I went on a trip to Saint Petersburg with my Russian class. I remember not receiving what I thought had ordered at a fast food place and difficulty haggling with the little old ladies at the the souvenir stands next to the Spasa Na Krovi church. Last year, when I was in Madagascar, I never reached the point where I could have followed a conversation in Malagasy if I concentrated very hard. Of course, I could get my point across easily enough with the paucity of words I knew and French as a crutch; but here, I didn’t have the option of a language I already know, I had to use Spanish. When I first arrived, it was like listening to someone speaking with a hand covering their mouth; I could kind of understand, but to get the true meaning of the Chileans’ words I needed to concentrate very hard.

On top of the intrinsic difficulty of understanding a language that I am not fluent in is the added difficulty of the Chilean accent. So to build upon the previous comparison listening to the Chilean accent for me is like listening to someone talking through a mouthful of marbles with their hand covering their mouth. I found that the number of marbles (read here: accent) varies depending on where the person is from. Hernán, one of the boat captains, comes from el campo in the South, and instead of saying, for example “Quizás querías venir pescar con nosotros esta noche?” (Maybe you want to come fishing with us tonight?) he will say something like this “ Quitha queri veni peca conotro etanoch?” And I am left with a blank look on my face. Maybe not all the Chilean accents are not that extreme (although they all seem to have the ability to speak mind bogglingly fast), but I have noticed some quasi-universal peculiarities. The two quirks of pronunciation that I find most noticeable are that:

1. Chileans practically never pronounce the “s” sound. So “Que dijiste?” Becomes que dijite?” Once you start anticipating how words will sound without the “s” sound this becomes easier to understand.

2. Chileans rarely pronounce the endings of words and considerably soften them, so often almuerzo becomes almuerz. This is a bit harder to deal with especially when you don’t understand a word and you are trying to get someone to repeat it back to you. It usually takes several tries.  

Besides these pronunciation differences there are a couple of linguistical quirks that I’ve picked up in the last two weeks that I’ve found very endearing:

1. The usage of “acá” instead of “aquí” for saying “here”. In Spanish class I remember at least one lesson being devoted to the different degrees of “here”. You learn aquí, ahí, allá (or at least this is what I remember from a super long time ago), and I always remember using “aquí” for right here and “acá” was a really shady term that we had heard of but never used and it was kinda had the same meaning as “aquí” (then ahí is even further away and allá is waaaayyy over there), however in Chile, I soon realized that I was the only one saying “aquí” and everyone else was saying “acá” so, I jumped on the acá train as well.

2. New slang!

chévere: awesome, cool, great

cuatico: over the top

chuta: darn

fomé: lame

¿chachai?: get it? This one’s probably my favorite because it kind of seems to replace the conversational filler “ummmmm”, and of course being the producer of many blank quizzical expressions I have earned my fair share of¿Cachai? And ¿Cacha(s)te?

3. Speaking someone’s name proceeded by “la” or “el”. For example they’ll say, “¿Donde está la Lauren?” (Literally, where is “the” Lauren). I can´t tell if they do it for everyone or if it a term of endearment or familiarity, but I love it!

So all in all, my Spanish is definitely getting better. It has only been two weeks but I already understand practically everything (unless people are talking really really fast), and I feel that I can converse more smoothly. I think that my progress can be measured by the simple fact that when I got here and I would be asked, “¿Cachai?” I would respond with a blank quizzical expression, but now I know enough at least to say, “Sí caché!”

Welcome to Huinay!

It’s been almost a week since I arrived at Fundacion Huinay. Huinay is research station in Northern Patagonia, Chile. My first reaction upon arriving was one of wonder and awe. I had been in a few research stations before, but in none of them were the facilities so luxurious or whimsical. Huinay is in the fjord region of Patagonia which means that the landscape is entirely made up of mountains starting several hundred meters below the water’s edge and running uninterruptedly to the crest several hundred meters above us. Because of this, the station couldn’t be built on flat terrain, and indeed, the houses are built on raised wooden platforms that rest half-way on the mountainside, half on wooden stilts. Another remarkable fact about Huinay is that it is built almost entirely of wood and an effort had been made to disrupt the trees as little as possible to the point of including them in the building design. Indeed one of the first things I noticed that the decks of the houses and labs had been built leaving spaces for treetrunks and the effervescent verdure seemed to singlemindedly want to poke through every crack in the wooden slats. All of these details sprang out to me at once while Katie was giving me the grand tour and I thought, “I’m living in a treehouse.”

My new home!

Huinay is the product of a very strange partnership: The University Catholica of Valiparaiso and the Chilean elecitricity giant Endesa. What I understand is that the university owned 34000 acres in Northern Patagonia and proposed to Endesa to foot the bill for the first and only state of the art research station in all of Patagonia. Endesa agreed to do so because building an ecological research station is in line with conservation goals, and this would look pretty good coming from a not-so-green supercompany. I feel that the station lives up to its somewhat conflicted ideological roots. On the one hand there are hippy-dippy sustainability initiatives at this station, such as growing our own vegetables, keeping a beehive, and sorting the trash between biodegradable and non-biodegradable. On the other hand, there seems to be no initiative to implement some water or electricity saving rules. Whatever the motives, Huinay was opened for business in 2001 and great science was had by all!

The story of its conception gave me the answer to the question of why Huinay was so swanky: it had been funded by one of the richest companies in South America! Everything was very, VERY, nice. When I first arrived at Huinay Katie led me up an immaculate flagstone path through overhanging leaves and vines towards a wooden (tree)house. I was to live in the scientists’ house which had a large common room complete with couches, table and chairs, and a kitchenette. I am sharing a room with the other intern, Annika. And what a room! Complete with a desk, enormous shelf space, an en-suite bathroom, and sliding glass doors that lead to a balcony. Delightful! Equal to the quality of the room is the quality of the view. Out on the balcony I can look over the treetops and the blue ocean right to the forested cloud-laced fjord on the other side. Not too shabby right?

View from Huinay

I feel like I should have mentioned this before, but here goes, Huinay is very isolated. There are no roads that lead to it; it is only possible to get here by boat. The only thing here other than the research station is a “village”, and I put village in quotes because it is comprised of two houses and a school. School is out right now, but during the year it has about 15 students, mostly the children of salmon farmers who have the option of living at the school during the year if it’s more convenient. On the station there are another handful of people. On the science side we have Ulo and Katie as the research coordinators and David the GIS guy. Sole and Reinhardt have lived on the station since the beginning and they take care of the administrative side along with Lola. Dennis and Veronica cook, Marco, Hernan, and Meli are boat captains/ maintenance workers. And then people come and go. One of the purposes of the station is to receive groups of visiting scientists. A couple of groups will be arriving in the next weeks so it is about to feel very crowded compared to the deserted island vibe we have right now.

So that was the story of how Huinay came to be here which explains why I am typing on my computer in a treehouse on what feels like a deserted island, but is actually on a fjord firmly attached to the Chilean coast. I’m about to go pick a bowl of blueberries from the garden patch which I will eat with some yoghurt that we keep in the fridge in the common room, because we have a fridge in the common room! Though this kind of opulence may feel wrong in this lush deserted island setting, I’m not complaining, it’s nice to have the best of both worlds.

On the road again! From Santiago to Huinay

I had come to Chile to work at Huinay, a research station in fjord country in Northern Patagonia. Getting there was going to be a bit of challenge though, and as I had planned it out, was going to take me three days of travel. From Santiago, my journey to Huinay divided into three parts. The first one was taking the Tur Bus bus from Santiago to Puerto Montt. The bus left Santiago on Thursday at 20:30 and was supposed to get in to Puerto Montt at 10:00 on Friday. The next part was to take a four hour bus ride from Puerto Montt to Hornopiren at 13:30 on Friday. The last part was to take the Mailen ferry at 10:30 Saturday morning from Hornopiren when I would finally make it to Huinay. Though I faced a long journey, I was confident in the dependability of the Chilean transportation system especially after having dealt with the chaos of getting around in Madagascar. I didn´t think I would run into any problems.

I spent a very restful night on the Tur Bus where I made full usage of my reclinable seat but was a little bit nonplussed by the American movies and TV series that played throughout the ride. For all the advanced bus technology they hadn’t adopted the airplane’s practice of using headsets and so I had to listen to the movies whether I wanted to or not. We arrived in Puerto Montt bus terminal a bit after 10:00 on Friday morning. It was a new-looking, high-ceilinged, but very crowded building, whose walls were lined with ticket booths. I found the Kemel bus booth as instructed and managed to swipe one of the two remaining tickets for that afternoon. I spent the remaining time in Puerto Montt trying to find an ATM that had cash (success!) and making an international call on my cellphone (unsuccess…).

1 o’clock came around and I swung on my hugenormous backpack on my back yet again and went outside to look for the bus. My seat was in the back of the bus, next a gentleman with an eyepatch who was very keen to converse once he realized that I was able to string together a couple words of Spanish. The road was surprisingly bumpy and gravelly and struck a winding path along the coast, with the ocean on the right side and forested mountain on the left. After an hour we stopped in a teeny town where a woman boarded the bus to sell empenadas. Then to my great surprise the drove onto a boat. We were taking a ferry ride across a narrow stretch of water from Caleta La Arena to Caleta Puelche. I was very excited to get out of the bus and take a look around. In this area of Chile the fjords jutted out into the water creating narrow channels which made travel by water a considerable time-saving venture. The bus drove off the boat on the other side and two and a half hours later I had arrived in the little village of Hornopiren. I had asked to be dropped off at La Rampa, which is the ferry launch point. I immediately located the closest hospedaje which was on the other side of the street, and though its chicken and trash filled yard did not give off the best impression, the woman who greeted me was very kind and led me to an adjoining house where I’d get me own room. After she had given me complex instructions on how to turn on the hot water for the shower, I set out to explore the little town. There was nothing really to see, it was very deserted, dusty, and a little depressing. The streets seemed quite spread out for what it was, and though there was some kind of festival going on where I got some yummy food, it too was very empty of people. By this point, however, I was exhausted and headed back to the hospedaje for some sleep.

The next day was the home stretch. I bought my ticket for the Mailen ferry at 9:30, and it was scheduled to leave at 10:30. Most of the people boarding the ferry were happy summer-vacation-going Chileans in cars. At about 10:00 the man directing the traffic onto the boat called for mochillos, which I know understand means back packs, and with a nudge from a Chilean girl who saw that I didn´t know that “mochillos” applied to me, I followed the handful of pedestrian travellers onboard. The boat cruised at a slow pace straight between long stretches of enormous green fjords jutting into the ocean. After three and half hours we reached another rampa. Beyond the concrete slope there was a dirt road marked “Parque Pumalin” and next to it was a wooden dock. Besides that, nothing. Had I come to the right place? Everyone was getting off the boat though. I did too. I went down to the wooden dock where there were three small boats tied up and asked the lone man fishing off the edge with a metal can tied to a string if he was from Huinay, but he wasn’t and didn’t know anything about it. Katie, the girl I had been corresponding with, told me that they would come pick me up from the ferry. Well, I was here, so they had  to come pick me up. The Mailen stayed at the ramp to wait for an hour before making the ride back to Hornopiren. Some of the crewmembers were busy unloading goods while others looked stood around, smoking and waiting.

After ten minutes of fruitless looking out over the water for any sign of an approaching boat, one of the crewmembers of the Mailen came over to ask me where I was going. I told him “Huinay”. He looked at me confused. I repeated, “Huinay”. Another confused look, but then he slapped his leg saying, “aaahh, Weeenay! Porque no le dijiste antes?” Then after another two minute conversation I understood that they had gotten a radio call from Huinay asking if they had anyone for them on board. And they didn’t know that I was there so they had said no. I wasn’t where I was supposed to be! I was a little concerned, but the man led me back towards the other crewmembers and in rapid Spanish that I couldn’t understand he tried to ask me how this situation occurred, I explained badly that when I had bought the ticket I had said that I was going to Huinay, and I supplemented my explanation with a lot of hand gestures and shoulder shrugging. In anycase, I understood him when he said that he was going to talk to the captain. I waited by the boat, where other crewmembers asked me if I was scientist, what I was studying, whether this was my first time in Chile. I answered as best I could in my distracted state. After another 15 minutes the man who had gone to talk to the captain returned and I was kindly asked to come back on board. Huinay was about 40 minutes in the other direction and they were going to drop me off on the way back. I was extremely relieved that I was not going to be left alone on a concrete ramp without any cellphone service.

 At 15:30 the Mailen departed for Hornopiren on schedule. After 40 minutes of the fjord landscape someone came to get me. He said something, and though I couldn´t understand his rapid and accented Spanish, I laughed as his tone conveyed to me that he had said something funny. He led me to the back of the boat where the large metal ramp that vehicles used to get onboard was raised and kept the boat closed. We were getting close to the coast and I could just make out a cluster of elegant wooden buildings that seemed to be raised among the trees. I also spotted  a small motorboat that was approaching the large Mailen. Through hand signals more than words I was instructed to wait while the metal ramp was lowered into the water. A blond girl who was driving the boat tried a couple times to get it close enough and finally was successful, throwing a rope and life jacket towards the crewmembers.  I put the life jacket on, handed all my bags to the waiting hands in the motorboat, and stepped on myself. I had made it! I called out a “Muchas gracias!” and was sent off with a chorus of “Que te vaya bien!”. I was very happy to have finally arrived after such a long trip and my nearly disastrous detour. Katie smiled at me and said, “Welcome! It´s great to finally meet you”, I answered “Thanks, I am so glad to be here!” And I really meant it.