GO CHILE
Noeluna en route pour Singapour
Matthieu Vermersch
Mon 15 Mar 2010 17:41
Here we are in Chile. We arrived to Santiago very early last Thursday.
It was a very animated morning ; at the exact moment of the
investiture of the new President, Sebastian Pinera, we had a 7.2
earthquake and a replica 20 minutes later. People here are quite
nervous about earthquake now. Even if they are used to it because
Chile is definitely in the middle of 2 "placas" (Nazca and South
American), the 27th of February "terremoto" (8.8) was something they had
never experienced before, or at least since the 1960's one, 50 years
ago. So everybody went out in the street fearing that the buildings
couldn't cope with another big tremor, only a few days after the big one.
Also, the winter is coming soon, and the Chileans are worried about
the situation of the people in the south of the country, where more
than 1.5 millions persons either lost their houses, or don't have
power or water and live in tough conditions.
But apart from the few replicas that we have once or twice a day, we
are very lucky and life is going on very smoothly here in Santiago. It
is really a beautiful city, surrounded by the Andes mountains. There
is trees, flowers and parks everywhere. The weather is absolutely
delicious, dry and warm during the day and much colder at night (10 C
- 28 C today for example). People are very elegant in the streets, men
still wearing full suit and tie.
Last night when we came back from Isla de Maipo (Maipo? does it ring a
bell for wine lovers ?) my aunt couuntryside house, the city was
completely dark. We learned a bit later that it was actually the whole
country which was suffering a huge power shortage. Chile, a place of
adventure...
With love to all our Chilean friends from South to North.
Marguerite and Marie-Anne