I was woken up this morning around 1 am by a gentle
rattling, I knew straight away what it was, an earthquake. The gentle rattling
quickly became a quite large rattling and before long the whole building was shaking. The intensity of it kept increasing and the
adrenalin was rushing through my veins preparing me for a fight or flight
response, I chose the rabbit in headlights response and dived under the covers not really sure what to do. I am not sure exactly how
long it went on for; it must have been 30-45 seconds. The worst thing is
not knowing when it is going to slow down and stop. Once it did
stop I still wasn’t really sure what I should do so I lay there a bit more, a
few car alarms had been set off. The power was still on so I switched on the TV
and it appeared that it was 6.4 on the richer scale, the epi-centre was off the
coast of Valparaiso, where I had been the weekend before. Fortunately there
wasn’t a risk of tsunami. So, the earthquake count since I have been here is
now up to three. I couldn’t back to sleep for
few hours after all the excitement so am pretty tired today. I think I need an earthquake plan.
The weekend was spent climbing a mountain close to Santiago, Cerro Provincia (2750 m). I met Matej and David at the metro station Los Dominicos. Matej is a post-doc in the theoretical Physics department and David is a colleague of his from the Czech Republic. We got a bus to San Carlos de Apoquindo, which is where the Universidad Catolica football stadium is. The trail starts from behind the stadium. It took us nearly 7 hours to reach the summit, a steep climb and scramble most of the way up. We arrived at the summit about an hour and a half before it got dark, the sun was getting low and the temperature was already dropping. There is a Refugio close to the summit where we planned to stay the night. The refugio was a simple dome structure that probably slept 6 -8 people. Surprisingly we were the only people crazy enough to be spending Saturday night there. We had come prepared with some fine wines, bacardi and Czech plum schnapps (from Bulgaria) to help us through the night. Once the sun had gone down and darkness had fallen we were presented with some magnificent views of the stars. The cold eventually forced us into the refugio dome where it seemed appropriate to partake of a fine Cuban cigar that David had been good enough to carry up with him. I am not a smoker by any stretch of the imagination but have to say I quite enjoyed it. I suppose there is a time and a place for everything. It was probably the smell of the sweat off the thigh of the Cuban woman who had rolled it.
I only had my thin lightweight sleeping bag so a cold uncomfortable night of fitful sleep on the wooden floor of the dome followed. In the morning the sun rose up over the Andes giving us a wonderful view and we sat and had breakfast. The walk down took us about 4 hours and was quite tough on knees and legs as most of the trail was loose scree. We got back down to San Carlos around 3 pm I think and I was exhausted. Two days later as I write this my legs still hurt. It was totally worth it though. Some photos can be found on my Facebook page.
Well done to Liverpool as well, knocking out Everton in the FA cup!
A
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