Un Asado Chileno

Perhaps you remember--though I’d nearly forgotten myself-- that in my first entry on Santiago, I mentioned a guy I met on my flight, Marco, a Chilean veterinarian currently training as a doctor in Ecuador. If you look back, you’ll also note that I mentioned his best friend Jaime, a veterinarian who just so happens to live in Illapel. Though I haven’t mentioned them since, they hadn’t just fallen to the wayside. Marco and I have texted from time to time and Jaime and I have been playing Facebook-tag for many weeks. At long last, we managed to catch up last night. It turns out that not only does Jaime live in Illapel, but he lives in El Balcon, the cerros (foothills of the mountains) about a ten minute walk from my house. Unbelievable. After my day in town, Jaime and I met up on the Avenida, the main drag in town (which is way smaller than the main drag in Pisa about which I’d complained last year). We rode back up to his place where we "took eleven." (Haha, or "jaja" en español, ¡o castellano! I love that the literal translation of tomar once, or to have an evening snack, is to take eleven.) We watched a game of soccer, the Copa Chilena, played for the first time this year on Easter Island. It is, from his explanation, an annual soccer match between two more or less randomly selected teams, this year’s being between the beloved professional team from Santiago, Colo-colo, and the local Easter Island team, Rapa Nui, composed of fisherman and high schoolers. Don’t ask me exactly why they would put these teams against each other. It sounds like a total massacre to disgrace the Easter Islanders during this effort to help "incorporate" Easter Island into the country of Chile. (Many Easter Islanders don’t consider themselves to be a part of Chile and refer to the people from the rest of the country as the continentos, or people from the continent.) The Easter Islanders, for their rag-tag assortment of players, put up a good fight and only lost by 4 to 0. These men, though by no means professional athletes, spend so much time on physical labor and also are of a different genetic make-up such that they could still face a professional team with some measure of pride. They wore feathers in their hair and shouted out to each other in their native language.

After the game, we head over to Jaime’s friend’s house down in the pueblo for an asado, or barbecue. His friend is also a veterinarian, so it wasn’t a surprise to be greeted by an attractive, large cat shortly after walking through the front door. Upon emerging onto the back deck, a fluffy, white, three-legged door hardly bigger than the cat hobbled over to greet me. I had just reached down to pet this funny animal with its giant fluffy ears when a huge, tan, Bordeaux dog or French Mastiff jumped almost knocked me over. Apparently, despite their differences in size, the female Bordeaux dog who was about as big as me had massive jealousy issues with this tiny, white, three-legged dog. As she went and chased the three-legged fluff ball around the yard, her mate, another Bordeaux even bigger than her, came over to get some attention. I was being thoroughly entertained by their collection of pets when someone told me to stay out of the back of the yard. I looked up to realize he had good reason: a giant male ostrich was seated there between the trees!

Besides this odd assortment of animals, the people themselves were fairly entertaining. We chatted and I spent my first evening really hanging out with Illapelenos, or whatever adjective should be used to describe people from Illapel. We swapped stories and had a few good laughs. They taught me words I probably shouldn’t know, their favorite of the night being the expression hacer turumba, which basically has the same meaning as trombare in Italian. (Note: I was most definitely not involved in the stories that used these terms.) I can’t be sure, but these words sound awfully similar. I was excited to find that some slang expressions seem to share roots between Spanish (or Castellano, the word these people use for their language which they insist is not the same as the one spoken in Spain) and Italian. It’s too bad I didn’t meet Jaime (pronounced Hai-may) earlier, but as the dicho, or expression, has it, más vale tarde que nunca: better late than never.