Diamonds and Stradavarius

Happy passenger

Where to now?

Isn’t it funny how we sometimes recall funny things? The picture is thus.

The little blue two-man tent is nestling under the willow tree at one edge of a grassy green field. Foot prints in the heavy dew  mark Ewa’s path diagonally across  the field to a little baby blue coloured building which has two doors  marke “Banos Varones” on the sunny side and two doors marked Banos   Dames” on the other. It is obvious that Ewa has walked straight to the sunny side. Being Male I too went straight for the sunny side, and as we are in a camp site that is closed and there is no possible chance of human interaction, I leave the door open as I contemplate my next blog, what I want to paint, the next leg of our travels, the snow clan volcano in the distance, how cold the fish are in the river, where the piglets forage when it snows and the water-trap on the basin, which brings me back to the time when my mother dropped her diamond ring into the basin and it managed to by-pass the grating where hairs are normally trapped in the not so smart lodgings. The water-traps in those days were made of heavy lead and like the plastic ones that don’t have the same scrap value as the old lead ones; they had a screw fitting at the very bottom of the U bend. The purpose of the U band Trap is twofold. Firstly because it is a U bend the water always fills this part of the drain pipe thereby preventing any foul odours being emitted from the plug hole as this pipe leads into the main sewer pipe, for the same reason applies to the WC. Another reason for the U bend in the basin and I suppose would also apply to the WC is to catch diamond rings. I remember clearly the debate about whether the velocity of the outflow water from the basin would be sufficient to wash the diamond through the U bend into the main sewer, in which case no time should be wasted as if the velocity WAS that great the waste mater in the main sewer would clearly have sufficient mass to deliver the diamond into the Vaal river. I thought two things. Firstly a diamond that size would definitely be at the bottom of the U as the flow from the basin was definitely no match for the diamond. That was my first thought. My second thought was for more frightening. IF my youthful observation of the comparison of diamond weight verses flow rate were incorrect who was the most likely person to be put into the sewer? The smallest person who happened to be me! Now my mind was really racing and I had a very real interest in the quick recovery of my mother’s ring. I quickly went to inspect the basin drain hoping that it had got caught up in the hairs, but Hilda was far too efficient and had cleaned them all away. I had to wait as a big glass bowl (no plastic in those days) was placed under the trap as Dad unscrewed the fitting. There was a sudden rush of water. Boy was I happy to hear a clink as the diamond ring dropped into the glass bowl... As I sat this morning in the full sun contemplating I noticed what I have noticed on three previous occasions. Neither the Argentinians nor the Chileans have traps on their basins. The fact that I am sure few of them would own diamond rings the size of my mother’s, there was no smell coming out of the plug hole, so I can only  conjecture that they have a system of connection into the main sewer that I am unfamiliar with.

Volcano Chillan

Looking back at what I have previously written I see that I have scant mention of some of the places we have been and what we have done, so I will go back a little.

In all the time we have been in South America we have hardly had a drop of rain. We were warned before going down to Patagonia that we would have rain and more rain and wind. We didn’t, we had beautiful clear sunny warm days most of the time. So we were somewhat taken aback when one day we were basking in the sun and the next day we woke to close on Zero temperatures, drizzle and wind. It cleared as we crossed over the Andes into Chile, but for the two days we were in Lonquimay it was overcast and we had to rely on the long-distance views we had seen of Lonquimay Volcano to give us some idea of what we were missing as we drove to Chillan. Even in the drizzle and cloud the drive was really beautiful as it wound through forested valleys. We stayed in luxury in a Chillan Hotel i.e. we had a bed and hot shower! When we woke in the morning it was a crystal clear day with spectacular vistas of snow-capped volcanoes. We had an amazing ride to Volcano Chillan and its thermal bathes. This area is one of the main Ski Resorts in Chile and it is certainly a place I would like to re-visit, but it had an airy and almost abandoned feel to it as we are now out of season and just about everything was closed and it was only because of my wife’s wily ways that we were allowed to camp in the field with the Blue sunny loo! It was a beautiful ride in perfect weather.

Ewa and I travel really well together. How it works is that she reads all the back ground information and believes everything she reads. I go behind the scene and see how it actually works! I had never given much thought to earthquakes, volcanos and Tsunami’s. As you drive through the region you are simply aghast at the beauty, but up until a few days ago I didn’t really think about the ramifications of any of these events. We have also been pretty out of touch with world news.

The evidence of earth quakes is all around you in Chillan; it has been almost flattened on three occasions. Buildings stand empty awaiting demolition; cracks in walls are not uncommon sights. We picked up news of the happenings in Japan, but still any of these events were things that happened “over there, to other people” until yesterday.

Cobquecura Earthquake Damage

Cobquecura

Fast!

Dinner for Two

If I was writing this blog a year ago from the exact place I am now sitting, I would have been at the epicentre of an earthquake which the seismograph at the local school recorded topped 9.6 on the Richter Scale.. It was officially reported as 8.9. The locals will tell you that over 9 for some reason the Insurance Companies  start getting sticky about paying out claims. Ewa and I would have been on the motorbike so fast you cannot imagine. We would have turned sharp right at the petrol station and been up the mountain before you could blink. I love my wife! We are lying in bed surrounded by maps, pamphlets from the local tourist information centre, Lonely Planet the lot. Ewa says I think we should go down to Cobquecura. It is a beautiful little village on the coast surrounded by papaya trees and orchards”. I don’t know what she or the author of Lonely Planet smoke, but I don’t want to try it.

Chile has a coast line of over 6000 km and an average width of less than 200km. So the coast or the mountains are not far away, but I imagined the mountains in the East gently tapering off into the Pacific Ocean in the West. My imagination was almost as wrong as Ewa’s little fishing village at the coast! The mountains ARE in the East, but they do NOT taper off into the Pacific Ocean. There is a certain drop in elevation as you go towards the coast, but you wind through magnificent pine and Eucalyptus forests that grow within a kilometre of the coast until the road winds down 700 metres to sea level to the village of Cobquecura, not a Papaya or orchard in sight. The buildings look little tatty, cracks in the walls, some are roofless. Lonely Planet says there is a camp site which would give a Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Blackpool a run for its money! We park outside an official looking building. It looks official as it has a sign with a Chilean flag painted on it. There is a delightful young lady sitting at a table outside the main entrance. She appears to be canvassing for some or other cause. We ask her where the tourist information is. She smiles and points to the building next to us and explains that it has closed down, closed for the season or fallen down. Our knowledge of Spanish does not allow us to split such interpretation. I look at a notice board next to the defunct tourist office and it has a map of the village which clearly says that number 35 is Camping Horizontes del Mar. The lovely lady has now put word out and also came to the conclusion that there was in fact a camp site, and pointed us in the direction of no 35 on the town map. As yet we have not really taken in our surroundings. We head of in the direction of 35, and too our amazement there are in fact not one but two opportunities for camping. We chose the second one as it looks more dilapidated than the first and therefore by reasonable deduction will be cheaper than the first. We are the only campers. The owner is rotund and smiling. We like her so do not ever give the first smarter camp site with the swimming pool a second thought. We are very happy with our find. Not exactly what we had been expecting but that is the fun of what we are doing. We set up camp, remove our cycle clothing, wash and change into our other set of clothes and walk back into the village. This place must have been hit by an earthquake I comment to my wife. The town map shows all the eating places in the village. It was a bit out of date I further comment as number45 has fallen down, but number 46 is absolutely delightful. We enter. We are the only patrons but this did not deter the manager of the place sprung to his feet and warmly welcomed us, stoked the hearth and lit a candle. He also left on the TV, so for the first time we could see the destruction that has and is taking place in Japan. I cannot believe the stupidity or arrogance of building a nuclear reactor on one of the earth’s fault lines. We watch in amazement then switch it off. We ordered paila de marina which was under the speciality heading. There were other things under the heading of Tablas, but Ewa translated this as meaning Planks, so we decided to go for the Speciality. We wanted to ask the waiter what had happened to the village, but decided that we may be delayed in getting our food if we did this prior to being served, and what a blessing we did. Clearly we had entered the restaurant a little early, at 8.30. By 9.30 the owner and a friend came in and placed little flower arrangements on the tables and lit more candles. By now we had almost completed THE most amazing seafood dish we have ever had. Absolutely delicious. To add to this we were to enjoy a further delight. Enter Anne Maria, the owner’s niece. She came over to us and spoke to us in emasculate English. So it was that we were told that Cobquecura was the epicentre of an earthquake that happened on 27^th February 2010. We were flabbergasted. Having just seen the visuals of what was happening in Japan, now Maria was describing what it was like to be in an earthquake that shook for 3 minutes 45 seconds. What seems to scare people most is the Tsunami that results from theses quakes. It is interesting that in the case of Cobquecura the damage from the quake was greater further away from the epicentre and there was no Tsunami damage, it hit the surrounding coast line and killed about 500 people. The actual quake resulted in no fatalities in the village.

All of a sudden the signs in the street that say Tsunami with an arrow telling you the direction you need to go to get on to high ground, have real significance.

$3milliion

What do you think?

Pablo and Esequiel

Knock me over with a feather! My battery ran out on the computer while I was writing, so we decided to walk into the village to pick up emails. Pablo Carraso was helping out his mother at the internet café, and when he heard that we were from South Africa his whole face lit up as he is about to start farming Proteas. To his delight, I put him in touch wife a friend of mine who does just that in SA.

When we had finished our emailing and most of his strawberry cake, he offered to walk us around the village, pointing out the houses which were not damage badly in the quake, but were knocked down by the owners who thought incorrectly that they would be able to claim from a government grant and have them rebuilt! Pablo then said “Ah, would you like to see a little museum, it is a private collection and he may ask you for a small donation?”  

Esequiel Valenzuela, is the cleaner at the local school and has been collecting artefacts all his life. He welcomed us with a broad smile and laughed at the question about a donation “Pedro, for you it will always be free” he said.

Esequiel has what I would describe as a lean-to addition on the side of his house. He unlocked the little Yale lock to reveal an unbelievable collection of Fossilised shells, a whole collection of rocks, antique wine urns, a collection of money from around the world which I noted included Rhodesia Bechuanaland and Lesotho, a collection of sewing machines butterflies and some musical instruments. He picks up a violin and Ewa said “Oh, a Stradavarius?” to which he replied “Yes!” I thought I would collapse looking at Ewa’s face as he passed it to her! When we asked him if he was aware of the value, he produced an internet search which valued it at $3,000,000!

I don’t know if there was a good trade in Strad copies, but as you can see in the photograph it has a Stradivarious label stuck to its inside! Maybe I will enquire at Christies! If it IS the real thing it is kept by a really interesting person in a padlocked lean-to in a little Chilean village, and could easily disappear in the earthquake! Classic stuff, not what one would expect to find on a trip around South America.

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