{"id":943,"date":"2010-04-13T10:19:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T09:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=943"},"modified":"2010-08-31T10:15:49","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T09:15:49","slug":"in-chile-after-the-earthquake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=943","title":{"rendered":"In Chile after the Earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"

I flew into Santiago airport with some trepidation \u2013 arriving just days after one of the world\u2019s largest recorded earthquakes, at 8.8<\/strong> – but it takes a while to spot any sign of damage at all.\u00a0 Given that most taxi drivers can never resist a moan, mine was more concerned that the 2005 Skoda he\u2019d just acquired had been installed with a tape rather than cd player.\u00a0 \u2018What is the point of that,\u2019 he complained and apologised.\u00a0 He\u2019d wanted to play me some Iron Maiden to celebrate my common British heritage with the group.<\/p>\n

Heading into town, we cross a few bridge-sections of road which have had to be plated together, but Santiago itself seems unmarked.\u00a0 The Z\u00f3calo, the central square, is the usual picture of shoe-shine boys, old men sitting on benches and a religious nut preaching the end of the world to a disinterested audience.<\/p>\n

In the shopping streets nearby, the atmosphere is rather as if a fire alarm had gone off in John Lewis and now everyone was back in the building and shopping.\u00a0 But then the Chileans are different from the rest of South America.\u00a0 As one tells me:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Everyone here is middle-class –\u00a0 except for the new president, Pinero, and his friends, who are filthy rich!\u2019\u00a0 Many of the more menial jobs \u2013 the maids, the cleaners, the security guards \u2013 are taken by Peruvian and Bolivian immigrants these days.<\/p>\n

The rest of the continent make jokes about the Chileans being a nation of bland shop-keepers, from their less spicy food to the mild, more temperate climate they enjoy.\u00a0 I was impressed by the resilience and pragmatism they showed in the face of the earthquake \u2013 and by the foresight with which buildings had been constructed, in the main, to withstand such huge force.\u00a0 But then they have had a long time to get used to such attacks.\u00a0 175 years ago, almost exactly, Charles Darwin witnessed the Chilean town of Concepci\u00f3n, then, as now damaged by a ferocious earthquake:\u00a0 \u2018the most awful yet interesting spectacle I ever beheld.\u2019<\/p>\n

Eating a caldillo<\/em> of conger eel in the Central Market, a magnificent iron-framed building erected by British investors in the past, I found the food was not so much bland as a balance of interesting flavours \u2013 perhaps why the Chileans have always been such natural and loyal allies of the British, from the 19th<\/sup> century War in the Pacific to that other 20th<\/sup> century War in the Atlantic, the Falklands.\u00a0 We too have been accused of being a nation of shopkeepers;\u00a0 though quite how we\u2019d deal with a 8.8 earthquake, given our incapacity to handle a few wet leaves on a railway track, I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n

written March 8 (posted late due to technical issues in posting from Pacific, as several of following posts will be as well!)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I flew into Santiago airport with some trepidation \u2013 arriving just days after one of the world\u2019s largest recorded earthquakes, at 8.8 – but it takes a while to spot any sign of damage at all.\u00a0 Given that most taxi drivers can never resist a moan, mine was more concerned that the 2005 Skoda he\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,3],"tags":[46,47],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peru","category-uncategorized","category-travel","tag-chile","tag-earthquake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}