Cansado

Things are winding.

Thursdays are for protesting. Normally we have a big march and then 40-80 encapuchados, kids with their faces covered, stick around trading rocks for tear gas all afternoon. This happens every Thursday as regular as violent clockwork. Things are winding down though. Today, for the first time in a long while, we only had a march. It was pretty anemic at that. I passed them on the bridge on my way home from downtown. They had a couple of kids with a trumpet and a snare drum who seemed like the only ones serious about sticking it to the man. Everyone else just looked bored.

It's been a long lack of semester.

On Tuesday the students of my univserity will vote on whether or not to end the strike and start the second semester. A lot of schools across the country are having similar votes. Many are already back in the classroom.

I've finally got all of my paperwork in order to replace my stolen passport. I have to go to Santiago for an interview at the embassy. It's a ten hour bus ride, but I'll get to visit some old friends in Santiago, so on the whole it's a plus. I'll go down to the bus station tomorrow to look for tickets. It's kind of nice not having many responsibilities and being able to just get on a bus and go anywhere in the country on any given weekend. On the other hand, I'm running low on cash.

Something is messed up with the photo uploading mechanism. I took some pictures today of a high school that's still in toma. I'll try to post them tomorrow.

Also, here's the Economist's take: http://www.economist.com/node/21534785.

Aún más

Everyday ups and downs.

I went to the Cine club last night with Jessie. After misreading the schedule online, I arrived expecting Midnight in Paris, a romantic comedy featuring Owen Wilson. What they were actually showing was Ajami, a gritty, faux-documentary about urban violence in Jaffa, Israel. It was stark, bloody, melodramatic, and infinitely better than sitting through two hours of Owen Wilson prancing around in France.

At the movie, we met a couple of grad students from Mexico and Honduras, a Romanian expat, and her Valdivian pololo. We went out for drinks afterwards, and I realized how extremely pleasant it is to speak Spanish with people I can understand without difficulty. That is not to say that the Mexican or Honduran (or Romanian) accent is necessarily clearer than the Chilean accent. In truth, I think that socio-economic status makes more difference than nationality with respect to proximity to "standard" Spanish. Most importantly, perhaps, these were cosmopolitan folks. All of them had lived and studied in foreign climes and, hence, had developed the sensibilities (and patience) peculiar to international socializing. We had an interesting conversation with them, exchanged contact information, bid them goodnight, and returned to the frustrating world of everyday, nigh-indecipherable Chilenismos.

In other news, I was extremely disappointed to learn that I slept through the rugby world cup final (the time difference with New Zealand is problematic). What a shame to miss out on the grand French defeat. No matter; the two local teams will be facing off today in the field behind my house, and I definitely won't miss that game.

Here's another chunk in my continuing series on the student protests:

Chunk 3: Frustration.

So what exactly are the problems compelling the students to mobilize, strike, seize their schools, throw rocks, burn buses, and the like? As we saw in the last chunk, income inequality is a big problem in Chile. Education is commonly seen as the best way to combat said inequality (although whether or not this belief has anything to do with reality has yet to be conclusively demonstrated). Imagine the frustration, then, when the tool to fight inequality is beset by problems of inequality. Here's a quick rundown of issues:

• The biggest problem is cost. Chileans think university education is too expensive. Students can graduate with debt of the same order of magnitude as the price of a new house. Families typically assume the costs of education and go into debt as well.
• There are also problems in the credit market for students. I've heard lots of people complain that interest rates are too high, and it's too hard for students to get loans.
• There is a big problem with what economists call asymmetric information. Private universities are big, profitable business in Chile. Lots of new schools are popping up, especially in Santiago, without bothering with things like accreditation. Some well known schools offer majors that don't have any application in the job market. Students and families don't know which is which. Thus students go into debt studying at these institutions, thinking they will be able to land a job after graduating, only to find their degree is next to useless.

Note that none of these problems affects the wealthier families. So there you have it: essentially another narrative about the rich staying rich, the poor staying poor, and some people getting rich by swindling the more vulnerable parts of society.

End of Chunk 3

Diario

Tidings.

Looking over my previous post, I realized it's what a Chilean would call pesado, which translates approximately to "heavy", "boring", "obnoxious", or "tiresome". So, for those interested, here are some lighter bits of news, observations, and goings on.

My classes are interesting and very diverse, both in subject matter and pedagogy. I'm studying silviculture in native forests in a class that meets rarely, packs in lots of information, visits plantations, and has reasonably hard quizzes. I'm in a literature class where we don't read very much literature and the lectures range, seemingly at random, across a broad selection of social, artistic, and historical topics. I'm taking a microeconomics course in which I am the only student. It's very demanding, but at the same time I have lots of opportunities to investigate the practical examples of the material that interests me. The most regular and organized course is History of Chile with the other members of my program. We're all quite fond of the professor and grateful to have a class that meets regularly and covers interesting material in a systematic manner.

Every week brings new challenges. This week's has been bomb threats in the University. The students are completing make up classes and quizzes to finally finish the semester they should have finished six months ago, and some students still don't want any academic activity whatsoever until the movement's demands are met. So they've hit upon a new strategy, which is to call in phony bomb threats, which force the police the evacuate the entire facility and thus interrupt any quizzes or classes in session. I've had three classes interrupted in the past week due to bomb threats. In two cases we simply canceled, and in the third case we went to a nearby gas station and finished the class at their fast food tables.

On a lighter note, here's a kitty:

This is Mime (Mee-May); she's the pet of Carla, my host family's youngest daughter. Mime's hobbies include capsizing the trash can and trying to sneak into the house. Unaware of my cat allergy, she often attempts to climb through my second-story window when I leave it open too wide.

It's been sunny for the past couple of weeks, and occasionally it's been possible to walk outside without a jacket. Spring has arrived. Today I think I'll go to the city park with Jessie to visit the firewood festival.

Desarrollo

More details about the student mobilizations.

Quite some time ago, I wrote that I would try to explain my view of what is going on in Chile with respect to the student movement. I said I would break it into chunks to keep the size manageable, I wrote the first chunk, and then I promptly forgot about the project. However, since the paro (strike) has now entered its sixth month in many schools, I figure it's high time to revisit the subject. As the last chunk was posted over a month ago, I'll repost it below before moving on.

Note: I will try to approach this issue from a more general perspective, but most of my informal investigation of the topic has tended to focus on economic analysis and my personal experience. My apologies in advance for any economics jargon or boring anecdotes that may slip in.

Chunk 1: the March of the Penguins

One of the principal antecedents of the current movement was another student mobilization in 2006. This movement was called "the march of the penguins", so named because the students' uniforms made them look like penguins. The main objective of these protests was to achieve greater equality in education. Some specific demands were free/reduced student fares in public transportation, reduced/waived fees for taking the university entrance exam, and repealing the eleventh hour omnibus education bill that constituted the Pinochet government's parting gift to Chile. In answer to the protests, the center-left government promised a lot and delivered little. Many students today feel betrayed by their politicians for the lackluster response to the march of the penguins.

End of Chunk 1

Chunk 2: Imposed freedom

The more general antecedents of the movement have to do with the history of Chile. After the military coup in 1973, the Chilean economy went through a twenty-year liberalization process. This series of reforms, aimed at opening the economy to foreign trade and investment and at privatizing historically government-controlled markets, was primarily guided by a group of Chilean economists called the "Chicago Boys", so called because they had received their economics training at the University of Chicago. Their ideas were heavily influenced by Milton Friedman and reflected a marked preference for free markets over government regulation. Despite what Friedman described as the "Miracle of Chile", in which the Chilean economy experienced relatively high GDP growth in the late 80s and early 90s, many Chileans feel the economic reforms were extremely damaging to the country because the economic gains primarily benefited a very small group of wealthy families.*

Chile has a long history of social and economic inequality stretching back to when it was the southern border of the Inca Empire. The arrival of the Spaniards, and subsequent subjugation of the indigenous peoples introduced new and equally rigid social stratification. The process of independence, expansion, and industrialization were also dominated by the economic and social leadership of a select class of elites. Needless to say, capitalism rampant at the end of the 20th century didn't help very much. The gap between rich and poor continued to grow. (In 2008, the CIA calculated Chile's Gini coefficient as 54.9, roughly on par with the rest of Latin America.)

One of the primarily gripes that Chileans have with the military dictatorship's free market reforms (many of which remain in effect today) is the privatization and/or deregulation of natural monopolies and public goods. Some examples are utilities like power and water, health care, and university education... especially university education. A lot of people believe it was exceedingly unwise to unleash profiteering in these areas and that as a result the lower classes are paying heavily for the lucrative returns being carved out by businessmen in sectors where the state ought to protect consumers.

The takeaway from all of this consists in four points. Currently in Chile we have:

1. An economic culture oriented towards unregulated, and often unfair, competition.
2. A high degree of income inequality.
3. Profiteering in social necessities like education.
4. Resentment of all of the above.
   

Next chunk I'll talk about why these are important in the context of the student movement today.

*And of course, many Chileans feel exactly the opposite. As with many elements of the Pinochet regime, there is definitely no consensus of opinion among Chileans on the topic of economic reforms.

End of Chunk 2.

Fotografía

I borrowed my camera for the day.

As requested, here are some photographs from my internship with SAMU:

Here is the view from the bridge I have to walk across every morning to take the bus to get to the hospital.

Here is the dayroom at the base.

Here is the ALS crew enjoying a Youtube video.

Here is the fleet of old/extra ambulances in the parking lot.

Here is Movil 205, our ALS truck.

The back of the truck without the cot.

The three-lead monitor, O2 and suction unit, long distance monitor, and IV kit. (We start lots of IVs here. Even if we aren't going to administer a drug or even saline, we'll establish IV access and just leave it with a drug port in case the hospital wants to push something.)

The view from the side door.

The cab.

These are the suction cups I was talking about for the 12 lead.

Prehospitalario

Some notes on my work.

About two months ago, I started volunteering with the local emergency medical service. I've been meaning to write something about my experience for some time now. The service is called SAMU here (Servicio de Atencion Medica de Urgencias), is part of a national service, and operates out of the regional hospital located in Valdivia. My role is really more of observation than participation. From time to time I am needed to help with patient movement, vital signs, or basic interventions, but for the most part I'm the extraneous part of their normal three-person crew.

(For non-EMS readers, you may want to read this next paragraph and leave it at that. For those with an EMS background, you may want to skip the next paragraph and read the rest.)

First the story about how I came to work at the hospital: I arrived in Chile without really having thought too much about acquiring an internship (a significant mistake on my part). Before leaving Santiago, however, I mentioned my interest in volunteering with EMS to our program director. Within a couple of weeks he arranged an interview with the doctor in charge of SAMU in our region. Due to faulty lines of communication, however, I only learned of this interview an hour after it was supposed to have taken place. But, no matter, we rescheduled for the next day. It is important to note that at this point I had been confined to a chair for the past four days due to a knee injury suffered the previous week and could barely stand, much less walk. I dressed in shirt and tie for the interview, not sure of what to expect. Don Oscar happened to be heading in the same direction as the hospital that morning so he gave me a lift. Unfortunately, he dropped me off on the wrong side of the hospital, so I spent about half an hour hobbling around the building, which is enormous, asking people where to find the chief of SAMU's office. I finally found SAMU's base, in a separate building behind the hospital. When I knocked, the door was answered by a tall, Germanic-looking man in a lab coat. I had found the boss. It turns out Doctor Schulz doesn't have an office, he operates (not surgically) from a desk in the middle of the communications center at the SAMU base. My interview consisted of him asking me where I was from, what I was studying, and then telling me he didn't have any problem with me working with them. Then he introduced me to the shift on duty, and that was that. I showed up later that afternoon in work clothes and started riding along and getting to know the staff.

I want to note some general observations about the service, narrate a typical run, and comment on some of the significant differences between the service I know in Ohio and what I've seen here. Keep in mind that what follows are impressions that I've developed through a language barrier in less than three months, not established facts.

General observations

There are two ambulances operated out of our base, a basic truck and an advanced truck. The service also has one ambulance based out of Lanco, a smaller city in the north, and La Union, a city in the south. These four trucks are responsible for the Region of Los Rios, an area about 30% bigger than Connecticut. Resources are not as stretched as it sounds at first. SAMU is supplemented by the ambulance services of the local hospitals. There are some eleven hospitals, and each operates two trucks, so the entire region is served by about 26 trucks. We also have a couple of reserve trucks that are only staffed on special occasions like holidays or long weekends, when more people tend to use emergency medical services.

Each truck runs with a crew of three. For the basic ambulance, that means a driver (no medical training), an assistant (equivalent to a first responder), and a paramedic technician (equivalent to an EMT). In the case of the advanced ambulance, the crew is a driver, a paramedic technician, and a nurse (equivalent to a paramedic). (Supposedly there is a third classification of crew with a doctor on board, but I've never seen this happen.) There are crews for two trucks on duty at any given time, so six people per shift. Our base employs about 24 ambulance workers in total.

We also have a communications center that handles all calls for the region. (You have to dial a different number depending on which emergency service you need in Chile; 131 is the number for ambulances.) They have two phone operators and a doctor on duty at any given time. The doctor is there for medical direction, but sometimes he or she with help manage the phones when things get busy. There is also a secretary during business hours and a kid who cleans the base. (We had a dog who hung out for years in the base and in the emergency department of the hospital, but someone stole him about a month ago. He was the only dog I've ever met who liked to chew on gravel.)

Typical run

Our salidas normally go down as follows: an operator answers the call, generally on the sixth or seventh ring to make sure it's a serious call. The operator then spends several minutes trying to firmly persuade the caller that they don't need an ambulance. (The operators' main job is to allocate very scarce resources, and they get a great deal of nonsense calls.) After getting information about the patient's location and problem, the operator alerts the ambulance crew via the radio. "Mobile unit such and such. Code such and such." It's usually a code 101 "medical problem of unknown etiology". The crew then goes to the ambulance and marks that they're ready. Then the operator relays the location and the patient details. We don't have GPS or maps in the trucks. The driver generally knows where all the streets are, and if they can't find the address, they radio the base for directions. We generally don't use emergency lights during the day and rarely use the siren (only for cardiac arrests and such). When we arrive on scene, the in charge person, either a paramedic or a nurse, goes into the house to assess the patient. They usually make a transport decision in the first 30 seconds and call for the cot. We only change the sheet on the cot once per day, so generally we ask for a thick blanket from the patient's house to lay the patient on. The houses are small with narrow hallways and steep stairs. We don't have a stairchair and the cot doesn't fold, so patient movement is usually one person grabbing the patient by the armpits and another by the legs and just carrying them. Once we have the patient in the truck, the secondary medical crewmember, either an assistant or a paramedic, checks the pulse, oxygen saturation, and blood pressure (almost never manually). The in charge person reads the patient's medical documents, takes a short history, gives basic interventions like oxygen, bleeding control, or starting an IV, and then calls medical control on the radio and gives a report. Sometimes medical control will indicate an additional drug, but usually the doctor just says to transport as is. Then the in charge person tells the driver to go. One family member is allowed to accompany the patient in the back of the ambulance during the transport. The in charge person often uses the rest of the transport time to finish up the paperwork. When we get to the hospital, the driver unloads the patient on the cot and wheels him or her into the emergency department. Then he finds a vacant bed, we move the patient onto the bed, and wheel him or her to the side of the hallway to wait until a nurse or doctor is available (this usually takes several hours for non-critical patients). The in charge person gets the on-duty nurse to sign for the patient, and then we drive the 200 meters back to the base.

Notable differences

I'll start with the nitpicky and move on to the bigger things:

• Unlike in Ohio, examination gloves are optional here, and most opt not to wear them unless they see blood or vomit.
• Handwashing before and after runs is also infrequent.
• Patients are almost never strapped to the cot, and on some of the cots, the Velcro is so old that the straps are more decorative than functional in any case. (Frankly I don't understand why we strap patients down in Ohio. I've never seen a patient come close to falling off a cot- it's rather implausible under normal circumstances- but I have seen several patients hurt by carelessly misapplied straps.)
• Whereas in Ohio we walk into the house (and the hospital) with everything we think we'll need to treat the patient, here we usually walk in without any equipment whatsoever. (I've only seen vital signs taken inside the house twice; I took them both times, and it was for patients who weren't transported.)
• Vital signs are only taken once during a run, whereas we almost always take multiple sets in Ohio.
• The twelve lead ECG monitor is a separate machine from the three lead monitor here, and it's a monster. Setting up a twelve lead is a five-minute process that involves spring-clip bracelets and anklets, a bottle of conducting gel, and a large array of suction cups.
• It's perfectly normal here for a paramedic to take or make personal calls on his or her cell phone during a run.
• Every patient is asked to present their national identity card, and their RUN (identification number) is recorded, along with information like address and DOB, directly from the card.
• We reuse a lot of things in Chile that we throw out in Ohio. For example: cervical collars, oxygen masks, Yauger tips, those little ear condoms for the tympanic thermometer, etc.

Some broader differences between EMS in Chile and in the US have to do with attitude. In the fire service in Ohio, we talk about maintaining a sense of urgency. That is to say, you don't necessarily want to rush, but you do want to strictly prioritize your expenditure of time. Our system is constructed to reflect this priority. In SAMU, that sense of urgency is not so strongly felt. They are very aggressive about getting the patient into the ambulance, but at that point things become far more relaxed, even if the patient is in critical condition. They usually finish all interventions before leaving the scene, even though the driver is sitting in the cab throughout the whole process. One time I saw a patient exhibiting clear signs of a stroke spend eight minutes in the back of the truck getting an IV stick before getting oxygen therapy much less transport. Part of this lack of urgency might be traced to the knowledge on the part of the paramedics that, unless the patient is rapidly dying, he or she is going to have a long wait at the hospital before receiving definitive care.

Another attitude difference manifests itself in the patient-caregiver relation. Paramedics here seem to prefer talking about the patient to talking with the patient. They generally read the patient's medical documents and talk to family members and other emergency workers as if the patient weren't even there. It's not uncommon for the nurse to not speak a word to the patient in the back of the rig aside from asking for his or her ID card.

A third big difference is the degree of centralization. SAMU is a national service. Everywhere in Chile they wear the same uniform, drive the same ambulances, and use the same equipment with the same training. The in charge person reports to medical control on all runs. All calls for the entire region are handled out of one call center in Valdivia. This is almost diametrically opposed to how things are structured in Ohio where EMS is organized at a local level and varies from volunteer fire service, to contracted private services and every combination in between.

That's all I can think of for now. I'll add more if more occurs to me. I've been meaning to take pictures of the base and the trucks, but both my cameras were broken for quite a while, and now one is stolen and the other loaned out.

EDIT: formatting and some more differences.

Cabalgata

Another interesting weekend.

In summary:

Miss first class. Local history lesson included in cab fare. Flight to Santiago. Bus to Viña del Mar. Beautiful coast. Crashing waves. Nice place to stay. Lots of seafood. Swimming pool failure. Private bus to hinterlands valley. Dry mountains. Big sky. Short hike. Cold bath. Wool weaving. Barrage photography. Horsemanship learning. Spurs jingling like windchimes. Camp making. Soap making. Meat grilling. Meat eating. Sleeping bag under the stars sleeping. Frozen sleeping bag waking up. Horse riding uphill. Lunch eating. Horse riding downhill. More busing. Swimming pool failure again. Sauna failure. Horse soreness. Like like like... Inappropriate, irrepressible laughter. More seafood eating. Deep sleep sleeping. Farewell breakfast of last sight seeing. Dune climbing. Dune running. Dune falling and tumbling. Short bus to port. Stairs to cerro. More stairs. Alley exploring. Mural documenting. Onward and upward and ever more quaint and Thieves! Knives! Backpack surrendering. Farewell camera. Farewell passport. Farewell raincoat, dictionary and lunch. Phone call making. Police station finding. Report filing. Last minute bus ticket changing. What a relief to make the bus. Long bus ride. Two hours of Hollywood's lasting shame. Repeat. Made bearable by the best of company. Small seat. Long night. Arriving in Valdivia by full moon light. Taxi riding. Sneaking upstairs with a full trekking pack. Two hours of glorious, dream-filled sleep. Back to class.

Sorry: no new pictures (please see above), but here are some older ones.

Valdivia

Niebla

Reserva Costera Valdiviana (photo by Jessie)

Cosquillas

Solitude

Senderismo

I finally got my boots muddy.

Well, the trip to the Valdivian Coastal Reserve turned out to be tremendously cool. Apparently the Reserve doesn't host many backpackers. When we stopped by the Nature Conservancy's office in Valdivia, the lady there reacted as if it were the most novel thing she had ever heard. "I have a couple of people here who want to go to the Reserve!" She explained to the park ranger over the phone.* It also took a while to communicate to the rangers that we didn't want a cabin, or a campsite, or bathrooms, or a firepit, or a two-mile loop trail. "We really just need a map please," we told them. Eventually we did get the idea across and a bus schedule although they didn't have any maps for us.

About three eighths of the fun was just getting to the trailhead. Early in the morning (8:30 is early for me here), we caught a bus from the end of our neighborhood towards a little town on the coast called Niebla. From Niebla we boarded a lancha, kind of like a floating bus, for the half hour trip to Corral on the other side of the bay.

I snapped this picture of some fishing boats from deck of the lancha. In the background is the Island of Mancera, home of a small fishing village and an old Spanish fort.

Jessie was my partner in crime for the weekend. Behind her you can see the town of Corral.

We had an hour to explore Corral and to find bleach to treat our water with, and then we boarded a rural bus headed towards Chaihuin. It was about an hour ride along a pot-hole filled gravel road past some beautiful coastline. Chaihuin is a small fishing/farming/tourism community that for some reason doesn't appear on most maps of the area. There we found the headquarters for the rangers of the Coastal reserve. They were very helpful in providing information about where to visit in the reserve and where to find food, lodging, and guides in Chaihuin. Apparently there are some amazing stands of alerce, "the sequoias of Chile" in the reserve. One particular tree there is well over 2,000 years old. Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit the alerces because they were too far from our intended destination,

a beach called Playa Colun.

Much to my dismay, the headquarters didn't have any topographical maps except for a 4'x8' wooden model of the park, so we pretty much had to rely on verbal directions as far as navigation goes. Over the phone I had been led to believe that the reserve had trails for trekking and areas marked out for backcountry camping. This turned out not be the case; camping within the reserve is actually not allowed. However, once we explained again at length that we really only needed a flat place to put our tent, it was indicated to us that the rangers typically turn a blind eye to this sort of thing and that you can probably find a good spot to pitch a tent here, or here...

We ended up having to hire a pickup truck and driver (for about twenty bucks) to g

et to the trailhead, which was another twelve miles inside the reserve. The driver, Eduardo, was a cool guy, a commercial fisherman in-between boats. He got his four wheel drive truck stuck in the mud about two miles from the trailhead, but he walked the rest of the way with us to make sure we didn't get lost. We arranged to meet him at the nearest gravel road in two days time and made our way down towards the beach.

It was glorious with sun and a clear blue sky (the weather forecast had called for rain all day). The beach was huge, and, apart from a couple of huasos on horseback we passed before getting there, we didn't see another soul.

Playa Colun is huge, about six and a half miles of sand backed by dunes and cliffs. We hiked along the dunes sometimes, under the cliffs sometimes, and sometimes right next to the ocean.

The dunes were beautiful and full of cows. Every mile or so we would come across another group of bovines peacefully grazing in the sand.

We found a couple of waterfalls, a cave, a shipwreck (well... more of a boatwreck really), and a lagoon on our first day of hiking.

Some of the dunes are really big: the trees on the left side of the photo above are about 70 ft tall and are being slowly eaten by the dune.

We decided to camp in the saddle between two dunes the first night. From our campsite, we had a view of the rainforest, the ocean, a lagoon, and the dunes all at the same time. The second day was spent exploring the dunes and the lagoons.

Beach Cows!

An overlook of one of the lagoons.

On the third day we hiked the back up the length of the beach and found an incredible trail over the cliffs on the other end. I forgot to take my camera, but there are some incredible pics of a giant rock arch over the ocean on Jessie's point and shoot. I'll try to steal some when I can.

Here we go.

We also stopped for an incredibly cold yet invigorating shower in a waterfall. The water was so frigid and was pounding down so hard that it was hard to keep my balance. I was sent reeling and nearly fell a couple of times while trying to rinse the soap out of my hair.

My trusty boots, after well over a thousand miles of service, finally gave out on this trip. Miles of wet sand split the soles. I may have to wait until I get back to the States to replace them though. It's damned expensive buying wilderness gear in Chile.

After getting back to Chaihuin, we found little restaurant at the bus stop. You had to enter through the kitchen, and the menu was whatever the lady happened to be cooking at the time, which turned out to be empanadas de loquito (fried shellfish pasties). It was quite tasty.

For whatever reason, the bus to Corral never showed up. According to various sources around town, either the owner/driver was sick or he was in Santiago or the bus was broken. Everyone agreed, however, that since it hadn't arrived by now, it definitely wasn't going to. Luckily, our friend Eduardo offered to give us a lift for another 10,000 pesos, so we were able to get back to Valdivia more or less on time.

En fin, the Coastal Reserve is a great wilderness for backpacking for its combination of fantastic scenery and near-complete isolation. We'll have to go back sometime to see those ancient trees.

*All quotations are translated (poorly) by me.