puerto, playa, jerbos, pescando

An explanation of the photos. Warning: long descriptions of the port. Feel free to skip through.

This first ones are from my trip to the puerto with my English students who work with the reefer containers. It was an amazing trip, and I got a totally unique and special view of how the port works. I called the shift cell phone from the pier, and one of my students met me to help me get past security (he needed to be there to prove that I had pre-arranged the visit). I chatted with the security guard for a while about American golf, and got through without any problems. From there I met my other students who were working at the time (a few of them had their día libre on that day (free day) and others were working other shifts (I came during the morning shift, but the port is open 24-7, so there are also 'afternoon shifts' from 3:30pm-11pm and night shifts from 11pm-8am) so I didn't get to see them all), and I got fitted for a hard hat and steel toed shoes that were a bit too big. I also had to use a reflective vest, and I ended up using my students' vest because he was the smallest and all of the other ones were excessively huge. From there they showed me the organization of the containers (see photos below of containers stacked up) and the first steps of connecting and revising the containers to make sure that they work OK. A standard container size is 40 feet long and 10 feet tall. My students are reefer technicians that work with refrigerated containers, making sure that all of their electrical and refrigeration issues are dealt with. The refrigerated reefers are the white ones.

After touring the port in a small company truck, Enrique (my student who organized mostly my tour) decided that MAYBE I could board a ship with him, which was previously considered too dangerous. He spoke with the jefe de la nave (translation difficult, mostly head of the boat- not the chief mate or the captain) who was chileno, and after promising not to let anything happen to the gringa, we were given permission to board! So I boarded the buque, or vessel. The crew was mostly Filipino, as I had been told, and I had to register. From there, I watched reefer technicians (not my students, unfortunately) connecting the units, using all of the vocab we've studied (extension cord, socket box, out of range unit, ladder, etc.). The third photo from the bottom (of the photos that are clearly of the port) shows a reefer technician (blue jumpsuit) working with the connection box. Below is a photo of the ship that I boarded, the Constantine before I got on board. The next photo above the reefer tech is one that is taken from sobre cubierta or above deck (had to climb a sort of scary ladder to get up there), and you can see in the upper left corner that a reefer container is being placed below deck with a crane. My students have practiced a dialogue explaining that they can't connect the reefer because the deck is open and it's dangerous, and now I totally understand- if they go to connect it and there's a problem, it could be an issue because they could easily fall. From there, we explored the buque for a while, and then got off.

After that, we checked out some of the reefer containers, and I saw the whole operating system. It shows the temperature, and there are all sorts of alarms (that we've practiced talking about in class) that show if the temperature is out of range, if the defrost isn't working, and all sorts of other problems. I took a picture of an Everfresh unit, which is specially designed (by Americans- and the reefer techs mostly like the American designed units because they're easiest to work with) for delicate products, especially (in this season), avocados! Avocados (or palta, in Chile) are super coommon here, but if you think about avocados in the U.S., they go bad quickly if they're left out, so you don't want to buy a super ripe one in the supermarket, especially if you're going to eat it later in the week. Now imagine that these same avocados come from Chile, and take 33 days to reach the port of Seattle! They need some special refrigeration care to make sure that they mature perfectly so that when they arrive in the supermarkets, people want to buy them. Also keep in mind that with the excess of produce (especially palta) here, people will buy anything, but in the U.S. people tend to buy food based on its outward appearance, so the avocados need to look good too! Enter Everfresh units. They care for the palta and make sure that it arrives perfectly matured and looking good. I just realized that I didn't include the photo of the Everfresh unit backside, but now you know a lot about fruit transporting.

You can also see in these photos the huge blue cranes (sorry the photo is on its side) that are used to load and unload the reefer units from the vessels. The cranes are 50 meters tall, and mostly are imported from China. What's interesting to me is that the cranes come almost completely assembled, and arrive on a boat to the dock! From there, they unload it with a forklift-like machine, and then they just have to do the electric assembling. Which is no small task- it takes about 2 months for the almost completely-assembled crane to be ready to use. The port is expecting a new crane to arrive in October, and they expect it to be ready for use in December. I hope that I can see the crane coming in- imagine seeing a ship with a fully assembled crane on board, that has come from China to Chile!

Back to the cranes. They're 50 meters tall, so Enrique asked me if I "suffered from vertigo". While I'm usually hesitant about jumping off of heights (into water, etc.) I'm not TOO afraid of heights, so he did some special negotiating and spoke to the guy in charge for the shift, and we headed up the crane! I was at the top of that huge blue beast! We took an elevator up, and then had to climb a few flights of stairs to get to the top. As you can see in the photos, the weather wasn't great (it rained later that evening, complete with a wind storm), and it was pretty windy. Now, even though the cranes are made of steel, they still move in the wind! So there I was, 50 meters in the air on the top of a crane that is loading a buque, as it sways in the wind. The photos of the beach, and of the city, and of the ship (the same one that I boarded, but this time from above, with zoom) are all taken from the crane. I also asked Enrique to take a picture of me (complete with hard had, vest, etc.), but it looks like he didn't actually push the button hard enough, so it didn't come out- que lata.

From the top of the crane, they asked me if I wanted to visit the crane operator's cabin. I figured it's going to be a while until I can watch a crane operator loading containers onto a vessel again, so of course I said yes. We went down a bit, and I met the crane operator, who was a super nice guy. He operates the crane with something that essentially looks like a glorified joy stick, and the bottom of the cabin is glass (obvio) so that he can see what he's doing. Operators work in pairs- his partner was below with a radio, and they communicated, talking about where to put the containers, etc. Each one works in the cabin for 4 hours of the 8-hour shift, and then below for the other 4 hours. You can see the photo that I took through the glass bottom of the crane picking up the container from a truck. The trucks honk when it's up, and then they leave, and the next truck pulls up. After watching them load for a while, we took the elevator down, and I arrived on solid ground (much to the relief of Luis, my other student who is the boss of Enrique, who was quite concerned for la profe de Ingles). From there, my tour concluded, and I left quite content. Oh, and finally, I didn't talk about one of the photos, but it's a photo of the copper in a container, and a worker loading the container. That copper is only about 80% real copper (Chile exports most of its copper to China for industrial purposes), but the copper that is in thin sheets (no photos, sorry), is 99.99% copper, and hugely profitable (at the expense of the environment and the communities that live near the mine).

The other pictures are from the fishing adventure to Laguna Peñuela. I'm fishing (with poor posture) with Maia.

Below is Chicky, who we took out to the beach for a (long) walk. We eventually buried her in sand, but she didn't stand still for the photo. She also liked to bother other, bigger dogs (while barking with a definite scared yelp to her bark), so Alvaro had to bring her back, and you can see the beautiful beach and the totally non winter-looking day.

Next, there's a picture from the Día de la Lactancia (Breastfeeding day) and I'm holding the baby in the Consultorio.

Finally, Maia is holding up one of her new jerbos or gerbils, this one being Cofi (but pronounced like coffee), and the other one (blackish) being Lassi (pronounced Lassie, because she liked the name).

And there it ends! Phew.