Earthquake and snow

June 28 at 15.25 hrs it sounded like some helicopters were closing in on the institute from the north. Then came the shaking. And it was gone.

It was an earthquake, with the magnitude of 5.7 according to USGS's home-page for earthquakes (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/) near Illapel. I was happy that the epicenter wasn't near Valparaiso, even though I have always said that I would like to experience an earthquake I'm satisfied with the small ones of magnitude around 4. Actually, on the Mercali scale this earthquake corresponded to a 4 near Valparaiso - quite enough for me.

Monday 2nd of July was a holiday here in Chile, in honor of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Actually friday was the actual holiday, but the day off were moved to monday. The saints were celebrated all weekend. Sunday I went to Caleta de Membrillo, just by the institute, with my friends mother to see the procession and launch of Saint Peter, the saints of the fishermen. The day off on monday meant that Juan Diaz had the opportunity to show me Cajon de Maipo as he talked about already when he was in Århus in april. It is a really beautiful place and if you are a bit interested in geology I am sure the you will find it very interesting. I think it was especially beautiful with all the snow.

This wasn't the only snow I was going to meet. Monday morning on 9th July I had my flight home. I was going from Santiago via Buenos Aires and Paris to Copenhagen. But in Buanos Aires we were surprised by snow. Yes SNOW in Buenos Aires - first time since 1918. Since snow is not a every winter happening, the airport was not equipped to move snow. Therefore the captain of the plane postponed the flight until the next day, and I got to see some of the snow of Buenos Aires and to spend the night at Sheraton Hotel. It was quite exiting to experience snow in Buenos Aires, even though this was my first time in the city ... . But next time I'll hopefully not be traveling on my own – it's quite boring to be in a fancy hotel by yourself.

Landing in Santiago

Sunday morning I arrived in Chile. The last hour of the flight to Santiago was really beautiful; the sun was rising over the clods and over the mountains – the cordillera. I was really surprised to see how snowy it was, but well it is winter in Chile. I was talking to the woman beside me (Chilean living in Sweden) about all the clods covering Santiago and the smog, we didn’t realize that we were landing before we were actually on the ground – it was a really soft landing. After the hot June we have had so far in Denmark it was freezing cold going out of the airport in Santiago.
I spend the first day in Santiago with my friend Titi and her family in law. Monday morning we went to Valparaíso with the professor from the project of my thesis.
I’m going to spend almost all the time here in Chile trying to figure out what I can see on my data, because it’s not usual to have seismic reflections from the water column. But fortunately I’m going to spend some time with my godson and friends here in Chile as well.