Un tremor

23 Aug Another weekend in Chile. This morning's task was to get a complete inventory of the contents of the RV. Sandra had to submit an inventory to ADUANA (Customs) in Arica, so we figured we'd do an inventory just in case the same applies in Puerto de San Antonio, but so far that hasn't been the case on any of our shipping efforts. It took us all morning to do the inventory, which was OK since we had nothing more pressing to do. As I've stated before, Chileanos are very nice and helpful people. Today the owner of the parking lot where we've been staying stopped by and talked looking at Roger, while I conversed with him in Spanish. Sort of odd, especially since Juan Eduardo speaks sort of fast and Roger had a dazed look on his face trying to follow the pace of the conversation. Anyway, Juan Eduardo is quite the business man. His day job is an executive position at the Santander bank. He also owns the parking lot and La Florita restaurant. He told us we must eat lunch at his restaurant, because only on the weekends do they serve empanadas de pino. I asked him to write down directions to his restaurant and he did, just so we wouldn't get lost. Juan Eduardo also offered us his car to use, in case we wanted to go to Santiago. I told him we greatly appreciate the offer, but Roger doesn't like to drive much in the rain especially in somebody else's car in a strange place. You would have thought I said something wrong, because he said that if Roger could drive our RV from the USA, he could surely drive a borrowed car. We thanked him profusely for the offer and he left us to finish our inventory. Around 1 pm, Juan Eduardo stopped by again and insisted that it was time to go eat lunch at his restaurant. Coincidently, we were getting ready to walk over to his restaurant so he insisted that he drive us there as it was drizzling. Funny thing was that where he had to park his car, was almost as far as our walk would have been, but he insisted that he escort us to his restaurant. The restaurant isn't all that big, as it was on the second floor of a street front building. We were seated and Juan Eduardo wanted us to try his pisco sours drink as an aperitif. The drinks were a strong lime based concoction. He then ordered for us his favorite local dishes. We both had empanadas de pino, which were delicious. Empanadas de pino have a slice of hardboiled egg, one black olive, and ground beef with onions. It is served with aji, which is sort of a salsa, just thicker. After the empanadas our main course arrived. I had a beef caldo and Roger had a white fish with vegetables. The beef in the caldo was the most tender beef we've eaten out and it had chunk of acorn squash, piece of corn cob, peeled potato in a broth. Roger said his fish was good too. We found out from Juan Eduardo that the local fishermen try to catch squid and conch, because the Japanese market demand pays well for these two items. Most of the edible fish that Chileans eat, come from the southern part of the country. We were intrigued by this, because there are a lot of small fishing boats in the harbor. After lunch we wandered back to the RV for a siesta, because we both ate too much. After our nap, we had to go back out for some thing to nosh on for a light dinner and breakfast tomorrow. With that accomplished we came back and futzed around. Roger was running the generator to charge the house batteries, when all of a sudden the RV started shaking and rolling. I immediately turned off the generator and Roger went outside to see what the problem was. The problem was a 6+ magnitude earthquake. The guy running the parking lot asked us if we felt the "tremor." It lasted a couple of minutes and it caused all the dogs in San Antonio to start barking, as well as countless car alarms went off. Juan Eduardo stopped by to check on us, to make sure we were OK with the tremor and understood that these things happen periodically in San Antonio. But because the ground is softer than other coastal regions in Chile, the tremors aren't as bad. He also mentioned that if we heard the tsunami warning that we should go up the hill past the hospital. In the 40 years that he has lived in San Antonio, he's never heard the tsunami warning signals, other than their required tests. Roger had never felt an earthquake before, so it was interesting to him to actually have been in one. I had experienced one when we lived in California. Made for a blog worthy experience. It rained most of the day, so we did not do any exploring of the surrounding area as we hoped to do today. Rain is probable tomorrow as well, so we will have to see how things go. The parking lot is closed on Sunday, but the owner gave us a key so we can enter and leave as needed tomorrow. The people we have met in Chile have been some of the nicest, most helpful people we have met ANYWHERE we have traveled on this planet. We like it here.