Only 44 days late- The Earthquake Blog

There is a bar in Santiago Centro called La Piojera. No other bar could be so aptly called The Flea Pit. The bar attracts everyone of all classes and castes, they get ridiculously drunk, sing, dance, snog, fight, vomit then struggle home. This may appear remarkably similar to a night out in Blackburn but what La Piojera has that Blackburn lacks is the Terremoto.

What is a terremoto? Imagine the worst possible combination of flavours you can, then throw a bit of dog poo in and you've nearly got it. The ingredients are 6-day old sweet white wine, fernet and pineapple ice cream. Yes, pineapple ice cream.

It is sold in pint glasses and gets you instantly plastered. My one night on terremotos left me with the worst hangover of my life and I spent the whole afternoon shivering on the sofa whilst watching Mamma Mia with my Danish Flatmate. In short, it was the worst day of my life. Of course, terremoto translates as earthquake, and hopefully the drink and the quake that hit last month are once in a lifetime experiences.


First the facts, the earthquake, which hit in the 27th of February at 3.34am was 8.8 at it's epicentre which diminished to 8.3 here in Santiago. It was the 5th strongest earthquake in recorded history. Last night, 44 day after the main quake, yet another aftershock hit, just one of hundreds.

I would be lying if I didn't say that the big one was brown pants time. I live on the 15th floor of my building. Tall buildings like mine are designed to sway during quakes- to shake out the earth's vibrations. You feel it more. And it felt like I was going to die.

Sunset from our flat

On the night of the 27th the initial tremors woke me up and I was sure it would pass. I lay awake, waiting for it to fade away but it just kept getting stronger and stronger. You could feel the entire building move. It felt like one of those punchbags you have as a kid. You hit it and it rolls over but somehow sways back upright. The entire building was creaking and groaning, windows rattling. My chest of drawers fell over on to my bed. Plates and glasses started to break. It grew stronger and you think that this is it but after 2 minutes things start to fade.

No electricity, no gas, no water. Not just in my flat but in the entire city. I checked on my flatmates then we went and watched flames rise from a chemical plant that had exploded to the north of the city.

The rest passed as you would expect. We tried to phone our friends but all the networks were down. We inched our way through the darkness of 15 flights of stairs and went and sat in the foyer. A man with a dog approached:

"Ah, you're foreigners!"
"That's right."
"First earthquake?"
"Yep"
"Don't worry. Could you look after my dog? I'm going to look for my mum."

Few words of advice or consolation there then. The next day we all gathered in our office to trade stories and drink Gato. I phoned our institutions- there were a few collapsed walls here and there, lots of cracks but all our kids were fine. All the under 5's slept through the entire thing and had no idea why everyone was making so much fuss.

We were all very lucky. Santiago escaped relatively unharmed. The south was devastated. Last weekend we visited Retiro, a town in the south. One in four homes had collapsed and people were living in bus stops and tents. The town's main employer, a cement works was shut as one of it's towers collapsed. The school was still shut and many services had ceased to exist. It will be many years before towns like Retiro get back on their feet

Damage in Retiro

Yet, the earthquake represented the start of a lot of things. We've worked hard to help our institutions make repairs and we've built temporary houses in the south and life goes on.

Many people have asked me if it makes me want to come home. But it's been the opposite, I've more desire to stay here than ever before. Even if the aftershocks continue to mean frequent changes of trousers...

New Years and New Beards

Christmas and New Years are a funny old thing in the southern hemisphere. Firstly it seems that no one is that bothered about Christmas here. You don't hear "Merry Xmas Everybody" or "Mistletoe and Wine" in the two months leading up to the holidays and there's no-one going around getting battered just because it's Christmas. No one buys turkey, there are no crackers, the shops are a little more crowded than normal and most importantly, you don't feel forced to be jovial. One of my least favourite things in the world.

Even the few recognisable things still seem out of place, Christmas carols in Spanish and the Father Christmas in the shopping centres look distinctly uncomfortable as they're sweating their testicles down the drain in the 30 degree plus temperature.

So on Christmas Day we found ourselves once again on the roof of the newbies apartment block enjoying a barbeque, drinking copious amounts of boxed wine and crap beer and burning to a crisp. It's really quite a spectacular place to spend Christmas as here is the view.

Granted, this may not be the best pic for it, what with the minging apartment block and all, but the 360 degree panorama of Santiago and the Andes really is quite awesome. I won't go into a lot of detail about the barbeque except that there was a water balloon fight, we played table football using hockey terminology ("Faceoff!) and using a bauble for a ball, some of us threw things of roof, we played roullette using a roullette table that cost approximately 2 pence and I saw a Canadian man's genitals.

But the biggest thing to come out of the Christmas Day barbeque (after the genitalia) was that all the men in VE decided it would be a fabulous idea that we should all grow beards.

Now, being a Wiggins male, I have inherited several undesirable genetic traits: being able to fall asleep everywhere and anywhere, extreme gangliness, a terrible sense of smell and the total inability to grow facial hair. So the last day we all shaved was December 25th and the next time we would be able to shave would be January 21st, when one of our volunteers Brys left. As a Wiggins, facial hair progress was painfully slow, I barely moved out of the bumfluff stage, but when I did, I jumped straight into the "This man should not be working with children":



And generally, I hated most of the entire experience. It was nice not shaving for a month, but it itched like hell and looked utterly rubbish. I counted down the days till the Great Shave-Off and when it finally came, I set about the "beard" with a rusty bic razor with glee.

Now, looking at the rules of the competition, this was about having the Best Facial Hair, not the most. All the lads would shave a new creation, give it it's own name and the women would vote for a winner. All the men went about doing bizarre and un-godly things with their beards. Frenchy hacked chunks out of his eyebrows, Matt emerged with dreadlocks and Jack went Taxi Driver on us. Brys and Pharoah dazzled us with the gingerest beards ever seen. Brooke, who clearly had the best, emerged with a beard that said "I've spent 4 months felling redwoods in upper British Columbia with only the love of a grizzly to keep me sane".

And me, well I called my creation "El Conquistador" but "A Weasel's Arse" would possibly have been more appropriate. The whole concept was brilliantly inane, all the boys were giddy about their chances of success and the girls just rolled their eyes. There was no prize, but massive amounts of pride were at stake.

And who won? Well, I did of course. And this proves several things:

1. Women don't like facial hair or stupid competitions.
2. If you lobby enough for the sympathy vote you might just .
3. You should have a German friend called Eva to persuade, cajole and bully everyone to vote for you.
4. The democratic process is alive and well. You can't argue with the voting process. And there can be only one true winner. Ladies and Gentleman, may I present you with the winner of "VE Global Best Facial Hair":