Lota

Terribly behind on this blog, with no real excuse. Due to a nationwide teachers' strike over a historical debt, my school hasn't held classes since last Thursday. It seems like a tricky situation and one on which I won't comment except to say that I certainly hope it gets resolved.

A few weekends ago I took a day trip to get in touch with my Coffey heritage. I didn't quite make it to Ireland, but I did get to go into an old coal mine in Lota, a town along the coast a bit north of Lebu. Lota has a reputation for being very working-class and not very safe, but we actually had a great time. Everyone agrees that it's definitely gotten a lot better since a movie was filmed in the mines there a few years ago, which brought a lot of money and interest into the town, and taking a tour is now a fairly touristy deal among Chileans in the region.

The tour guide, who'd been a miner for years, was wonderfully friendly toward us, extremely depressing in telling endless stories of people he'd known who died in the mines, and terribly in need of a bath. He also sang to us a mining song that mostly consisted of the word "carbon" (which means "coal").

His wanderings literally brought us into a cage to descend into the mine and eventually beneath the ocean; I'd at that point been under the Pacific before I ever touched it.

Many coal samples were offered to us, but I declined. Really soils the hands, and despite Al Gore's efforts, I surmised I'd be likely to come across more coal in my future.

The tunnels got smaller and smaller, which was particularly unfortunate for my friend who is 5'10''. They weren't much of a difficulty for me until one part near the end, where everybody was basically crawling to get through.

Despite the seemingly endless stairs we had to ascend at the completion of the tour, it was a really cool experience.

We then explored Lota a good bit, finally finding the beautiful gardens along the ocean. Not only was it really pleasant to wander about there, we also scored a sea lion sighting. Excellent.

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