A Year in Chile

We landed in Chile in December 2019, two months after the start of a social revolution, and four months before the Coronavirus arrived. That might sound like unfortunate timing, but looking back, we couldn’t have possibly planned it better. We had no idea what the year ahead of us would bring, but we were prepared to face some unusual challenges. In addition to the big changes of moving abroad with young children, we would be settling in during a time of major upheaval in Chile. The “estallido social” (social explosion) that had begun in Santiago in October was still pulsing through the streets of all of the major cities. There was evidence of the uprising all around: graffiti, broken windows, burnt trash bins and boarded up storefronts. I took the first picture below the day we arrived, as we drove from the airport to our new home in Viña.

• 

• 

• 

Despite the disturbance around us, we were able to enjoy a fairly normal Chilean summer. On a few occasions we were sent home from a public spaces when a protest was imminent, and we crossed Valparaiso and Santiago off our list of places to visit. But mostly we enjoyed beach days, swim lessons, museum visits, afternoons at the park, a couple of birthday parties and even a roller skating performance!

Every weekend we traveled to the countryside to visit family and to love on my garden. During the summer, we hired my property-brother-in-law to design and oversee renovations on a small cabin to make it more comfortable for weekend visits and holidays. We eagerly checked in on the progress every weekend.

At the end of February, as summer was winding down, the International Music Festival came to town and brought with it more than just a disappointing performance by Adam Levine. Under the slogan of “sin justicia no hay festival” (without justice there is no festival) protests intensified in Viña. We saw the smoke from burning trash bins and tear gas outside our window, heard helicopters whirring above, and watched on television as a car dealership around the corner was ransacked and several cars were set on fire. That night my husband took the fire extinguisher from the apartment building to put out two fires on our street. I began to wonder what our “normal” life in Chile would actually look like.

• 

• 

In March, the Coronavirus arrived and our concept of a “normal” life in Chile changed again. As the virus began to spread, the Chilean government enacted strict measures that included mandatory masking, nationwide closures of all schools (which had only been open for one week after summer vacation) and non-essential businesses, and a nationwide curfew. We hunkered down in our apartment and hoped that things would improve in a few weeks.

In April, mandatory quarantines were rolled out in communes with high infection rates. Residents in communes under quarantine were required to stay at home and could only leave to complete essential duties with a valid permit -and they do check for the permit on the highways, in the streets, and at the entrances of any open businesses. To give you an idea of how strict these measures were, only after many weeks of lockdown did the government establish a permit for children to go outside “once a day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, between 10am-12pm or between 4pm-6pm for a maximum of 90 minutes and within 1km of their residence.” Staying at home was a requirement, and leaving home, even for a walk, was very difficult.

• 

• 

Given that we were living in a 6th floor apartment with no outdoor access and two energetic boys, we didn’t think twice about moving to the 500 sq ft cabin in the countryside before the quarantine went into effect in Viña. Even though it meant withdrawing our kids from school and saying goodbye to the apartment where we were finally settling in, it also meant living a lifestyle that would be almost untouched by the pandemic. Our kids would be able to go outside and be with their cousins every day, and our physical distance from the rest of the world was practically quarantining in itself. The cabin renovations weren’t entirely finished when we arrived – we didn’t have countertops or a kitchen sink for the first week- but it was better than the alternative.

And so we spent the rest of the year right there, in a little cabin on a big plot of land, with all of my in-laws by our side. It was nothing like what we had so tediously planned or expected, but boy were we lucky. We were lucky that we had just finished renovating the cabin, which was not previously suitable for long-term living. We were lucky that our kids were young and adaptable and that they weren’t old enough to be craving independence or to be set back by my limited homeschooling abilities. We were lucky that my husband is a brilliant and persistent man who was able to install and maintain functioning internet so he could work from the country and our family wouldn’t have to separate (or stay in the apartment all together). I was lucky to have a garden waiting for me to give me purpose and bring me joy. We were lucky to be living on the same property as all of my in-laws where we could isolate from the world together instead of completely alone. We were lucky that when summer rolled around again and restrictions eased up for a hot second, we were able to gather the proper permits to escape to the south of Chile to witness a total solar eclipse by a majestic lake at the end of the strangest year.