Chilean Stone: Erizo

June 9th – After classes, Nicole and I traveled up north to Reñaca to try to find a seafood restaurant to eat at. We had heard of a seafood buffet, but couldn’t find it after a little searching. However, we did find a great place to eat, and I was feeling adventurous enough to try erizo. Erizo is the Spanish word for sea urchin, and the delicacy consists of the raw sea urchin roe eaten with lemon juice. It was definitely an interesting flavor, unlike anything else I’ve ever tried. I liked it, but I couldn’t finish all of my plate because it was a lot of a new and strong flavor. Nicole tried one piece, but claimed that the texture was like that of “a partially decayed lung” and refused to help me finish the plate. She ordered conger eel soup, and that was much more of a standard fare. I think if it was offered to me, I would eat erizo again, but it was kind of expensive and I probably won’t order it again. At least not any time soon.

The infamous erizo.

June 10th – After going to classes all day, we packed up and prepared to go on a trip down south to the end of the world. A month prior we had bought plane tickets to Punta Arenas, and we would be visiting the southernmost part of Chile for five days total. We ran into the same problem with the plane/bus schedule as before, so we had a nice five hour wait in the airport before boarding. There was an electrical problem with our plane, so we also ended up waiting for a couple hours on the runway. However, we arrived safely in Punta Arenas at around 7:00 am, and grabbed a couple hours of sleep before heading out to walk around town.

June 11th - Punta Arenas is sometimes billed as the world’s southernmost city, and it is certainly an interesting place. The winter solstice is very soon, and for our time down there, sunrise was at around 9:00 am and sunset at around 4:30 pm. Also, the highest the sun gets above the horizon is around 14 degrees. We walked around town for a few hours, saw some southern seabirds and dolphins, and then rendezvoused with two friends who had come down the day before. After cooking a pleasant dinner, we spent a very cold night in our heatless hostel. Needless to say we didn’t spend another night there.