First plates in!

Yesterday we installed the first plates for my experiment. I wanted to install 30, but was only able to install 8 before the drill bit bit the dust and the tide started rising. I was a little disappointed because I'm going to SACNAS in San Jose, CA this week, exactly when the barnacles - at least in some years - start settling, and won't be able to install the rest until I get back. But I'm also a little relieved to have installed a few because at least now I'll have a reference to see whether barnacles settled while I was gone.

Here's a pic of the intertidal at ECIM Sur, where I'll be working. Notice the blue tuffy on the bottom right. That's the zone where I'm installing settlement plates in order to compare habitat selection during settlement of three species of barnacles. I'll post more photos of the actual plates and explain the project a little once I'm done installing them.

  

Extra credit if you can find the echinoderms in this photo! There are tons of sun stars and sea urchins in these pools, which makes me very very happy :)

I'm off to Santiago this afternoon to catch an overnight flight to San Jose. My aunt Stella and uncle Pete will pick me up from the airport so that I can spend the day with them before the SACNAS conference begins that night. I'm looking forward to tomorrow because it's been almost two years since I've seen them. They've also promised to take me to Whole Foods to load up on goodies and In N Out because I've been craving a hamburger like none other. I think this week I'll eat nothing but hamburgers; I miss them that much. 

I'm also looking forward very much to the SACNAS conference. I'll get to see some of my best friends from grad school, Marlene and Gloriana; friends from Boston like Serena and Melanie; and several other friends that I've met through SACNAS. It will be busy because I've organized one scientific symposium and am speaking about my diagnosis in another one, plus giving a poster presentation, judging posters, and mentoring students. This conference has been a source of inspiration, motivation, and even therapy for me for the past seven years which is why I wouldn't miss it even though I'm thousands of miles away! I'll try to post photos when I return!

Downtown Las Cruces

Just another day in downtown Las Cruces:

Carrete!

Translation in Chilean: Party

Last night Jenna and Jessica had a party, complete with a parilla (bbq) and bonfire, to kick off the field season. Today Fabian arrives from Concepcion and we'll spend the next two days planning experiments. Then Saturday through Tuesday we'll be setting up our plots. I'm a little anxious because the waves are going to be at their peak the next few days and the tides really aren't that low here. And I'm going to California from Tuesday through Monday, which is precisely when the tides will be the lowest for the entire Spring. That always seems to happen to me - traveling during the best tides. Oh, well.

At any rate, it was an awesome party. We danced until 7 am! Here are some pics:

Straw that broke the camel's back

There is increasing evidence that dietary guidelines (i.e., low fat, high carb) implemented since the 1980s have contributed to the current obesity and metabolic syndrome (diabetes and cardiovascular disease) epidemics. And not just in the US, but in several South American countries, especially Chile. My friends in Santiago who I visited this weekend, are a good example of how its affecting Chilean families.

On Saturday morning, as I was helping the mother prepare breakfast, I brought up the issue of nutrition and health with her. I brought it up because earlier she had offered me some orange juice, cereal, fruit salad, and 'light' yogurt (0% fat, which usually means replaced with carbs) - basically, a blood sugar nightmare. As she showed me, she expounded on the health benefits of eating such foods ('No fat!' 'Good for your cholesterol!' etc. etc.). Now, once a week on the Chilean morning news, they have a segment on nutrition during which the doctor extols the virtues of cereals and 'light' yogurts and demonizes fat. I couldn't help but be reminded of these shows; Mariluz was almost parroting them word for word. But I kindly declined, saying that I would be fine with ham, cheese, and palta (staples in every Chilean breakfast). She looked at me as if I was going to have a heart attack. At that point, I figured it was a good time to explain to her why I needed to eat more fat.

We also got onto the topic of diabetes. After telling her about my family history, she told me that she was prediabetic and on medication. When I asked her if she had a family history of diabetes, she told me that her father had diabetes and had both of his legs amputated before he died. I also told her that my sister had PCOS, which is a precursor to diabetes. Two of her daughters have PCOS. By the way, this is a good time to congratulate Monica because she no longer has PCOS!!! She did it by first starting on metformin, the diabetes drug. But she was able to get off metformin recently by also reducing her sugar and carb consumption and losing weight.

I stopped the conversation there because we were ready to eat breakfast. She ate fruit salad, topped with 'light' yogurt and bran flakes (no fat, high fiber = super healthy!), followed by bread with cheese and palta. She told me that she used to eat a lot of cheese but had to stop when she found out that her cholesterol was high.

As much as I wanted to, I didn't talk with her about the sugar and carb content of her food choices and their link to diabetes or try to dispel the myth of the role of fat in obesity and cardiovascular disease. I didn't explain to her that by replacing fat with carbs in her diet, she would have spikes in blood sugar that would leave her craving more and storing more fat. I didn't bring them up partly because I'm not confident in my mastery of the spanish language to explain it well enough, partly because how do I tell someone so convinced of the healthiness of her food choices that her doctor and the media are wrong (?), and partly because I'm still doing the background research to convince myself.

And I was upset. I'm upset because the people I care about and love are being given information that's making them sick. I also feel helpless because there's nothing I can do at this point. But it only makes me more committed to learning as much as I can about nutrition.

But wanna know the straw that broke the camel's back? This weekend we watched the opening ceremonies for the Panamerican games in Guadalajara, Mexico. The opening act was the Mexican band Maná, my favorite band of all time. What I saw shocked and horrified me. The lead singer, Fher, is fat.

This is what he used to look like:

  

This is what he looks like now (kinda like Meatloaf): 

  

It looks as though the obesity epidemic has reached one of the most beautiful men in the world. Now that's just not right.

A day in the life of a Las Cruces dog

There's this cocker spaniel that sits in the same position in front of his house almost every day, just staring off into space. Even when I pass by, he just keeps staring in the same direction. I think he's a little old, but even still, you would think he would look in my direction as soon as he felt the vibration of my footsteps!

Here he is:
(Note: these photos were taken on different days!)

  

I'm off to Santiago this evening to visit the city and the Marambios. This is my last weekend before our real field work begins! Next weekend the tides are really good, so we're going to start setting up our field sites. Then the barnacles should start settling at the end of the month. Por fin!

Last Tuesday, Jessica and I took two buses to Coquimbo. We left at 9:30 am and arrived in Coquimbo at 7 pm. It was a long bus ride, but the vistas were beautiful - especially the last leg, which was along the coast. 

We spent the next two days at a 'Physical Oceanography of the Southeastern Pacific' conference, where Jessica and Fabian, her adviser and my collaborator, presented. I also got to spend some time getting to know Fabian and his wife, Angela, over mariscos and wine. I tried 'loco', which is a local mollusc that supposedly tastes like abalone. I ordered it 'a la parmesana' (swimming in parmesan cheese). It came in a 'greda', which is a type of dish they bake it in. I can't even begin to describe how delicious it was - the meat was tender and creamy, which was only accentuated by the cheese. 

On Friday, I visited downtown La Serena, a beach town 14 km away, on my own while Jessica and Fabian attended the conference. Later that day I met up with them to visit the feria artesenal. And that night Jessica and I stayed at a beachside cabaña. It was gorgeous.

Cabañas en Coquimbo | Loca for Loco! | Jessica and Fabian present their research |
The beach outside the conference | View from our cabaña in La Serena

On Saturday, Jessica and I took a colectivo (taxi where they pick up passengers along the way to keep it full and the prices low) to Vicuña, a small town 30 min away in an area called Valle Elqui. We were told that the Valle Elqui is a must-see while we were in the area because the desert flowers would be blooming. Well, we didn't see any flowers but the valley was beautiful nonetheless. We visited the Gabriela Mistral museum, dedicated to the Chilean Nobel poet, and a local farmers market.

Then we took a bus to Pisco Elqui, a small town higher up in the mountains made famous by it's beauty and it's Mistral pisco (really, aguardiente) distillery. There's some controversy regarding the name of the town. Supposedly it was changed from 'La Union' by an ex-president, who claimed that Pisco originated in Chile, not Peru. But in reality, 'pisco' in Chile was actually aguardiente until the last 50 years or so, when it changed it's name. But Peru was making 'pisco' way before then. (I learned all of this from the tour, which was all in spanish! My spanish has improved a lot from traveling with Jessica) At the distillery, I felt like I was visiting a Napa vineyard that was plopped in the middle of a valley in the heart of Anza Borrego desert. It was definitely a trip of a lifetime.

  

 Bus ride to Pisco Elqui | Church in the Plaza de Armas, Pisco Elqui

 Grape mascerators used in first step of Pisco distillation | Pisco distillers

 Mistral distillery | Lunch at the Mistral distillery

Piure heaven

  

Can you guess what I'm eating in this photo? Well, it's an invertebrate and I studied it in my lab at Harvard last summer. I'll give you a big hint:

That's right, folks, I ate a sea squirt. This goes down in history as the weirdest thing I've ever eaten (thus far).

We took a guest speaker, Kevin Lafferty from UC Santa Barbara, to eat lunch after his presentation. He told us that he wanted to try 'piure'. People from the lab grimaced at the suggestion and recommended he get a half portion. Anxious as I am to try new foods, I told him I would help him out. But I didn't really catch what exactly 'piure' was. Then the waitress brought out this bowl of red lumps in a red broth. When I asked what it was, that's when they told me it was sea squirt. I then told Kevin to go first. Here he is before he puts it in his mouth (also notice the bowl of sea urchin in the background):

And here he is just as he takes his first bite:

His face basically sums it up. He really disliked it, but actually I didn't think it was that bad. It was true that it had a weird iodine flavor that I had never experienced before in my life. But I actually liked it more than the 'herizo' (sea urchin), which I thought had gone bad because it had a really strong sulfur flavor at first before it started tasting creamy. I prefer S. franciscanus, the red urchin that's common in Southern California, myself.

I'm off to La Serena, a beach town north of Las Cruces, tomorrow for a conference. It was a last minute opportunity to meet with one of my collaborators for a few days to plan our experiments and get to know a little bit more of Chile. I'll post pictures when I return!

Settling in

I have been in Chile for over a week now, and in Las Cruces for 5 days. Thursday night was a turning point, where I really started to feel like I was settling in. That night there was a party that all the people at the lab attended, so now I have a bunch of new friends. On Friday, I visited a store a friend recommended to me that sells decent vegetables and fruits. Then, yesterday my friend Jessica and I went to San Antonio, a port city 20-min away by microbus that reminds me of Ensenada, to go shopping at a mall. I really started to feel at home when I saw this:

 

 What?! Chile has Dunkin' Donuts, but California doesn't? At any rate, it was kind of nice to see a familiar face.

We also visited the supermercado, which had everything. I was so excited! When I first arrived to Las Cruces, I didn't really know where to shop. The stores that I had visited were pretty limited in variety or the vegetables were just plain bad. But I asked around and finally found one store within walking distance with a pretty decent variety. Plus, the market in San Antonio expanded my options even more. It will be totally worth the trip. Here are some examples of how my meals have improved since finding new markets:

Breakfast was the easiest meal to prepare since the beginning because I could get eggs, palta (avocado), and tomatoes easily. Kiwis are also really common here and are really tasty!

But since I found the new market, I was able to make guacamole which really enhanced breakfast.

 Dinner was not that great before because I couldn't find any good vegetables. One night I had a chuleta (pork chop) and wine. (Oh! Did I forget to mention how cheap and good wine is here?! Silly me.) Despite the wine, it was pretty sad.

 I found carne molido (ground beef) at the supermarket. The local markets don't sell any. So I prepared hamburgers (with egg, tomato, and onions) and ate them protein-style.

Before Friday, I didn't feel like I was getting enough to eat. But the last two days I've felt really good. So now I'm sure I can survive here!