Week 6
- 3 days ago
- 13 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Day 43 / April 9, 2026
Thursday thursday! I started the morning finishing the blog post from the week prior then published it. More computer work followed after. At around 3:00pm Aparna invited me to join her, Cynthia, and Eiber for a meeting at CEAP (Centro de Estudios de Alimentos Saludables) near University of Talca. They had scheduled to meet with the ‘Bean Master’ leading legume scientist, Bacilio Carrasco, to discuss plans for Eiber’s undergraduate thesis. He showed us various options for Eiber to house his 90 bean plants for the duration of his study. We were also allowed to try some tomatoes! So small and so full of flavor!
Eiber and I headed back to the lab where I met Javiera, Fernando, and Giuli to get groceries at Jumbo. I went home, made a big salad and went to bed.
Day 44 / April 10, 2026
Friday!! TGIF!
I made some changes to the website (maybe you’ve notice the new press section hehe), then continued adding references to my folders. I met with Aparna in the afternoon to discuss the initial frameworks I suggested for the review. She recommended we divide my proposal into three separate projects. Her reasoning for this stemmed from wanting to directly address the existing gap in the literature, and to segment the work into more manageable portions. In which case, my priorities have shifted to writing a comprehensive review on the geology, meteorology, and biology of the Atacama desert which characterize it as a Martian analog. I aim to finish a draft by the end of May, then visit the Atacama in June to take supporting photos.
In the afternoon I hopped on a bus to Santiago to see Amber for one last weekend.
I arrived in the city around 7:30pm, we met in the middle and walked to Tijuana Tacos for dinner. Translation error on my part meaning we both ended up with a cow tongue taco (lengua) instead of bean tacos (legumbre) still so so delicious! We also managed to sneak in a final order at filippo gelato before close. After that we returned to the Casa Rojo hostel and crashed for the night.
Day 45 / April 11, 2026
We woke up bright and early around 8am and headed out to wander for the day. We started south towards O’Higgins park then changed direction in search of empanadas to the north. On the way, we passed by La Moneda Palace where there were thousands of people lining up to participate in the national day of sport (dia de deporte)! There were 3k and 5k races all over the country today! The energy was so high, music playing loud, and lots of smiling runners.
On the other side of the palace, we were so lucky to arrive just at the start of the changing of the guards! This ceremony takes place every 48 hours usually at 10:00am weekdays and 11:00am weekends. It can last anywhere from 30-45 minutes including music from the Carabineros band. The ceremony has been running since 1851 featuring female officers as of 2001 and mounted soldiers as of 2012.
See this video for a short taste:
We continued our walk north for empanadas arriving at Emporio Zunino right at 10:30am. This special spot was founded in 1930 by the Italian Zunino brothers who were heavily involved in the importation of italian products to Chile. They started incorporating italian cheeses into the traditional chilean dish and the rest is history! There are only three options on the menu, Napolitana (cheese, ham, and tomato), Queso (cheese), and Pino (chilean combination of beef, olives, onions and a hard-boiled egg). Amber opted for the Pino and I tried the Napolitana with a glass of their daily juice, today it was peach, durazno.
Our destination for the day was Mercado Urbano Tobalaba (MUT), the first market of it’s kind in Chile and a creation of the Territoria Architecture team (Ignacio Correa, Director of Development, had presented at the Fulbright Orientation two weeks prior and recommended a visit). We stopped for a quick coffee at Cafe Tricicolo en route before arriving around 12:30pm.
The market was insane! With over five floors of shopping, dining space, gallery space it felt so inviting and warm. Additionally the careful incorporation of plants contributed to an urban forestry feel, always a breath of fresh air in a city center.
We enjoyed lunch from the Cevicheria while sitting in a boat, so cool!
We ended our market wander perusing the art gallery exhibition ‘Las formas de la luz’, the forms of light showcasing 119 of 2,500 photography submissions aiming to capture light.
On our walk home we opted to stop through the Italia neighborhood where there was a wine festival going on. (Despite the spontaneity, we really did get lucky!) For $18 per person you received a wine glass and wristband and were able to sample from a number of different stalls along the street. There was music and other artisanal products for sale. As well as being a great atmosphere, it was ideal for people watching. We snagged a gelato from La Tranquera and continued on.
We arrived home around 6:00pm after a full day of wandering (41k steps, 30km) and were in desperate need of a shower. We cleaned up, had a quick rest, then headed out the door to find some din. We settled on Brazas Taberna Peruana on the south side of Plaza Brasil. Amber had a margarita and I had a pisco sour while we perused the menu snacking on the complimentary baked corn and bread. Amber opted for the seafood soup of the day and I had tacu tacu a lo pobre: fired rice and beans with a cut of beef and plantains on the side. We devoured everything it was so delicious!! Back at the hostel we played a few rounds of pool and hit the hay.
Day 46 / April 12, 2026
Amber’s last day! :(
We were out the door by 7:30am for a run around O’Higgins park. Much to our surprise there was yet another road race being set up. We dodged people on their way to the event and changed course to accommodate the park closures.
After a quick shower and packing up our bags, we headed out for the day. We stopped at Perfil coffee where Amber enjoyed a filtered coffee and I had their grapefruit espresso…so fresh! With a slice of lime cake as well. This was my first encounter of another Chilean-spanish quirk: there is only one word for lemons and limes, límon. The cashier chuckled a bit at my amazement. With such distinct flavor profiles and frequent use in recipes here, I am still surprised!
We continued on our wander over to the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, stopping for a proper breakfast in the museum cafe. The walk back to the hostel went by so quickly while talking about our plans for the upcoming week and returning to ‘real life’. After a lengthy game of pool, we said our goodbyes. Amber hopped in a car to the airport and I took the metro from República station to Terminal Sur for a bus back to Talca.
I spent the whole 3 hour journey surfing on spotify for new music. Really in search of something with an essence of techno though more upbeat and positive, little or no lyrics, and an immediate hook at the start (If you have any recs fitting this description or even generally, please send my way!) I was unable to find exactly what I was looking for, though I did stumble across Caribou’s 2020 Album ‘Suddenly’, a whole bunch of great stuff from Sofia Kourtesis, ‘Fara’ remix of ‘Sene’ by O’Flynn, ‘You Give Me Something’ by Jen, and the groovy ‘A Gira’ by unfazed.
I arrived home, did some unpacking and went to bed.
Day 47 / April 13, 2026
Back in the office today I was able to sort through additional papers from Aparna and restructure my approach with the sole Atacama focus in mind. Javiera stopped by for a visit and we chatted about our weekends, practiced some line dancing, and I learned a bit more about Mapuche tradition. Javiera shared a photo of her nephew born in Santiago and now 11 days old. His name, Lautaro, honors the 16th century Mapuche military hero. Around 1546, 11-year-old Mapuche boy Lautaro was kidnapped by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia's men near present-day Concepción, Chile, during conquest planning. Sent to Spanish camps, Lautaro started as a yanacona (helper) then became Valdivia's paje (page), tending horses. His outgoing nature and quick learning won Valdivia's affection. He joined military raids, battles, and drills, overcoming his fear of horses and mastering riding. Over years, Valdivia personally taught him Spanish tactics, cavalry use, and strategy, turning Lautaro into a military expert. In the 1550 battles of Andalién and Penco, Lautaro witnessed Valdivia mutilate defeated Mapuche prisoners as a warning, sparking deep resentment. In 1551, he accompanied fort foundations at Cautín, Nueva Imperial, and Villarrica. Between late 1551 and 1552, during travel from Concepción to Santiago, Lautaro escaped and returned to his people. Presenting to loncos (chiefs) led by Colo Colo, Lautaro overcame suspicions with innate leadership. He taught Mapuche warriors to ride horses as "body extensions," use new weapons, and adopt tactics like squadrons, successive attacks over mass charges, terrain choice, ambushes, and guerrilla warfare. Elected toqui (war chief), he led a major uprising against Spaniards dominating from the Biobío to Valdivia rivers. Lautaro trained squads for defensive maneuvers against cavalry, tactical retreats, and cornet signals (brass instrument) for obedience. He created an intelligence network of spies (men, women, youth) posing as drunks, Christians, or traitors to gather info and spread misinformation. Agents trained for night vision and tree-branch signals. He organized a hierarchical army with specialized commanders, including an intel chief. His attire included a red Spanish shirt, leather bonnet, feathered crown, Toki Kura stone emblem, and Clava war club. Translated and summarized from this article.
Lautaro was a very special choice for a name and will hopefully impart some bravery and courage onto Javiera’s cousin!
I got back to work digging for any papers about the Atacama and came across the work of Raúl Zurita. This artist used bulldozers to carve a poem into the sand in 1993 reading “Ni pena ni miedo”, “Neither pain nor fear”. The geoglyph poem was 3km long and written at the time of the Pinochet dictatorship collapse. There is an article by Matías Ayala Munita which dives further into the inspiration, process, and feedback of this work. But to summarize: Zurita's poetry prominently features national landscapes - deserts, seas, mountains - as projections of collective mourning for Pinochet-era violence, employing biblical symbols like water for purification and skies for transcendence to envision redemption, as seen in works like Canto a su amor desaparecido (1985), though these evade economic or ecological readings in favor of subjective affects. The inscription serves as a counterpoint to the 1994 Memorial of the Disappeared Detainee and Political Executed in Santiago's General Cemetery, which adapts Zurita's verse “Todo mi amor está aquí y se ha quedado pegado a las rocas, al mar, a las montañas”, “All my love is here and has remained stuck to the rocks, to the sea, to the mountains” atop a marble wall listing victims' names, both embodying the Concertación's reconciliatory discourse by containing grief in monumental, impersonal forms. Created south of Antofagasta with heavy machinery (letters 250-500m tall, 1.8m deep), it involved artists donating works auctioned to fund the project under the public works minister, evoking land art or geoglyph but paralleling nearby extractive mining operations like La Escondida, which treat the desert as inert resource while ignoring its microbial life and geological temporalities. Intended to last 800 years and visible mainly from the air, it aligned with post-dictatorship optimism in La vida nueva (1994), its handwritten-style typography asserting authorial presence amid neoliberal consensus critiques. However, erosion by wind, sand, and rare rains blurred it within a decade—leaving only "miedo" legible—exposing the desert's agency and challenging engineering predictions, later restored in 2013 via the Proa Corporation (mining-funded) with an Andean Pachamama offering, signage, and tourism integration alongside Mario Irarrázabal's nearby “Mano del Desierto.” Ayala critiques Zurita's anthropocentric poetics for obscuring extractivism and ecological violence, positioning erosion as a material “feedback” that rewrites the work, questioning its messianic humanism in an Anthropocene context (Ayala criticizes Zurita's human-centered poetry for hiding the harms of mining exploitation and environmental damage. He sees the desert's natural erosion of the inscription as nature "fighting back" by erasing and altering the artwork. This challenges Zurita's overly heroic, savior-like view of poetry in today's era of human-driven planetary change).
Finally I ended the day climbing at Pared. During my time away with Amber, they had done a number of renovations. There is now a new entrance, and a pizza oven!! The vibes were electric! :))
As I made my way over to the smaller section away from the classes and crowds, one of the gym locals said “Que tal?” a very casual greeting with similar vibes to a “what’s up?” I nodded to acknowledge still not really sure who he was talking to and went on my way. Then again he came over and hit me with the “que tal?” we got to chatting and I received sooooo many amazing recs! Cristobal, Chris, had recently returned from a trip to Valle Encantado, Argentina near Bariloche. He shared videos crossing a river on a small paddling boat to access the crag. The nearby Piedra Parada was also a really unique, prominent feature worth visiting! Once I had my fill of climbs, I headed home, showered, and tucked in for the night.
Day 48 / April 14, 2026
The day started with Dr. Charles’ week 7 lecture on DNA replication featuring a creative demo with yarn. He was trying to explain the formation of replication forks as helicase unwinds the two opposing strands of DNA. He held two pieces of yarn, twisted them together to create a double helix, then had a student volunteer try to separate the pieces at the middle. In so doing, the twists move away from the expanding opening in the middle and create tension at either end, this is where topoisomerase proteins come in to alleviate any torsional strain.
After class I headed back to the office and made a decent dent in writing the introduction for the Atacama paper. Aparna called me into her office for a meeting with Nicolas in the afternoon. Nicolas proposed an idea for a project partially characterizing ~32 bacteria samples from Deception Island Antarctica. We aim to perform antibacterial testing and antioxidant testing to characterize these, then publish the initial findings. It sounds like a great project and I am excited for the opportunity to get my hands dirty in the lab!
After work Chris invited me to check out Gravity, another climbing gym located at the Mall Go! Florida. We arrived at around 8pm, I paid the $1 fee for a first-time day pass (great deal!) and proceeded to get my butt kicked by everything. It was awesome. There was a women’s class going on and it was so great to see 20+ women enjoying the space! Chris whipped out a thermos with hot water and prepared a cup of mate, offering it to practically everyone in the gym. Mate continues to appear in community gatherings like this presenting opportunities to share, talk, and relax. Interestingly, the Gravity wall was designed with an open plan in mind. It sits like an island in the middle of an huge space on the second floor of the mall, for all mall-goers to spectate. Understandably, some people find it invasive and prefer to visit in the evenings.
When the gym closed at 10:00pm, we headed to a nearby spot, ‘Donde es Nacho’. Chris recommended the chacarero, a beef sandwich with green beans. It was delicious! We then stopped at Ambar on the way home and bumped into another climber, Javier, who had been at the gym as well. I tried my first Michelada con Merkén, a Chilean way to dress a beer with lemon juice and in this case a spicy merkén salt rim, while we chatted about all things climbing. With the recent reports of anchor failure in Kalymnos, Javier expressed some concern for the hardware in Constitucion, a nearby coastal town with sport routes.
It was awesome to hear some local insight and visit a new gym. I was quite tired when I got home, managing a quick shower before crashing into bed.
Day 49/ April 15, 2026
Poila Boishakh!! Bengali New Year! Shubho Noboborsho (শুভ নববর্ষ) to everyone celebrating today! The lab celebrated today with homemade snacks prepared my Aparna’s mum. We tried nimki, a crunchy savory snack of fried dough. Also, shakarpara, a sweet snack similar to nimki but coated in crystallized sugar. And sujir payesh a sweet dish featuring semolina pudding with raisins and cardamom. It can always be hard to celebrate traditions away from home, but it seemed like this special gathering presented a great alternative!
It was a busy day in the lab working with Nicolas to practice the antimicrobial tests. We started with two EPS conditioned copper nanoparticle samples, filtered out the EPS using a .45nm membrane ensuring only the nanoparticles were left. We then coated two plates, one with E.coli and another with B.cereus, punched out two wells in each and placed two paper filter discs. We then separately loaded the wells of each plate with 100uL of each copper nanoparticle sample and placed 5uL of sample onto the discs. These were left in an incubator overnight at 37C and the following morning we examined for signs of intolerance or resistance to the nanoparticles. It appeared that the bacteria grew without any changes, demonstrating a bacteriostatic effect of the nanoparticles.
For further practice, we repeated the same methodology as described above, instead to compare the antimicrobial activity of five different bacteria strains in response to the EPS supernatant from an Antarctic isolate. We compared with positive control streptomycin. As shown in the photos below, the ‘halo’ surrounding the wells suggests some amount of intolerance. This can be quantified using the ruler as shown.
At 5pm I headed to lab practical where we performed DNA extraction of a banana. A chunk of banana was ground up using a mortar and pestle. We then added 20mL water and sieved the mixture through gauze. 20mL dish soap was added to the filtrate and mixed in. Then 20mL pineapple juice was added and combined. Finally, 20mL of this mixture was transferred to a graduated cylinder and 20mL acetone was added. We watched as the DNA precipitated and drifted to the surface.
I skedaddled home, went for a quick jog, then had a lovely facetime with my parents and Val who were having dinner together…hi guys!! :))
Day 50 / April 16, 2026
This morning I met with Nicolas to check yesterday’s plates (as described above). Then he prepared a table listing all of the bacteria we will use for the study. It feels more real seeing it listed!
I wrapped up this week’s blog, as well as continued drafting the introduction my first section about the historical and modern uses of the Atacama Desert. This afternoon, I will be back in the lab to help Javiera film a video for class and for a quick lab meeting about how to carefully use the centrifuge. A couple quick reminders: Balance! make sure to use new Falcon tubes! Clean all spills thoroughly and report as needed. At 5 we will have access to use a lyophilizer to freeze dry a number of samples and I look forward to learning about the process.
I am then hoping to get to Pared later today and enjoy one last dry walk before a rainy weekend!
Chau! Thank you for coming along! :)
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