Month: August 2026

Loose Ends

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 17.14.

It’s getting to that stage of my time in Chile where I’m starting to take advantage of every moment remaining. Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten quite used to the sight of the Andes, the caracaras that seem to be constantly somewhere on the horizon and the wheezy call and response of the characterful meadowlarks. But soon I’ll have to say goodbye. So, while the weather holds at least, I’ll try to get out after work and soak up as much of that view as I can.

After a productive day spent exploring Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry (specifically Quickdraw, Demeter, Shooting Stars and Delilah) and hanging out with the Senior English team, I popped in to grab my camera and went straight back up the road to Observatory Hill (Cerro Calán). It was smoggy and overcast on my way up, but by the time I reached the summit, the sun had found a breach in the cloud line near the horizon and came shining through – just in time to light up the meadowlarks that were scrambling about the summit.

I went all the way to Patagonia for pumas and took a boat out into the Pacific to see an albatross, but the meadowlarks have been a feature wherever I’ve gone. For me, they’re probably the bird of Chile – after all, national bird or not, I’ve seen condors in Peru, albeit perhaps not as frequently as I have here.

If I had more time – and the weather were kinder – I’d head south again in search of the chucao, a smart little Chilean speciality, and try my luck in search of the Magellanic woodpeckers that reside within the forests of Chiloe. I’d also try to track down the elusive tucúquere, the largest of the owls of Chile, that has thus far eluded me. I suspect I’ll be absolutely knackered when I return from my final adventure next week, but if the sun decides to make a very overdue return, I might make one last jaunt out to Batuco, a wetland reserve to the north of the city, in the hope that I might find the burrowing owls that live around the lake.

Until then, I’m quite content to watch the meadowlarks bousting about.

When the sun can be seen, Santiago experiences an incredible second sunset. The dying embers of dusk catches the peaks of the mountains and showers them in golden light, before they fade to an imperial grey against the iron skies beyond. Then, just when you think it’s over, the mountains erupt in an incredible crimson light. I’m not sure what triggers that second burst of light. Maybe it’s the sun hitting the Pacific, or some trick of the clouds. Either way, it’s breathtaking.

As I walked back down the road toward Avenida Charles Hamilton, the clouds became a mirrored beach, like so much stippled sand. To the north, the triangular summit of Cerro Manquehue rose into the ether like a child’s drawing. It’s been the eternal backdrop of my stay here in Santiago, visible from both my home in Las Condes and my office in Craighouse on the other side of the mountain.

Before I came here, Manquehue was just the name of a Chilean Catholic community who I met once in Durham, many years ago. Now it’s one of my favourite waymarkers in the Valle Central.

Tomorrow brings an observation – one of my last – and a planning session with the Deputy Head for a fully-fledged 90-minute lesson of my own on Thursday. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were testing me. It almost feels like a job interview.

I saw a fox near the car park as I left today – a gold and silver vixen, rooting around the trees just beyond the fence. These culpeos are a lot closer to wolves and jackals than they are to true foxes, but nature clearly likes the design of the fox, because the culpeo and its cousin the chilla have both evolved to fill that niche.

I’ll take that as a good sign. Nothing that beautiful could be anything else. BB x

Upgraded

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Lo Barnechea, Santiago de Chile. 15.35.

After a relatively quiet week left largely to my own devices, my third and final week here in Santiago has got off to a thundering start. Not only did I get to observe an English Language A lesson on Othello – easily my favourite Shakespeare and one of my chosen texts for next year – I actually got to teach a large chunk of it, steering the lesson firmly into the context-heavy waters of racial and religious subtext.

It could hardly have felt more natural. Granted, it was only half of a double lesson that was in my hands, but it was everything I wanted my experience of teaching literature to be. I remain very much attached to the idea that one day, God willing, I might get the chance to teach the literature of my own language, too. It’s a tremendously uphill journey, as my degree is in Modern Languages and Cultures and my training is entirely in French and Spanish, though I did skew almost all of my modules into the realm of literary analysis during my university studies. It’s also worth noting that my grades in English Literature – and my passion for the classes – were simply streets ahead of my interest in languages at school, which, I admit, were something that came naturally to me rather than a particular passion of mine. No, I haven’t read nearly widely enough in English as one might have done reading English Literature at degree level, but then, I’ve read a great deal less in French, and here I am teaching Albert Camus and Gael Faye for the third year in a row. Go figure.

It must have gone down well, because I’ve been invited by the Director of the Senior section of the school to teach another Y12 class the same material, but in more depth, on Thursday morning. Realistically, this is what I expected what my placement to look like, albeit in Middle – but this is much more my sort of thing.

I also popped in on a Y11 French class, which was suggested as a possibility in my very first week, but has been held back due to the ongoing cycle of assessments. Students start French much later here (which seems logical, with France being seven thousand miles away), so they were only learning the basics of introductions and masculine/feminine adjectives, but it was good to get my eye in – because on Thursday I’ll be taking the entire class as they move into the realm of verb conjugation. Fortunately, it’s only the regular -ER verbs I need to concern myself with, and being native Spanish speakers, they should be able to grasp the concept of verb conjugation considerably more capably than my English students. They reminded me a lot of my Y11s back home: lively, bolshy, but keen to do well and to impress. Two thirds of them are carrying on with me to A Level, which I’m still raving about. I don’t imagine it’ll be a trend moving forward, but I’ll do my best to try and engineer that kind of success in the years to come. After all, with languages on the decline across the UK, my job does depend on it somewhat!

My final commitment for today, after a lovely lunch with the Senior English department, was to drop in on the school’s MUN/Debate Club, hosted by Sebastian, one of the English team. I’ve got to hand it to their ambition, tackling the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine for one of their first debates, but they handled it superbly, and some of them stuck around at the end for feedback, just like mine do at the end of a Burke or Interhouse Debate. After a couple of weeks where my attention and interaction has largely involved my colleagues and their respective schemes of work, it feels incredible to be working with the students directly at last. It reminds me just how much I love this job, which is surprisingly reassuring, even in the middle of my summer holidays.

Saying it makes it so. Today is the start of week five. Four weeks remain, which will be down to less than two by the time my responsibilities in Chile and Greece are concluded. Once again, I have contrived to whittle down the gargantuan private school holidays into a much more manageable break by keeping myself as busy as my sanity will allow, though with a full seven weeks of ever-changing plans, this summer really does take the biscuit. I might feel guilty about relinquishing time I could have spent refreshing my memory behind the wheel of a car if I weren’t so busy… but you know as well as I do that that would be an out-and-out lie. Between the mountain lions, albatrosses, hummingbirds and Shakespeare, I couldn’t be happier with how this summer has gone.

Tomorrow calls for Carol Ann Duffy (…!). We haven’t crossed paths since she and her stolen snowman were unceremoniously shunted to one side in favour of Seamus Heaney and his litany of potato poems during my GCSE years. I’ll hit the books tonight and come armed and ready to muck in with a Y11 class, who are presenting their analysis tomorrow. The fun never stops! BB x

Question Time

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Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 18.45.

My time in Santiago is drawing to a close. Five days remain before I pack my rucksack with a few warmer weather supplies and set out for one more grand adventure – before responsibilities call me back to drought-afflicted Europe. It’s been so long since we had a day of truly clear skies – not since the day I arrived, to be honest – that it’s hard to imagine what most of Europe is going through right now. I’ve almost forgotten what’s it’s like to be hot outside.

I took it easy today. The weather was supposed to be miserable, but while the forecast rain did eventually come down, it was only for about five minutes. I thought about exploring the rocky mountainside reserves around Santiago’s east side in search of a few Chilean specialities that I have missed thus far, like turcas, tapaculos and the one and only tucúquere or horned owl… but in the end, it looked far too complicated to get there and back again under unpredictable weather conditions in time for a social outing at 2pm, so I gave it a pass. That’s where I draw the line between birder and twitcher – I’m not going to miss out on a chance to meet people and practise my Spanish just because I’m leaving the country in a week and haven’t seen all the Chilean endemics. There are limits even to my obsessions.

It was a lovely gathering at one of Tomás’ cousins’ apartment, in true South American style – that is, thirteen people and two dogs squeezed into a living room, with a lovely array of snacks and conversation.

Most of their attention was demanded by the new puppy Tomás’ sister has acquired over the weekend and his cousin’s dog, who went absolutely ballistic at the presence of so many strange-smelling new faces and a puppy to boot. I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest, but I think it’s safe to say I am not a dog person. They really are far too much.

Growing up with cats has had more of an impact on me than I realised. Tolkien once that “sheep get like shepherds and shepherds get like sheep”, and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s happened to me. Cats are loving and affectionate in their own way, but they’re also highly independent and will only tolerate so much attention before they need to slink off somewhere on their own. Maybe that’s why I’ve also ways been drawn to the quieter, more noble dog breeds that don’t bound about so much, begging for your attention, like mastiffs.

I feel very welcome here. Sure, there have been times when it has not been lost on me that my assigned department aren’t entirely sure what to do with me, since I did seemingly fall from the sky, but most introductions lead to some sort of inquisition, born from a natural curiosity as to what I, an Englishman, am doing out here in Santiago.

I wonder how my colleagues will treat Tomás during his stay. I know they will be welcoming, but I doubt he’ll be the centre of attention as often as I have been out here. I don’t think it’s even a generalisation to say that the British simply aren’t as curious. It’s not in our nature. An Englishman’s life is his own affair, and to ask too many questions is to intrude. I had that much beaten into me by a previous girlfriend who found my inquisitiveness and love of deep questions nothing short of invasive. She might have been an isolated case, but I will always remember a dinner with her colleagues where not a single one of them asked me a question or even acknowledged my existence for the entire three hour sitting. She is the only Briton I have ever dated, and it was enough to convince me that it is a mindset I must avoid at all costs.

The sunset from the cousins’ eleventh floor flat was quite spectacular. I’ve been away for quite a while now, so I am starting to look forward to the familiar trappings of home, but I will miss the mountains. You’d have to go as far as the Himalayas to get mountains as impressive as these… and don’t think I haven’t considered that – once I’ve saved up some more, of course, after what really has been a very splurge-y summer!

Tomorrow should – I hope – bring me the structure I have been craving. Two hours of Othello followed by another couple of hours of French. It will make a nice change from working on my novel in the Middle School Lenguaje department! BB x

Firecrown

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Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 17.40.

With strong winds and heavy rain forecast for much of central and southern Chile this weekend, I decided against any madcap travels beyond Santiago. It’s just as well, too: even my whimsical considerations of hopping over the border to tick Argentina off the list with a flying visit to Mendoza would have been impossible, after yesterday’s renewed snowfall blocked the mountain pass, closing the terrifyingly steep Ruta 60 for what is likely to be quite some time.

For once, I erred on the side of common sense and spent my Saturday in downtown Santiago, stocking up on a few important supplies for my final adventure in South America, now less than a week away. My main target was the sportswear giant Decathlon, but while I was hunting it down I stumbled upon a fabulous bookshop specialising in natural history in an underground mall at Tobalaba. I’ll simply have to come back here before I go – the selection of books on offer was incredibly tempting.

I still can’t get over how much birdwatching is a thing over here. I’m so used to Hispanics being generally disinterested in birds they can’t shoot out of the sky. It’s so heartwarming that that particular aspect of Hispanic culture is shifting, and that Latin Americans seem to be the driving force behind it.

With my Decathlon business concluded, I popped into Jumbo – Chile’s answer to Spain’s Mercadona – to grab a couple of snacks for the week ahead. Amazingly, the supermarket did me for lunch, too: they were giving out free samples of the seafood stew mix (which was amazing!) as well as free samples of strawberry yoghurt and pistachio ice cream. They weren’t exactly full-size dishes, but Tomás ordered far too much pizza last night, so I was quite happy with a couple of free nibbles for lunch.

The heavy rains of the past couple of weeks have transformed the Mapocho River which runs through the city. When I arrived, it was little more than a steady flow in a largely dry canal. It’s now a roaring torrent that cuts above the din of the traffic when you’re close enough. Chile really is a country of extremes: when it rains here, people have to be prepared for property damage and flood control, even up here in the mountains.

By the time I reached the car park at the foot of Cerro San Cristobal, it was already half past one, and a lot of city folk had come to the same conclusion as me: that is, that it would be nicer to go for a walk today, rather than tomorrow, when the scheduled rains are due to come down hard. Parquemet was full of cyclists and runners, as it was on my last ascent now three weeks ago, but after a flying visit to the Japanese Garden – which was probably the noisiest zen garden in creation, thanks to it being located within a Hispanic capital city – I ducked off the road, following one of the many forest tracks intended for downhill mountain bikers. But for a lone jogger, I had this route to myself, which meant it was alive with wildlife.

The first critter to show up was a woodpecker. I never did find the famous Magellanic woodpecker during my visit to Patagonia – a very good reason to come back someday – so this striped woodpecker or carpinterito is my first in Chile. Like most woodpeckers, it was a nightmare to capture on film, being in the darkest part of the forest, moving constantly and under a dark, overcast sky, but I just about managed a couple of shots before it disappeared among the trees.

A large flock of finches followed me along the spine of the cerro, feeding among the dead foliage at the side of the path. The siskins here look and sound a lot like the ones back home, but the sierra finches are really rather special. I saw some of these pretty birds in Cusco, but in Santiago they’re essentially garden birds.

I hoped I might find some of the pretty diuca finches that are so common at school. There weren’t any on the cerro today, but I did keep running into diucons, their fiery red eyes even more obvious in the midday light than they were the other day, when I was shooting into the sun.

The best find of all, though, was a bird I’ve become very familiar with here in Santiago. I hear them every single day, and see them at least three days out of seven, whenever I should be near a poker plant. The green-backed firecrown is probably Chile’s most well-known hummingbird, since it seems to have a home on even the busiest streets in the city centre.

The last time I had a close encounter with one of these living gemstones, I didn’t have my camera on me. This time, I came prepared. Firecrowns are fearless little creatures, driven by an insatiable hunger that is a side-effect of their rapid metabolism – so, once again, I was able to sit quite close and watch, until the bird landed so close I could see its heartbeat and its tiny tongue tasting the air.

The firecrown gets its name from the male’s plumage, which really is quite something. Even with the naked eye, you can’t miss that sudden flash of scarlet when they alight upon a branch, just like hoopoes do with their crests when they land.

The secret is the iridescent sheen to its feathers, each one bending the light slightly differently depending on its position on the bird’s forehead. They can, of course, flatten and raise their crests at will, so I had to wait a little while before I was able to capture that ripple of red light.

After spending a happy half hour or so with the firecrowns, I wound my way back down the cerro and used what little battery I had left on my phone to catch a bus back to Las Condes. I only stopped one more time, just before stepping on board the 409, to see a couple of Southern Lapwings that had flown in and gone down to the river. I see and hear these birds every day, too, as they’re a lot noisier than the firecrowns, but I haven’t yet had the chance to get a photo. They’re usually patrolling the rugby pitches in pairs, and they have a reputation for being ferocious with passers-by in the spring, when they have eggs or chicks near at hand.

Well, it’s getting dark outside. I didn’t expect to have such a good afternoon’s birdwatching on what was essentially an extended shopping trip, but sometimes, it’s the outings you don’t plan that turn out to be the best.

That said, I’ve done a lot of planning for next week’s mad adventure, so I hope that turns out for the best, too. It really is going to be rather special. BB x