This post months late, because its about summer, and summer ended here about 3 months ago, but I did really mean to post about our Chilean summer vacation because well, its all been part of this experience of being an expat, but mainly being in a pandemic wherein not everything fundamentally, makes sense, or goes even remotely as expected. I think when I last left you, wed recently spent Christmas in our house, after a return to weekend quarantines left us without the ability to leave Santiago. Well, a little after New Years the government decided it would institute a permiso de vacaciones, wherein regardless of your fase, it gave people the ability to travel to a single destination during the summer within the country. You had to stay in that region, and once you came back that was your one pass, but regardless it allowed people to get away (Chile, like a lot of other places has a phase system of restrictions based on the number of cases in essentially 1 being full quarantine, 2 being weekend quarantines and no travel, 3 being semi opening and ability to travel between regions and 4
and 5 being essentially normal - go to if you want to learn about it). The wisdom of this pass may have been short sighted, as it probably just brought the cases from the capital out to the hinter regions of the country and set up for more restrictive measures in the Spring, but anyway, you play the hand that is dealt to you, so we got one.
Vitacura, where we live, was still in fase 2 with travel restrictions, so we decided to apply for the permiso and head for the coast for in fase 3, meaning lighter restrictions and open on the weekend. Stephs parents were still in Chile, so we left for about 3 weeks, as we figured with them helping with the kids we could mix in a bit of vacation and work. My office was open, but in all honesty, no one was really going. We were very excited to get our first weekend out of the house since early December, and since Stephs parents had arrived from Canada. We arrived about a week after New Years and we all took a deep breath...happy to be by the ocean, looking forward
to a bit more freedom to move around and go to the beach on the weekend. Well this was to be somewhat short lived...the morning after we arrived, there was a great controversy. Videos from a couple of massive fiesta clandestinas over the New Years had surfaced in the area we to (Cachagua/Zapallar), and were making news all over the country. It started on twitter and was picked up super quickly by all the news outlets because of the nature of it...most of the kids at the party were sons/daughters of the elites of the country, and to be honest, hating the elites in this country is a sport...and probably rightly so, theyre kinda jerks (please see my post about social unrest). It was videos of a packed house with tons of kids not wearing masks (max number of gathering was supposed to be 10), and to top it all off there was these whatsapp voice messages from some of the protagonists that ended up on national news about these greasy hookups...very soap opery...I dont know who that Pancho Correa is, but he sounds like a dirtbag.
fiestas clandestinas in the area that night, and well, because technically all the rich kids should have been stuck back in Santiago based on the restrictions anyway, there was a huge outcry from the rest of the country. The more concerning thing was the rampant rumors of the number of attendees that were testing positive for COVID, and people who had attended were being told to quarantine, and slipping quarantines...all eyes were on this little beach town - I was like, holy sh*t man, all I want to do is have a god damn vacation...ugh...anyway, but now the Minsal (Chilean Health Department) was involved and we knew that restrictions they were while our first weekend at the beach was libre, the next Monday (Minsal announces new/eased restrictions every Monday/Thursday) sure enough, Zapallar was on its way to fase 2...
