24 June 2010

Hello to anyone reading this!

I don't think I've previously mentioned that Copiapo seems to have a lunch time parade (or similar) every couple of days in or around the central plaza. With the office being only 100m or so from the plaza, you can hear the bands, chanting, or whatever is going on, with considerable ease. Sometimes they are so damn noisy, one has to close the office window.



Todays parade-associated noise started at about 10.30AM and featured a brass band, drums etc. Being the curious type, unable to see what it was about through the window, I grabbed my camera and headed off to the plaza to see what was going on. As I got closer, I could see that something unusual was going on, as there was an old horse-drawn carriage being pushed (minus the horses) into the plaza. I then spotted the source of the drums and music, and found that it looked rather like the local high school band. I snapped a few photos, then after they had all gone past, turned and to see where they had gone at the front of the plaza. It seemed that there was some local historical society thing going on, as there were a myriad of people in costume milling around, along with the band, the carriage, seating arrangements and all of that sort of jazz.








It turns out that it was some form of commemoration of the first railroad in Chile, which ran from Copiapo to the port at Caldera, taking the products (from the local smelters) to the rest of the world, wherever that might be.





There was music from the band, speeches by officials, school kiddies, food and craft stalls and so on. It was all pretty interesting. I took the opportunity to try some of the local foodstuffs for sale at the stalls, which were excellent.






From the left to right, we have;

1. Sopaipillas (pronounced something like "soap-eye-pee-yahs"), which are a flour and potato/pumpking kind of thing that is fried in oil. Vaguely like a fried gnocchi, I guess. Not too bad!
2. Milkao ("mill-cow"), another variant on the sopaipillas
3. Tortilla de Rescoldo, which is pretty much the Chileno version of good ol' damper.
4. Churrasca, which is a thin bread something like pita bread I guess, but thicker and cooked on the BBQ like the ones in other photos. They are best hot off the BBQ, when they are cut in half and lathered with pebre (the Chileno salsa thing that I've banged on about previously). Churrasca's are not to be confused with Churrasco's, like I was going to be, which is "grilled meat"!
5. There are some other meat-filled delights that I didn't bother with, something vaguely like a "chocolate covered something or other", and donut-like objects.
6. The bowls with spoons are the pebre.
7. The cake thing, spelt (from memory) and is pronounced pretty much as "que-que", although a quick Google didn't return much that was useful, so perhaps it is a bit wrong. Regardless, it is a type of cake, although the more usual word for cake is "torte", so I'll have to figure out what the difference actually is.

By the way, did you notice the dogs in the above photo's? I think I've also mentioned the abundance of dogs around the town. It seems a whole heap of them came out to see what was going on when the band was playing.

Best wishes to all!

A