Monday, May 12

Today we visited the Ventanas Division of Codelco, the national copper company. Originally we were scheduled to visit the Andina mine but there was a strike; the strike is over but the company is not allowing visitors yet. This seems to be the Olson curse; whenever I lead a trip to Chile, we cannot visit the mine. When Luis Chaparro led trips, they were always able to visit the mine. Ventanas is where they take the concentrate and convert it to 99.99% pure copper. They also produce gold, silver and other high value metals. We heard a lecture and then took a bus tour of the plant. We could not actually go into the plant because we lacked safety boots. The experience was rather frustrating for most of the students. The lecture was in Spanish. The two Santa Maria people and I tried to translate but because of the technical language it was difficult. Eventually I hope more of my photos will be posted, including those of this visit, but there are problems with the business school servers (they are doing a conversion) and this has delayed the posting of the pictures. After the visit, we stopped at Con Con and had empanadas. The rest of the day was free. I think the students are still really tired from the horseback riding and all the walking around they did yesterday. I keep forgetting to mention that everyone is getting lots of opportunity to use Spanish (whether they studied it or not). In the restaurants and stores almost no one speaks any English.