IEEE-ICIT 2010 conference Chile – 3
Chile journey to visit the IEEE-ICIT 2010 confernce on Industrial Technology in Vina del Mar, Chile
9-26 March 2010
Through working in the FUNSET project we (Stephan Auer, Benjamin Grössing, Christian Hudec and Constantin Reinprecht) had the chance to present our work at an international conference in Vina del Mar, Chile in March 2010.
18 March 2010
Sun. Sun. Sun. It was the first sunny day from morning to evening. Valparaiso is a very nice city! We walked through the city south of Viña del Mar from 11 am to 5 pm and I really liked it. I love the little coloured houses in green, pink, red, blue, violet, and many more colours. We took three typical elevators (ascelatore) which was quite cool because I have not seen them anywhere before. At 11.55 pm we noticed another earthquake. I did not notice it at first until Christian told me that the earth was shaking. It was quite a strange feeling.
19 March 2010
4.45 am is way too early! That was the time we had to leave the hotel for Santiago airport to be on time for our flight to the Easter Island. The terminal for national flights just consists of huge tents because the airport suffered a lot of damage by the earthquakes. It was a bit awkward situation but everything was pretty well organized and so we checked in, had our lunch package from the hotel for breakfast and waited to board our plane. The flight was pretty good. At the little very nice airport we were picked up by a lady from our hotel and she gave us flower-necklaces similar to them everybody knows from Hawaii. Our hotel ‘Gomero’ is really nice and in the afternoon we went to the beach. We saw a lot of surfers because the waves were pretty good for surfing. Benjamin, Christian, Stephan and I went swimming and we were astonished that the ocean was so much warmer than it was in Viña del Mar. In the evening we went to a typical Rapa Nui – the name of the Easter Island in the local language – dinner and after the dinner to a traditional dance show which I really liked.
Moais on Easter Island
20 March 2010
Today we had the first of two day tours to see the most important and most famous places of Rapa Nui. We saw a lot of the typical stone monuments called Moai. I think that they look really cool, but I did not know that they were pretty young because the last Moais were made around 1680. Our guide Katipale told us a lot of interesting things, not just about the touristic sights – but also about the culture, the history, and the problems of the Easter Island today and in former times. We visited a large stone mason where the Moais had been made and from there carried to the Ahus (platform where the Moais stand on) all around Rapa Nui. The size of the Easter Island is about 116 km² which is approximately half of Vienna and only 4000 people live there today.
Benjamin Grössing, Constantin Reinprecht, Stephan Auer and Christian Hudec in front of 15 Moais
21 March 2010
In the morning after breakfast (the breakfast was always very good with fresh juices, avocados and delicious marmalades) I went to church to get to know the way a mess looked like there on the island. The songs in Rapa Nui language were awesome. So many people sung and some even played the guitar, the Ukulele or mouth organ. Everybody looked so happy, enthusiastic and euphoric and so different than in the most Roman-Catholic messes in Austria. We got the advice to go to church on Sunday by our hotel and I think that many hotels give such advice because there had been many tourists in the church. After church our next tour started, which was also very interesting. In the afternoon it rained very heavily, but thanks God it stopped after a while and we had beautiful weather for our tour.
Again we want to thank Sparkling Science for giving us this unforgettable experience presenting our work at an international conference as well as having and amazing time in Chile.
Constantin Reinprecht
