Well, that was interesting.

Last night, around 9 PM, I was lying in bed reading, when I felt the bed start to shake.

"Earthquake," I thought, "Probably a 4.0."

It continued to shake.

"Make that 5.0."

I got up and stood in the doorway. More shaking.

"6.0"

I heard glasses breaking in the other room, water sloshing out of the toilet, and people starting to shout. The lights flickered on and off with each shake.

"Huh."

As it turned out, it was an 8.2, about 100 miles south of me, and 12 miles beneath the surface: very close, and very shallow.

At the moment I was in a hostel in Arica, which was mostly empty at this time of year; there was only one other guest, plus a handful of friends and family of the owners, who were lodging there.

I grabbed a flashlight from my pack, to have it handy, and filled up my water bottle. A few minutes later, Jorge (who seemed to be in charge) announced that we needed to move to higher ground. I put on my shoes, grabbed my backpack, and went to the door, just as we lost power.

Together, everyone staying in the hostel walked up the street to the top of a nearby hill, surrounded by honking cars, emergency vehicles with sirens screaming, and other pedestrians heading up to safer ground. At the top of our designated tsunami hill, we listened for news (the two kids, probably in middle school, cheered when it was announced that all schools would be closed tomorrow. One asked me where I was from, then what kind of iPhone I had).

A while later, a friend of the family showed up in his taxi, and drove us all still higher up the hill (at that point, I think we would be safe from any non-biblical flooding). One family nearby pulled out blankets, and went to sleep in the back of their car. The people I was with brought out some kind of pasta dish to eat as we waited. One woman didn't stop crying, but everyone else was calm throughout.

Finally, two hours later, we heard a press conference on the radio. "The tsunami alert will be in place for another six hours."

"Okay, that's it," Jorge announced, "we can head back to the hostel now."

[...]

Yeah, I'm not really sure what happened there.

In the morning, the city's power was restored, but the water was out. All my travel plans have been thrown into disarray: the highway is closed (so much for seeing Lauca National Park). I was supposed to take a bus to Calama tomorrow, then fly to Santiago, but my connection in Calama was pretty tight, and given the condition of the roads, I don't think I would make it even if bus service was restored in time.

So, instead I bought a flight directly to Santiago for tomorrow, continuing my monthlong burning through money like prairie fire (there goes another 100,000 pesos...), but hopefully getting me back in time for my next flight.

In the meantime, I spent the day wandering around the city, surveying the damage:

Almost all of these streetlights were surrounded by broken glass.

Most of the damage was broken glass, but there were some buildings with structural damage as well:

There's been a lot of property damage, but only 6 dead, which is pretty remarkable given the scale of the earthquake. (A 7.0 earthquake in Haiti 4 years ago killed 220,000).

Today most of the businesses are closed (even the McDonalds!), and the rest are busy cleaning up. The television news have already come up with a catchy animation to accompany their coverage. It seems as though things should be back to normal here in a couple of days.

Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes!