Something woke me around 3:30 am last night.

I woke up Max. “Did you feel that? The house is shaking.”

He got up and walked around the house. A distant alarm went off. The neighbourhood dogs barked. But all turned calm and still.

I couldn’t fall back to sleep, though, wondering what was up.

This morning a Chilean friend texted me to say there’d been a massive earthquake south of Santiago. The entire country is on hold, the airports closed, the highways broken, so far 74 people killed. Nobody is going anywhere.
I’ve lived through earthquakes before, most during the years I spent living in Costa Rica, but one as recently as October in Mendoza. Definitely not fun.

News reports are saying this quake was 1,000 time stronger than the quake in Haiti in January. We are at least 800 kms from the epicentre, on the other side of the Andes, and our cabin shoke. Serious business.
So today we are sending prayers a los vecinos trasandinos.