Day Five: What Does Mushroom Food Smell Like?

Today we went to visit Bosques del Mauco, but before we could head over, we had another lecture on culture at USM. The public bus rides continue to be exciting as we're always confused over fare and the buses either drive extremely quickly, or get stuck in jerky stop and go traffic. We finally got to USM and made it to our lecture right on time. Today we learned about the major differences in conducting business in Chile and the US. We discussed some basic cultural differences between the two nations and how they would affect business behavior. We went through various situations of opening businesses in Chile and what sort of problems each type of business might encounter. All of this information will be useful if I ever come back to Chile.

Our drive to Bosques was north along the Pacific Coast and the view out the window was beautiful. Because we were going to be around heavy machinery and a lot of dirt at Bosques, each of us got special steel toed boots to keep us safe. The owner of Bosques, who runs the company with his father and brother, met us when we arrived and was kind enough to lead us through every step of the mushroom growing, harvesting, and packing process. . The first step in the process is composting bales of hay to create food for the mushrooms. This composting involves soaking hay in water and then covering it with chicken feces, so the smell it produces is not the most pleasant. We saw hay in each step of the composting process from fresh bales, to those filling the containers where the mushrooms will grow. We then moved to a room where the containers of growing mushrooms are stored. These rooms are enormous, holding many rows of containers stacked eleven high.

Lots of mushrooms!

The rooms are entirely dark except for a flashlight carried by the owner and the flashes of some of our cameras as we try to see the mushrooms growing. The next step in the process was the harvesting of mushrooms. The original stacks of eleven containers are moved to two rooms with stacks of either five or six containers so that the harvesters can easily move through the room to cut the mushrooms. Once the mushrooms are harvested the best mushrooms are packaged for commercial sale and the medium best mushrooms are packaged to be sold to wholesale. The fresh packaged mushrooms are sold only in Chile. The bottom tier of mushrooms is canned to be sold around to globe. Prior to visiting Bosques, I had not realized how detailed and precise the growing of mushrooms needed to be.

Once our visit to Bosques was concluded, we took our bus back to USM to take our second reggeaton class. The class was very high energy and felt a lot like the Zumba classes I take at the gym. We repeated some dances from last class, and also learned some new steps. One of the songs (click to listen to it!) has been stuck in my head since we first danced to it in reggeaton class and I enjoyed listening and dancing to it again. After our dance class we were on our own to get dinner so I got empanadas (again) with some of the other students. As usual, they were delicious.

We had some free time before our reggeaton class so I walked around campus to find a nice view of the sunset.

Tomorrow we're visiting Vina Indomita and Isla Negra. I can't wait to learn more about Pablo Neruda and the wine making process!