Strange things in the skies

Is it a seagull, is it a plane?

Last week we sat at the dinner table of our Tregualemu neighbours Senora Juana and Don Tano, after an amazing all-homemade meal – the roast lamb was notable by its absence from the field outside the house. The window behind the table looks out to the ocean, their son’s house sitting in between the two. Senora Juana gazed out the window and told us all about the UFOs, the groups of moving lights in the sky she sees every now and then from that seat at the dinner table.

Often they rise from the ocean, moving steadily straight up, then zoom inland over or past the house. Sometimes they increase in size, sometimes there is one, sometimes many. Normally it is sunset or after.

Senora Juana and Don Tano are not rash people. They are an older couple, extremely hardworking, who live out their life in a two-and-a-half century old ranch, where the courtyard is filled with chickens and native plants and two gravity-defying Chilean palms. They lived through extreme devastation in 2010’s earthquake and tsunami. They are quiet and stoic and beyond generous. In short, there is no reason on earth not to believe them when they say they see UFOs over the house.

This is an unusual situation to be in, never having previously met anybody who claims to have seen unexplained lights in the sky before. Especially strange because we now fall into that category, too. Two weeks ago the two of us and Max were surfing at sunset at a beach between Tregualemu and Curanipe, Chile. The water was calm, we were waiting for the next wave, and up in the sky we saw eight hovering points of light: one large one and seven smaller arranged underneath it. They were in the part of the sky the sun would set in, though not close to the horizon, and static. After a few minutes they had gone (none of us was looking when they disappeared).

Speaking to Senora Juana, the Unidentified Flying Objects we saw sound very similar to what they have seen. By definition there’s no knowing what these UFOs are … orbs of light, energy, clouds, aliens? Who knows!

UFO sightings are pretty frequent in Chile. Another good local claim to fame is in Chanco, also in Maule region – known as ‘The Chilean Roswell’ (in reference to the flying saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947). On February 15, 1914, the villagers of Chanco reported seeing what appeared to be a flaming log fly slowly over their heads and into the hills behind, accompanied by a roaring noise. The hills erupted into fire. The eyewitness residents testified to seeing this flaming log well into their old age. The first flight in Chile was in August 1910, but in Santiago, effectively a million miles away in those days, so the chances of whatever all those villagers saw being a rogue aeroplane is incredibly slim. No official explanation or aircrash was registered…

Eyes on the skies, people!

SARAH