Valparaiso

Greetings from a big city. Since we need to upload pictures in order to get them saved somewhere, we will update you on our latest movements with the captions.

This is a church built in the early 1700´s in Achao, which is on a smaller island in Chiloe. The church is filled with amazingly ornate woodwork. The coolest thing is that it was constructed with the use of no nails. Only joints and wooden pegs were used. We were not allowed to photograph inside.


Here is our campsite in souther Chiloe, right in the middle of an apple orchard. Unfortunately, the apples need another 6 weeks or so to be ready. We finally got real laundry done (not in a sink or shower), so we hung out here for an extra day with little to do. It was great. We are about 3 weeks ahead of tourist season, so we are often the only ones at campsites. It is quiet, but we do enjoy being social now and then.


Here is Tracy at a Laguna. We made it here without use of public transportation or walking, but for the sake of our parent´s blood pressure, we will not say exactly how. (It rhymes with smitchhiking... no worries all the locals assured us the Chiloeans are 100 percent good people, and the lady who picked us up felt bad for our lack of towels and brought us some from her house) Tracy is eating a "completo" which is a Chilean classic- hot dog covered in enormous amounts of guacamole, tomatoes and mayonaise.



Who wouldnt want to pick up this guy? (The sun finally cooked my face to the point that I had to buy this one dollar hat).


From Chiloe we went to Valdivia. A hip little university city at the junction of two rivers and near the ocean. German influences is particularly strong here. Our favorite part was hanging out near the market, where locals buy and sell veggies, fruits, flowers and sea food. These sea lions hang out by the market and wait for the folks cleaning fish to throw them the scraps.


The veggies and fruits were quite beautiful.


This one is for Nana since the last one was such a hit. Those Germans love to put up cutouts of stereotypes for travelers to pose in. We could not find two children to accompany us.


We travelled overnight to Santiago, the capital of Chile. We spent several hours walking around this morning. This picture is in front of the capital building (I think). Our ultimate destination was Valparaiso, where we currently sit. We tired of hot dogs, french fries, french fries covered in lots of stuff and baked chicken with potatoes, so the city was a welcome place to find some variety...today we found some Chinese.


We will try to get up some Valpo pics soon.

We are starting to see lots of Christmas around. Christmas trees everywhere (plastic, of course), carols on the radio, street vendors selling wrapping paper and singing Christmas lights. Not sure where we will be at Christmas time, but we are starting to get in the spirit.