Photos of Street Art

Here are a bunch of photos from street art we've seen all over the city of Valparaiso. Yesterday we went to "el ex-carcel" and old prison that's been turned into a cutting edge cultural space. The walls were lined with murals.

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First day in Valparaiso

(Our first glimpse of the Andes, shrouded in clouds.)

After a 9 hour flight from Dallas, we arrived in Santiago, paid our tariff, went through customs and were off. We caught a public bus to the center of Santiago – because of a combination of our terrible Spanish and bad directions we ended up having to walk a bunch of blocks with our FIVE (yes five) bags – two ginormous backpacks, two daypacks, and a duffel full of food for the backpacking trip. We both agreed that after the backpacking trip we needed to pare down so that everything fits into our backpacks alone. The bus-ride from Santiago to Valparaiso was super cozy. The scenery on the way looked so much like California it was weird – iceplants lining the freeways, eucalypus trees, yellow grasses. Even the freeway signs were more or less the same colors.

We got to the Valparaiso bus station and a young woman who spoke English remarkably well gave us a map, showed us some interesting spots on it, and even explained exactly how to catch a “collectivo” (taxis that pick up more than one fare at a time) or public bus to our hostel. It was technically a super soft sell for her tour company, but so appreciated. The challenges of speaking Spanish were wearing on us as we got more and more exhausted. Plus, we were discovering that I could understand better than speak and Rebecca could speak better than understand, so our conversations with helpful (and incredible patient) people were a three-way sort of deal where they would say something, Rebecca would look quizzical and I would translate it into English to her, and she would respond back. We quickly practiced how to say “Gracias por su paciencia” -- which is probably grammatically wrong but does the trick.

(Hostel Bellavista -- our room is the upper left one that is open.)

Five plus hours after touching down in Santiago, we finally made it to Hostel Bellavista. A totally picturesque little hostal in a burgeoning artists area of town called Cerro Bellavista. The Hostel itself is covered in murals. The streets all around us and in a neighboring area, Cerro Concepcion, are covered in “graffiti” – basically totally amazing street art.

(Two 3 or 4 month old kittens and a painting of a man playing guitar. Blake has a keen eye for baby animals. There are so many cute dogs and cats everywhere here.)

Really truly some of the most exciting I’ve ever seen – incredibly good art – I couldn’t put my camera down as we were walking the streets.

We took showers and went down to have bite to eat and found this great little café bar where we had really yummy café con leche, sandwiches, local porter, and awkwardly ordered juice. “Cual typo de jugos”…“Duranza” … “Naranja?” …“No.” Okay I’ll take it anyhow. Turned out to be peach juice, also good. Needless to say we decided to sign up for 10 hours of private 2-on-1 Spanish lessons while we are in Valparaiso to give us a little jumpstart on our language adventure. We start on Wednesday.

We took a long wonderful walk after our meal, to an “ascensor” up to the top of Cerro Allegre. Valparaiso is basically a small amount of flat area surrounded by steep tall hills. You can walk up the many long staircases that connect these split neighborhoods together, or you can take an outdoor cabled elevator for 100 pesos apiece (about 20 cents). I looked up while we were riding it – Rebecca looked down and said it was a little scary – they are on a STEEP incline.

At the top was a little area chock full of cute cafes and bars, art galleries very reminiscent of the Telegraph and Grand Galleries – really really cool art. We immediate decided that we will come back here again at the end of our trip – since we have to come back to Santiago anyhow to fly back home.

We both also decided that Valparaiso is about as romantic as it gets. Tomorrow our plan is to take a long walk along the ocean, take another “ascensor” up to another neighborhood nearby, bring Rebecca’s fancy camera with us to take more pictures of amazing street art, charming buildings, and gorgeous views. Neither of us can believe this is only the first day of 4 months!

(View of the ocean from the top of the Cerro Alegre ascensor.)

(Here we are blogging from a perfect cafe with WiFi, that took us a while to find this morning -- but now we are eating cafe con leches, toast and jam, fresh squeezed orange juice, and some awesome eggs with ham.)

-- Blake

Buenos Viajes

We are now sitting in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport waiting for the first leg of our flight, a bit unable to believe that THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!!!!!

The past few weeks has been a steady stream of closing down our bay area lives for a few months, saying goodbye to our friends. Phew! Our last two weeks we were lucky enough to get to stay with Blake's sister Jenn and her family. Blake got lots of bonding time with the nephews, and we both got a few nice late evening chats with Jenn and Aaron.

Then on Friday we were off, with one last stop to check in on Scarlet and make sure she's doing well in her temporary kitty heaven, which she is.

We headed down to LA and got to hang out my brother Ben and his wife Beth, who opened our eyes to the euphoria of the Korean Taco truck, which if you're ever in LA, you have to check out - go to their website to find out where they'll be... http://kogibbq.com/

8 more hours of driving through the desert brought us to my mom and dad's place in Tucson where we were fed lots of yummy home cooking and gave mom the rundown of where we'll be when to the best of our knowledge. They gave us a wonderfully sweet sendoff complete with smokehouse almonds for the road. :)

Here we go for a daunting 18 hours of air travel - Valparaiso here we come!

(Blake describing the size of the hair he saw at Dallas airport and Rebecca checking to see how long she has to wait before she can use her new neck pillow.)

Here is our Itinerary as we know it so far: Monday 2/1 arrive in Santiago and head on over to Valparaiso. Sunday 2/7 take a flight down to Punto Arenas in the far south of Chile and head over to Puerto Natales where we'll meet up with Elizabeth and Marty. Two nights there and then we head into Torres del Paine National Park for 10 days of Backpacking the "W" circuit plus a day of camping at either end. Then, we'll wind our way up through Argentina, maybe spending some time working on an organic farm for a week or two. Then, we'll head on up to the Bolivian salt flats on our way to Sucre, Bolivia. In Sucre, which is a college town in Bolivia, we plan to take language school for 2-3 weeks and check out La Paz somewhere in there. We'll spend as much time in Boliva as we want before heading into Peru. We plan to do a 10-15 day trek into either the Bolivian or Peruvian Amazon. Finally, we'll be ending our trip lounging on the Beaches in Ecuador. Then fly back to Santiago and be back in Phoenix on June 2nd!

PS: for those of you who know Elizabeth and Marty and want to check out their yearlong adventures through southeast asia and south america, their blog is at: http://other-climes.blogspot.com.