clara playing in the bubbles at mim! aren't you jealous, i bet you haven't been to a kids' museum since you were eight. unless you were one of us crazy ncssm kids, who had prom at the museum of life and science...
here's a view of santiago from the top of cerro san cristobál, a big mountain in the middle of the city that's set aside as a park. it's kind of like central park, if central park was on a gigantic mountain and had a religious site at its summit. this is probably looking west, given the lack of big mountains in the background, but i'm not entirely sure. but just look how MUCH of santiago there is there, it's a gigantic city.
and here's what's at the summit of cerro san cristobál, the virgen de somebody something. err...sorry. i think it's probably la virgen de carmen, the patron of chile, but i'm not particularly sure. i think this is a cool picture though (as i do of most of my pictures, that's why i take them), and i'm actually surprised i fit the whole thing in the picture...it's pretty gigantic. you can see it quite clearly from the top of another park nearby, cerro santa lucia, which is also a random mountain stuck in the middle of santiago.
here's the view east from cerro san cristobál. those mountains are really big. that might be the dumbest understatement i've made in a while, equivalent to saying, "the atacama was dry." but eh. the morning we left, there'd been a snowfall, and the top quarter or so of all of them was completely white. but it's really neat to have such monstrous mountains right outside the city. wish chapel hill had cool mountains like that looming over it.
so now we've left santiago, and are out in the harbor in valparaíso (henceforth valpo, because that's what the chileans call it, and it doesn't require me to type the accent). it's kind of murky outside, but you can see that it's a colorful city, and has spread out up onto the mountains surrounding it. and you can also see a cruise ship in the harbor there, carrying a bunch of europeans on a three month vacation, apparently. you wouldn't expect it, but a decent number of cruise ships stop in valpo throughout the year. not this time of it, mostly, but in january and february for sure.
this is what all the streets up on the cerros around town look like--ungodly narrow and steep, with really colorful houses. there's a mural on part of the orange one there, though i'm not sure you can make it out.
here's clara, and the girl on the left is noa, clara's second cousin and who we stayed with while we were in santiago. we got her to skip class to come to valpo with us. they're standing in front of...something...that i apparently thought looked cool when i snapped this picture.
consulting the map on a park bench. i was hoping you'd be able to see the view over the rail there a teeny bit, as it's incredible. alas.
see! i told you it was colorful! and this is even on a cloudy day. i hope here you can get a bit of the sense of this place; all the houses are just piled up on top of each other on the cerros, with winding, tiny streets, and a color scheme that would send the town council of cary into cardiac arrest. i love valpo! we were discussing which house we'd live in if we could pick, and my choice was that yellow one with the red roof. what a view it must have.