Beach Monkey

Santiago

Here is the beautiful city of santiago!

sunset from the top of the mountain :) this was at the end of the day trip..

we left at about 8 am, and the first stop was la moneda. this is the equivalent of our white house, lots of fun government stuff! here is a guard with really shiny boots.

The inside was absolutely gorgeous! Here’s one of my favorite sculptures, she looks so peaceful.

So after that, we went to the museum, and then to my favorite part of the trip… FISH MARKET!

Its can joke! what a silly fish. They had all types of crazy stuff, and the restaurant that we ate lunch at is right in the middle of all the dead fish. yumm. There were awesome octopi,

and these crazy things that look like creepy hermit crabs with curly tongues.

There are a lot of people trying to get an extra dollar around Viña & Valpo. They are usually around my age or younger, dressed in crazy clothes, riding unicycles, and other crazy stuff. At night you usually see people doing poi de fuego.. throwing around fire pretty much. Heres some kids doing cheerleading stunts in the middle of the street.

I miss america!

So today we spent about an hour and a half walking around and searching for the Starbucks. Probably one of the most gringo things we could do. We sat and did our homework for about two hours then Adam walked me home. On the way, I SAW McDONALDS!! oh how i have missed your gross cheesy gloppy goodness! Don’t get me wrong, the food here is pretty amazing, but i miss that good ol southern food. Barbecue, fried everything, cheesy nacho taco bell cookout burgerrrssss. I will be getting a mcgriddle as soon as possible. and a double cheeseburger.

Another exciting thing happened today, mi padre was on tv! He was on a talk show about his book. :)

mi padre vvvv

ok, i’m off now to search for taco bells in Viña.

Con Con

Today we all took a micro(bus) to con con. Con con is incredibly beautiful beach with plenty of seafood shacks, and hunks o’ fish for sale on the sides of the streets. There are a lot of birds there, most of them HUGE. Often, the restaurants will throw left over fish guts on the beach for the birds. We got to see them all flock and feed :)

The city is about 10 miles outside of Viña, and the plan was to walk back. instead, a few friends and I stayed in con con, climbed on the rocks and watch the sun set. Then we hitched a micro back.

Beautiful day:

p.s. someone left their horse tied to a fence on the side of a highway…

dogs galore

more of the stray dogs sleeping in boxes. pobrecitos!!

I almost took one home, cute guy with a really bad leg. poor dog could barely walk but limped over to me to be pet. we hung out for a while before I had to go home. most of the stray dogs here are really nice, and you can clearly see which ones not to pet.

Doggies

There are stray dogs everywhere! I’ve taken a few pics of them. My favorite so far that i’ve seen is a little black lab puppy that i was petting in the streets. i think it was teething, because it kept biting my boots after i pet it. it wouldn’t leave me alone and all the people on the streets were laughing at me. one nice guy distracted the puppy while i ran across the street to sit at a table with my friends. the puppy chased me and i had to finish my cerveza with my boots on the table. i included a pic of the puppy.