Valparaíso

Yesterday we took the bus from Santiago to the coastal port town of Valparaíso. We were all set to hang out in the sun on the beach and were surprised to find gloomy clouds and a cold sea wind. We froze for half the day in our sandals and tank tops until the sun finally came out around 2pm. Here we had our first taste of the real world of Chile outside of the comfy language school where the professors speak super slowly. I think we did well considering we´d only really been speaking Spanish for 5 days!


The sea! The sun had finally come out. There are pelicans chilling on that old port structure.

This is Diego our new friend and server at color café where they serve about 50 different kinds of tea. He sat and chatted with us in Spanish for a while and put together a plan of sites for us to see during our day. He also promised to email us a Chilean - Spanish dictionnary that he put together. We have learned that in Chile they don´t speak Spanish, they speak Chilean so it´s important for us to the learn their unique vocabulary.
We were at color cafe before the sun came out so here is Amélie freezing in her tank!
The city walls are covering with bright colourful murials.
There are TWO cats cuddling in this pot! The town is full of tons of cats and dogs that roam around. The dogs especially are creepily human like.
Another distinctive charactaristic of Valparaíso is is steep, windy roads and pathways. Some parts of the town are so steep that they have nifty elevators to take you up.


Today we´re back in Santiago for our last day with Señora Solice. We just bought our bus tickets to go south to Temuco.