A Chilean Adventure - Day 3

Okay, where did I leave off? Saturday night.

I almost forgot! Saturday night when we arrived back at the hostel, there was a young man reading in his bunk. His name was Oliver, and he was in Chile working with the telescopes. Oliver is from Britain, so it was fun hearing his accent and discussing all of the cultural differences between there and the States. There was even a lot that got lost in translation between the English-speaking peoples!

Anyways, we invited Oliver to go with us to Easter Mass the next day, and he accepted. The service was interesting, but it was hard for me to get anything out of it as it was in Spanish. :) It was still a very cultural experience.

After that, we started trekking over to the big street market in Valparaiso. And boy, was that interesting.

They. Sell. EVERYTHING.

From clothes to food to kitchen sinks to medical supplies to sunglasses - you name it, they sell it! Okay, they don't sell everything. But it's pretty close.  

This was a statue in the middle of the street market. I don't know what it was of or what it meant...but it was cool looking.

Again, I got over-zealous with my food and started eating it before I took a picture of it. You're not missing anything, though. It was just a hamburger. :) I did, however, get a picture of the mil hojas, or "thousand layers" pastry I got. We had walked by a bakery and decided we definitely needed to get something sweet. Many stores operate that you go to the register and pay for what you want first, get your receipt, then go over to the counter and grab your food/pastry. 

It was a delicious mixture of pastry and dulce de leche. So basically... sugar.

We walked back through the market, this time looking for anything to buy (I didn't). 

Then we said our goodbyes to Oli (not for the last time), and headed over to the fish market. It's too bad that it was Easter Sunday, otherwise the market would have been a lot busier. It was pretty dead - but very cool to see! We just don't have anything like that here. A farmer's market doesn't really come close to describing it. At least I found out where all the stray dogs were getting their food.

We made the long trek back to the hostel (or maybe we caught a bus...no, I'm pretty sure we walked), and changed out of our Sunday clothes. Our bus back to Santiago didn't leave until 10 pm, so we had quite a few hours to kill. So we headed to the restaurant below the hostel (Color Cafe) and hung out for three or four hours. We played cards, drank coffee (hot chocolate for me), listened to some authentic music (Noah, I forgot what it was called), and had some supper. It was a very delightful and relaxing afternoon.

Color Cafe puts anything and everything their patrons give them on the walls. Every so often they take everything down, categorize it, and start again. There are pictures, postcards, decorated napkins, currency, and everything else you could think people would bring to a restaurant.

This was Stuart the majority of the trip. He got some wonderful shots, though!

Here was our little band. They were great!

I have no idea what this was. It was called something like "el gigante" and was a tortilla, beef, cheese, tomatoes, corn, mayo, and guacamole. And lettuce.

At that point, it was about 8:30, but we wanted to see if we could catch an earlier bus back to Santiago. We were able to grab one that left an hour earlier than we had anticipated, which was good for Noah as he had to get up early the next day. The ride was only about an hour and a half, and during that time, I got to see a good chunk of Inception dubbed in Spanish. Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't sound as good in Espanol. I feel that watching movies you've already seen dubbed in Spanish would be a pretty good way to learn the language.

We arrived in Santiago, took the metro to Noah's, got our bags, caught a cab to our hostel, checked in, walked the block over to the apartment, and FELL INTO BED. It was a long day.

Until day 4!