Our program took a trip to Pomaire, a tiny village famous for its clay pottery/clay pigs/clay aliens (?!) / clay everything.
After we rambled around the two streets of Pomaire, we went to Isla Negra, where Pablo Neruda had a house right beside the Pacific Ocean.That man's collection of stuff was staggeringly diverse - Amazonian butterflies, figureheads from ships, pipes, stones, ships in bottles, medieval instruments, narwhal horns, giant clams, and the list goes on and on (and he has three other houses in other parts of Chile!).
Talk about quirky.
After our formal tour of Pomaire and Isla Negra, a smattering of us went to Valparaiso/Vina del Mar for the weekend (they're twin cities by the ocean - btw, I had my first feel of the Pacific Ocean - brrr!)
Our odyssey to the hostel/our stay in Vina del Mar was incredible.
The brief bus ride alone from Valpo to Vina merits description.
Fifteen or so of us board a tiny micro bus for the ten minute ride to Vina. We all have backpacks, and our appearances shout "gringo." With no real idea as to where we are going, we have maps unfurled and bamboozled looks on our faces.
The bus is, of course, blasting electronic dance music.
And the locals range from mildly amused, to neutral, to eating bread, to surly.
Meanwhile, the bus driver is training for the day when Nascar allows buses to race the track. We are standing, barely clinging to bars, experiencing several units of G-force around every turn. Apparently, Valparaiso is the place to go for astronauts training to go into space.
Perhaps I will catalogue more of the trip later.
I'll post some photos, too.
For now, I am going to put the finishing touches on my application for astronaut-hood and mail that sucker to NASA.
No comments:
Post a Comment