Chicago is My Kind of People

Wall in Valparaiso
Family breakfast
Valparaiso is famous for its beautiful graffiti
More Valparaiso
Ziplining in Cajon de Maipo -- notice the tire break system

Having everyone here has been awesome! It’s been great to be able to get out of the city for a little bit and relax. On Thursday Natalie, Amanda, Allison, and I all went to Cajon de Maipo. It’s a short metro ride away from Santiago but it seems like a different area entirely. Well except for the excessive amount of stray dogs. What is wrong with this country?! We stayed in an adorable cabin in the middle of mountains and waterfalls, hiked, drank wine, made a delicious dinner, went ziplining and got massages! On Friday, Kristen and Jenny arrived and the 7 of us went to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Before we left for Valparaiso, Amanda, Natalie, Allison, and I went out to lunch. I’m glad we did because they really got to see Santiago at its finest. By the time we had taken two bites of food, we had been hit up for money by not 1 but 5 homeless people. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind, but one man in particular was quite persistent. On our table we had a plate of carrots and a plate of tomatoes. In an attempt to get him to leave, Allison graciously offered him the rest of our carrots. He left for about 30 seconds...came back and mumbled that he prefers tomatoes, and proceeded to drop a spoon from his mouth onto our manjar dessert (sidenote: manjar is like caramel only maybe even better.) As if he hadn’t done enough…he then walked about 5 feet to our left, squatted down and made the most heinous noise I have ever heard. Are you ready for this? ……He was POOPING! Well at least I’m pretty sure he was and we were not willing to stick around to find out. I love this city. The Valpo/Vina trip was complete with lots of walking, a wine crawl, Jota Cruz, sopapillas galore (I could do a whole blog entry on sopapillas alone but for now all you need to know is they are little fried pieces of heaven that you can buy on the street for about 20 cents), lunch at the beach, and too many desserts. Que rico!