the queen travels: Chile today, hot tamale

March 13 … another day at sea. It’s still cool, but we expect it to get warmer as we go further north.

We like the days at sea as there’s a lot to keep us occupied. Today we spent time doing our usual – Bingo, Spanish, cards with new friends, working on blogs and so on. But we also did the culinary cooking demonstration, which was excellent and followed by a tour of the kitchen. We, who are hardly ever without cameras, did not take a camera. So maybe we’ll do it again so there will be blog fodder with photo support. Or not.

On Saturday, March 14, we sailed into Valparaiso, a large port in Chile, located about 70 miles or so from Santiago. We had thought we’d be close enough to make a trip to the Harley shop there. That was not to happen as it was about a hundred dollars for a taxi to get there. Nope. I’ll get my shirt from the Internet. But the good thing is that it is definitely warmer now.

It's a bit hard to see but the strip diagonally across the photo is an elevator. Little cars run up and down and people use them to get from one place to another, up and down the hills.

The smoke made for a very hazy day and not a whole lot of photos opportunities of the city.

There are about 17 million people in Chile, with about 320,000 of them living in the Valparaiso area. Santiago, the capital, is home to about 6 million people. There are lots of earthquakes, so I don’t guess I’d enjoy living here. Valparaiso is known as the Jewel of the Pacific and Little San Francisco; it was a stopover port for many ships although when the Panama Canal was built in 1914, it was a killer for commerce. These days, though, there are lots of container ships and cruise ships.

The first explorers came from Spain and that’s where the name of this town came from, the name of the birthplace of the first Spanish explorer; however, there were immigrants from many other countries, including France, Germany and Britain. Because of the diversity of the people there are many different styles of architecture.

We offloaded and boarded our buses. Our first stop was at Vina del Mar. I’m not really sure what it was all about other than it was a beautiful plaza with lots of flowers, and a special organized flower area kind of like one we have at home. This one, though, had a clock that made it extra pretty.

The flowers were beautiful even if it's the end of their summer.

From our photo stop, we progressed through town until we arrived at the Fonck Museum. The most exciting thing here was that they had a moai statue from Easter Island. It was out in front and the first thing you saw. It’s not as large as many of the ones we saw on the island, but still quite impressive.

Moai sighting.

We wandered in with our guide. The museum appears to be quite old and while there is a wildlife exhibit upstairs, and a few other things of interest, the guide and museum both seem to mostly speak to Easter Island, or the Isle de Pasqual, and the moai. I was happy enough with that because they’re of great interest and one of the most exciting things we’ve seen and photographed.

The museum had information about the variety of materials used on the island, including the volcanic glass used for knives and spears, and the basalt used for carving. Of the more than 900 moai on Easter Island, more than 800 of them were carved out of the Rano Raraku quarry that we had visited. Of those, 22 were made of white trachyte, 18 of red scoria and 10 of basalt. Of the 288 moai that were placed on an ahu, or shelf, 58 of them wore the red scoria cylinders (pukao) on their heads. These topknots or hats were carved at the smaller Puna Pau quarry that we did not visit. These with the topknots were my favorites.

Some of the jewelry worn by the Indians looks quite heavy.

Drums were used in their lifestyles, as in many others.

Their burial grounds were far away from their villages.

Some of their pottery was pretty unique.

Shrunken heads are always a must-see.

Outside and in front of the museum there was a large stone. It’s a Piedra Tacita, or … Stone of Many Pots, Indian’s Stone … or a stone known by many other names. These stones are frequently found in different areas of Chile, Europe and America, usually near streams. They are either rocky outcrops or large, fixed stones with bowl-like holes in them produced by friction from grinding hard substances for either daily or ceremonial use.

In 1994, a Chilean company donated this stone to the museum.

The museum visit ended all too soon and we were off again … these bus rides are sometimes too long with not enough stops, or stops that are not long enough. All it does is whet your appetite, but we are making notes of places we’d like to return to, and things we’d like to spend more time exploring.

Graffiti is a way of life in these countries. It's everywhere.

However, it's considered an art form. This is one of my favorites.

Open markets are common. But I don't know that I'd eat the fish from here.

There are lots of horse-drawn carriages. And horses gotta eat.

Even high-rises have color.

This advertised a restaurant. Graffiti????

Bright-colored buildings are used to fight depression.

We stopped on the water front, a place that had plenty of street vendors and a little shopping plaza full of vendors, as well. Being that Lapis Azuli, a blue stone, is mined near Santiago, I had wanted to get a piece of Lapis jewelry here. I hadn’t seen anything I wanted other than a silver ring with a Lapis flower, but they didn’t have it in my size. So I figured that I wasn’t going to get Lapis, and I’d already purchased a couple of other things in different areas, a moai pendant and a penguin pendant.

The brightly-painted boats always catch one's eye.

These two were special, too.

Bright but warm clothes were for sale.

Street vendors sell everything.

The little shopping area had nothing I wanted, trinkets but that was it. So, back to the ship we went. As we went through the terminal toward the ship there were a couple of vendors set up. I saw one with Lapis. She had exactly what I wanted … not the ring, but a pendant with a Lapis flower. It was mine. Yahoo!!! I was a happy cruiser.

Back on board we watched the local port activity. There were a lot of cranes loading a lot of containers on ships in the neighborhood.

Busy, busy, busy.

Our ship was also taking on a load … passengers, fuel, food. My favorite was the potatoes … I even saw Captain Tater who was watching over the taters.