Been a while

Man, dog and goose (and Greg) that were wandering through the central streets of Mendoza.

Last night on our street in the full moon (with my new jacket!)

There´s no such thing as a tying post in Pichilemu. They just tie the horses legs together!

Poker with stones. We forgot to bring the matches with us to Pichilemu so Marty and I rumaged on the ground searching for enough little pebbles for all 5 of us. We looked a bit odd :)

Looking down our street at the full moon.

On the way to Mendoza. About 2000m up in the Andes. That is the road weaving in and out in figue 8s. It was bloody terrifying! On the way back the bus was over taking trucks on these corners!

Argentina but still in the Andes.

Sunset in Casablanca on the way back to Valpo

More Andean rocks...

A piece of graffiti close to our house. I now have hundreds of photos of all the cool bits and pieces. A lot of stencils as well.

Ok,

Back in Valpo now. It`s our last week here. Will be quite sad to leave really. I love this place.

I have been walking around Cerro Alegre (where we live) and Cerro Concepcion taking photos of all the graffiti. Some of it is amazing. It`s just a pity that you get all the little punks going and tagging crap over a lot of them. Hopefully we`ll get big copies of some of the photos to put up at home.

I feel like I have been travelling non stop for the past month. And in between each trip I come back here which is probably a bit silly. I was thinking about going to Colchagua Valley tonight but I`m exhausted and think I will just have a relaxing time and absorb all the wonderful things about Valpo.

We`re having a party this weekend for all hte people in Marty, Tim and Courts` classes. Should be fun. I don`t think much has been organised so far. I`m going to try and make empanadas (the empanadas in Pichilemu were to die for!) and the other night we went to a vege restaurant, Ritual, that had a drink similar to sangria but blended. So we might make some of that as well. Cerro Alegre has a lot of vege restaurants. It`s strange because they seeem to be the only ones in the whole of South America. Ritual even had soy meat! That`s unheard of!


Pichilemu was so cool. It is how I imagined most of South America to be. Well, the smaller towns at least. It is mostly dirt roads and taxis are a horse and cart during summer. As far as Chile goes it`s pretty cheap as well.


When we first arrived I was still feeling a bit dodgy and had to watch everyone else eating these amazing looking empanadas that we crammed full of yummy stuff. It was torture! But the next day I was there in a flash. Oh so good! I am bringing the recipe to NZ. Really it is just a South American pie but mmmmm.... so full of cheese!

we went on a horse ride in Pichilemu which was fun. I did feel a bit sorry for the horses but they seemed happy enough. We all went galloping along the beach (unguided - they are quite lax over here) and Greg managed to take his horse right out into the waves. I thought the horse was going to fall over but it managed to keep it`s balance. It´s pretty rough riding. There´s no luxuries in the saddle. It´s basically just a bit of metal in the vague shape of a saddle with an entire sheepskin covering it. The horses had chains as bits and the stirrups were held on by rope. The horses are really lovely. A lot of solid, stocky horses. Typical western style.

We got a horse and cart down to the beach that day. It was a lot of fun. There was a little girl playing with a ball in the middle of the road and she must have lost control of it. It rolled towards the horses and the driver steered them up onto the footpath but the ball got caught under the wheel of the cart and popped. The look on the girl`s face was priceless. She was pretty unhappy but I have to admit it was quite funny!

Anyway, I think we´re going to get going soon. Maybe go to a different vege restaurant tonight. We´ve been playing a lot of poker (I am useless!) so maybe we´llhave another game of that tonight as well.

Thanks for commenting!

Talk soon,

Kerry x