Valpo!

I had a really good first week in Valparaiso (known as Valpo for short)! Not as much work but still enough to be busy. I also have been spending a lot of time booking my March. I have a lot of travel and places that I am staying, and I did not have the majority of it figured out. I am still working on some last things, but I have all of my flights booked which is a good feeling. 

On Wednesday I made my way to a cute cafe that is right by my Airbnb. I got an incredible piece of cake and this lemonade with mint and blueberry blended up in it. So delicious. I did some journaling, and it was overall a nice afternoon.

Thursday, I walked to Parque Cultural de Valparaiso. This used to be a jail but has since been turned into a park and art/ cultural center. The park is really nice, and it was cool to walk through the old jail and see the art. The current installation was a bunch of embroidered tapestries about Chilean women because it is Women's History Month. I have a little bit of experience with embroidering so I cannot even imagine the patience and time that it took to do those art pieces. So wonderful! I read and journaled in the park for a while, and it was really nice. 

On Friday I took a local bus to the next town over called Vina del Mar. Google Maps told me to wait alongside this main road for a bus and eventually I just got on one that said Vina del Mar and I made it to where I wanted to go. I did not really hang out in the town much because it seemed like a lot of buildings and restaurants and instead, I went straight to the beach. There is a really nice path that goes all along the beach and even connects another beach that is more north. I walked along the entire beach and even walked to the other one. I ended up doing 25,500 steps that day which was a good feeling. These beaches aren't really for swimming because the waves are really big and intense, so I just ate my snacks and read my book. I am currently read Malcolm X's autobiography, and it is really interesting. When I was walking back to the main beach, I stopped at a food truck because they said that they had vegetarian completos. I wrote about it in my last blog post but a completo is traditional Chilean street food and it is a hot dog covered in mayo and ketchup. They don't seem to have vegetarian hot dogs or sausages here so mine had a layer of sauteed mushrooms, diced tomato, mashed avocado, lots of ketchup and mayo, and a little bit of mustard. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought that I would because I am not the biggest fan of mushrooms! I think next time I will ask for less ketchup and mayo. It was overall a really great day and experience visiting Vina del Mar.

Saturday I was planning to do some exploring and try to go to the house of poet Pablo Neruda. I was just going to do that because it is a really popular thing to do, and I did not really have any other plan. The woman who runs my Airbnb asked if I wanted to join her, her sister, her daughter, and her niece and go to this women's march. I said yes! Saturday was International Women's Day and all over the world there were marches about women's rights. My mom participated in the Grand Junction one and it was fun to hear about that! My march was pretty big. There were lots of women with signs and whistles. There was also a drumline full of young gals and that was really fun. I had such a good time, and I am so glad that I got to participate in that march. It was a beautiful unifying feeling and it made me realize that we are all working towards the same cause. Even though I am so far away from home, the same problems persist but also the same resistance exists! It really was such a special experience for me to be involved with that in Chile and I am so grateful that my host invited me to go with her. 

Sunday was a really chill day for me because of lots of reasons but I was alright with it. I have some craziness coming up and I am going to be doing a lot of traveling over the weekends, so some chillness was good. A few more days in Valpo and then I am heading back to Argentina for a while! So grateful for this adventure and the people that I get to share it with :)