ATACAMA DESERT

My family and I have been traveling through the Atacama desert this past week. We've been taking long bus rides through the desert, and I mean really long bus rides, like last time it took thirteen hours. On that thirteen hour bus ride we had to stop because there was a traffic control but it was on strike, so that made the bus ride even longer( the picture is where the strike was). 

When we are going through the desert the only thing I see are big brown mountains and a couple of little towns here and there. It is also really dry, I haven't seen any plants or trees just rocks and dirt, it's the driest place in the world. In the town we're in right now, Iquique, it gets 0.039 inches of rain a year, in Point Arena where we live we get 30 inches of rain a year. In 2009 1/100th of a inch of rain fell in Iquique and caused an emergency. The rain knocked out the power of several neighborhoods and wrecked the roofs of 4,000 houses. The Governor had to cancel school to fix the damaged roofs.

INTI artist

Inti is a Chilean artist who has traveled all over the world to do murals that are really big. He is a street artist who was influenced by "Latin American socialist murals and graffiti art." Street art in Chile has a long history and people like it a lot. The name Inti is also the Incan sun god. The Incans ruled during the 1400's to the 1500's in western South America including parts of Chile.

Inti has done murals in Paris (France), Atlanta (USA), Puerto Rico, and Poland. Inti really got into it in Valparaiso. This is where I saw one of his murals.

I thought the mural I saw was interesting because I like Inti's style and it has really bright colors. I spent a while looking at the painting we saw and thought it was very cool. Here are some more of my thoughts about this mural.

VaLpArAiSo: A cRaZy CiTy On A HiLl

We spent five days in Valparaiso. We did a lot of things there. We would take really long walks there (one time we went to the Chilean poet Pablo Nerurda's house). His house had a pretty good veiw of the port, and it was a five story building on a steep hill.

There are a lot of steep hills, and some of them were so steep that cars couldn't go up them, so you would have to walk up on these really steep stair cases. They have these "hillside elevators", called ascensiors, that would get you up a hill if you didn't want to walk up. Once again they were in strike, so we didn't get to go in one. There was also a garbage strike, so there was a lot of trash on the streets.

A lot of stray dogs and cats were wandering around. A couple of times a dog would start following us to see if we would give it food. Most of them were mellow but some of them were a bit feisty.

Valparaiso

Yesterday we arrived in Valparaiso, YAY. First we did all the boring stuff, like unpack and go get some groceries. Then we got to go get some good looking stuff from a bakery. We got two chocolate donuts, a little chocolate cake and finally we got a chocolate pastry, but like I said it looked good but it didn't taste very good (boo hoo). After that tragic experience we had dindin and watched a movie (we've been eating desert before dindin). 

Today we went to the Museo Naval y Maritimo, a museum that my dad really wanted to go to, so we kinda had to go. Part of the museum was about Thomas Cochrane, an English admiral who helped start the Chilean navy. He was in the navy from 1793-1860 and died at age 84. He served in many different countries, like Brazil, Greece, Chile, and England. He was the real life person who inspired the movie Master and Commander.

MY TRIP TO THE MUSEUM WITH MY FAMILY

NINO EN LA VENTANA, 1951

When we were in Santiago my family and I went to an art museum, the National de Bellas Artes, and on the very bottom floor there was a big section on this guy named Carlos Faz. I wrote about him and drew a picture of one of his paintings.

Carlos Faz was born in Vina Del Mar on March 23, 1931, he died in New Orleans, United States, October 3,1953. He was really excited to be in New Orleans and jumped off the bow of the boat he was on, and drowned when he was only veintedos. If you would like to see more pictures go to the museum's website.

My art teacher Miss Meyers told me to look at a painting and write what I think about it. I picked one of Carlos Faz's paintings and here are some of my thoughts about it.

What I see in this picture is a plant in the background and a doorway, I also see a boy sitting on a stool.

COLO COLO

On Sunday my family and I went to a soccer game. We tried to get in but they sold out all the tickets, so we had to try and buy some from scalpers. The first guy we tried to buy from wanted 80,000 pesos but we only had 50,000 pesos. We found someone else and bought tickets from him. When we were in line for the game, the security checked us and threw away our expensive water bottles that we just bought for our trip. The security person said that we could hit someone in the head with the metal bottles and that is why he threw them away.

When the game started the fans for the team we were there for were getting a bit crazy, for example some of them were flicking off the other fans and calling them bad names. There were riot police with big scary dogs and the police had some crazy riot armor on. They also had horses with a bunch of crazy riot horse's armor. The fans hated each other so much that they had to be separated with big barbed wire fences and riot police. When the game was over the COLO COLO won, the score was 3 to 2.

Chilean coup

Today we went on a metro train to Barrio Brasil in Santiago. When we got there we were looking for the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, but when we were looking for it we couldn't find it, then we realized it was in the wrong place on the map. We got pretty darn hungry by the time we figured out it was wrong on the map so we looked for food, but we didn't really find anywhere to eat so we got some smoothies. They were good I got a pineapple and my brother got a strawberry. We found a restaurant that looked good but they had some kind of thing happening that you could only get these giant plates of different foods. Then we finally found a restaurant that had pizza so we got the pizza but instead of tomato sauce there was ketchup.

Graffiti Street

Today we were walking to the Funicular train to go up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal. When we got to the place that the train left from the workers were on strike (en paro). Here's a video of the trash collectors who are also on strike (we've seen piles of trash on the side of the street when we are walking through the city).

On the way to the train we walked through Barrio Bellavista and I saw some cool graffiti art on the walls and garage doors of houses. I took pictures of them and here they are. ENJOY! (:(:(:

Plaza de Armas

We are here in Santiago! It took 13 hours to get here in a plane. We got here and came to our apartment and unpacked. Then we took a walk through Santiago Centro and got lunch, and ice cream which was very delicious. We stopped at a little toy store where my brother and I got some miniature wrestling guys. Then we went to a plaza called Plaza de Armas and played with our guys and took some pictures. Check out my pictures of the carabineros, main statue and other parts of the plaza.

Plaza de Armas has been Santiago's "symbolic heart" since its founding in 1541. The center of the square used to be the gallows during colonial times. Now, there is a fountain with Chilean palm trees. A church is on the edge of the plaza.