Saying hello to Australia

Yesterday we spent the day out at Valparaiso, the coastal city of Santiago. This city was out of control! It reminded me a bit of a modern day Tortuga (Pirates of the Caribbean joke there); every searchable building surface was graffitied and many buildings were brightly colored. A lot of vendors were selling magnets with pictures of various artworks found around the city. I suppose there’s a bit of pride that goes along with it.

The city was quite interesting because there is no rhyme or reason to its layout. Just build as you go. It’s especially noticeable at some restaurants; when they were built, they were on a lovely hillside and the outdoor patio had a beautiful view of the bay. Now most of those views are of giant apartments and grey buildings.

The most notable part of the trip, I would say, was seeing the sunset. This isn’t my first sun setting into the ocean nor will it be my last – hopefully. But, it was quite something to behold nonetheless. The last time I looked on to the Pacific was when I was in Australia. We would wake up early to see the sun rise out of the Pacific when we were up at the Great Barrier Reef. I like to think that as I watched the sun go down, someone was in Australia watching it rise. I felt very connected and was quite homesick for Australia while here. I lived in a port city in Australia and being here brought back memories of Fremantle. One quite physical memory being a sort of pine tree that I found outside of the museum we went to. It’s the same tree that was all over Fremantle and whose pine needle (best description, but not really just a needle, more like a frond) was in my room in Australia and now I have one here in Chile. Today was the closest I’ve felt to Australia since leaving – and now I’m craving some TimTams.