Chile part 2

Hi! Sorry it has been so long since I have added anything on our blog. It has been a crazy and great month of travel and visits. This is the second part about Chile. We drove to two cities next to each other on the Pacific Ocean. The first is a beautiful place called Valparaiso. It is an old port and is absolutely beautiful. It has a long history of pirate attacks and travel, and you can feel the history as you travel around. We drove to the port first and walked around a bit. There was a slight smell of tear gas in the air and we found out that there was a dock workers strike that morning which was taken care of! Things in Chile have changed since Pinochet, but the sense of police there is still powerful.
Joe took some photos of the strike and this huge armored truck! Yikes.

There are these cool rail cars that go up to the hills all around the city. We rode one up to walk around. This is us above the port. It is like an artist colony now and the graffiti and murals were amazing.

The photo below shows how steep and funky the roads and buildings about the port are! This house was modeled after a ship. Cool, huh?

There was graffiti all over the place. This was stenciled on one of the walls! Interesting.

This is one of the old buildings that was a rich merchant's home many years ago. Now it is a museum. Check out the artwork!

More Graffiti. This one is for you Jim Jones. I could hear you laughing as I was taking this photo!

This green head was one of my favorites. It was so huge. Ethan, It reminds me of the artwork that you and I do.

This is a row of houses in the town. I think it would be very hard to be in a bad mood waking up everymorning to these amazing colors. Valparaiso was incredible!