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Published: January 6th 2013
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Good afternnoon blogging buddies from a sunny cerro in Valparaiso.I was out early this morning for some breakfast and have now settled in for a couple of hours to get this blog off before heading out into the sunshine again.It is sunday so everyone is at half speed and the city is relatively quiet compared to its week day hustle and bustle.
I have continued my ramblings around the city and continue to find interesting sights and sounds around very corner.As I wandered around Concepcion a few days ago, in bright sunshine, I found a photographer working on his prints.I am not sure of the chemistry but he paints the light sensitive mixture onto cloth with a paintbursh then allows it to dry for a while before putting a negative image upon the emulsion and leaving it in the bright sunshine to expose it. The results are very nice and he was more than pleased to tell me all about his craft.We spoke in french as that seemed to be the least painful choice between us.I have actually spoken French a few times since arriving here.Alberto,the property manager at my apartment speaks french so he and I have been communicating
with a mix of spanish and french, when I get stumped on vocabulary.
From the top of the cerro one can see vistas of the sea down every street and on this day in the distance a sailing ship appeared being escorted into the harbour.A beautiful sight with 4 masts and a bright white hull.Sails were down and she was under tow coming into her berth but glorious none the less.The ship was the Esmeralda, a 4 masted steel hulled Barquentine training ship of the Chilean Navy.It is the second tallest tall ship in the world and a beauty.I looked it up on google when i got home that evening and read about an ongoing controversy surrounding her.During the Pinochet years she was used as a floating prison and torture ship and still reaises great emotion and anger in some ports that she visits.Hard to blame a ship for a Dictators past, but in Chile she is still Queen of the fleet.
I decided to head down to the port and see if I could get closer to her and walked around the container port towards the naval dockyards.As I got closer I realized I was in the
midst of a scene that has taken place in ports around the world for hundreds if not thousands of years with the sidewalks and parking lots filled with the families of the sailors coming ashore from the Esmeralda.Young men and a couple of women in bright white uniforms greeting laughing and smiling moms,dads,wives and children.It was wonderful and I really felt I was witnessing a living part of the great maritime history of this city!
I watched for a while before I was shooed away by the military police for straying a little too close to the restricted naval yard! oops!! I always have to be aware to not cross sensitive military and police lines. Not always apparent.
At this point I was getting hungry and continued along the coast to look for somewhere to eat.As luck would have it I found a fishing pier with a restaurant over looking it.A nice outside deck in the sunshine looking out over the sea and some harbour seals sunning themselves on the rocks. I did my customary pointing at someone elses food to inquire what that is and ended up with a wonderful bowl of seafood soup.Soup doesn't do it
justice however but it is close to describing it because of the broth.The broth though barely covered a huge bowl absolutely brimming with oysters,clams,muscles,shrimp and other pieces of seafood.Incredible and fresh,nicely paired with a liter of Crystal beer, and my afternoon was complete.
Adios
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Tony
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Pretty Hilly
Don't think my old lungs could hack a town like that ;-) Glad you're enjoying it though.