ibamos de santiago

For those of you who don't know, we have acquired the "mammals" over the years (the chicken was a cat toy, but then became an honorary mammal). We take them everywhere, and take amusing (to us, at least), pictures of them all over the world. They have been to Rome (took toga pix at Colloseum), Morocco (they rode the camels), Hawaii (to the telescope and hiking), London, Norway, Paris (top of Eiffel Tower), and all over the States.

Here the chicken is mocking the encaged birds who will never feel his joy of freedom.

Here are all the mammals in front of chicken cages. The Monkey almost always wears his red turban. The Rabbit did have a UCLA shirt, but we think it got lost in the move. He's moved on, anyway: "Go Dodgers!"










Stuartt and Vivi looking at the goats













Jenn and Vivi by the river (it was a bit chilly).













We took a drive into the Rio de Maipo valley this past Saturday to get out of the city for a few
hours. Unfortunately for us, the guidebook we have (Insight) has the worst maps ever, so it wasn't totally clear how to get there. We took the longest possible route, but eventually arrived in a canyon with a nice view of the river and of the high mountains.





We found a park to have lunch in, which seemed like it might have great potential (cafeteria, zoo, playground). So we paid our $10 (a bit steep!) and headed in to the zoo. It had chickens, goats, one llama, and some sheep (so not really a zoo, but Vivi did enjoy it). Then we went to the cafeteria, but right next to it there was a soccer field, with people playing soccer, and BLASTING music. Not exactly our idea of a tranquil mountain outting. (And it unfortunately reminded us of weekends in the parks in LA-a bunch of people playing soccer and blasting music:(





So we drove on, stopping in the main town in the canyon to buy fruit (for Vivi) and empanadas (for ourselves). We got the del horno (baked) kind, cheese and pino. We mistook pino for pina (pineapple) and were surprised when we got meat instead of fruit. Later Mr. Google told us that pino empanadas have ground beef, olives, cheese, hard-boiled egg, onions, and certain spices, like cumin. I do NOT like them, though I will eat them if excessively hungry. I prefer just plain ole queso ones. On the way back, we felt a bit cheated, because we only ate 2 of the 4 small ones we had bought, and didn't want the pino ones, and are relatively inexpensive, so we stopped to get more. This time, no horno, which means they were fried. They were made fresh, stuffed with cheese, crispy, hot, and very good.





We also stopped by the side of the road and walked down to the river. There was a manual cable car that you could sit it and pull yourself across in. I might have done it by myself but 1.) not w/ a baby and 2.) it was locked. So we just walked along the river a bit, and noticed that all the good stopping points for cars are also good stopping points for trash-dumpers. So one can enjoy the beauty of nature, as long as that person is willing to ignore the occassional slide of refuse down the hillside.





Our drive home was much easier, as we could figure out the map this time. We thought about stopping at some of the white flags (signal for homemade goods, such as empanadas, bread, or jams), but we were quite full of cheese empanadas, it was a cool, cloudy day, and it was getting cooler. So we headed for the warmth of our **home**.