Chile: my first few days here

So, here I am in Chile. I know, I know, the blog is "Annalisa en Panamá", but I'm in Chile for a little while nonetheless.  It's part of a mini-Fulbright award within the larger Fulbright.

I'm here staying with a friend of mine (no taxpayer money is going toward my lodging -- only to airfare), and giving talks at several local universities. The schedule is keeping me hopping, so I'll just do a whirlwind tour of some of the views from my first few days here before I started doing talks and such. 

I mentioned I'm staying with a friend; her apartment overlooks the Pacific Ocean.  It's an incredibly lovely view.

What I see when I look out the window.

The land is really steep here: mountains in the back of me, and water in the front of me.  That allows for a set of buildings that, when my husband and I first saw them, knocked us for a loop. The area looks like one of those exotic Star Wars cities with the buildings rising up out of nowhere.  

So lots and lots of people get great views of the ocean.

Sometimes the hills are just a tiny bit less steep, and then the apartment buildings are shaped like stairs, climbing the hills one story at a time. 

The hills in the morning fog, which will burn off midday.

Have we done lots and lots of walking along the beach and up and down hills? 

Yes, yes we have.  

In Chile, we're just past summer, heading into cooler weather. During the morning, I'll often need a jacket, but I've also gone running in shorts and t-shirt.  It's quite a change in weather from Panama! A month or so ago, this area was hopping with tourists.  Now they're  mostly gone, but (a) the restaurants and shops are still here serving the locals, and (b) the scenery is still amazing.  I'm kind of in love with this place.

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon,
walking along this beach.

And a random ocean fact I never knew before, that I'll share here, because I think it's interesting: I kept seeing these patches that looked like sea caps or foam, but not quite like that.  My friend says those are sand patches on top of the ocean waves: it's because we're near a river that washes sand down and out to sea, and then the waves catch the sand and wash it back toward shore.  She says it's how we have sandy beaches instead of rocky beaches here.

Looking northward along the coast,
you can see a ribbon of sand washing out
from the river just around those rocks.

And then straight out, toward the west, you can see
white patches of sand on the water.

And that's my first few days of Chile, with more to come.  I'll be here a total of two weeks, and then I'll head back to Panama for the remainder of my Fulbright award.