In some place on the beaches near me in Viña del Mar, Chile, you can see these tiny creatures about the size of a thumbnail scurrying through water and then tunneling down under the sand. In English, they are sand fleas.
In Spanish, they're pulgas del mar. Not to be confused with pulgares (thumbs) or pulgados (inches), although given the size and shape, you can see why those words are similar.
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| They don't chase people; they scurry down river or down into the sand. |
Rivers flowing through the beaches here have beautiful, tiger-like patterns formed by two colors of sand.
Why two colors of sand? If I were going to stay here longer, I'd have to do some real geology learning because I'm fascinated by what little I can see of the geological history revealed on these beaches.
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| Stripes of brown stone alternating with stripes of black stone. |
There are stone croppings and seams of stone on the beaches here that are so black I thought they'd been painted. But my friend Ximena says no, those are stones formed by a long-distant volcanic past. This area also (we're near the Andes, remember) has had lots of geologic upheaval, including earthquakes.
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I just have to guess that what I'm looking at here is alternating volcanic periods,
then plate tectonics pushing the layers sideways and up, and then lots of ocean erosion.
That's the limit of my current geological grasp, such as it is.
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Update
A few days later, I discovered this helpful placard. That black rock isn't lava that flowed down and covered everything, it's magma that pushed up through cracks; hence the stripes.
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| Helpful text explaining this all. |
Back to the rocks:
The rocks that aren't black sometimes are tiger-striped, grey and brown, and all pocked (almost like coral). In fact, some of the rock really is coral, I realized after I wrote this! |
| Wet tiger rock. |
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| Dry tiger rock, with the sea wall behind it. |
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| A coral rock covered with sea weed and mussels. |
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| With my foot, to give a sense of size. The mussels are tiny! |
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| And see the pock-marks? It's coral! So cool. |
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And so the beach has rocks of many colors.
It's so pretty! |
In addition to the rocks and the sand fleas, I've seen (from a distance) a bunch of sea gulls and also these cool birds which I've learned are called Inca Terns.
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| The little red feet! The mustaches! |
I saw one of these doing her little dance moves in front of a dude who was playing it cool. She was all "hey, baby; hey, baby. Look at this, hey baby, lookee here, lookee, baby". And eventually the cool dude decided, "oh, heck, yes!". Happiness all around.
We haven't seen a lot of these, although we're keeping an eye out: here they're called
Lobos del Mar, which translates to "sea wolves". In English, we call them "sea lions".
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Lion, wolf; wolf, lion.
I don't think it really looks like either one. |
There's a popular and accessible walkway along the coast at the top of the sea wall here, so I've only been down to the actual beach two or three times. But when I do get down there, it's fascinating to explore. My husband saw me dabbling around and took this picture, which I love.
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| Sticking my feet in the Pacific Ocean. |
Watching the sunsets doesn't ever get boring, my friend Ximena says, and I can believe her.
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When I watch this, I'm actually east of my family and friends.
Geography is wild. |
The sunsets look different from day to day.
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Sunset with a Chilean flag and the ocean pounding
on volcanic rocks. Sometimes life is pretty good. |
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