There were swans in Puerto Natales
They had a baby
Matt called him an ugly duckling
But he wasn’t an ugly anything
Whatever he was trying to eat was ugly
It did not look appetizing at all
Mom should have kept a better eye on what he was putting in his mouth.
But he was very cute
When he got tired he went into backpack mode.
Which was even cuter
It seemed like a pretty good spot to snooze
Even while Mom fished
He seemed pretty stable
Baby swans are cute.
This is a fox
He was at the border between Argentina and Chile
They did not ask him for his passport
He was far away
So none of the pictures are sharp
But Kerri is posting a bunch of them anyway
Because he doesn’t fit in any other post
And you don’t want a post with just one picture
Because he’s cute.
Day 6 was also rainy
But at least it was mostly flatish
Matt was still unimpressed
So was Kerri, but Matt was too unimpressed to take pictures so there is no evidence of that.
The glacier got further and further away
But you could still see it with a zoom
It was bluer than the sky
It was also very windy
This is not Lago Gray
But it is a lake
Huh, Matt did get a picture of Kerri
Toward the end of the day the sky got a little blue
And then more blue
But not in the direction of the famously picturesque mountain
We had one day in Santiago and started it with a free* tour. On the way there we saw some art.
The story of this statue involved a jilted lover. Of the man, not the horse. We weren’t told what happened to the horse, though it looks like it may have been a more interesting story.
We passed lots of buildings in Chile this on has access to an underground museum area which we did not visit.
Out front was a giant flag.
There are some very nice parks in Santiago. This was right in the middle of our walk and was going to be a fortress, but instead became a really nice garden area.
Just before we crossed the river you could see off in the distance a nice spot where you can view the city. Mainly after it has had some rain to clear the skies.
In the river waterfront gardens were several statues. This was a fountain donated by Germany to celebrate the Chilean independence.
The food in Chile is really expensive. Remember that the . is a , so that is $2,950.
It was pretty warm and so lots of palm trees, although with really unusual bark patterns.
This statue is from Southern Columbia between 1-500CE. It is “imbued with a solemn peace, impressive for their ability to irradiate the mystery of the sacred.” The sign says so.
This funny monkey was sculpted by a Chavin sculpture between 1000 and 400 BCE.
This is a sculpture of a young noble women from the Veracruz culture (300-900 CE).
This funky pedestal is Mayan from between 300 and 900 CE.
There was also a sculpture of a man wearing a monkey skin from about 300-900 CE. You can see that it is a skin at the edges around the mouth and eyes.
You can also see the monkey’s hands with his poking out underneath.
This is a quipu, the Inca’s only form of written language. This one has 586 cords organized into 8 sections of 10 sets, and is probably some kind of census data.
The pattern of knots and twisting had meaning to the author and recipient. Very few people in the empire were literate, probably only top officials.
We still don’t know how to translate it.
The museum also had some smaller ones.
These strange carved stone geometric shapes date back to 11000 to 6500 BCE, just after people arrived in America. No one knows what they were used for.
These mummies were people from the Chinchorro people. They started mummifying people in 6000 BCE, 2000 years before the Egyptians.
