Public transportation, Valparaiso-style

A few of the many funiculars that crawl the steep hills of Valparaiso and connect the lower and upper town. I rode several of them, including one that seemed to be a mom-and-pop operation -- a woman came out of an adjoining room where she seemed to be eating lunch to sell tickets and operate the cars.

Valparaiso

It's a pleasant drive from Santiago to Valparaiso, a couple of hours through valleys full of vineyards underneath wrinkled brown hills that reminded me of California -- if not for the signs all being in Spanish and the occasional llama, I might have been in the Napa Valley.

The city itself is unique though -- a gritty port town near the water, surrounded by steep hills full of bright colors, with art everywhere.

Sunday bird blogging

Whoops!

A goldfinch grabs for a seed a bit too enthusiastically and loses it to the squirrels which are always hanging out below the feeders.

Saturday reflections

A street up in the hills of Valparaiso, Chile, taken from a cafe window.

The reflections are subtle, a patterned overlay reflecting the street art on the walls behind me. It's been fun going through the Valparaiso pictures, because I haven't looked at most of them since they were first taken more than three months ago and I'd forgotten a lot of what I saw.

More to follow, maybe even this weekend.

Random things I saw in Santiago

A building in Santa Lucia Park, one of the buildings of the Universidad de Chile, the ornate roof of the National Museum of Fine Arts seen from Santa Lucia Park, and statues inside the museum (which had a much more interesting collection of modern art, textiles and photography than the exterior led me to expect.)

Urban poetry

A fence behind the large golf course that lends its name to the neighborhood behind my first hotel in Santiago -- El Golf.

These are just garbage bags, but the pink looked so tropical that my jet-lagged brain first saw them as some kind of strange flowers.

Astronomy Tuesday

I find this image jaw-dropping: a high-resolution photo of Mars, taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2014.

These are sand dunes, edged with frost. The sun was low in the Martian sky, so only the top of the dunes are lit up, with deep shadows in the valleys.

But the image is so unexpected, so abstract. Who would ever have guessed this was Mars?

Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

Sunday bird blogging

A female cardinal in the park yesterday. She's not a juvenile, because their beaks are dark and you could pick her beak out of the woods at a hundred yards, but she does look small and young and a little spindly.

Saturday reflections

I had planned to skip reflections this week, but I spent the morning in the park, and love these springtime greens in Central Park Lake. So here you are after all.

Geometries

I posted a picture of this building in Santiago a few weeks ago; here's another view, without reflections.

I really love those balconies.

Urban poetry

The top of Cerro San Cristobal in Santiago is a Catholic shrine. The large statue of Mary is visible for miles, and the path up to it has the Stations of the Cross.

I don't know why these racks were empty. The waxy ghosts of the hundreds of candles they used to contain were a little eerie, even in the bright sunshine of a summer day.

Astronomy Tuesday

It is still Tuesday, right?

You can't go wrong with the classics. Here's a lovely galaxy, NGC 289, a jewel of the Southern Hemisphere skies.

Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, ChileScope