Chile!
We have a lot of blog catching up to do! We’ve been to the Galapagos Islands, Panama, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, Washington State, Atlanta, Pikeville (the Tennessee one, not the Kentucky one), Hilton Head, Crystal River and Miami since our last post! Oh! And by the way, we also got married!š„° One of these days I’m gonna go back in time and write about all of those things. But in the meantime, I’m going to start with what we’re doing now.
On January 21st we flew to Santiago, Chile (a 9.5 hour flight!) on a redeye. Santiago is really pretty. It’s huge too. It’s the capitol of Chile and has a population of about 6.5 million people. The country of Chile has a population of about 19 million. We went on a city tour of Santiago with a cute young girl named Francisca. She had good English and told us a lot about the city. Here are some pictures of the largest market in the city. It was huge! The prices in Chile are higher than in Ecuador and Peru, but they’re still lower than in the U.S. The prices you see in the pictures are in Chilean pesos. If you want to compare to U.S. prices – – – One thousand pesos equals about $1.25 and the prices are usually in kilos. So for example, the beautiful pineapples in the picture show a price of 1,800 pesos, so that would be about $2.25. Pretty cheap, huh?!
The Vega Market 
Everything was so fresh! 
That tall guy in the blue is Ivan š„° 
We wanted to buy all these veggies and cook, but were staying in a hotel so we couldn’t š 
Chilean garlic and fresh pomegranates! 
They don’t refrigerate their eggs in Latin America. 
Don’t the nectarines look so yummy?! 
All of the tomatoes in Chile look homegrown! They’re even red inside instead of that pale pink grainy look you get in some storebought tomatoes at home. 
The pineapples here are amazing. 
They’re filleting the fish. 
We also went to a park in Santiago that was at the top of a big hill. It’s where the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia (who founded the city of Santiago) built a fort so he could battle with the Mapuche. The Mapuche are one of the largest groups of indigenous people in southern Chile. Here are some pictures from the park.
Here are some more miscellaneous pictures from our Santiago city tour:
I thought this was cute – – the priest is enjoying a chat with one of his parishioners. 
Beautiful Catholic Church 
Most cities we have gone to in South America have big letters like this that spell (or abbreviate in this case) the name of their city/town. 
This was a large town square with government buildings around it. 
We bought homemade sopaipillas from this sweet ladySopaipillas are pumpkin-based flour tortillas fried in oil or butter that are typical in Chile. 
This is some info that the sopaipilla lady gave us. It tells about how she is a representative from her region of the country and that she is a really good cook. 
This is called the Palacio de la Moneda (“the palace of the mint” because it used to be where they minted money) where the Chilean president’s home and administrative offices are located – – kinda like our “White House”! 
The president of Chile is SebastiƔn PiƱera. He is pretty much hated by most of the Chilean people. He currently has a 6% approval rating. More to come about that in another post! 
This was the door to a large bank. 