Goodbye to Santiago... heading north

Moley's been pretty quiet for this last wee while, but here he is demonstrating the great view from the top of Cerro San Cristobal (so Lily and Amelie, rest assured he is well and happy and enjoying his trip!)



For any of you who know I have a thing for odd numbers and a thing against even numbers, you'll not be surprised to know that this meant after visiting la Virgen at the top of Cerro San Cristobal two times I really felt it was appropriate to go for a third trip!  And as she seems to mark the centre of Santiago for me, and has been an important space for reflection and thanksgiving,  it seemed an apt place to spend my final afternoon in Santiago, drawing this "Soñadora" dreamer image as a thank you to Nayarett for sharing her home with me for the last week and looking forward to my move north towards La Serena.

I was taking a time-lapse of the activity around La Virgen while I was drawing and here is the resulting video fragment.

The evening was spent with the remaining members of La Tribu, having drinks with Kristina and Panda at la Piojera, then joining Angelica and Nayarett and their friends at Angelica's despedida.. more dancing, more drinking, a great end to the week! (Although with the strength of the two "terremotos" early in the evening and the late late night I woke up very late and feeling like there had indeed been an earthquake in my head (terremoto translates as earthquake).  I'd missed my bus north, so got a far later one than I'd planned, and slept most of the 6 hour journey north.

Arriving into La Serena I was astonished and impressed yet again by the sheer generosity and openness of the Chilean people when I was welcomed by Christian, a friend of a lad I've been in touch with about visiting here, who is the friend of an old flatmate's friend's friend who lives even further north here in Chile... phew what a chain of friends' friends! :-)

Christian picked me up from the bus station because Mauro (the flatmate's friend's friend's friend who I've been emailing and texting) was in the middle of a 24 hour shift at the hospital where he and Christian are in their final year of 7 years of studying medicine.  We wandered along the beautiful long stretch of seafront with our feet in the water and ate a delicious dinner of fresh sea-food...  I had prawns with two other shellfish I don't know the names of in English let alone Spanish, but no matter the language, the food was delicious!  Christian then dropped me to Mauro's shared flat where I have a room all to myself, which was a huge surprise.  I met a young lad Miguel who turns out to be the brother of the lad whose room this is, and he explained that his brother is away further up north, on one of the 7-on days of his 7-on-6-off routine of work at the mines (the routine Gonzalo explained to me back in Valparaíso).

What a kindly warm welcome!

Am excited to start exploring tomorrow and finally meet Mauro...

:-)