Sweeties and chocolates

It's been National Independence Day, well, week in Chile. The country ground to a halt as thousands of people headed out of Santiago to the coast, while those of us who remained in the city enjoyed huge festivals involving dances, rodeos, barbacues known as asados, and a series of inventive alcoholic concoctions well worth mentioning as well.

Buried amongst the food stalls and children's rides was a candy shop. A chocolate shop tempting you with colored gumdrops and mountains of white turron, a soft nougat with peanuts in it.

Mountains of turron

 Gumdrop heaven!

My loot. Could pirate booty be any more satisfying?

How a Cannon takes a flood

  One of the dangers of long-term storage became apparent when we unpacked Mom and Dad's belongings to bring them from Osorno to Santiago, in Chile. Most of their appliances bit the dust I'm afraid. Their refrigerator had to be replaced and the washing machine had apparently died as well (but only after we moved it twelves hours north). The dishwasher repairman has also been out twice so far, but it's still not working; we've not given up on it yet - probably lunacy at this point, hoping it will be rescuable, but here's hoping.

  Mom did shed a few tears for her old fridge and dad had a loss too as well, his old Cannon camera. He's had this fella for a long time, but what made it kind of cool was the science experiment it became while it sat in a nice cool, damp, dark environment.

Tragic.  The old knobs and bobs that came with it fused together a few years ago apparently, as there was no separating some lenses from each other.

  I'm hoping some of the lense filters will willingly subject themselves to some professional cleaning though. I'm interested to see what the red and yellow filters will do to a picture, and what that lense so tantalizingly labeled "star filter" will do.

Laja trash removal services

There's a tiny town six hours south of Santiago called Saltos de Laja. This is the Chilean answer to Niagara Falls or Iguazu Falls. We break our journey to the city of Osorno, where Mission to the World helps with another church called the "Iglesia Presbiteriana de Osorno".

They're beautiful waterfalls, three in a row, each as lush as the previous. The above photo was from the window in my hotel room. I opened the curtains and told dad, "uh, there's a leak in the backyard"; he just laughed.

The trash removal services got as big a response from me as the waterfalls though.

What a lovely fellow - a bit on the bony side if you ask me, but if you've gotta have your trash taken out, this is the way to do it.