Last few days of the Olam adventures in S America

So, our 7 months of travels are coming to and end with mixed feelings.  It has been such a colourful and rich experience with much learnt, many new friends made, and probably most of all, so much time together as a family.  But we are looking forward to seeing friends and family, eating vegemite & weetbix, watching cricket, not living out of backpacks, or riding crowded buses.

We left Oz all those months ago as three, and now we are returning four :

Today we catch our Lan Chile flight back across the ocean to Adelaide.  We will be leaving on Sunday evening and arriving Wednesday morning, local time! We had a huge brunch with the Kings and are now packing and tidying up things.  Here are a few images of the last few days here in Santiago.
We worked with Kaleb and Forrest to start a junior-youth group where their sister Noel goes to school (and mother Ingrid teaches)...

Visited with Javier, Sol, Sophia and Matias Duhart to record some songs in Javier´s home studio... 

Travelled incessantly around the city on the buses and metro, with frequent pauses to climb trees and visit playgrounds.

 

Met up with various friends old and new.  Including one of Dan´s highschool classmates (from Atlantic college), Manuela Janssen, who has lived in Chile for the last 15 years.

And Felipe Duhart and Cristina Lopez who we had met last time round in Santiago.

Bill Slatter from Australia and his house mate, Vicky.

We also were able to help out at some open days at the National Bahaí centre doing some singing... and a fair bit of playing...

Side trip to Valparaiso

"Round the Cape Horn to Valparaiso..." the Sting song echoing in our minds as we set off for a couple of days at this colourful port 1.5 hrs by bus from Santiago.

The narrow pathway up to our hostel on Cerro Alegro.

Some of the locals.

A visit to one of Pablo Neruda´s houses.

Views of Valparaiso from on top one of the Cerros.

Finally, we got to tangle our toes in this side of the great Pacific Ocean.  Was sad though to see so much debris on the beach, both brought in on the tide and dumped by beach goers. So we decided against taking the edible algae that the Chileans love back home with us...

We found delicious goats cheese in one of the old market areas.

Gino, a very outgoing and well traveled Chileno, befriended us on the bus ride back to Santiago and took us to eat in a very nice Peruvian restaurant in the Bellavista barrio.

Back to Santiago : Hero´s 3rd Birthday

So we got back to Santiago on the Friday evening 6th Nov and managed to get the bus to drop us off near to Quilicura in the north of the city, within a reasonable taxi fare of the Kings.  Was like coming home in a way as we had stayed with the Kings before  heading off back in August on our tour of Chile and Argentina.  We joined the Kings family on Saturday to ride the public transport system all the way across town to join in the cluster reflection meeting.  Was good to see friends we had made from our first visit to Santiago and to see how things had gone over the 3 month cycle and how activities were evolving for the next one.
The next day  Sunday 8th November was Hero´s 3rd birthday!
We didn´t quite get up for the 5:13 am vigil of her actual birth, but mid morning had a scrumptious pancake breakfast and opening of the prezzies ceremony.  It was the first birthday that Hero actually sort of understood, and she would proudly wag 3 fingers at who ever asked her how old she was.  We succumbed to her evident preference for all things pink and found some pretty dresses and a fabulous hand-crafted "princess" tiara.

We then hopped on the 307 bus into town and went over to see two of Hero´s buddies from our first stint in Santiago, Layli and Maryam Masrour.  Their parents Tiago and Vanda (and lil sis Chloe) generously took us on a picnic trip up to a little "farm animal" theme park at the foot of the Cordillera. It turned out that the park is located 10 minutes away from the future Bahaí House of Worship site, so we saved some of the celebrations for there.  Tiago is intimately involved in the Temple project and was able to take us for a visit of the actual location where the beautiful temple is soon to be built. What a site! 

Site of future Bahaí house of worship for South America

 

Looking up directly at where the Greatest Name will go on the apex of the building.

Back at home, "living like (the) Kings"