Week of work

The fundament took an awful long time to construct. We also had to make the storage box before we could start building for real. 





















But we got there. Thursday we managed to put up the first frame. But it´s just one week left.  

That Thursday was quite chaotic for being in peaceful Open City. Some gangsterdogs from outside was there fighting with the lokal dogs. A fire started on the other side of the river, so helicopters came and scared all the horses. So they ran wild and the dogs started chasing them.

After the first frame was fixed, the next ones came up pretty fast. This is as far we are now, and hopefully we will keep up the good work next week. No time for mistakes really..

And... Go!

The first days this week were filled with waiting. Waiting for the engineer to decide how much fundament we needed, waiting for materials. Waiting for the right materials, and then tools.
                          

 

There are horses right by our site, and loads of different bird species. I love the view from it.

So finally we have started. Now the fundament is set, and a major bunch of planks are marked and cut. Our ingeneer made us do 13 holes with concrete for the fundament. Because our site is located on the top of a sand dune, the hardest work was to carry water and concrete to the top. Luckily we had great help from our 14 new chilean group members.

Now we at last have the weekend off, and I think it´s necessary. I will spend it walking around beatiful Valparaiso, and soak in inspiration.  And of course sleep a lot.

Valparaiso

Ilmar headed back to Norway, and I am now in company of my classmates in Valparaiso.

This picture is from Santiago where we spent a day







Valpariso is a rather large city by the coast of Chile. This is where we´re gonna live the next month.

We could have been more lucky with the area we live in. When we are walking near the hostel people comes up to us and warn us. It is the oldest part of Valparaiso, and is where all the poor people live. None of us has been robbed yet. We´ll just have to stick together. I have felt totally safe in the rest of Chile, and my guidebook says that it´s less corruption here than in the U.S. and Japan.


The city is colourful and nice with steep hills and narrow streets. There is street art everywhere, and small shops and stands where they sell handmade things.
































The Open City

The Open City is located one hour north of Valparaiso.
This is where we´re gonna spend our days and build.








Every Tuesday the architecture students in Valpa begins the day with a poetic act in the Open City. After the session they have good old fashion gymnastics. Something for both your body and your soul.






The Valparaisian students had found sites for us. Our cabin will be in the sand hill in this picture.

So, this Monday we´ll start, and 15 chilean students will help our group. I hope we´ll manage to organize them all.
We all look so much forward to start now!

Full moon

After coming back to La Serena, we drove Equi Valley to Vicuna, where we found more tourists than anywhere else on this trip.
We liked it there. The Valley is famous for it´s wine and pisco production. We tried to get a tour at the local pisco distillery, but arrived too late. Only the bar was open. So we had a few pisco´s with the bartenders there. Later that night we went to the Mamalluca observatory. The moon was full that night, which was kind of disturbing for the star-sight, but nice for the moon sight of course. This picture is taken through a telescope.

This is just with long shutter on the camera.
It was a great experience to be at a mountaintop at middle of the night with a telescope. We also saw Saturn with it´s ring, and learned about the Southern Cross.





These are some pictures from Pisco Equi, some kilometers further into the valley. The place is even smaller than Vicuna, and much more touristic. Less interesting.

But again, beautiful..

North and back

The north is full of vultures. Well, this isn´t too far noth either. Bahaia Ingles. I guess the place is crouded in the summermonths. Now it was totally deserted. We had a hard time finding an open hotel. We found a cabana. Im happy we found something though. Outside these guys where waiting.





But the nice thing about a deserted village was that we had all the beaches for our self. Ilmar used the oppurtunity to propose!








I´m suddenly engaged.
Here is the proof. Feels good too.
I´m engaged and blogging about it, gee!
But now you know...










The desert


We drove to a national park called "Parque National Pan de Azucar" Beautiful place and of course warm. Then we went hiking up to a view point where we could see the Pacific ocean.

















It´s amazing how plants manage to grow at places like this. No water, and it almost never rains. They are living of morning fog. Then some birds and lamas lives of the plants. We saw a lama. There was also supposed to be foxes around.



















From the viewpoint













Yesterday we tried an other national park.

"Parque National Nevado de Tres Cruses" This park wasn´t just as easy to reach. The park was at 3700 m over sea level. We had to get over a mountain top at 5000! With a little rented Kia. Getting up there was thrilling. But down again when we where both dissy and felt kind of drunk because of the hight..













But hey. It was beautiful. At the top we found a salt plane. We drove the whole day, and ended up in Vallenar where we are now. Not anything special about the city really, so we better move on.

La Serena

As I am a tourist for real this time, I started taking piqtures in the airplane already.

Theese are the Andes..












And I can´t wait starting looking around down there.









We will travel around for about a week before we start building.
We are now in La serena, where we have walked a long distance along the shore, tasted pisco sour, stayed at an old hotel with an even older hotel-keeper. And eaten the biggest ice-cream.
Now we are going to rent a car and drive north.
So long!