Celebrating Batalla de Iquiuqe

A Mid-Week Holiday

Today is a national holiday, so I got to stay home and write a blog post! (And do some grading later, of course). Rather than have me try to explain the Battle of Iquiqui, here is the link to Wikipedia's entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iquique

Welcome to Viña, Uncle Rick!

Steve's eldest brother arrived yesterday, and the two of them got right down to business: Watching a Cardinal's game, and drinking beer:

We are not sure, but we think Rick brought the rain. It started yesterday evening, and got quite heavy off and on through the night. Here's a picture from this morning, of a newly washed Alvarez street:

 Paws in the Street Dog

I have been wondering what the dogs do, when the rainy season arrives. Paws in the Street Dog (see previous post for why this dog is named), who lives outside our building takes advantage of the bus shelter:

 We also gave it (not sure of gender, haven't looked yet) some bread for its breakfast in bed:

A Walk Down to the Beach

So we headed down to show Uncle Rick the coast, taking advantage of a break in the rain. Here is a typical parking spot, on the wide sidewalk. Since there really is no place to park in front of businesses and apartments along Alvarez, this is the solution when you are dropping off or picking up something.

We had a dog entourage on the way to the beach. These guys started following us because I made sympathetic noises at them, and Rick started dropping pieces of a roll he'd reserved from his breakfast at the hotel. They stayed with us all the way to the beach, and we picked up several more on the way. A couple dropped out, 2 more joined in, and we had a nice escort of 6 dogs for the kilometer or so walk. 

Nearing the beach, they spotted another dog and chased it rather aggressively, and we thought we'd seen the last of them. Not so: they reappeared and continued following on our way to the Viña Flower Clock. Steve got some pictures of them at the clock, which will appear on his blog soon.

Dogs here don't seem to like motorcycles-this pack rushed out into the street to chase two motorcycle policemen (we've seen this before). They also went after a military guy, dressed in fatigues, when we were down by the clock. He ended up kicking at them, and another man ran up and yelled at the dogs. I'd never seen dogs do this to anyone before (other than the dog that jumped up on me, and nipped at me on Easter Island one morning). And lest you think this is because they don't like the police, this isn't the case-the first 4 dogs to join us on our walk had been hunkered down around a police office who was stationed on a corner on Alvarez.

Down by the Water

The sky and surf were just beautiful today. Too bad my little camera didn't capture the group of  about 20 people in wet suits, who were swimming very far out into the rough water.