Beautiful Money

It is always really interesting when traveling to use different currencies. I usually go through a period where I do conversions in my head to figure out if something is a "good deal," based on the exchange rate. I'm still doing a bit of that, particularly as I'm trying to balance existing funds, vs getting more CLP out of a cash machine, so that I don't end up with a lot of left-over pesos to bring home or exchange for US dollars.

The other part of learning a new monetary system is, of course just figuring out denominations of bills and coins, and handing over correct change. When in doubt, I just stick out a big bill-this doesn't happen all that often anymore, because I know prices in places like the feria, and do the math in my head.
Chile has very colorful money-a US dollar looks so plain next to it:

Notice how the bills are different lengths, in addition to being different colors. I think my favorite is the purple, 2,000 note (about 3.70 US dollars). I decided to photograph the reverse sides since I think they are more interesting, with the different nature scenes from various regions in the country. The obverse has the standard Head of an Important Person on it. One thing I like about these bills is that the 5,000 note has a woman on it, Gabriela Mistral. She was not only Chile's first Nobel Prize winner (for literature), but also the first Latin American to win, and the only female Latin American who has won that prize.

Coins come in 500, 100, 50, 10, 5 and 1 peso denominations. At the current exchange rate, 500 is roughly about a dollar. So a 100 peso coin is about 20 cents, 50 pesos would be about 10 cents...you can see how the 10, 5 and 1 peso coins are of limited value!

Steve and I hoarded 500 and the new 100 peso coins for use in our building's washing machines. I always groaned silently whenever I got old 100 coins in change on my daily colectivo rides, since the don't fit in the machines. But for now, I think I have enough to last me for the duration of my stay here.

Pigeons at Puerto Valpariaíso

With the metro strike over, and the day surprisingly clear, I headed over to the port in Valparaíso with my popcorn. The last time I was there what right before Steve and Joel left. We'd seen a man enticing pigeons onto his hand with some peanuts, which of course, Joel also wanted to do.

Since we didn't have anything to feed the birds, we picked up some peanut shells to fool the birds. It worked!

Steve posted a better picture of Joel, where you can see his expression of glee when a pigeon landed on his hand.

So I decided to see what would happen if I brought some actual food. When I arrived, I only saw one pigeon-but all it took was a couple of pieces of popcorn on the ground and around 50 showed up in about 5 seconds. I can't figure out where they came from:

 This one sat on my hand for a while, giving me a sort of "hey, where's the food?" look:

I think the one in the mural below was mad it didn't get enough to eat, and took an entire hand with it. I guess I had a lucky escape!

Palta on toast, the breakfast of champions

This is something I'll really miss about being here. Can I replicate this at home? Yes, of course. But avocados cost so much in the States that when we do buy them, we make guacamole to share. Here you see an entire small palta smooshed up with a little salt and lemon juice (Chileans just do the salt) on yummy bread from the neighborhood bakery.

Palta on toast is usually served as a snack, not breakfast. The breakfasts I've had here at hotels have coffee (nescafé) or tea, bread, thin cheese and ham slices, fruit and cake or cookies (Joel liked that a lot!).
And here's a picture of a typical toaster here:

We bought a really cheap one, so you can see it is rusted from my futile attempts to wash it. I learned that what you really need to do is just shake the crumbs off, rather than use water to clean these. It is hard to see, but there is a handle to the left-you set the metal plate on top of your gas burner set on a low flame, and the bread goes upside down on the widely-spaced grill wires. Heat comes up through the little perforations, and voila! Toast!