Day 365! One whole year since we’ve set foot on American soil. I am too tired to write anything profound about the day, but I’ve got an ongoing list of topics (big and small) that I’ll extrapolate on upon our return. Speaking of our return, we have settled on the remaining stops and know that we’ll be heading home in late May. We haven’t bought return tickets yet, but that is the plan. ~4 weeks to go.

I feel like I’m at mile 25 in a marathon. I’m exhausted, but I’ve passed the infamous “wall” and now just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other until we reach the end. I know that once my metaphorical muscles have recovered, I’ll be planning the next race.

Speaking of tired, weary muscles… we once again slept terribly last night. Is this middle age? Taking a full week to recover from jet lag? Or is this time change especially brutal? Whatever it is, it’s killing me. I woke up at 1 and couldn’t go back to sleep until 4.

We finally got moving at about 9:30 and walked to a coffee shop. It felt very hip and we had a filling breakfast of eggs, fruit, & toast. I ordered in Spanish but then got in over my head when asking if we could replace yogurt in one of our dishes with a dairy-free milk. The server switched to perfect English. This has happened so many times now… I start with my bad Spanish, the other person tries to make it work, and then they quickly realize that their English > my Spanish.

We walked back through the colorful streets of Valparaiso. Every building is painted. Some are thoughtlessly tagged and others have beautiful murals, but no wall is left untouched.

We had planned visit an art museum today, but it would have required driving, and driving here is not a passive activity. We were just so wiped that we couldn’t face it. So we came back and hung out for much of the day.

I set Millie up with painting and she painted Pablo Neruda’s living room that we saw yesterday from memory. I love getting to see into her brain via her art. It was fun to see which details stuck with her.

I love that she captured the portrait with two faces, the fireplace, and the wood chair. There was a mermaid sculpture just out of frame. Photo from internet for reference.

Nick and I spent some time planning out our next stop, Peru. Machu Picchu feels impossible to get to but we’re going to make it happen. This all took hours so we caved and let Millie watch a movie on her iPad. We did some laundry. I tried not to take a nap.

At about 4 we went out to Valparaiso Cultural Park. We walked the very hilly and very confusing streets. The route took us up and down back alleys and long staircases. I can’t tell if it feels unsafe here or if I’m just programmed to think empty alleys + graffiti = danger.

The park had a small playground and a large field. It was surrounded on all sides by buildings. One was a former prison and is now a museum to commemorate the torture that happened there during Chile’s dictatorship. We decided against visiting because I think we’ve hit our annual quota of “museums that used to be horrific prisons”. Millie is finally getting over her prison fear/obsession so we didn’t need a relapse.

She played tag with Nick, and then soccer with a little boy. We successfully burned off most of her energy and then headed back down the hill for an early dinner. The place we hoped to go to was closed, so we went to the closest place that looked decent. We sat outside as the sun set and the lights of all the houses up on the hillside twinkled on.

Then back to the Airbnb for some playtime, bath, and please sweet baby Jesus, sleep.