Day 6

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

We started our morning visiting La Sebastiana– Pablo Nerudo’s home in Valparaiso. We took an audio guided tour of the whole house, and learnt about the inspiration behind many of his poems. The house had breathtaking views of the ocean and the rest of the hills in Valparaiso, leaving us all inspired too. Something that was quite obvious was the beautiful intricate architecture and how there were so many maps and atlas’. Nerudo clearly loved to explore the world, much like all of us, and I believe more strongly now, that new experiences and travels help us all grow as people and cultivate a global mindset crucial especially in a field like Engineering.

Following that, we took a quick trip to the Flower Clock, and then, we drove to Viña del Mar, where we got to go to the beach! I absolutely love the ocean and love thinking about how it connects every part of the world together. Maybe if I looked far enough, I could look all the way to my home back in India! Another thing I noticed was how a lot of Chilean culture had parallels with Indian culture. The sense of community, the food, and the energy of the city felt familiar and reminded me of Hyderabad quite a lot.

We spent a couple of hours playing at the beach, basking in the warm sun, and kicking around soccer balls, which was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. As our day in the sun was coming to an end and we were walking back to our bus, I noticed how the coast was lined with zig zag boulders and rocks, which I later learned were a way to prevent tsunamis from flooding the city. I loved watching small engineering principals at play all throughout the trip, and it only reaffirmed how engineering is so universal.

Finally, we went back to Santiago, and ended the night with a grind session, preparing for our pitch the next day with my team, Ingeniando Sueños.