The walk from my house to Alvarez, the closest main street in downtown Viña, requires a swift fifteen-minute walk downhill through a slightly grungy part of town. I make this walk usually twice or three times a day because there is nothing fun or exciting to do up where I live.

During my third week in Chile I noticed a group of four local teens (three boys and one girl) vigorously washing a graffiti-covered wall with coat after coat of white paint. I didn´t really pay attention to it, I just felt kind of bad that they were doing it in the cold and assumed it was some sort of community service thing.

When I passed by eight hours later they were still there, only the scene had changed. The sidewalk was cluttered with upwards of 30 cans of spray paint and a hot mess of tools and nozzles and paper towels and face masks and plastic bags. It was close to 10pm now, and the same students were sketching out the drawing by the light of a battery-operated lamp.

I saw them the next morning. I saw them for three days after that until they finally finished the mural.

Graffiti and public art is such an interesting way to learn the culture of a city. In Viña there is hardly anything incredible, with the exception of the the work these adolescents did and a few other murals. In Buenos Aires, loaded phrases with reference to politics, religion and homosexuality were on every street corner in red and black paint. And in Valparaíso it ranges. There´s a lot of romantic "te amo ____"´s and religiously-influenced "dios es mi vida"´s around downtown and near churches. In the kitschy bohemian district of Cerros Alegre and Concepción, tags and stenciled art clutter the staircases. I´ve made it a hobby to roam around town with my digital camera snapping photos of intriguing art.

As for my personal favorites? One is a stencil of Amelie wearing a bandana around her mouth that said "Amelie es terorista." The other is a phrase on Paseo Yugoslavo that says "TURISTA TERORISTA" in thick black letters.