Dolls and Pet bottle shrines
The first strange mountain in Chile came while heading to Mellipilla 50 Km south of Chile’s capital Santiago. A mountain of dolls piling up like mass grave on the roadside, beside a small white chapel. Apparently the sight where a 16-year-old girl died on the day her father gave her a motorbike. Ever since the accident people stop and leave dolls in thanks for the received favors ascribed to the defunct. The second strange mountain appeared on a steep hill slightly hidden behind a slow climbing truck that we were chasing with the FLYER eBikes. At first it looked like a giant PET bottle collecting station with the anomaly that all the bottles were full with water. Then among the bottles she appeared the little statute of the Deceased Correa (in Spanish La Difunta Correa) that according to Wikipedia is: A semi-pagan mythical figures in folk religion, for which a number of people in Argentina and Chile, feel a great devotion. Cattle keepers first, then truck drivers, disseminated the figure of the Difunta, creating small altars in several routes throughout the countries, with images and sculptures of the Deceased. Full water bottles are left as votive offerings, “to calm the deceased Correa’s eternal thirst”. We saw several more Difunta Correa shrines with more mountains of PET bottles before reaching the Pacific Ocean near Navidad (Christmas) by sunset.