El Primero Dia en Chile!

I woke when Brennon tapped on my arm. Breakfast was coming. I guess I had been sleeping heavily because I hadn’t even heard the carts or seen the sun fully come up. But we were still on the cramped plane. The rest of the flight was alright, though. The sun was bright and above the horizon. It was cool to watch it progressively rise; I would wake up periodically and look outside. The flat horizon turned from blues to oranges and pinks until the bright sun blinded us on the flight. The well-trained stewardess had put down all of our windows with a hanger as we slept though.

When we landed, we Americans had to get our visa, which was $160 worth of contentment from the Chilean government delivered as a “reciprocation” fee. Most of us had to get one: Dave, our leader, already had one from previous excursions, and Luribel is Dominican. They went through a different line while we waited in the other one. We purchased our visas, went through immigrations, and then found our luggage at the claim. Dave had met the other two girls that were on a different flight (which if ours was on time, our two flights would have landed at the same time), and they had collected our baggage. We did an accounting and couldn’t find Luribel, so we proceeded through customs thinking she might be on the other side. We couldn’t find her there, so we sent a leader and our tour guide whom we had just met to investigate. Mistakenly, she hadn’t gotten her visa, so they were holding her in immigrations. Because she didn’t get her visa, they had to export her back to the states. The leaders couldn’t even get in to see her. After an hour of probing, we found the wall we were hitting was too thick, so we left to salvage our sad day. We all feel bad for her; not only did she have to sit in the airport for 15 hours until her flight leaves, but she had to do it all alone, missing on all the plans. I hope that she gets to meet us in Peru! It really put a damper on our day.

We loaded the bus and headed to a small touristic village where we got a real taste of the culture. There were dogs everywhere! I mean, everybody who has been to South America anywhere has said that there were dogs everywhere, but I never quite understood. They would just lie in the street, pee on park benches, hang out in the alleys, everywhere! They were quite tame as well, so they weren’t much of a bother.

Everybody was really forward, too. They would stick fliers in your face to make you eat at their restaurant or stop at their tienda. Some of the things they had were cool: a lot of pottery, sweaters, Indiana Jones hats, handmade jewelry, and tones of junk! I almost bought lana de alpaca socks, but I knew they weren’t alpaca, so I passed.  I’ll wait for Machu Pichu.

For dinner, we ate at probably the fanciest diner on the street. Inside, the bathrooms were free (a big deal), but the tables and chairs were all on dirt floors. It was a really fun and even clean atmosphere. We had fresh jugo, delicious empanadas, and tender pork and beef steaks, served over coals to keep it warm. We were also served desert, which was just raspberry ice cream. I accidentally said a couple things in Spanish, so our waitress kept talking to me like I knew what she was saying at 100 mph. I felt very stuck with my Spanish, but I think it will come a long way when I have used it regularly for 3 weeks.

After, we were taken to our hotel, our gracious guides said good-bye until Monday. We found our rooms and were finally able to clean up after a day’s worth of not showering, not brushing teeth, not shaving, not putting on deodorant, etc. We settled in, then met back together to have dinner and kill the evening. We walked the streets of Santiago, heading in the direction that would get us some sight seeing and dinner opportunities. We walked by the Presidential Palace, but it was fenced off more than usual. It got dark here at 6:30 ish, so most of the shops had shut down by the time we got out (which was only about 7:30). We ended up going to the Indianapolis Bar, which wasn’t a great choice. Then we walked back to our hotel because we were all still tired from the lack of quality sleep from the flight.

Luribel, we feel so bad! We really wish you could be here with us. I hope to see you when we get to Peru!