First off, no matter how hard I tried to maneuver around in seat 13A, it wasn't comfortable, but at least I got some sleep! 6 hours actually, if I timed it correctly. The last time I left you I was watching the 70 yr. old woman mix 4 airplane bottles of scotch amongst her 3 different glasses. It is now 6am or so and I am thinking to myself, wow this flight is one long @ss flight! 9.5 hours from Dallas to Santiago! The cool thing is as I slowly open my eyes, I look outside my window and see one hell of a sunrise amongst the clouds. Yes, I would love to be laying in my nice comfortable bed at home, but this is something I have never seen before that is pretty damn cool. Once I realized I couldn't sleep any longer, I just sat and stared out the window thinking about the trip ahead of myself. As the minutes pass by, the more I thought about the magnitude of it and the more I realize how fortunate we are to experience a trip of this sort. The clock hits 8am and the pilot says that we are about to fly over the Andes Mountains on the left side of the plane. Guess what, I am on the left side, nicely! What a view! To see the view, please visit "Day 2 Pictures" on the left side of the blog. 9:30am approaches fast and the plane lands. "Welcome to Santiago, Chile!"
After passing through customs and baggage claim, the group hopped on the bus and headed off to the hotel. I am not going to lie, from the hotel for about 15 minutes, Santiago looked liked the bad part of Baltimore on a good day, but as we passed through a tunnel that got us into more of the city limits, the city became quite nice and much more cleaner, but still very polluted! Santiago is one of the 3 most polluted cities in Latin America. Sao Paulo and Mexico City are the two others.
As we finally pulled up to the Plaza el Bosque Suites Hotel, I was beat down tired, but at this point, you just have to run on pure adrenaline. The guide told us we had about an hour and a half to shower and get ready to head to lunch. After showering, a small group of us went walking around the streets to find "cambio" for our U.S. dollars. As we were standing on a corner block, a nice young woman tapped me on the shoulder and said in Spanish, "Are you looking for a place to get change?" I turned to Chico and said, "what she say?" We ended up following this woman 5 blocks up and 2 blocks over. Prior to arriving at the bank, we did witness Chico almost fall in this hole below (Picture). Santiago has holes, cracks, and steps all over the place. I think in that short walk to get change, 3 of us almost fell.
Getting change with Chris was one of the worst experiences ever! ha, jk, but not really. First, it took us forever to get to the place, then it took Chris forever to do the math. He does admit though, "I am not a finance guy, I'm a policy analyst." Anyway, after all the walking around, Chris was the only one to get change, we didn't have enough time for the rest of us. So, as we walked back, Drew and I decided to just buy some from pesos from Chris, bad idea. This was the biggest debacle and lasted an hour into lunch trying to figure out how much. Finally, we cut Chris off from talking about it anymore, wow!
We ate lunch as a group at a great place called Divertimento Restaurant. It was nestled in a park/woods area at the bottom of the mountain where San Cristobal is located. I had empanadas, Steak with mashed potatoes, and Chilean desserts. We also had some great Chilean wine. It seems that every meal we have here with the group each person gets a half a bottle of wine to drink. Pretty nice deal if you asked me.
Lunch was followed by a 3 hour tour of the city of Santiago, Chile. I will add more later on, but this was a fabulous trip! It was mostly on a bus, but parts of it the group got out and walked. Some observations, Santiago has some beautiful buildings, churches, fountains, and parks. It is crowded and traffic looks to be heavy most of the time (think, it is the summertime here too and traffic is bad). Also, I have noticed people are everywhere, out and about, sitting in the park, on benches, laying in the grass. I also notice that the people of Santiago are extremely nice. Please see the pictures on the right side of the blog to see all the places we visited on the tour. I have over 100 pictures, so that should give you all a great idea of the city and its architecture.
For dinner, the group was on our own. Drew, Chico, Ehsan, Ameer, and myself went to Azul Profundo for seafood. A very popular place in the area of Bellavista. I also picked up a small gift for myself and maybe for someone else? Hmmm, for Motto? Well, time will tell. We ate and drank for a couple hours and it only cost $30 a person, great deal. I had salmon over risotto with flounder ceviche, empanadas (of course), and calamari/shrimp. Oh, on a side note, cabs drive crazy here, stop signs are definitely yield signs and Ameer got the same meal as Drew. I think Ameer is now growing a gotee too?
I should have day 3 notes and write-up posted later this evening, but we shall see, tonight we have the night free and the boys are going out for steaks again. Vacas Gordas is calling our name I think.
Miss the ladies of 1633!
