First few days in Chile

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Day 1 in Santiago, Chile.
We finally arrived in Santiago after a long long flight from San Francisco. We stayed at a cute hostel called Ecohostel right near the main downtown area of Santiago. We crashed for a few hours, and then went exploring. Santiago has an efficient train and bus system and lots of parks.

We checked out a vegetarian restaurant called
One great thing about being here during the summer is that the days are super long. Depending on the latitude, there is 16 to 18 hours of sunlight. It was so nice to walk outside at 10 pm through the parks along the main river running through the city.

Day 2 Santiago, Chile.

We woke up late, which seems to be our theme this trip, and ventured off to find Pablo Neruda´s house. It was the house that he lived in towards the end of his life and was modeled after a ship. If you´re in Santiago, it´s worth the few thousand pesos for the tour. Next, we headed off to find the Museum of Pre'Columbian Art. We wanted to check out a few others as well, but since we started our day so late, they were closed by the time we finished at the first one.

Day 3 Fly to Punta Arenas in S. Chile
We headed out for one the main parts of our trip- Patagonia! We decided to take the 4 hour flight versus the 3 day bus ride. And guess who we saw at the airport in Santiago- Erica´s favorite teacher from Japan- Daigo Tsuji and his family. They are in Costa Rica for 3 years teaching at a Japanese school. It´s the last place we expect ed to run into someone we knew.


Days 4-5 getting ready to go on the Circuit Trail at Torres del Paine National Park
We brought most of our camping food from home, so we only needed a few more provisions like dried fruit and fuel for our stove. (our trail mix was taken at customs in Santiago! after they charged us $130 per person to enter the country!)

We almost didn´t find fuel (white gas) for our stove. We ran around town to every camping store and pharmacy and everyone was out. We thought we might have to delay our trip for a day just to get fuel. Luckily, after dinner, we decided to try one last pharmacy, and they had it, so we were good to go for our 10 day hiking trip.

Dec 22-31 on the Paine Circuit
Transportation to Torres del Paine is really easy to find. The Tourism industry is much more organized than i.e. India.
Our first day on the trail was beautiful, a little windy, but clear. We got to Camp Seron w/ plenty of time to nap in the sun. The campsites here are very different from the U.S. In the U.S. people tend to look for campsites where they can´t be seen by others. Basically trekking in the U.S. is not a social activity. However, on this trail, the campsite areas are small and you´re forced to share space w/ your neighbors. Also, many of the sites have shelters for hikers, where we could cook dinner and stay out of the rain, which there was a lot of!

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Photos

pablo neruda' house
sign from pablo neruda's house w/ his wife matilda.

Graffiti near PN's house
Poem/graffiti near Pablo Neruda's house

Tsuji family
We ran into one of Erica's friends from Japan at the Santiago airport.