Bienvenidos a Santiago!

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Bienvenidos a Santiago!

We arrived in Santiago Tuesday morning after a brutally uncomfortable 9 hour flight from Atlanta (I - Matt, slept maybe an hour...but at least Moneyball was ok). Despite the grogginess, we started the trip off with a few great successes. Success 1 - our bags showed up...what a relief. Success 2 - we figured out how to take a bus from the airport to center city using our broken spanish. Successish 3 - we found Hostel de Sammy with only one wrong turn.

Failureish 1 - we went to a restaurant for lunch and were barrated by an old gentleman (who we thought was trying to seat us) for trying to take his seat. Oops. His food looked good though and since we couldn´t read the menu we told the waitress ¨we´ll have that¨, spaghetti and beans it was!

Day 1 was pretty low key. Day 2 and Day 3 have been spent touring the city. We went to an old train station that was built as a celebration of Chilean prospertity and is now a cultural museum. We saw the Presidential Palace - not as impressive as you would think it should be. We hiked up a small hill, Santa Lucia, near downtown and got some great views (plus loads of public canoodling - hey its the local hangout for such thing).

Today we went to the Aquitania vineyard. We were late for our tour because the N on a compass actually points South in the southern hemisphere. Something I learned long ago, but forgot seeing as I´ve never traveled to the southern hemisphere. Regardless the tour was great and most of the day we got to hang out at the vineyard from which you can see both the Andes Mountains and all of Santiago City.

Success 4 - mastery of public transit. Bus, train, etc. - no problem for Matt and Sarah.

Second to experiencing a new culture, meeting fellow travelers has been fascinating. There is a girl who is staying in our hostel who has been touring the world for 5 years (from Scranton, PA). 3 months sounds like an eternity to me, as I´ve never been exposed to anything different. So meeting these people is quite elightening. On the total opposite side of the spectrum, we met two couples today at the vineyard who are spending a month and visiting every country on the continent. Vastly different travel styles.

Tomorrow we head to Punta Arenas in the very south of Chile where we get into Patagonia.

PS - sorry, no pictures this time, the computer is from 1903 and can´t handle a USB

Comments from Sarah: SOUTH AMERICA IS AWESOME! and one of the highlights was the deliciousness called terremoto which is wine with a huge scoop of icecream on top..

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