Santiago--- the Coolest Yet

---

Geo: -33.4691, -70.642

We made it to Santiago safe and sound and are in a great hostel with lots of very friendly 20-somethings from all over the world. We're having a barbecue tonight in the courtyard with them and free wine and beer.

Dang. We could have had free whiskey or gin on the Taca flight, too. I'm gonna have to take up drinkin'...

Bill, you and Inga should be here. It's alot like Chimbas.

One of the young men here is from Columbia, Harold, a doctor who's moved to Chile to practice. I suppose it's a little safer practicing medicine here than in Columbia. Another fellow from Norway insisted I try his local honey in my tea. It's fresh! he says. It was just made last week.

Cute. So in the trash went my Splenda and I tasted a bit of Santiago. Sweet.

Bob says if he's impressed with anything it's the quality of the young people traveling. They're not bums; they're educated, contributing members of society and the're very considerate of us old folks.

Everyone's been so welcoming. The fellow at the bus station where we bought our ticket for La Serena tomorrow was so excited that we were from the US he introduced us to all his co-workers. Say hi! he told them all. They are from the United States.

Santiago sits snuggled up against the snow capped Andes begging to have it's picture taken. Beautiful! We don't have time for anything this time through cause we're off to La Serena in the morning, but we've penciled in Santiago for the end of our trip in March.

More then.

Oh, something interesting some of our new friends were talking about tonight. A 4th year medical student from Buffalo, NY, just returned from down south and said because of a strike, there's no gas available so people are trapped in their towns not able to go on tours or travel around. They're also running out of food because nothing's being brought in by truck...it sounds awful and I sure hope it's remedied by the time we're there in a month. One fellow from Seattle said he has a plane ticket to go down there Monday--he's sure hoping it's solved soon.

Can you imagine...stopping travel in the peak of tourist season? What if you'd, like, traveled to Glacier and couldn't get out of Columbia Falls? AND you'd run out of beer?

Speaking of beer, the bbq was a huge success. We crashed a bit early--dinner was at 7:00 (a Latin American 7:00, as prep didn't begin until then) ate around 9:00, and by midnight the singing was going strong. We could hear them through our window that opened onto the courtyard below. Some of us heard them, some of us were sound asleep snoring.

I love to hear men's voices though and with the guitar they sounded really good! There is something very special happens when someone brings out a guitar. The atmosphere changes. It's a bonding thing.

Although as the night progressed the music denigrated to raucous beer-drinking songs (but sung in Spanish they're really not so bad). Until the drums started. Then my slumbering husband wasn't quite so sound asleep anymore. But esta bien. It was a fun night and we wouldn't have missed it for anything.

---