¡Bienvenidos a Santiago!

We left Seattle at 1230 local time (having been good citizens and arrived at the airport 2.5 hours early.) We spent 3 hours flying to Dallas, where we waited three hours for the flight to Chile. This is about a 10 hour flight, and puts you 3 more time zones forward (we’re 5 hours ahead of Seattle here.)

So, we landed at 945AM local time. We paid our $100 “reciprocity” visa fee (our government must have pissed someone off, since Canada’s “reciprocity” fee is about 15 bucks.) It took us a while to get our bags (we were standing at the wrong carousel), then when we went to customs, where we hit our first snag. On our customs forms, I had marked that we weren’t carrying any agricultural products, assuming they meant (like everyone else) fresh agricultural products. They got a little annoyed at us when they scanned our bag and found food. All but a few things were packaged foods, like granola bars and dried fruit. The dried fruit especially, the officer didn’t like, since she’s allowed to let in “dehydrated” fruit, but not “dried” fruit, and she pointed out to me that the bag said “dried”. I started to say, “in our language, those are synonyms”, and then thought the better of it. Okay, toss it. So she got my dried fruit, which I had deliberately not eaten on the plane, saving it for a snack. Oh, well.

We took an overpriced taxi in (about 20 bucks), the experience and exhaustion having drained a little of our taste for adventure (we didn’t feel like figuring out the bus.) But, he dropped us right at the door of the hostel, and refused a tip. Our hostel is actually quite nice. We had brought some American cash with us to pay the visa fees, but the visa people took cards, so we still had a wad of dollars, and so we were able to take advantage of the hostel’s offer to not charge the 19 percent tax if we paid in dollars. It’s on the sixth floor of a building right on what appears to be the main square of the city. The view from the deck we share with another room is pretty amazing. The square is packed with people around quitting time on Friday night, and there seemed to be an outdoor performance of The Nutcracker. There was the requisite crazy guy yelling about his bible (he needed no translation) that I could hear from the balcony. Some guy doing beautiful chalk drawings, wowing a bunch of little kids, and making very little spare change, so far as I could tell. A subway station, right in the square, and some sort of national cathedral on one side, and the National Historical Museum on another side. We couldn’t have gotten luckier in the random picking of a hostel.

We have this place booked for two days, but we may decide to stay a little longer – we’re trying to read enough of the guide book to see what else we want to do here, before falling asleep. The historical museum was interesting, but as few of the signs had any English, it didn’t take long (I find I can usually make out the meaning of the first sentence, but it takes me a minute or two, and then in the second sentence, there’s invariably a word I just can’t work out, and so I give up and move to the next exhibit. Not so much a problem in an art museum, but in a historical museum, the words are kind of what you’re there for.) But, it only cost a dollar each – we got a discount as I had a 1,000 peso note and a 10,000 peso note. The guy had no change, and two tickets were 1,200. He just took the 1,000 and waved us through, and even fished whatever must be the local equivalent of a quarter out of his pocket so we could stuff our bags in a locker. Gracias!

By the way, if the rest of Dallas is anything like DFW, I think we should politely but firmly suggest to Mexico that they take Texas back. Yuck.