Chile

Well I arrived in Chile just fine. Flight from Chicago into Dallas ran quite late on departure, so I was forced to hammer through the airport Home Alone style to catch my next flight from Dallas into Santiago, but no big and it will count as my workout for the day. Last night I took an overnight bus from Santiago to Puerto Montt. I unfortunately believe that I left my camera uplink cable in Chicago, so picture updates appear unlikely until after I return.

Anyway, some brief news of my travels so far. As I said, I arrived in Santiago yesterday and had time to kill before my over night bus. I had enough time to do a couple things Erin suggested.

The first activity was to hike up the trail to Cerro San Cristobal. Erin told me that there is ¨A big statue of Jesus up there or something.¨ I thought, great, Kuph would love it if I got pictures of a large Jesus statue for him to frame over his bed. Anyway, part way up the trail, (and this trail was a bitch, quite steep and in the Chilean heat, it was rough after being acclimated to the cold and being known as someone who loves the cold anyway) I realize, um, it´s a statue of the Virgin Mary. Way off Erin.... It was a nice hike though, great views overlooking Santiago.

After I finished that activity, I simply walked around town a bit. At one point a man stopped me and asked me some questions. (As much as I try to blend, it´s not too likely to happen. Oh, and I also don´t try, I don´t know how I could that wouldn´t be exceptionally offensive.) We chatted for a bit as he also asked me for help on his english a bit, translating sentences for him, etc etc. Eventually he asked me if I was in a rush or if I wanted to stop in and grab a beer and keep chatting and helping eachother with language. I said sure, why not. Anyway, Javier is 39 and a rather nice fellow, but it´s a weird situation when he doesn´t know much english, and therefore the phrases he wants me to translate come off rather weird when to a beginning speaker, it´s probably (read: hopefully) natural. The particular phrase in question was ´I like you very much.´ So, yea..... Anyway, he gave me a weird beaded necklace thing to remember him, and he also gave me his phone number and invited me to his neices birthday party next. What a guy.

After that, I wandered around some more. Went to a pretty cool market, and really loved some of the paintings artists had on display. That was pretty much it for my first day. I then boarded the overnight bus and fortunately slept most of the time as I didn´t get enough sleep on the flights. Erin and Steph are arriving into Puerto Montt in about an hour so I´m heading to meet up with them now.

Also, Chileans are big on PDA. teenagers are making out everywhere.