South America - March 6th - Santiago

Since this was an educational trip for Sara (and oh how educational it was) she had two meetings (the four spread out over the two weeks….you cannot even begin to imagine all the work) and I had nothing to do. Well there is only one place to go in a situation like that. Starbucks. Oh Nick, tell me you didn’t go to Starbucks, that is so American. First, South American’s consider themselves American so you have to say United States (as Sara reminded me continually) and second, I think it is really interesting to see how companies from the US do things in foreign countries. Anyway, back to the Starbucks. I walk in and it is EXACTLY like a Starbucks in the United States. Down to the music being in English. Well, besides the Spanish. No worries, I can handle this situation. Some could consider me a master of the Spanish language (my high school Spanish teacher is not one of those people) and besides Coffee of the Day is translated as Café de la Dia in Spanish. This was supposed to be a one-sided order though. So when the lady asked if I wanted milk I got confused. Then when she said milk in English I was like, “Leche. I knew that one. Dangit.”

After my trip to Starbucks I took the long way back to the hotel to walk around the parts of the city I hadn’t seen the night before. One thing that I noticed, and everyone was pleasantly surprised about, was how clean the city is. Sure there were the requisite stray dogs that Sara gave me the puppy face about every time she saw one (I got it a lot), but they all seemed well fed. The thing I love about stray city dogs is that they stop at crosswalks and walk when the crowd does. They aren’t dumb. At least there were no stray cows like in India.

Anyway, Sara and her group eventually came home. We went on a search for bottled water and killed time until dinner. That meant we had to kill A LOT of time. See, in Chile and Argentina they don’t eat dinner until after 9 o’clock in the PM. Restaurants don’t even open until 8 o’clock. If you wanna go out after that you better be ready for a long night because it isn’t appropriate to go to the bar until 1 AM. We chose this restaurant near the hotel that (as best as I can tell) a Chilean TGI Friday’s. Check out this name for a restaurant, Pub Licity. You realize very quickly in any meal setting that the South American concept of service is much different than the North American version. Our waitress was always on the fringes of our area but wouldn’t come to the table until we signaled that we needed something. She would give us our menus and then wouldn’t come back until we signaled we were ready to order. Another great thing about being in a foreign country is when you struggle to order something or carry on a conversation and then the waitress answers in much better English than your Spanish.

The food wasn’t that great, but afterward we took the party to the restaurant’s bar. This is where I learned a very valuable thing about South America. Be mindful of the mixed drinks. I wouldn’t even call them mixed drinks. I would call them death drinks. They give you a glass half full of whiskey and then a 12 ounce coke in a glass bottle. They pour so much that I was sure that they had to mix it with water. I revised this sentiment about two hours later. You’d better be careful or you’ll be down quick. I also had a Chilean tell me that I looked like John Denver. He then proceeded to sing me a song that John Denver wrote about Chile. It was AWESOME.

South America - March 4th and 5th - Santiago

The entire time I was in South America I kept a notepad close at hand and would write an experience in one or two words so that I could later bring all my readers (the 6 of you) an accurate summary of the highlights of my trip.

The flight from DFW to Santiago was a pretty simple nine hour overnight flight. Well, as simple as any flight is. You get on the airplane, they close the doors, you sit around for 45 minutes, you take-off, land in a foreign country, and go on your way. I had two forms of entertainment to help me cope. The first was this really crappy Steve Carell movie (Dan in Real Life) and this really uncrappy John Grisham book (The Appeal). I chose the John Grisham book and sleep after watching about 15 minutes of the movie. John Grisham books are all pretty similar in that there is some social injustice in Mississippi and a lawyer of some type is going to fix it. But they are all really entertaining and easy to read. His books are my number one for reading when traveling.

So yea, we touch down in Santiago and the immigration officers are like, “Welcome to Chile!!!” And I was like, “THANKS.” And they say, I see you’re from Estados Unidos.” And I’m like, “Yes ma’am. These colors don’t run.” And they’re like, “That will be $131.” So apparently if you’re from America it is $131. If you’re from Canada or the UK it’s $50, and if you’re from anywhere else it’s free. That doesn’t seem very fair. I mean all I wanted to do was plunder their natural resources and deface their national parks.

The tour guide meets outside of customs (I pulled a quick one on the agriculture officials when they wanted to search my bag by just walking away, “No hablo espanol.”……HA, I had a bunch of fruit and some cow parts infected with hoof and mouth disease in my carry-on). We walk outside to the bus and already I’m a fan of Chile. Remember, the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite those in the Northern Hemisphere and March is the beginning of fall. The weather was just about perfect. We leave the airport and drive through the obligatory slums located near the airport into the city. The roads into the city are interesting in that the major ones are actually tunnels that go under the city. Everyone knows that in the movies the major catastrophes happen in the tunnels, so I’m sure how safe it is to have tunnels in the country with the most tremors in the world (I may have made this up, but they do have A LOT of tremors and earthquakes), but hey, they were a quick way to get around the city.

We check into our hotel with 90 minutes before we’re supposed to be ready for our trip to the winery. The question is, do we eat or do we sleep? Sleep it is. We’ll just set the alarm clock and…….wait a minute, where is the alarm clock? We were soon to find out that alarm clocks do not come standard in hotels across Chile and Argentina. Luckily we had the cell phone. Then we turned on the TV, oh good the first channel I turn to is GREY’S ANATOMY…..IN ENGLISH.
The Concha Y Toro winery is what you would expect a winery to be. A bunch of grapes, a bunch of barrels of fermenting grapes, and a bunch of bottles of finished fermenting grapes. All set to beautiful scenery and old, well kept building. As previously stated, I’m not big on the wine. But wine is good for the heart, and well you’ve gotta keep that heart strong so I might as well try it. Well, I tried. Disgusting probably isn’t the right word, but they definitely weren’t good. Or maybe they just weren’t for me. Concha Y Toro is Chile’s most popular wine though.

After the winery, it was late afternoon and almost dinner time. A group of people were walking across the city to this “artsy” part of town. After a day of travel I didn’t feel like doing anything, but Sara wanted to go and she is really cranky after a day of traveling (apparently I should have given her more wine). Anyway, most of the walk was through this park that follows the river (or more accurately, riverbed…..drought) through the city. Apparently, Chilean’s like to make-out in parks. Good for them. I think that (along with wine) makes you live longer. Our walk eventually turned into the Bataan Death March until out of nowhere we showed up in this really dirty party of town. As we all know, dirty parts of town equal the artsy (often referred to as bohemian (often referred to as hippie)) parts of towns. I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t really happy when we were told this was the place. Especially when I could feel the local “artists” staring holes into my blond head. I just told myself that it was because the ladies wanted me so bad.

In actuality, the trip was well worth it because we went to this AWESOME restaurant. It had ivy growing up stone walls inside and concrete benches and great food. I think I might have eaten intestines though. I’m not sure. It was gross, whatever it was. We took a “taxi” back to hotel. I used the quotation marks because I’m pretty sure it was just this guy’s Jetta. Since there were 12 of us, we took 3 taxis back to the hotel. Our driver had to get out of his vehicle to ask another taxi what the fare was. Also, when you have 3 taxis all going from the same point A to the same point B you get some racing. That was fun.

Then it was time for bed.

Safe and Sound

Just flew back from Chile and Argentina, and boy are my arms tired.......I hate that joke. Anyway, super tired. I'll get a write-up on here in the next week or so, but I wanna make sure it's good and does the trip justice.

Purdue's going to the Elite Eight. I can feel it in my soul.....and it feels good.

In the meantime, read this hilarious site.

Done and Done

I'm going to make this one short and sweet. Ok, maybe just short. After 6 long years I'm finally finished with college. That associates degree is going to look great on my wall.

I also leave for Chile on Tuesday. I don't know when I will be able to post next, but you have my word that you will get a full report when I return.

Also, the weather is wonderful. 60 and sunny. It's supposed to snow again on Tuesday. Global warming I guess.

See, told you short.