Magellan´s Revenge

Montezuma is not the only one who wrecks revenge on the intestines of visitors. Our ship has an outbreak of the norvovirus and yours truly has fallen prey to some invisible bug that has laid me low for a few days. Surprisingly and fortunately, Mike has escaped the bug. The buffet lines have been modified on the sip to disallow self service, so we have longer lines as we eat one of our hundred meals a day. We were committed to eating healthy foods this cruise, and for the most part we have stayed true to our commitment. A few desserts here and there, but mostly three healthy squares a day. Even if they don´t stay in the tummy long enough to be digested.

We are at the internet cafe in Montevideo, Uruguay today. We took a bus tour of the city with lots of photos to share whenever we get a chance to download. Yesterday we had a long stay in Buenos Aires, and we took lots of photos as we roamed around on the bus tour there. One day is hardly enough time to see either of these cities, but after these short visits we aren´t sure we need to see much more of Montevideo. After all, on a highlights tour they are probably showing us the best they have, and well frankly, there wasn´t that much to see. Buenos Aires on the other hand looks like a grand city...Paris of South America, with lots of charm worth a second visit.

Our cruise ends on Sunday morning when we arrive in Rio. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan our Carnival tickets will be waiting for us when we arrive and the cheap hotel we found will be both passable and within a reasonably priced taxi ride from the ship´s dock. We hope to get better access to the internet so that we can keep in touch more regularly.

Til then,
Deanne

Greetings from the Bottom of the World

We are in Ushaiha, Argentina, the self-reported bottom of the world. The last city before Anarctica. We went on a bus tour of the National Park, Tierra del Fuego earlier today. Now we sit in the Internet Cafe in the little town with the big banner reading, "Bottom of the World and the Beginning of Everything". It is a magnificently located town surrounded by jagged mountains covered in snow. They only experience thirty days of sunlight here (and you thought Seattle was bad!) but lucky for us we hit a gorgeous sunny day.

Mike just called time, so I have to run. We spent time doing our bills and answering e-mails so we are out of time here. I Will write soon.

Deanne

Our Last Port in Chile

We just took the tender boat in from our ship into the small port town of Punta Arenas. It is so foggy outside the window of the internet cafe on the dock that we can't see the ship sitting outside the window. These little internet cafes seem to have sprung up on the piers where the boats dock. There are rows of tiny phone booths for the crew and passengers to make internet phone calls to home, and a wall of computers for us to access the internet at the princely sum of $2 per hour. Compared to the exorbitant rate of 50 cents per minute on the ship (which we are currently boycotting until we are more desperate) this is heaven.

Punta Arenas is our final city in Chile. We have traveled down the entire southwest coast of South America, past the Chilean fiords and through the Magellan Straits and we are in the final city before we start up the other side of the continent. Punta Arenas was a powerful trading city for ships making the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa before the opening of the Panama Canal. Since then it has languished so that it is now a beautiful little town with several mansions left from the days of rich wool traders now turned into museums for the tourists coming through on ships. We have seen numerous other ships both in front of, and behind ours as we make our way through relatively narrow channels such as the Magellan Straits and the fiords. It is clear that the trip we are on is popular with other tourists as well. Unlike the other cruises we have taken, this one appears to have a minority of North Americans and many others speaking languages we don't recognize. There are also many Spanish speakers on board, giving us a chance to practice our deadly Spanglish on the poor staff and fellow passengers that we encounter.

Our last stop was Puerto Montt, Chile. We took a long, 8 hour bus trip called a photo safari around the countryside to see the sites. I have some beautiful photos of the lake, volcanoes and city that I will post when we next get access to wifi. The town itself was rundown and poor, but the countryside was spectacular. The nearby town of Puerto Varas was much more prosperous and worth another visit someday when we get back to Chile. The major industry of the area is Salmon farming, and it seems that every tour into the countryside included a salmon lunch at one of the restaurants catering to the cruise tours. Farmed Atlantic salmon is not really a big treat for residents of the Pacific Northwest who are able to eat fresh Alaskan salmon most of the year, but it was accompanied by some traditional foods as appetizers (a small empanada and sopilla) so we were able to try some Chilean food. Our bus was nice looking but missing some important part that holds it steady. We shook and swerved on the country roads. Most of the time it was fine, but it was a little scary coming down the narrow, curvy mountain dirt road at the volcano.

We are enjoying the company of our table mates on the cruise. We come from the four corners of the US, and the center (Seattle, New York, Florida, St Louis, with a nod to my origination in LA). The group are frequent cruisers so we have been able to hear about other great trips they have made.

Well, the fog has lifted enough for us to see the dock outside, but still not our ship. We are going to set off to explore the town. We may log in again in a few hours after walking around. If not, we will catch you in the next port of call. Until then,
Deanne

Awareness served up by a tiny Peruvian waitress

Tiny Peruvian waitress, Andrea served our lunch at the highly recommended restaurant, La Casita de Barrealas. I described finding this little Peruvian treasure in another blog entry, as today was our second meal at this delightful little restaurant hidden in a roadside house. Andrea, young and sweet, readily agreed to posing for a photo (I will post them shortly when they are finished downloading) at the beginning of the meal, and utilized her superior English skills and our totally inferior Spanish to take our order. As the various courses were delivered (first a shared vegetable salad followed by a shrimp curry for me and a fried shrimp meal for Mike then profiteroles for dessert) I took a photo of the food. At the end of the meal Andrea asked to see the photos. She seemed pleased and touched with the results, particularly when I offered to e-mail the photos to her. She returned to our table with a business card that included her e-mail address and asked me to send the food photos to the restaurant. I am not sure what transpired in that interaction except that I understood her to be touched by my desire to share them with her, and I was touched by her sweetness. I hugged her, and she said goodbye with her hand to her heart and a kiss to her fingertips. I walked back to the car with tears running down my face.

I am currently downloading the photos to attach to the blog and send to Andrea and her manager. I feel like something special happened in that little restaurant.

Thank you, Andrea.
Deanne

Meeting Friends Along the Way

Every day we have been traveling has reinforced the charm of visiting each new location for a minimum of several days. The rushing two day visits of our European whirlwind tour, while providing exposure to many fascinating places, missed the joys that familiarity bring. Today is our seventh day in the Colchagua Valley at the Vina La Playa Hotel. We added an extra night to our stay so that we now leave here tomorrow morning, drive to the airport and throw ourselves on the mercy of the cruise transfer buses to take us the hour drive to Valparaiso to board the ship. When we leave here we will miss the familiar smiles of the staff when we pass each other in the hall, the laughter that our fumbling Spanglish brings as we try to order our food and the intuitive assistance we are provided because we have become familiar to the staff(towels and sunscreen appearing without request when we head out to the pool or a third egg for Mike at breakfast). Due to our cash difficulties we have spent a week without tipping anyone (a problem we rectify tonight and tomorrow as we say our final goodbyes to everyone) yet the staff has been wonderful to us. We recommend this place to everyone.

We have also made friends of other guests, no one visiting for nearly length of the week we are here. Each group of Americans that come through seem to gravitate together. Roger and Sue from New Jersey stayed three nights and shared meals and lots of laughter. Because they were here a shorter time they crammed in more wine tastings than we did each day and were able to point us to the ones they enjoyed the most. Last night three travelers from Pennsylvania came in. Only in Chile for a few days before boarding a cruise to Antarctica, they had hired a driver and guide to accompany them. They were seeing the countryside on the back roads. We enjoyed their company at dinner last night and had the pleasant surprise of a packet of information on Brazil left for us by Barbara. She also asked for the blog address, so Barbara, if you ever read this, we appreciate your kindness.

Also checking in last night was an Argentinian family from Mendoza, the wine country capital of Argentina. Their beautiful little girls, Clara and Emilia have captivated us with their sweet looks. Trained in Texas as a Longhorn, the father (name unknown) of these little girls has offered to provide us with ideas of places to stay in Mondoza when we get there several weeks from now. He is apparently in the wine and tourism business, so he is currently off working today, but we look forward to his ideas.

Yesterday we had a terrific wine tasting with a young, well spoken college man, Christian (photo in the set of the wine country). He is studying for a career in English translation and provided a wonderful overview of the wine making process and the unique qualities of wines in Chile. We were so impressed with Christian and his knowledge of wines, not the mention the great wine that we left the tour with bottles of wine to take with us on our cruise.

On our final day in the Chilean wine country we are off to the ATM machine to load up once again. We will probably take in another wine tasting and some pool time. It is a wonderful life!

Adios, Deanne

New Link to Photo Library

I took out the European photos to make the page load faster. If you want to see any of our photos, including the deleted photos, just use the link shown in the photo column to take you to picasweb. This site, http://picasaweb.google.com/WanderingGypsies has all of our photos which are available to anyone to download to their computer. I hope this makes it easier and faster to see the new photos.
Deanne

Eating our way through Chile

Finding the restaurant was the most difficult part of lunch at the Peruvian restaurant yesterday. We had a flyer with a map showing the location as directly across from the Laura Hartwig winery on the road into Santa Cruz. It takes about ten minutes to get off the property of our hotel and its accompanying winery. The long, dusty and very bumpy rocky road from our door out to the public road through rocks up that we hear banging against the underside of our car. Each trip out to the road we see one or more of the hotel or winery staff riding in or out of the property on their bikes. They always give us a wave and continue bumping their way along. Once out to the main road, a left turn leads past small but clean and nice homes. Another fifteen minutes of driving past small homes on the road interspersed with corn fields and vineyards leads out the main road. That fifteen minutes of driving requires vigilance as there are many dogs, children, bicycle riders and folks waiting for the bus along the road. As we pass people, we usually are met with friendly curiosity. They look at us while we look at them, and mostly everyone is pretty friendly about the stare off. Eventually that road leads to the main road which is evidenced by the broken down and abandoned train station. It is our landmark for the turn.

We saw sleek, modern passenger trains on our long drive up and back to Santiago, but those trains never make it down here. In the Central Valley we have multiple track crossings marked on the roads only by a stop sign in front of them. Judging from other drivers, apparently the train track stop signs warrant a slow down before crossing, but nothing else. We haven't seen a train on these tracks yet, but I guess once is enough if you don't see it in time.

After turning off the main road onto the road into Santa Cruz, then crossing the train tracks, we drive down a long road littered with tiny towns. Some of these towns have huge speed bumps to slow down traffic, so this road requires a little caution. The homes alongside the road are not as well tended and modern as the ones near our hotel, possibly because the higher paid jobs are at the hotel rather than the town. Who knows? Eventually we pass a few signs for wineries, all of which are marked with large, clear tourist signs. The Laura Hartwig landmark sign told us the entrance was 150 metres ahead. We never saw it so we ended up in Santa Cruz to turn around. Coming from the other direction we saw a similar sign telling us that Laura Hartwig was 160 metres ahead. We finally determined a little gravel road hardly visible through a growth of trees was the entrance to the winery and one of the three or four houses across the road was our targeted restaurant. Driving slowly, we saw tables in front of the pink house and knew we had found the highly recommended Peruvian restaurant.

We chose to sit out on the front porch beside our car parked at the side of the road. Perhaps it wasn't the most attractive place to sit, as all of the other patrons could be heard inside, but it was fun to watch the action on the street while we ate. We had been told by the proprietor of another restaurant that the National drink- the pisco sour was worth ordering at the Peruvian place because they were almost as good as his homemade ones. Mike was designated driver for this trip, so I had this blended drink or lemon, sugar, ice and Chilean whiskey while we kept to a single glass of wine. Wonderfully refreshing. Our waiter, Mort and his assistant, Lady (introductions made with lousy Spanglish) recommended the Cebiche (I had the salmon version; raw salmon in lemon with thin sliced red onion which was wonderful while Mike had the enslada mixta- a huge salad with avocado, hearts of palm and artichoke) followed by our main course of tacu tacu (beef chunks for Mike and seafood for me- stewed and served with a slab of rice, tomato and bean mixture). A bowl of salted huge puffed corn kernels sat in the center of the table for snacking. We never made it to dessert, as the servings were huge. That was about $20,000 pesos, or $40.

Our hotel includes breakfast with our stay, so each morning we enjoy a small plate of fresh fruit, mostly honeydew melon and watermelon, but sometime nectarines or cherries. Today we had figs from the tree near the pool that has been dropping fruit in the walkway all week (I have been quietly taking a fig or two sometimes). Along with the fruit we get pan, or little round biscuits that are served at every meal at every place we have eaten. Butter accompanies the pan at every meal, and jam at breakfast. We drink coffee con leche; fresh coffee is served here rather than the Nescafe that many places serve when you order coffee. Finally, eggs cooked to order. We ate them scrambled for the first few days after ordering with nods to whatever was offered, but eventually we figured out how to order our Oevos Fritos, or fried.

Included in the price of our lunches and dinners (we still have no idea how much they are) is unlimited wine. We are staying at a winery after all. Given the small number of guests here the meal selection is limited to salad with or without shrimp for the first course, two main dishes which are usually beef, chicken or salmon but has once been lasagna and once gnocchi, then two desserts which are always custard or ice cream. We have been trying to get out to lunch so that we get a little variety, but have eaten our dinners in so that we can walk rather than drive after the wine.

For all of you following our trip, we are doing our best to eat and drink everything offered so that we can save you the guesswork of what is good or not when you get here. I had better take off to prepare for another round. Til later....

Deanne

Sorry wrong day- come back tomorrow!

Arguing with bureaucracy is pointless no matter where you go. We had a devastating ten minutes in the Brazilian consulate yesterday. Although we have been enjoying ourselves immensely, at the back of our minds we have been sweating the fact that the visa required to join our already paid for cruise was not in hand when we arrived in Chile. We made that nasty drive in Santiago's web of crowded, busy, one way and pedestrian clogged streets in order to apply for our visa, then had to drive back to our secluded wine country retreat and wait to return on Wednesday to pick up the passports we had relinquished to the Brazilian authorities and the accompanying visa. So, after a sleepless night on Tuesday, we showered and dressed at 5:20 AM and left our hotel for the 2 1/2 our trip to Santiago. We were told to arrive precisely between 11:00 and 12:00 to pick up the documents, and not having any idea of commute traffic, we arrived at 8:30 to make sure we didn't miss it. Familiarity with Santiago helped, and we drove right to the very spot we had parked previously with little trouble. We spent an hour having coffee and a pastry, the breakfast offering at a little sidewalk cafe. This $1600 breakfast ($3.20 US) turned out to be coffee with a piece of lemon cheesecake. Not exactly health food, but a sugar and caffeine buzz to rev us up for dealing with the Brazilians.

As soon as the consulate opened on the 15th floor of a downtown office building we were standing in the hall outside the locked door of the documents office. One by one those of us in line in front of this closed door would ring the buzzer and be admitted singly to have our bags and pockets checked, handed a paper number from the dispenser at the reception desk, then be admitted to sit in one of the twelve chairs in the waiting room. As your number was called you went to the front of the room where you took a chair in front of a glass window to talk to the official on the other side of the glass, handing across the necessary paperwork through a small slot in the counter. Six officials on the other side of the glass when all desks were busy spent considerable time with each applicant, reviewing the applications and supporting documentation, and in the case of our first visit, sending us out on various critical errands such as depositing our application fee in their specific bank and returning with a stamped deposit slip. This time we waited anxiously for number 8 to be called. I had additional paperwork with me to further clarify some questions they had about the validity of our flight reservations out of Brazil at the end of our trip. We were ready.

The officials on the other side of the glass appear to sit in some sort of status positions. On our previous visits we noticed that the women officials always changed seats when the men arrived, relinquishing the center seats and sitting on the outside chairs. The men appeared to be the bosses, as questions of paperwork validity were always discussed with them before a decision was made. With our luck, the biggest, oldest and most bored bureaucrat, sitting in the center seat called number 8.

We handed him the receipt for our passport and he left his chair to go in the back. After several minutes he came back empty handed and returned our receipt to us. He pointed to the date at the bottom of the receipt and told us we were a day early- we were to return on the 17th. Mike told him that the women who had processed our application had counted out to Wednesday on her fingers, so here we were, on Wednesday. We aren't entirely sure he fully understand the discussion, but he arose from his chair and went in the back, returning with an English speaker we had not seen previously. By this point I was near tears which usually are wasted on bureaucrats, particularly women, but I could not imagine another sleepless night and five hours of additional driving. I explained that we had a misunderstanding with the woman we worked with and that it would be very difficult to leave and return the next day due to the driving distance. She didn't look convinced, but she disappeared into the back. Big tough guy told us to sit back down and wait by pointing to the waiting room. We sat there in utter frustration. Fifteen or twenty minutes later she returned to the window with our passports in hand. Apparently they were ready in the back and the big guy had missed them. Relief that felt just as good as hitting the ATM jackpot!

We were too keyed up to do anything but jump back in the car and head back to our wine country retreat. Even after the ride into town with dark and commuter traffic Mike took the wheel and got us out of the big city and onto the country roads. It is probably a testament to his worry about my driving that he always offers to drive. Highway driving in Chile is not like at home or in the relatively-similar-to-home roads of Spain. First of all, bicyclists are allowed to ride alongside the two lanes of traffic moving in each direction. Furthermore, the long distance buses pick up and let off riders at bus stops on the side of the road, so pedestrians are standing all over the side of the road. If you are trying to get somewhere on the East side of the road and your bus lets you off on the other side of the highway, you run across two lanes of traffic to the center divider, then wait for a clear spot and run across the other two lanes. Although not many of them try it twice, there are also dogs making the trek across the lanes of the road on which cars and trucks are doing 120 km per hour. If all of that is not bad enough, the roads are clogged with trucks that look like they were packed by the set designers of the Beverly Hillbillies. No wonder Mike prefers to drive! He has managed to get us back and forth on those roads with no near misses.... an unbelievable driver.

I will write later about the food and wine, so tune in again.

Adios (Chileans don't pronounce the s at the end of words that have an s, so take that into account when you read my Spanish)
Love,
Deanne

$200,000 Spells RELIEF

That is not a typo. We are so relieved to have found success on our mission to go ATM hopping in the tiny town of Santa Cruz, Chile. After having no success at raising cash on either or our ATM cards while in the mega-city of Santiago, and quitting after several tries so that our cards would not be confiscated, we had called Washington Mutual from here to ask about the cards. Apparently there are four or more banking networks that allow member banks to check the balance level of an account at another bank before authorizing a withdrawal. Washington Mutual belongs to the Mastercard network (Maestro) and Sirrus, but not the Visa network, Plus. All of the Chilean bank machines we tried were tied to Plus. We got the list of Maestro ATMs on the website and went to Santa Cruz to get cash. The Santander Bank branch that we tried had huge lines of people to see the teller, but we had only a short wait for the ATM. I guess the folks in town either don't trust the ATM or don't have accounts. The bad news is that our cards didn't work there either, even though the Maestro logo was prominently displayed.

We were very nervous by the time we walked across the main plaza to our next listed ATM in the Farmacia Ahumada. No cash would mean difficulties with things like paying the parking attendant watching the street where we parked, the toll collectors on the highway when we drive to Santiago tomorrow to pick up our passports and visas, and the miscellaneous vendors selling things like critically needed bottled water. After waiting our turn behind a threesome that was unable to get cash from the ATM in the pharmacy, despite three people trying to figure it out, we were both able to extract the maximum withdrawal - $100,000. Although the Chileans use the dollar sign in front of their currency, their pesos are worth much less than our dollar. The 100,000 pesos is the equivalent of $200US. Flush with cash and relief, we went on a spending spree and left town with a bottle of diet coke and two bottles of fizzy water. Yahoo!

Like almost all Chileans we have met, the man collecting parking fees on the city block where we stored our car spoke no English. We managed to have a friendly interaction with him in which we think we paid him correctly, although the price sounded like it was $100 at first, and ended up being $300, possibly a misunderstanding and possibly an opportunity to collect additional permit fees from the unwary. He was quite engaging, asking us a long winded question which we did not understand at all with the exception of two words, "Barak Obama". Not sure how to respond to the conversation gracefully, Mike got in the car saying, "we like that guy", confident that our answer would be as hard for him to understand as his question was for us.

Confident that we can move around now without running into a cash crisis, we went in search of a restaurant for lunch recommended by our hotel manager, Barbara. PanPanVinoVino, or BreadBreadWineWine is a large restaurant on the 75 km road between our hotel and the main Chilean North South highway, the PanAmerican which brought us down to the wine country. A historic building that once served as a bakery, it has been charmingly remodeled as a nice restaurant. Barbara had called its menu Chilean, which she said is a hodge podge of foods borrowed from other cultures. She has recommended a second restaurant to us, offering a Peruvian menu, which she finds to have a more authentic menu tied to the traditional Peruvian culture. For a total price of $44US including tip, we had a delicious meal of steak in red wine sauce and caramelized bell peppers (Mike) and lomo, or steak strips with green pea salsa (me) accompanied by potatoes in bacon and fennel and creamed corn and a glass of wine each.

On our return to the hotel we stopped for gas, a complex and confusing exercise both times we have done it. A uniformed employee pumps your gas but not until you have waited in your blazing and suffocatingly hot car long enough to hop out and wonder what to do to get service. A casually dressed teenage boy washes your window and hangs out in the area in case you want to tip him a few $100 coins.

Today is warmer than usual. As much as we appreciate the warmth after the constant rain, snow and cold of home at the holidays, we don't enjoy the flies and mosquitoes that accompany the heat. Once again, a la Italy, I am spotted with swollen mozzie bites. Our bedroom is too warm at night to even consider a closed window and screens are just non existent.

It is 5:00 PM and we have a minimum of three hours before dinner. Like Spain, the Chileans wouldn't think of eating before 9:00 although the restaurants open at 8:00 in consideration of their visitors. I am going to sign off and spend some quality time at the swimming pool to cool off. My apologies to all of you in the rain, snow and cold.

Love, Deanne

All's well that ends well

I guess that is a true statement, but until you have been penniless or should I say peso-less in a country where you know no one, do not speak the language, and can't find an ATM that works and on top of that with many places refusing credit cards, it can leave one a bit paralyzed. Making calls to Wamu and Capitol One only exacerbated the problem when they told us you must find an ATM that accomodates Star or Maestro ATM's ...One big problem...Star does not have any ATM's in Chile, AND the ATM's we tried with Maestro did not work!! Wamu was very cordial but in the final analysis their suggestion was to keep looking for an ATM that worked. Great!!... we are only about 50 Km between villages here in Central Chile. Our great hotel manager Barbara suggested we drive to Santa Cruz and try the local bank ATM's. Santender Bank did not work and I could hear Deanne stomach crunching even tighter..and then at long last we went to a farmicia and found the Bank of Chile ATM. It worked!!! As we gave each other high 5's some of the Chileans must have thought we hit the Peso jackpot! What a relief.

We are now back at our amazing digs at a place you would probably never want to leave. Our waiter Jaime, manager Barbara and the other guests have been great! Now we can start leaving them tips like eveyone else...we had to explain we would take care of them at the end of our stay and you could not help but feel they had heard that story before...@#$% Gringos !! However they are far too gentle for language like that. It seems everywhere we go the people are kind and considerate and well mannered and very good in sign language because our Spanglish would never get the job done. Because there are only 7 rooms and a few suites here we got to know some of the couples pretty well. They are all having a great time on their two week vacation until they hear we have been at this for 6 months:) and have another few to go. We have heard some great stories from a lot of different people as we travel and everyone seems to have a similar ATM or Visa situation.

I heartily reccomend that when traveling you adhere to the old adage of "measure twice, cut once" or you end up in a never ending tunnel of bureaucracy. We weren't sure if this is an initiation to have you return to the office on the wrong day to see which one of the spouses will go postal and the other meltdown. We thought it is what bored civil servants do for laughs, tricking you with a wrong date:) Well we didn't go postal or meltdown but Deanne gave her best Shirley Temple routine as the Seniorita had mercy on us after looking at the originating date and finding the passports in the back room. I always look for the bright side. I got to drive for 3 hours each way avoiding chikens, bicyclists , kids, workers crossing freeways, people running out onto the freeway to hail a bus, and be passed while driving 130 km an hour like I was standfing still!! I felt at times like we were in a video game...who will come onto the highway next, the man with the donkey or the cowboy riding along the side road. Driving in Santiago was fun...just like New York with one difference, most of the intersections have stop signs (PARE ) but no one pare's they just keep on rolling. this wouldn't be bad except that the millions of people walking across both streets do the same thing, they just keep walking. I learned a long time ago as an outside adjuster in the South Bronx the best way to dispearse a crowd infront of you is to reve the motor to the highest RPM possible!! people automatically think your either a beginner driver or a nut case and they quickly get out of the way. With total insurance coverage and no deductibles I was feeling very confident as we blasted our way through crowds and taxi's making it back out of Santiago once again. Back to the peace and calm of our hacienda knee deep in pesos, passports and visas. ps for you non New Yorkers I don't advise The massive RPM thing but if you are tempted, make sure you keep the vehicle in neutral with the hand brake on!!!!

For what its worth Chile is one of the best places we have been, restaurants are great as are the people. There is an obvious lack of graffiti, no gangbangers slouching down the steets and the teens respectful and obviously well brought up. Although the towns and cities are old they are also very clean.
We would DEFINATELY come back here!!!!
Mike

Heaven on Earth

Aside from the fact that we are living on credit cards and sweating whether we have enough cash to pay the tolls back to Santiago to collect our passports and Brazilian visas, we are fairly certain that we have landed in heaven. Our hotel, the Vina La Playa, www.hotelvinalaplaya.cl is awesome. With seven double rooms and 4 suites, it is small and intimate. We have been here 24 hours and we feel as if we know Maria, who serves our breakfast and cleans our room, Barbara, the manager with whom I negotiated our reservations, the front desk guy (no name yet) and our waiter (also no name yet). With the exception of Barbara, an Australian born Chilean with a parent from each country, they speak virtually no English. Most of you know that we speak comparable Spanish. We order our food and request things like a bottle of water for the pool with a combination of rapid fire Spanish (them), dumb-founded but friendly looks (us) and sign language to signal a response of some sort to a question we don't understand. Regardless, we seem to have found a place that feels like home. The resort is miles from anything except the fields of the Chilean Central Valley. Once we got off the main North/South highway, the Panamerican, in the small town of Santa Cruz, we drove for about an hour on small roads to get to our lodge, then turned in and drove a bumpy dirt road to get to the hotel. Believe me when I say that we weren't sure this was something we wanted to try as we approached the place. Yet, once we saw the picturesque lodge and met Barbara at the front desk we were won over.

The lodge is set too far away from anywhere to make it easy to take meals elsewhere. The food has been quite good though. Last night's dinner was a choice of garden salad or garden salad with shrimp(and lucky for us they were headless and shelled), beef fillet or salmon tandori, and ice cream or pudding. Because this is both a lodge and a winery, the wine glasses are bottomless. We have tried several and have landed on the unoaked chardonnay and the Cabernet as our two preferred wines, with a preference for the red. I have no idea if that is winery specific or true to the region, but we will have to drink more at other places to let you know. Maria, quiet and polite, served us coffee, fruit,and scrambled eggs this morning for breakfast. Every meal has been accompanied by biscuits. Lunch today was almost exactly like dinner, and the menu board for dinner has announced that dinner has replaced the fillet with chicken (pollo is a word we understand). So, over the course of the week we are here we may sicken of the food, but so far it has been great.

I didn't spend much time on our visa problems, but they have been a major source of concern. On the last leg of our trip I obtained our Australian visa on line by sending them our credit card numbers for the $40 charge and our US passport numbers. I really never focused on the need for visas for this leg of the trip until a few days before flying down here when I recognized to my horror that we are okay for Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, but missing a necessary visa for Brazil that could not be obtained at the airport upon entrance to the country like the Chilean visa, or by e-mail like the Australian visa. Mike was calm about the entire thing, trusting that we would be able to obtain one once we got to Santiago, or if all else fails, we would miss the cruise. As helpful as his calm demeanor was, I was still really nervous.

We showed up at the Brazilian consulate our first full day in Chile, after a long hour drive from the beach town where we are staying and a harrowing drive through the one-way maze of Santiago. We had all of the paperwork we needed for the visa with us except a copy of our exit itinerary that included both our names. The print out I had from the airline taking us from Rio de Janiero to Santiago did not have our names. I did have a copy of our itinerary from Santiago to Dallas, however, and a copy of our cruise itinerary, and that seemed sufficient. All we had to do was go to the consulate's designated bank and deposit the Chilean equivalent of $140 US each. That is when we found out that our ATM cards don't work in most of the machines in Chile. We finally scrapped together all of the US cash in our pockets and went to an exchange office where we converted enough cash to make the required deposit. Later, we called the bank and discovered the complexities of ATM networks. It turns out that Washington Mutual subscribes to the Maestro and Star networks but not the Plus network, the one installed everywhere we were trying to get cash.

So, we are sitting in our beautiful hotel with just enough cash to get back to Santiago on Wednesday when our visas are supposed to be ready for pick up. Hopefully we will find the right ATMS to obtain more cash (we searched the websites of the ATM services and got a list of places to try) so that we won't have to sweat the tolls and the parking fees. Until then, we are holding on to tip money (big pay off coming to the staff of the hotel at the end!) and every other peso we can find. We are charging all of our meals to our room account (unfortunately the dinner bills come without a price attached so we have no idea how deeply in arrears we are getting, but that is a problem for a later day.)

So, in the infamous words of Scarlet O'Hara, "I will worry about that another day..."

So long, Deanne

First Impressions of South America

Our flights to Dallas, then an hour later to Santiago, Chile were long and uneventful- just the way they are supposed to be. When we bought these tickets we requested the exit rows on the two seat side of the plane. So we didn't have to contend with people's heads in our laps or zero leg room. Wonderful. The only glitch is that our nine hour flight was in a coach bulkhead row, which the flight attendant says catches a draft from somewhere. She wasn't kidding. Mike was using two blankets and a sweater to ward off the cold on his already sore shoulder.

As we were coming into the airport we both had exactly the same impression. Imagine flying into Palm Springs airport- with the mountains surrounding a desert area and you have the approach to the Santiago airport. The Andes Mountains, which I had imagined to be huge snow covered mountains capable of crashing multiple planes seemed tamer and less scary than I had imagined. A bit of snow sat on top of the highest peaks, but given the summer weather here, most had melted away.

The airport was as modern and crowded as any airport in any big city. In fact, if you did not know you were in Chile, in South America, you could have been anywhere. I had imagined that security would be tight, perhaps with machine gun armed soldiers patrolling the airport like in Paris. It was not nearly so intimidating. Police are everywhere- but they seem friendly rather than imposing. After we left the airport we were pulled over for a driving infraction of which we were guilty but totally ignorant of the law, and in sign language we reached agreement to follow the law (drive in the lanes marked for cars and not for buses) and were dismissed with a friendly reminder that Mike was also breaking the mandatory seat belt law.

The folks at the Avis counter were very friendly and seem to have set the pattern we would see for the next few days. One guy can speak English in every situation we have been in, and the others, who don't speak a word, go to find him to deal with us. The Avis man, a good looking young man, convinced us that we needed to purchase the insurance at $22 US a day. When I remarked that he was a good salesman, and Mike told him he ought to work in the US in sales, he offered to come with us. In response for my request for directions, we got a hand drawn map that showed the airport and the surrounding roads with the directions to the appropriate highway.

Just as we left the airport, on the advice of our friendly Avis man, we stopped at the ATM and withdrew $100,000CH, or approximately $200US. Thank goodness. As it turns out, the ATM in the airport appears to be the only ATM in all of Chile in which our ATM cards work. The cash we withdrew has been used to pay tolls on the roads between the airport and our hotel in the beach town one hour away of Vina Del Mar. On our first full day in Chile we had to leave our hotel in the morning and drive back to Santiago, one hour away, to visit the Brazilian consulate. In all of our travels, we had missed the fact that our cruise leaving next weekend requires a Brazilian visa.

Driving in Santiago is as bad as driving in any city anywhere, with possible exceptions for the horrible driving I saw in Mumbai and Delhi and maybe Paris. The drivers here seem to follow the rules- they stay in lane and stop at lights, unlike their counterparts in India. The streets are a complex network of one way streets and reserved lanes; the inside lanes of the boulevard are for cars and an uncrossable barrier separates these lanes from the outer lanes for buses. Only in the intersections can you pass between these sections in order to make a right turn in the following block. Left turns can only occur every four or five blocks, where there is a lane to turn left or U-turn. Every few blocks two policeman are standing in the bus lanes waving over cars that are driving in this lane. That was our first, and hopefully only, experience with the Chilean police.

We had expected more poverty than we have seen. Yes, on the outskirts of Santiago we saw a shanty town that we are thankful we don't have to live in. But, by and large, the Chilean housing looks like apartments and single family homes everywhere else in the world. Santiago has high rise apartment buildings, lavish in the nice areas, and run down looking in the cheaper neighborhoods. The suburbs have single family homes that look like their counterparts elsewhere. As we have been driving we have seen a variety of housing, but overall it is much nicer than in the parts of Mexico we have visited.

One could not ask for better weather than we have experienced so far. The days have been in the 70-80 range with no humidity. The days are summer long, and the evenings have been perfect for walking. Our first two nights were spent in a hotel in Vina del Mar, the O'Higgins. Panned in Aunt Donna's Frommer guidebook, but called a stately old beauty in our book, the truth was somewhere in between. The location was right in the center of town on the main square, making it easy to explore the town. The wide halls, parquet floors and huge lobby speak to the long ago heyday of their hotel. It has aged and show every year. Tiles were missing around our bathtub. Cracks were apparent everywhere. But the service was good.

Service has been exceptional everywhere. If a job in the US can be done by one person, it is usually staffed by half a person, making you wish to have a bit more of their time. Here, there are five people doing the one person's job. When we stopped for gas I counted four attendants pumping gas, washing windows and providing customer serve. The hotel had a half dozen uniformed people tending to the occasional customer needing help. We never carried our suitcase without someone coming by to grab it and carry it for us. We had help parking our car and turning down our sheets. Always helpful and never standing around to collect a tip.

It is after 11:00 PM here (we are five hours ahead of the US west coast) and already know of the Seahawks defeat, so we are going to wrap up for the night. Tomorrow I will write about the awesome hotel were we are currently staying.

Til then,
Deanne

WE'RE BAAAAAAACK!

It has been blog silence for the past month, but we are back! I'll start with the plans for what is next, then I will wax nistalgiac for the past month of family visits.

It is currently 11:00 AM Wednesday morning, January 9th. We have been up since 4:00 AM when we arose from our four hour nap to quickly dress, pack the car and drive Caitie to the airport. After four weeks of traveling with Mom and Dad one would think this 18 year old would be ready to fly back to Italy, but I think all three of us were sad to say our goodbyes at the airport. She is off to Boston where she arrives later today to spend eight days with her two close friends, Catherine at Harvard who she has been close to since high school and Lara, her roommate at NYU. She doesn't have Boston weather clothing, so hopefully they will stay indoors or loan her something to stay warm.

Mike and I leave on a 3:30 flight to Dallas, then a midnight flight from Dallas to Santiago, Chile. We arrive tomorrow morning in Chile. We have arranged two days at some dumpy hotel (described in the guide book as built in 1934 and never remodeled) in a beach resort town, Vina del Mar. After that rehabilitative stay planned to help orient us to Chile, we take off in a rental car for the wine country. We have negotiated a week long stay in a resort in the wine country which we hope is as nice as the wine country stays we enjoyed in New Zealand. We will let you know.

After visiting the wine country we head back to the big city for a day in Vina del Mar or Valparaiso, then catch a Celebrity cruise for a 14 day trip down the coast of Chile, to Uruguay, then Argentina and finally ending in Rio. We arrive in Rio just as Carnival, the original mardi gras,begins. We have a three day hotel arranged and tickets to one night of revelery. I can't believe that they start the show at 11:00 PM and go all night, but we will do our best to hang in there and get some great photos to share.

After our first three days in Brazil, we have nothing planned until our departure on February 22. We have heard all about the wonders of Argentina from Auntie Donna and Uncle Gerry who visited with us yesterday and told us about their previous and upcoming trips to Argentina. So, we may not last long in Brazil, and instead spend our unplanned three weeks visiting beautiful Argentina. You'll just have to follow the blog to see what we are inspried to do.

We arrive back in the US at the end of February where we take up our dogsitting responsiblities in Palm Springs while my mother and sister take off on their cruise through Asia. We will be keeping up the blog so tht those of you who ever want to visit Palm Springs can hear all about it.

On April 11th, we fly to Fort Lauderdale to catch another cruise. This time we will spend 14 days crossing the Atlantic, stopping in Bermuda, the Azores, Portugal and Spain. We will have about ten days in Spain to drive from our final port in Barcelona to San Sebastian, a city in the Northern Basque area that we want to visit but couldn't reach on the last swing through Spain. From San Sebastian we fly to LA pick up our car in storage with my mother and drive back to Seattle to coincide our arrival with Caitie's return from college and the termination of the lease of our home.

Now let me tell you how we did over the past month. The blog left off as we were waiting for our flight in Queenstown. Although flying from New Zealand to Australia, then to LA is counterintuitive and takes about 8 hours of unneccessary time, beggers flying on freqeunt flier points can't be choosy and will agree to any waste of time that doesn't cost money. So, we sat for days and got home. Our first destination was LA where we visited with my mother for a few days, did laundry and took care of reorientation to the US errands. Then we set off for Vancouver. As we were standing in the line to clear immigration, we saw on the arrivals board that Caitie's flight had touched down, and sure enough, a few minutes later she appeared at the end of our line. We caught up with each other in the baggage area, and after lots of hugs and waiting we discovered that her bags were still in London. We filled out the apprpriate paperwork, rented our car, then took off for Bellingham.

Our ten days in Bellingham were wonderful. Son, Mike and his wife, Dana opened the entire house to us, including the entire downstairs where Caitie had a room along side the room for us. We met their new cat, the most amzaing cat I have ever seen. It plays tag! The basic rules are that you run and hide, at which time the cat tries to find you and when you spot each other the cat turns and runs to hide and you give chase. Amazing!

Sons Matt and Jonny joined us for Christmas at Mike and Dana's. We exchanged gifts and shared a dinner of turkey and fixings and all of the wonderful baked goods coming from Dana's oven. She made us rolls, banana and pumpkin bread, apple pie and wonderful cookies. It was great.

On Christmas night we all jumped in Mike's car and he drove us to the casino where Matt was hard at work. None of us had ever visited the brand new casino, so it was fun to see the place where Matt puts in his long work days. Jonny spent a few days in Bellingham then had to return to Ellensburg for his job. He had to drive through horrible snow storms to get to our family Christmas celebration, but it would not have been the same with out him.

After Bellingham we faced the snow in Oregon and drove to Walnut Creek, Califronia where we visited with daughter, Megan and son-in-law, Matt and the two most awesome grandchildren in the world, Athena and Ricky. We also had a nice visit with my father and his wife, Pat. We were in the Bay Area for four or five days, passing around a stomach flu that Megan had first and shared very politely with most of the rest of us. Other than the flu, the visit was terrific. Athena went shopping with Caitie and me- a true girl's activity at which she shines (I am predjudiced in that I think she shines at everything).

Finally, we drove to Southern California where we arrived about a week ago. We have visited with my sisters and nieces and my mother. Mike has been super patient hanging out with lots of women.

And now we go. Keep in touch. We have never been to South America, so this will all be new. Until a long tomorrow....
Deanne