On-the-Road Tales

Wrapped up mystay in Brasil with some errands, writing postcards at the 11th hour as usual and burning CDs of photos since I am already 1800 pictures in, my 7.5G of compact flash cards are not going to cut it. Marcelo dropped me down at the airport and I said goodbye to one of the few people in the world who probably knows me better than myself at times. My feelings were summed in a the movie the night before – Che`s thoughts about crossing borders. I am paraphrasing here but…There is a sadness in leaving a country behind but a gleeful anticipation in what lies ahead in the next country. So I boarded the plane at midnight, which stopped in Rio before heading to Santiago. I hate sleeping on planes because I am always afraid I am going to miss something. You know a lightening strike, a decent movie, a UFO outside. If I fall asleep I will never know what I missed! Unfortunetly. this always leaves me bleary eyed and miserable stumbling around the next day but maybe I will learn. So I watched the snowy Andean ridgeline below reflect back moonlight and practically glow in the dark.

We landed in Santiago at o dark thirty and after waiting with everyone else in line for immigration I was informed Americans had to pay a 100$ reciprocity fee. Fabulous – I trotted all the way back across the airport and then returned to find absolutely no one at the 10 or so booths that had just been occupied. I could have sailed right into Chile without anyone knowing I was there. I reckoned that would cause me problems later on so I started searching for a live being. Apparently the entire immigration staff was glued to a laptop watching some utube video. The guy who finally dragged himself away was not impressed I disturbed him. Santiago airport looks like it is brand new. I went upstairs, checked in for my next flight and in an hour was in the air watching the sunrise out the window. The view on the 3 hour flight down below was captivating. A serious of hills, volcanos, lakes, ice fields and pampas. Chile is incredibly long and has just about every type of region and climate across its length.

As we approached Punta Arenas, I was pretty disappointed. Almost the end of the world, 11000 miles or so south of DC, I was expected to have to sidestep icebergs to get to my hostal. I did not expect this windswept, flat, barren brown desolation of a place. The only color on the somewhat curved horizon was the red-orange of a burning refinary flame. The shuttle ride was no better, bleak sort of place but I would learn its treasures are there just a little spread out. I did not have a place to stay so I jumped out of the van at the first stop where someone else had a reservation. Hey – if he did not enough research to find somewhere and he had a backpack, good enough for me. Turned out to be an old mansion and decent enough for 15$ a night. The shared bathroom was a little rough, everytime you lifted a wet foot, the cracked floor tiles would come with it. It was like a jigsaw puzzle trying to get them back in again. All part of the fun.

At this point I probably should have slept but there was a whole new town to explore, so off I went.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.