Last day in Santiago and then home

Today is the last day, as my flight home is this evening.

Tricia, Amy and Laura and I went to Sky Costanera to catch the view from the top. There is a lot of smog, trapped by the magnificent Andes. The city of Santiago is quite large, now that we can see it from this height. We can also see San Cristobal Hill below us.

Afterwards, Amy and Laura head to their new hotel, and Tricia and I take an Uber to La Chascona, Pablo Neruda's house in the city. It's a unique place, designed for his secret lover at the time (who he eventually married). The house is small and compact with narrow metal stairs connecting the different levels. The rooms are covered with art work as he was friends with many renowned Latin artists. He also collected unique items from different places, where he was stationed representing Chile in different official capacities. The neighbourhood where the house is located is Bellavista where we dined at Como Agua para Chocolate. It's a really cool neighbourhood with lots of restaurants, bars, small shops. We find a plaza with restaurants where we have a late lunch which drags on because the waiter screwed up somehow, which is annoying. To make me feel better, I got myself a gelato and they have lucuma! It's just as delicious as ice cream as it was in the cake.

We get back to the hotel for our shuttle to the airport with a few other people from our group. Anne-Marie and Sheryl are on my flight but they're in first class.

The flights are smooth and my first experience with Global Entry (in Houston) is great!

It's so good to be home, after a truly unique and memorable vacation.

Day after-relaxing winery tour and more stargazing

Today we get a little bit of a later start, although many people bail on the day due to our long day yesterday.

We are heading to Santa Rita winery this morning south of Santiago. The location is beautiful, right at the foot of the Andes. We have another delicious lunch with wine flights in a gorgeous room. After lunch, we are given a tour of the winery caves, fields and bottling, as well as a little history of the home and founding woman. The tour ends with a tasting and shopping.

In the evening, our group, now with everyone back in the game, takes three small buses to head to Observatorio Astronomico Andino, which is a private tourist observatory up in the mountains on a diet road. We are given drinks and appetizers before getting a little history of observatories in Chile, which has some of the clearest skies on Earth. In addition to the renowned scientific observatories, there are many private ones open to tourists, like the one we are at now.

Before dinner we break up into 3 groups to explore the stars-with the naked eye, with medium telescopes, and with large telescopes. We see Jupiter, Saturn, a couple for clusters and a nebula. The sky is actually not as dark as what we experienced in Rapa Nui, however the scientists are able to give us information about what we are looking at.

Dinner is in a freezing cold room, which makes the slow Chilean meal service a little less enjoyable. The Chilean soccer team is playing in the semi-finals, but lost, so the evening has a certain pall over it from the service staff.

After dinner we take the long winding road back to our hotel.

Eclipse day!

Today is eclipse day! We have to leave at 2:45a to make sure to get to La Serena in time, so everyone rolls out groggy in the middle of the night to the giant bus. Today we have 2 drivers because of how long the drives will take. We also have a woman on the bus who acts as a server for food and drink. I slept a good chunk of the way up. We stopped at a rest stop at about 7:45a for about an hour to give everyone a bathroom break. We get to La Serena about 10a. After a short drive through town with Claudio giving us info about it, we stopped at La Recova market. There are a number of stalls selling the typical trinkets (reminded me of stuff we saw in Guatemala and Panama City), a Wal-Mart type store and food stands.

From the market we head to Tololo Beach Club where we will be parked for the duration. We have a private area of the restaurant and an exclusive area of the beach for ourselves. The eclipse starts around 3:30p so first is another meal with pisco sours, appetizers, seafood and dessert. I'm going to have to be rolled out of this country. Shortly before the eclipse, the hard core photographers in the group start staking out this positions for this cameras and tripods. The weather is clear, sunny, beautiful. By the time the eclipse starts, the beach is crowded on all sides of us (but not right in front). There are vultures, pelicans and seabirds all along the beach and in the air. A police helicopter flies back and forth. During the eclipse from first contact, the excitement builds. By about the 3/4 mark, the temperature suddenly drops. When the sun begins to be blotted out, the crowd cheers and when totality hits, there is applause. I started getting emotional. The sun is so beautiful, with the deepest darkest black center and a beautiful glowing ring. The sky is dark but with a beautiful yellow orange glow at the horizon, as if it was sunset but there is no sun on the horizon. Others saw Venus, they saw the birds fly away at totality, they saw the lights across the bay turn on. The duration of totality is around 2 min but it feels like seconds. When the second diamond ring occurs, it is so bright and clear that in my head I felt like there should be a sound effect of a 'ding!'. As the sun returns, the birds all return at once. The crowds disperse quickly. There will be another hour or so before the sun returns completely. And then another hour or so when the sun sets.

We leave around 6:30 for the long drive back. There are massive traffic issues, most of it I slept through. We don't get back to Santiago until 4:30a

Valparaiso, Vina del mar and the down side of large group travel

Today is our excursion to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. It takes a couple of hours to get there. The flat part of Valparaiso looks like any typical Latin American town (kind of reminds me of the new parts of Panama City), but the hills are quite special. The houses are all built willy-nilly into the hills with all different building materials and styles. The street art is what makes this area special. It started in the 60s and was so popular that it became a status symbol for the people living here, and was exported to other cities. The bus took us to the top of a hill and we walked down so we can explore the area in my detail. Claudio pointed out a few key murals on the way with some interesting history.

At one point, we were unfortunately delayed by one person in the group who turned out to be less mobile than he realized. Claudio had to take care of him which caused the rest of us to have to wait around for an hour. When he finally returned, we walked to the funicular to get down the hill back to the flats and meet up with the bus. Our next stop is Vina del Mar, which is a resort-y area that has the feeling of Miami, lots of high rise condos overlooking the beach. We drive by the casino and the famous flower clock before heading to Tierra de Fuego restaurant for lunch. This meal started with many delicious tapas appetizers, more pisco sours by the waterfront.

Our evening meal is dinner in the restaurant preceded by a short talk by Dr Krupp. He continues the info regarding the eclipse, which is tomorrow. The meal is fine but we have been eating so much that I just picked at my meal. We have a very early start tomorrow at 2:45a so everyone turns in early.

Santiago tour and lots of eating

Today is a city tour to explore Santiago. After breakfast at the hotel, Claudio meets us with a giant bus. He points out several sights on our way to the funicular to the top of the hill to see a statue of the Virgin Mary. The weather is quite foggy so we don't get a great view. By the time we go down, it's starting to clear up and you can see how close and dramatic the Andes are. We drive through some ritzy areas of town towards the city center where we pass many government buildings and plazas. The main church is quite spectacular on the inside. There are police everywhere. It's a Sunday so many streets are quite deserted but the Plaza de Armes is very busy.

Lunch is at La Casa Vieja, and is on the late side. The place is packed. The food is delicious but portions are huge. We had pisco sours or sparkling wine to start the meal. Starter was empanadas with ceviche. My main was a fish with potatoes. The potatoes here are amazing. The dessert is an amazing cake called lucuma meringue cake. Lucuma is a local fruit. The cake is sweet but light. So good! We all roll back to the bus for a short break at the hotel before an evening lecture. We learned a bit about each of the tour guests. Dr Ed Crumb talked about eclipses in general and what to expect.

Then we gathered back on the bus for dinner. Our location is Como agua para chocolate, which is Chilean-Mexican food based on the book. This is another amazing meal, with huge portions. I had Chilean sparkling wine this time. My starter was ceviche. I've had it several times and they are so fresh and delicious each time. My main is conger eel with cheese sauce over creamed spinach. The eel was so good I even ate some spinach! Dessert was a three layer chocolate mousse cake with berry sauce. I didn't finish any of the dishes but they were all terrific. We rolled out of there to the bus for the ride back to the hotel at around 10:30.

Meeting the FOTO group

Today after breakfast at the Hilton, we are picked up by Claudio to be driven to our hotel in Santiago, the El Bosque. Claudio will be our guide for the duration.

After settling in, I sent a note to the group to see who was in already. Turned out Joyce, Joel, Marilyn and Suzanne are here. We met them at the hotel restaurant for a late lunch and long catch up session. Then Amy showed up and joined us for an even later lunch. After her quick snack, I joined Amy to go to the nearby mall, Costanera Center. We later found out it is the largest mall in South America and the connected tower is the tallest in South America. The place is packed, and the H&M even more so. Amy picked up a few things for Laura who had flight issues and will not have her luggage the first day.

Dinner tonight is at the hotel where we meet most everyone. There are several people who have still not arrived.

Sunrise on Rapa Nui and return to Santiago

Our last day on Easter Island started with an early morning to see the sunrise at Tongariki. We were joined by Laurent who had been with us on the two days of our tours. It had been raining the night before so the morning was dicey. It's also pitch black! It took about 1/2 hour to get to the site. There were many vehicles already there. We stayed in the vehicle for quite awhile because it kept raining. The sunrise was not so dramatic because of heavy clouds but we got out to take some photos and did get a little pink ribbon. It was nice to have a final communing with the majestic moai at this beautiful site.
We were taken directly to the airport. It wasn't really open yet at this hour (and really there's just the one flight). After a lot of lining up and waiting, we boarded a nice new 787 with comfy seats and nice video screens for a smooth ride back to Santiago. During our few days on the island, we found out that the US government built the runway here, which is one of the longest in the world, as an emergency site for the space shuttle. Hence the large modern planes that fly here.

On arrival at Santiago, we ended up back at the Hilton. Dinner in the restaurant coincided with the Chile/Colombia soccer game which Chile won in dramatic fashion on penalty kicks. Everyone at the hotel was so happy! It took awhile for us to get our cheque though.

Volcanoes, bird cults and more moai

Today's itinerary consists of two half day tours. After breakfast, we are picked up again by the bus with the Frenchman and Australian older lady rejoining us. We add a Japanese couple with their own guide. Only Mateo joins us as a guide. We start today at Orango, where the birdman ritual took place, next to the other volcano on the island, Ranu Kau. This spot is extremely windy. There are two small motus (islets) off the coast where manutara birds used to nest. Competitors would live in little stone huts until the competition. Then they had to climb down the cliff, swim to the islet, steal an egg, put it in a special crown eggholder, swim back and climb back up the hill to present to their chief. The winner lives in seclusion for a year with a village virgin. From the site of the birdman cult, we walk to the other side of the hill to see into the volcano. It's really a spectacular place, with a small lake filled with water plants. I've never seen anything like it! The sun is still low in the sky and makes the water shimmer. After we explore this area, our next stop is a view site from the other side so we can take photos. Our final stop of the morning is a place with several unrestored moai, including one that is clearly a female with two heads. Most moai aren't distinguishable by gender. There are also a few 'hair' stones where we can see the hole carved in to slot it onto the statue's head.

We have a long lunch break so we first go to the tourism office to get our passport stamped with a special moai stamp. Then lunch at a waterside restaurant where I have a fresh whole fish with caper and pineapple sauce and fresh maracuya juice. We then walk back to the hotel for a short rest before walking back to the rendezvous point, passing a post office to send some postcards to the nieces & nephews.

We add a young Asian girl with white hair to the group before our first stop at a private moai. The owner of the property allows tourists to visit. There is only one moai on a large platform and we are told this one is aligned with the solstice on June 21. The next stop is the quarry for the pukao or hair stones. There are several of varying sizes. The stones need to be transported to the final site of the platforms, up to 12 km away. The view from the hill is amazing. Our final stop of the day is at a site with 7 moai facing the ocean. We can also see the pukao quarry hill from here. The weather turns just as we are finishing up and we all rush to the bus and are taken to our hotels.

For dinner, we wander back into town to a place near the street where our hotel is located that always looked busy. The food is fine, but I'd say our best meal was the place we ate on our first day. We also stopped at the tour company office to book a seat on a sunrise visit back to Tongariki. They will then take us straight to the airport after. Finally, we stopped at a small market to pick up morning snacks and have a pastry for dessert.

First day in Rapa Nui

Today is our full day tour. We were woken by roosters quite early but lazed around in bed until 7:30a. After a nice breakfast of fried egg, local bread with cheese and cold cuts and fruit juice, our guide came to pick us up. We were on a bus with maybe 20 people by the time we picked everyone up. Our guides are Mateo (?) who speaks French and English, and Nico who speaks Spanish and English. We end up in Mateo's group for the duration. Our first stop is at Akahanga, where the kings lived. The moai are not restored on the platform so we see them lying down, many face first. There are remnants of a small village, crematoria where they burned their dead and a small cave for protection from rain. Mateo gives us a little history of the people and the place.

Our second stop is Tongariki, where they have set 15 moai back on their platform. Only one has his pukao, or hair stone. The statues have their backs to the ocean, facing what was their village. The site is beautiful and quite dramatic. We have quite a bit of time to take pictures from various angles and locations. After this, our next stop is Ranu raraku, which was a quarry for the moai as well as an extinct volcano. There are moai of various sizes and shapes scattered all over the hill in various stages of completion. Some of them are buried up to their necks so their faces could be completed more easily. Walking the trail takes us quite close to many of them. The view from the hill is amazing. At this site are also stone chicken houses. There are actually a lot of chickens on this island! We had them running around us at lunch, freaking out Tricia who has a phobia of them. Meanwhile our lunch was a delicious bbq chicken. The small bananas they gave us were delicious, much better than the standard Cavendish bananas we get here.

On the way to our next stop after lunch, the bus does a brief stop at a photo site so we can take a photo of the Tongariki ahu with the sun facing them.

Our next stop is a location with an unrestored giant moai as well as a special magnetic rock. The large rock is surrounded by smaller ones set at the cardinal compass points. We aren't allowed to touch the rock any more so there's no way to demonstrate the magnetic effect.

On our final stop of the day, the beach at Anakena has a few moai on a platform and a beautiful sand beach. The water is quite cold so I only dipped my feet in. It was a nice relaxing stop for an hour nonetheless.

In the evening, we hooked up with a group doing stargazing tours. They showed a short presentation about how the Polynesian people navigated via the stars and about some of the constellations we will see. In our group were several eclipse chasers, including a honeymoon couple. There was also a young Yale graduate doing some traveling before moving to Texas for a new job. The group is split into two vehicles to first go to Anakena beach. One of the guides sings a special Rapa Nui song for us in the pitch dark. They then set up cameras to do light painting photos with the moai. The sky is quite overcast but the photos are pretty neat. They then take us to another site where we can see the sky clearly with the Milky Way, Southern Cross, Jupiter and Saturn, several star clusters, all visible through telescope, high power binoculars or with the naked eyes. They provide hot chocolate, cake and a legend about how the god Maui made the stars with a net of pearls. It was a really fun evening with us getting back at midnight.

Heading to South America

The start to my Chile and Easter Island adventure started at around noon on Sunday at LAX. By the time I'd reached Santiago (via a 3.5 hr stop over in Houston), it was 8:30a Monday. Thank goodness for club lounge access!

Tricia had arrived earlier so by the time I got to the airport hotel, she had already settled in. We went down for breakfast and spent the rest of the day lounging around the hotel room. We had a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant (crab and avocado timbale for me) and turned in early as we had a 3a shuttle for our early flight to Easter Island.

After not enough sleep, we got to the airport in good time, spent some time confused about where to check in our luggage, wondered about the pack of kids (yep also going to Easter Island), found an airport lounge to grab a light breakfast, observed the many, many boxes of Dunkin' Donuts going on the trip, and arrived at the gate to wait for our flight. Which ended up delayed for 2hrs. The announcements were in Spanish (of course) and rarely in English so I asked someone waiting with us who also spoke English what they were saying. She said the Chilean Spanish is impossible for other Spanish people to understand.

It was close to noon when we finally arrived on the island. The airport is tiny and rustic. The island is small, the whole thing can be taken in from the windows on the airplane. After picking up our luggage, getting to our hotel, waiting for the twin bed room to be set up, we rested a bit before heading out to explore the town and find food. It's a short walk to the main drag. The town is quite rustic. There are a lot of dogs lollygagging around. We bought our park passes ($80US in cash) and found a nice place for dinner/lunch. I had a delicious swordfish with mango/pineapple sauce and a pisco sour. Tricia had a ceviche. We chatted with a young Asian American couple from San Franciso, also here for the eclipse, and with the waitress about living on the island. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a couple of shops and asked about a stargazing tour. Back at the hotel, I tried using my new tripod to take sunset pics (not as dramatic as the ones in LA, their air is too clean) and we tried to stay up to a decent hour before hitting the hay.

Santa Fe

Edie invited a few close friends and family to join her in Santa Fe over President's weekend and Mei and I were able to join her.

She and Bill booked a room at Inn of the Turquoise Bear so we chose to do the same. We flew into Albuquerque airport on Friday afternoon. The airport (they call it a 'sunport') feels VERY southwest, with Saltillo tile floors, Pueblo style pots and decor all around. It's about an hour drive to Santa Fe. We arrived to find a walled compound with luminarias all around the top of the walls. It was dinner time when we got in so after finding our cozy room, we headed out to the main plaza to find some food.

All the trees in the plaza are lit up so at night it looks beautiful. The weather is cold and clear. We stopped at Thunderbird Bar for some shrimp and Frito pie (which is a New Mexico specialty). We managed to get a quick stop into the Five & Dime for some souvenirs before it closed and then headed back to the hotel and bed.

In the morning, we went to the main building to check in and get breakfast. They had a big table with a great spread of yogurt, fruit, breads, and cereals, as well as a daily special. Today was frittata, chicken sausage and tomato salad. The food was delicious. The rooms are wonderfully decorated with local art and prints. Edie's family had arrived quite late last night so we greeted each other over breakfast.

We all set out for the day to walk to the Georgia O'Keefe museum with a detour at the state capital building. Again we found local art liberally displayed throughout. It seems New Mexicans are proud to show off their local artists at every opportunity. The O'Keefe museum is small but has a wide variety of styles of her art.

After the museum, we walked back to the Inn to drive to a local donut shop, Whoo's. We met up with Vid and his daughter Mira. Next to the donut shop is a chocolate place called ChocolateSmith. From the doughnut shop, we made a brief pit stop at a local market for some more substantial eats and then headed to Canyon Rd for some gallery hopping.

The variety of art styles on display in the galleries on this street is remarkable. We stopped at about 5 galleries and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. By this time, we were all pooped out so we headed to Vid's AirBnB to rest. Eventually, Russell's family arrived to make the party complete.

Dinner that night was at Sazon. This turned out to be a remarkable meal. The restaurant is decorated (again) with art. The food is Mexican inspired but with fine dining level creativity. We started with small samples of 6 moles served with mini tortillas (which were soft and delicious). The black bean soup of the day was one of the best things I've ever eaten. The chef came to say hello to our table after our starters. We all thoroughly enjoyed our mains. Mine was duck with a rich poblano mole (not too spicy). Mei had salmon with a different sauce. The chef's special dessert was a creation that revealed different flavours as it melted on your tongue from ginger to avocado ice cream to chili. Really remarkable. The volcano cake and pastry cream with berries were both excellent as well.

We finished the night back at the BnB with whiskey and girl scout cookies.

The next morning, after another delicious breakfast of blue corn pinon pancakes and maple bacon, Mei and I said goodbye to Edie, Bill and the girls for our drive back to ABQ and flight to LAX. We had a short visit but we both decided Santa Fe is worth returning to again, but maybe in warmer weather!