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.