Santiago - Feb 25, 2010

Sheri and Curtis arrived at Mendoza for one last time. We stayed at the Alamo Hostel which is a really nice spot with a big 50's style room. We chilled then headed on down to Parque San Martin. Being Sunday afternoon it was quite busy with picnickers and people sipping mate, and joggers, and guys cruising for girls, and vise versa. After, we headed out to restaurante La Florencia which has great food and wine. Next day we caught a bus to Santiago Chile on El Rapido bus lines. Everything was groovy until we hit the border then nothing was 'el rapido'. Waiting and waiting on the bus to drive into a big building. Finally the driver got us off the bus and we walked into the big building. We stood in one line then in another then wandered around and found the folks from our bus standing in a room. They searched our luggage then loaded it back on to the bus. They did a head count and we were 5 people short of the manifest. So after counting and recounting the other five people showed up because they had been standing in the first two long lines forever. They got the headcount straight then they x-rayed our handbags and searched them. We were released outside into a group of people who were standing around, so whatever searching and head counting that was done was useless.
It was a very windy road down the west side of the Andes and into Santiago three hours late. We took the Metro over to the Las Condes neighborhood and taxied over to the Marriott. Back to five star luxury. Santiago was busy. The setting is something like LA without the ocean. Comparing Santiago to Buenos Aires: Santiago is new and under construction and busy with new cars; Buenos Aires, except for Puerto Madero, is old and peaked out about a hundred years ago and has been slowly decaying since then. We boogied around the city and jogged in a nearby park. Sheri is obsessed with Chileno sandwiches. We tracked some down and ate a few. Chilenos love them. They are big and have things like green beans and thick slatherings of mayonnaise on them.
We caught a night flight back home at about midnight on Feb 24. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Chile, they suffered a level 8.8 earthquake about a day and a half after we left. Even though Santiago is 200 mile away from the epicenter it sustained damage and the airport is still closed.