Friday - Checked out of Rio Serrano very early this morning to get to the Lago Grey glacier trip. The hotel packed an early breakfast for us which was a joke - bread so stale you needed to soak it in your mouth before it would soften up enough to swallow.

Lago Grey glacier was amazing. I was thinking maybe we would skip it because we'd seen glaciers on the rio serrano river navigation trip, but I'm glad we didn't. This glacier is truly stunning - Stacy will post some pictures of it soon. The boat could use a bit of an engine upgrade, the 3 hour trip should probably have only been 1.5 hours. Ryan got pretty tired of the boat ride, but it was definitely worth doing.

On our way out of the park, we stopped to do the short walk to Salto Grande, the waterfall walk that was too windy when we'd attempted it on Tuesday. It was pleasant, very short. There was a small cafeteria near the trailhead, where we paid $60 for very pathetic sandwiches.

We got back to Puerto Natales with a full quarter tank of gas remaining, where we re-fueled. Gas here costs about 820 pesos/liter, which is about $5.10/gal. Interestingly, the grades are 93/95/97 octane.

The drive back to Punta Arenas is long, but was made shorter by quiet kids and Stacy reading aloud. We got back into town around 7:00pm, where we looked for accommodations. We ended up in a hostel near downtown. We were up in the very top of an old building - not a single surface was level or plumb. Since we had to wake up so early the next morning for our flight, our total time in this hostel was about 7 hours - for a cool $130.

Saturday - Woke up super early to get to the airport. Dropping of the rental car was simply a matter of parking it at the airport and dropping the keys through a hole in a desk inside. We were dismayed to see a much longer check in line than we would have liked, but ended up making the flight about 10minutes before they opened the doors for boarding. Ryan did a lot of homework on the flight, Ella slept on my lap the whole time.

We had a 4-hour layover in Santiago where we ate more crappy sandwiches, but had good wifi.

The 2-hour flight from Santiago north to Calama was uneventful, but very turbulent. I think it was the most turbulent flight I've ever been on, with lots of stomach churning drops and weaves. The kids did fine, but I was pretty green by the time we got off. I couldn't get off that plane fast enough.

In Calama, a guy from our hotel (Tierra Atacama) was there to greet us with a sign! That was a first for me. He drove us to the hotel (another hour-twenty). This hotel is really, really nice. We're in a 3-bedroom suite with a patio and view of the nearby volcano. It's really stunning. The service and food here are the best we've had in Chile.

I really feel like this trip will feel like 3 very separate experiences:
Santiago: Stressful and hectic city
Torres del Paine: Gorgeous vistas and glaciers, very remote.
Atacama: Luxurious and relaxing restort in the middle of gigantic, stark desert.

Patagonia & Happy Thanksgiving!

Carl gave you most of the details, now I get to fill in with pictures :)

Thank goodness it's so amazingly beautiful around here! That was the only thing that made Monday's drive enjoyable. We saw some really cool animals, tons of guanacos, 2 rheas (like ostrich, and that was extremely lucky because they were hours apart and are rare here), andean condors, tons of sheep, and several black chested buzzard eagles.

We have seen a several cool adventure vehicles. Carl was extremely envious of this one.

As we crossed over a small hill we found hundreds of cows in the road! There were several guachos (Chilean Cowboys) with their dogs, trying to herd them. We literally turned the car off for about 10 minutes while cows of all sizes streamed around us. Small cows would take off and the dogs would chase after it. It was fascinating to watch!

It was worth it, this is the room from our hotel room!! The Rio Sorrano is a decent hotel. The staff really warmed us to us after being here for several days (most of the guests are here for one night in large tour groups). They were especially wonderful with the kids. The food was better than we have had elsewhere in Chile, but still not great. 

I will add lots more Sunday when we have better internet (we hope...)

Monday - Checked out of our surprisingly nice hostel in Puerto Natales, getting gas on the way out of town. Then started our nearly eternal drive from  Puerto Natales to the national park of Torres del Paine.

Now, this drive in theory should only take about 2.5 hours. However, we managed to stretch it to about 7 hours. The roads in the park roughly form a giant circle. You enter via the southeast part of the circle, and our destination is at the western edge of the circle. Naturally, we drove the southern route. About 20km from our destination, the road closed. Crap. We'd already gone about 70km. A guy posted at the road closure looked at us with pity as he confirmed we needed to backtrack 70km, and then drive about 150km around the top of the circle nearly back to where we were. All while watching the gas needle drop.

As we backtracked, we figured we'd make a little 10km detour to get gas in Cerro Castillo. But no - they had no gas until morning. Turns out gasoline is very hard to come by here. We headed into the park, and the silver lining was that this is just about the most beautiful place to drive, with stunning views of the mountains, as well as wildlife (Condors, Eagles, Lesser Rheas, and Guanacos).

We arrived at our hotel at dinnertime, very glad to have arrived with just under 3/4 tank. Thankfully our trusty Optra XL sips gas.

Tuesday - Our plan for this day was to go on a short hike that is reported to have some of the most stunning views in the world. We drive there (using precious gasoline!), only to have two locals beg us to turn around. The winds here were topping 100mph, and they both said it would be absolutely treacherous for children. One said they'd seen a kid literally picked off his feet by the wind. So much for our hike. We ended up doing a less windy boardwalk hike near the Explora hotel and a small waterfall. Turns out Tuesday was exceptionally windy, even by the standards of this extremely windy place.

Wednesday - I have not ridden a horse for 22 years. Against my better judgement, I signed us all up for a horseback riding excursion. We each got our own horse, even the kids, but theirs were led by the guides - a "gaucho" named Miguel, and an english speaking Chilean guide named Jorge.

I swear that horse could sense my hatred of the beasts. It did not like me, it kept trying to nip at my ankles. I wanted it to walk like the rest of the horses, but it did not want to. We eventually reached an uneasy truce, however, as I let it trot and gallop a little bit, hanging on for dear life. Stacy's horse wasn't much better, as it tried to decapitate her on every low-hanging branch it could find. The trip was gorgeous though, and Ella had a complete blast.

Thursday - Today we signed up for a full day excursion to navigate the Rio Serrano river by Zodiak. We got bundled up in some super heavy duty antarctic suits to protect us from the wind and weather. Turns out today's weather was actually great, with very little wind, and we were a bit hot in all our layers. We got to two different glaciers, took a little hike, and ended the trip with some great bbq lamb. Happy Thanksgiving!

Some Random Pictures & Memories of Santiago

If you ask the kids what we ate and drank in Chile they will probably tell you that they drank a lot of juice and ate a lot of dessert. Carl has finally worn me down after years and I am learning to enjoy some wines.  A classic Chilean drink is the Pisco Sour, it's pretty good, but often too sweet. 

This was the pool at the Holiday Inn in the Santiago Airport.

As we were packing up to leave our AWESOME apartment in Lastarria (living room below), we watched a protest about education from our balcony. 

The kids are taking their parkour homework seriously ;)

Supposedly one of the world's best ice cream shops, we may agree!

View from the pool level of our first hotel, the Bellas Artes Aparts.

I thought it was really cool that there is a large course in Santiago where major streets are shut down every Sunday for people to come out and run and bike. There are attendants helping with road closures and even refueling stations. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the history included in our Tours for Tips Tour. This is the Palacio de la Moneda, where the presidential offices are. It was where the coup took place 9/11/73. 

Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales & Isla Magdelena

It's so nice to be out of the city! Punta Arenas was uneventful as Carl mentioned, except for a really yummy restaurant (Torques), where we literally ordered one of everything on the menu. My favorite was a guacamole salad with wheat berries. The penguin trip was amazing!

 This was making breakfast on a park bench in Punta Arenas this morning since no restaurants are open on Sunday mornings. I'm getting pretty sick of breads and pastas. Looking forward to LOTS of meat and veggies when we get home.

 The yellow corner building was our hotel, The Plaza Hotel. I should have taken a picture of the key. It was ancient, and the only way to lock your door was to lock yourself in with it. This also made me realize that there were no smoke detectors!!

 Finding he replica of Magellan's ship was super cool since Carl recently read a book about Magellan's journey (Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen). The kids were more interested than I expected. The tour included an audio tour in English which I really enjoyed.

After driving two and a half hours to Puerto Natales we were running low on patience. So we sat in our warm car while the kids ran around in the FREEZING cold. This park reminds me of the playground on the north shore of Lake Tahoe because of it's amazing views. 

Driving all around town looking for our hotel (because Google maps didn't have streets) we found a smoldering fire station that had burned this morning!!

The stray dogs are everywhere, and some of them are very cute. This one (which the kids named Ginger) followed us all around town while I tried to convince Carl to get the kids a puppy for Christmas ;) 

Couldn't resist taking a picture of this street which must be very happening when it's not a Sunday afternoon- it was lined with bars and strip clubs. 

The hostel that we are staying at is great, Alcazar. The kids did some homework tonight while Carl and I enjoyed some wine. 

-Stacy

Patagonia Sur

Friday - Checked out of our amazing apartment in Lastarria this morning. Stored our luggage in their office and wandered around for a bit, trying to figure out what we're going to do with our last week in Chile. The original plan was to come back to Santiago, but now we're thinking that we should check out northern Chile instead - quite a few travelers we've talked to have raved about it. Being absolutely sick and tired of cobbling together logistics constantly, we opted to book the week at an all-inclusive place in San Pedro de Atacama. In the afternoon we took a taxi to the airport to spend the night at the Holiday Inn which is steps away from the airport. The kids liked it - it had a nice indoor pool which we spend the late afternoon swimming in.

Saturday - Woke up early in the Holiday Inn by the airport, but still managed to get to the airport with not much time to spare. Lucky for us, an agent took pity on us and got us checked in and our bags checked quickly. The 4 hour flight to Punta Arenas was uneventful. Stepping out of the airport we were greeted with a blast of cold - WOW the weather is different down here! Brr, glad we brought all that winter gear. That's not all though - Punta Arenas seems a world away from Santiago. Everything here seems so much easier and less stressful. Renting a car went well, it's nice have wheels and not have to deal with taxis and buses and the metro for a while. Our hotel room is in an old building with two tiny beds - Ryan ended up sleeping on the floor. We ate at a small restaurant that had some of the best food yet - chicken soup, salmon, and a waitress who adored the kids.

At 4:30 we went on an amazing excursion - a two hour ferry ride to Isla Magdalena, where there are tens of thousands of Magellanic penguins. It was really incredible - we had to stay on a path but the penguins didn't really care about the path - many of them were busy gathering seaweed for their nests and had to cross the path in order to do so. For me it was really a "bucket list" type of moment, and was made even better by the kids adoring it as well. Took about 200 pictures, including of penguin chicks that had just hatched.

Sunday - Woke up in Punta Arenas. Because it was Sunday, nothing was open for breakfast. We drove around looking, and luckily saw a supermarket open. Peanutbutter and Nutella sandwiches for breakfast it is! Just in time too, Ryan was in desperate need of a crankenstein antidote. We ate breakfast in the central square of Punta Arenas. As we were about to leave, we heard what sounded like a marching band coming into the square. Turns out it was some sort of military procession. There was a regiment of riflemen behind the band, and then they met up with some higher-up looking folks in what looked like soviet trenchcoats. It was interesting for a while until they all went silent and stared at each other for a while. We got bored and left at that point.

On our way out of town we stopped at a big wooden ship we'd seen coming in. Turns out it was a replica of the Victoria - one of Magellan's armada. It was really interesting because it was full size and you could explore the whole thing. I can't even imagine sailing a ship like that on the open ocean. There was also some replica armor and weapons that the kids had fun putting on. Have I mentioned yet that it is really cold down here? We didn't linger too long at the ship because of the biting wind.

After that we took the only road out of town ("La Ruta Fin del Mundo") to Puerto Natales, stopping on the way for a smoked salmon sandwich.
Unfortunately the streets of Puerto Natales are not on Google Maps, so it took a while of driving around to find our Hostel. After checking in we wandered around town for a bit, finding a really nice dog which followed us for quite a while and had a blast playing with the kids.

Reality Check

For many years, Stacy and I have had a dream of living abroad for a year. We always thought this would be an exciting way to broaden the kids' perspective, and give them a chance to learn another language at a time during their lives when language learning was easy.

Chile seemed like an easy choice destination for this dream. It was politically stable, had a temperate climate, and was in a relatively compatible time zone with the Pacific. Stacy and I dreamed of a year escaping the suburbs and living in a cosmopolitan city for a year. What fun! How romantic!

This three-week trip was essentially a scouting trip to check out where we might want to live.

One week in, and it is with mixed emotion that I say that this dream has crashed down around us. Perhaps this scouting trip's greatest effect was to give us some perspective of our life in Folsom.

Santiago is a Big City. It moves fast. Very very few people speak, or are willing to speak english here. The spanish is very difficult for us to understand, not only because it is fast but because Chileans have their own "slang" for common\ words, and drop consonants and endings of many well known words. Everything we try and do takes monumental mental effort to successfully complete.

On Monday, I was robbed on the subway; pickpocketed and lost my phone out of a zippered back pocket on an overly full rush-hour train. My concentration was on the kids suffocating in a sea of armpits, and as a result lost my phone. (no more pictures on my posts) I'm lucky it wasn't my wallet. Yesterday, in Valparaiso, we met some people who had all of their belongings stolen.

Santiago is the largest city in all of South America. This city is quite "touristy", but not in the way I'm used to. About 95% of the tourists here speak spanish, hailing from other parts of Chile, or Peru, Argentina, Brazil, etc. American tourists seem quite a rarity here. This means the local ears are not very attuned to crappy spanish pronunciation. Not only can we not understand them, but they often have a hard time understanding us. I suspect that if you learned Spanish here, it wouldn't translate all that well to other spanish speaking countries.

The romantic picture you may have seen of Santiago ringed by rugged peaks is also quite misleading. This city has such bad smog that you can rarely see across the city; forget the beautiful vistas.

Now, don't get me wrong, this is an interesting city to visit. The various "cerros" or hill-parks in the city are pretty cool. Today we visited Cerro San Cristobal (2nd largest urban park in the world), which has a "funicular" that brings you too the top. We walked the long way down, and found a gigantic swimming pool, and an amazing playground, the likes of which you'd never find in the US (too many opportunities to hurt yourself). It's just that the prospect of living here sounds exhausting, dangerous, and expensive.

We have been having some good adventures over the last few days, however. Yesterday, we took a day trip to Valparaiso, a port town about 1.5hr away by bus. This town was built up in a haphazard manner along some very steep hills. The result is a collection of amazingly precarious structures (houses that are 3 stories on one side, 5 on the other). This is a city which boomed during the gold rush, as transport to California often involved transport around Cape Horn. This port was the most developed port on the entire journey around South America. It claims many firsts for south america (newspaper, bank) and for many years was the most populous and prosperous city in Chile. The 1914 opening of the Panama Canal was fairly disastrous for the economy of this port, and I don't think it has ever quite recovered.

Tomorrow we leave our gorgeous 2-floor apartment in Lastarria, in preparation for our flight south to Punta Arenas. I think our journey south to Patagonia will be our most grand adventure of the trip. Penguin Island, here we come!


-Carl

Top Reasons NOT to move to Chile

So, we aren't exactly sure how we chose Chile, it was sort of random..and definitely romanticized. But, we have made a new rule- we must know a little more about a country/know someone who has traveled there before booking such huge excursions in the future!

1. Is that even Spanish? NOTHING like the Spanish we know! Even the signs are in "chilean slang"
2. It's crazy expensive. Think San Francisco prices.
3. E.V.E.R.Y  Little Interaction takes SOO much effort. I knew moving here would take a lot of logistics, but I think the details on this end would be especially difficult.
4. Cities have crime- Carl's post details being robbed on the metro.
5. Don't really feel very welcome here. In Santiago itself many people wont try to speak English with you. But, beyond that. We have had a man yell at us "Go home you mother f**ing f**ers". Another man followed us a couple of blocks chanting "Go home, go home". Some people have been very nice, but I think that the politics over the past 40 decades have left a lot of different attitudes towards foreigners.
6. We LOVE Folsom

I have so many thoughts on the topic, so this is the condensed version!


Since we still have over two weeks left, we are changing modes so that we can most fully enjoy the rest of our trip. Now that we don't have to focus on logistics of moving here, we are getting out of the city! Saturday morning we fly to Southern Patagonia. We are thinking our last week could be spent up north, we are going to figure that out tomorrow.

-Stacy

Cerro San Cristobal

Today we trekked over to Cerro San Cristobal, the second highest park in Santiago. We thought it would be a half day adventure at most...We rode the funicular up, kind of scary!

YUP! I know the formatting of this post sucks, but I'm too tired to fight with Blogger. Just enjoy the pictures;)

Ella took some decent pictures of us:)

The view from the top was AMAZING!

Ryan's face about sums up his day. Did you know that we are horrible parents for taking him on international adventures and making him spend all of this time with us and his sister (the cause of all of the world's problems)!! Poor Ryan! Traveling can be hard on kids (and adults;)

Before we came here Ryan found this Virgin Mary statue on Google Earth, I thought that made it even more cool to see in person.

 

Since we rode up, we thought it would be fun to take the long route down, We didn't know it would take 2.5 hours!  We did find the coolest park though. We also somehow ended up in the middle of a closed construction area. 

This is the tallest building in South America. It was cool to see it change as we descended. By the time we found civilization again at the bottom, we had to hustle because we didn't want to be on the metro during rush hour. 

We were so excited to get back to our neighborhood (almost 8 hours after setting out)and find good dinner and wine!

-Stacy

First Full Day

It is amazing how different it feels after sleeping a full night on a real bed. We all slept in to around 9. In our family, this is a very remarkable occurrence, as Ryan pretty much always wakes up between 6-6:30. Our apart has a kitchen, and we'd picked up some basic groceries the previous night near Las Leones at the "Lider" grocery store. It was nice to be able to cook our own food, as we had yet to find any restaurants nearby that looked any good.

We're staying in the so-called "Bellas Artes" area, so named because it contains the fine arts museum. It's only about 2 blocks from our apart building. We wandered over there, passing on the way a little cafe that looked inviting. We easily found the fine arts museum and wandered in, finding that on Sundays entrance is free.

The museum featured an installation of a gigantic mountain of used clothes. There were also a number of statues from the 1800s and other exhibitions, such as a drop-in operatic duets from a local music school. It was interesting, kids got bored pretty quick.

After the museum we walked back to the cafe we'd noticed earlier. The Bellas Artes area is described in other places online as "Bohemian", or as feeling "European", with lots of cafes and shops and such. At this point, we were wondering where exactly it was that these descriptions applied to, because it sure wasn't the area we were in. It seemed more like the red light district! Anyhow, we'd noticed this one good looking cafe so we went back there for lunch, which was pretty good, decent sandwiches and some carrot cake (queque de zanahoria!). The kids got an interesting take on lemonade which was delicious, but not as sweet as they were expecting

After lunch we walked to the nearby Parque Forestal, where we made our way to a playground, dodging the chileans necking everywhere. In Chile, kids live with their parents until they are married. So apparently (lack of privacy at home?) it is very common to head to a park and lay in the grass making out (also, not very private? Don't worry, I missed that leap of logic also.)

The playground was nice, and was fun to watch chilean kids try and interact with Ryan. They took turns showing off their skills on the bars - Ryan able to climb higher, the locals able to do more pullups. They kept trying to talk to him, to which he responded "No hablo espanol", and they ran back to their parents shrugging their shoulders. I don't think english speaking kids are a very common sight here.

At 3pm we hooked up with the guys in "Where's Waldo" shirts for "Tours for Tips" - a free walking tour of the city. The tour was very interesting (for adults) covering many of the most important historic sights of the city. There were some amazing murals, 16th century churches next to glass highrises, and the location of the 1973 Pinochet coup. The tour lasted 3 hours, and the kids tolerated it very nicely.

After the tour we headed over to the Lastarria area, where the tourguide had told us there was an icecream shop which is rated in the top 20 worldwide. (who does these ratings?) We walked over there and instantly we knew that when people are describing Bellas Artes as bohemian or european, they're talking about Lastarria: it was a very charming area. We ended up eating an amazing dinner over there, with a very sympathetic waiter who helped us with our spanish. Did Stacy mention that the spanish here is challenging? Not only is it blazingly fast, but they also drop a lot of consonants and endings, and have a lot of local slang. I wonder how we'll feel about it at the end of the trip!

First Impressions and Lots of Nasty Bathrooms

I feel like the taxi ride away from every airport in developing countries includes heap after heap of trash and clusters of dilapidated shanties. Santiago is no exception. Though, it was only about 10 minutes before we got more into the city proper. It's obvious that the city is HUGE with a smattering of green spaces and parks. Traffic seems to move much more orderly than we have seen in central american countries, and it's lacking the constant cacophony of horns and yelling.

After a lot of research we decided to spend our first few nights in Bellas Artes, I don't think we will stay here much longer, but we will see. When booking the hotel I was confused by the fact that I saw multiple hotels with same address. Now I realize it's a large set of apartment buildings where different companies rent out sets of units (called aparts). There are lots of sex shops and gentleman's clubs near us.

When we first arrived we had 4 hours to kill while waiting for our apart. Ella was feeling really crummy, and public toilets are hard to come by. We had a not so great lunch where Ella went to the bathroom 4 times. The walls were literally wallpapered in porn?? That was awkward, luckily she was more fixated on the filthy floor that she kept sitting on.

We were looking for a grassy area in the shade to just chill and wait when we luckily stumbled into Cerro Santa Lucia. It's a really cool park right near our hotel. It has lots of areas to sit and run, lots of statues and fountains, and a castle with many steps to climb.

Since we were all nearly comatose it was exactly the right speed! Chile has LOTS of stray dogs, which they call qildros. We met a very cute one right away, which helped to take Ella's mind off of her yucky tummy for a bit. The kids had a blast running a run and playing fetch with their new pal that they named Perro.

The qildros are very well fed, most of the shops have food and water out for them. Supposedly they will even turn down bread scraps because they get so much better stuff. The parks throughout the city have small dog houses for them and they are vaccinated by the city. In looking up how to spell qildros, I did just find a news story about how President, Michelle Bachelet included plans to sterilize strays in her recent campaign.

Anyways, Cerro San Lucia was a perfect activity for our first day. After checking in to our hotel we chilled for a bit. It's mediocre, a little dirty, but it's 2 bedrooms plus a bed in the living room which makes for ideal sleeping conditions.  Since Ella was feeling a bit better we decided to try out the metro.  The ride there was uneventful. We wanted to check out Providencia, but apparently we didn't go far enough. We walked around the Las Leones metro stop and most things seemed to be closed. We had dinner at an ok Italian restaurant, La Piccola Italia. Nothing special, but we were happy because Ella ate some plain noodles, after we woke her up...

                 
                  Ryan's Parkour teacher asked him to practice and take                           pictures throughout the city. This is homework that he is                       taking seriously!





The metro ride home was a huge reminder that we REALLY need to work on our spanish. It felt different when we walked in, larger crowds, more police and military...but we didn't have much to compare it to. Our departing train took a few extra minutes and passengers seemed annoyed. After a couple of stops they made some Chilean Speed Announcements. All I could catch was that they were evacuating the metro and everyone needed to get off. On the platform there were big red lights flashing Emergencia. Folks didn't seem to be rushing or scared- just annoyed/angry.  It was about 9:30 at night and there were thousands of people on the streets. All of the passing busses were packed to the max. We ended up carrying our groceries quite a ways. The next morning we were able to look it up in English, http://santiagotimes.cl/santiago-grinds-to-a-halt-after-metro-meltdown/.