Adventures with Julia

Well, we made it to Santiago comfortably on time.  Our flight out of SFO was delayed more than 2 hours.  Thankfully our scheduled layover in Houston was 4 hours and we were able to make the connection without trouble.  Once in our United business class seats, we ate a quick dinner and dropped off to sleep for several hours.  Mark woke me up with only 20 minutes to collect myself before landing.  I had slept 6 hours, even missing breakfast.  

Once on the ground and through immigration and customs we were driven directly to our lodging, the Singular Hotel in the historic part of Santiago.   We learned from our driver that that Chili has 18,000,000 citizens and that 8,000,000 live in Santiago.  There are currently an additional million Venezuelan immigrants living in Chile. They are not all enthusiastically welcome, according to the driver.  After cleaning up and a rest in our hotel, we went out for a walk about the neighborhood and took a few photos.  The city is full of graffiti on every wall on every street and only some of it is any good.  We found ourselves in the university district with schools all around.  There was an interesting fountain called the German Fountain built in 1912.  It was very attractive except for the graffiti all over it. We walked along the Mapocho River, which passes through the city, and learned that it floods in the winter and nearly dries out in the summer. At the moment it is shallow, but swift and very muddy.

In the late afternoon we dressed for dinner and took an Uber to another part of the city to join Scott Browne and Larry McGrath for dinner.  We had learned they would be in Santiago when we were expecting to be there, so we planned a dinner together.  It was fun to connect with friends in a foreign city.  We shared a delicious dorado fish dinner and many laughs. Back in our hotel, I wrote this post and tried to sleep. Our room was so warm with marginal AC, it took a long time before I dropped off. It had been 90 degrees most of the day. It is definitely summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Tomorrow we continue traveling South to Patagonia.