Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Our adventure begins

I’m writing to you from Santiago, Chile, where Wilf and I are at the beginning of our next adventure. This is my first trip to South America, first time over the equator. I’m pretty excited to be here. We flew Victoria/Vancouver/Toronto/Santiago, arriving at noon after some 18 hours in transit. It has been a long two days, but we did it!

Of course it is summer here – the jaqueranda trees are in full bloom and they are laden with purple blossoms.  Our neighbourhood is full of small restaurants – tonight we ate Peruvian and tomorrow we have  a line on traditional Chilean. I don’t think we’ll go hungry.

I’m not totally sure what I expected of Santiago, but it is different from whatever I expected. Six million people live in the city, so it is huge. We’ll only explore a small corner of it while we’re here. But what we’ve seen looks more like a European city. The city looks prosperous, the people are well dressed and the buildings, roads and sidewalks are in good repair. There is a big subway system, filled with art and murals. In fact there is art and sculpture throughout the city.

This statue is in the main plaza and recognizes the Mapuche, the indigenous people of the south of the country  - quite haunting…

SAM_0627

So – it has been a long two days and it is time for us to go to bed – there are sights to be seen in the morning!

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