Thanks Jennifer and Alex!

We're heading back to Seattle tomorrow.  We've had a great time and would like to thank Jennifer and Alex for opening their home to us.

Muchas Gracias!!!

Tea Time!

After returning to La Serena we were invited to tea at Jennifer's uncle's home.

Tea is a tradition in Chile - usually in the evening (sometimes replacing any other meal).  Tea, coffee, panqueques (crepes), bread, creamed avocados, jelly, cheese, humitas (a corn concoction cooked in corn husks and similar to a very moist tamale without the meat filling), and ice cream.

A feast of a tea time!

Pisco Elque

After all the excitement of the wedding on Saturday we decided to take a vacation.

Jennifer had Monday and Tuesday off work - so we headed to the countryside.  Pisco Elque is a small town up the Elque Valley - a beautiful, arid, and rugged location just East of La Serena.  The bus took us there in a bit more than two hours and we had two days and nights of refreshing rest in a couple cabins in the small town.  Paula and I also took an astronomy tour up in the montains on Sunday night and viewed the southern stars through a 12 inch reflector telescope.  A nice switch from all the activity here in La Serena!

The obligatory photos:

Wedding Bells

The main purpose of our trip to La Serena was the marriage of our oldest daughter, Jennifer.  The blessed event took place yesterday and everything was a smashing success.

The garden setting was beautiful on a warm sunny summer day, the music fantastic, the food memorable, and the happy couple happy.

Photos to follow (the four of us are heading to Pisco Elqui for a couple days - back on Tuesday)...

ATM Blues

So Paula and I were in downtown La Serena (picking up the bridal bouquet for tomorrow's wedding) when we decided to pick up some extra pesos.  We stopped at an ATM machine in the entryway to a busy store, swiped the card and entered the top secret PIN number.  As I was then moving through the options to get to the peso withdrawal a woman stopped for a moment and whispered in Spanish to be careful that this machine is used to clone cards.  Cloning cards involves having a card reader secretly attached to the ATM to grab the card number during the transaction (and the PIN?) and having someone nearby that casually noticed what PIN you use.

Hmmm...

I canceled the transaction and we headed off to find a collectivo home.  Once at home I called the credit union in Seattle using my cellphone (it had enough money on it fortunately) and had the card canceled.  A drastic solution - but we can always get pesos using out daughter's card and then pay her back in Seattle.  So we're lucky.

The moral of the story - avoid on-street ATMs if there's an option for a more secure in-bank machine nearby...

For Liesl

Comments Fixed!

Blogspot's default condition for comments is to only show ones by "registered users" or something like that.  So if you posted a comment in the past and it didn't show up, that's why.  I've fixed it so that EVERYONE can now post comments.  Have at it.

El Completo Gigante

A completo is a hot dog.  But not just a regular hot dog.  And a  completo gigante is a large hot dog.  But not just a large hot dog.

Here are a couple photos of a completo gigante.  Inside that French bread they stuff two hot dogs (end to end), chopped tomatoes, chopped avocados, and sauerkraut.  Then it's covered with a blanket of mayonaise.  Alex and I got the gigante.  Paula settled for the "regular" completo - a single hot dog (plus, of course, chopped tomatoes, chopped avocados, and sauerkraut) stuffed into a smaller French loaf and then covered with the blanket of mayonaise.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your edification I present the completo gigante!

La Serena - City of Churches

The churches here in La Serena are one of the main tourist attractions (there's also the beautiful beaches...).

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Market Day

Jennifer had to go to work on Monday – she has a job at a language school - so Paula and I joined Alex for a trip to downtown La Serena.  It’s an old city (second oldest in Chile) with a storied history – including having the cathedral burned down by pirates in the 1700s…

We hopped out of the collectivo near the  market and wandered around.  It’s everything a South American market should be with handicrafts, fruit, vegetables, trinkets, music, folk dancing, and food.

Speaking of food, we found a restaurant on the second floor of the market overlooking the street and had lunch.  The restaurant specialized in seafood and we had two types of fish (congrio and reineta) and a pastel de jaiva (a rich crab casserole).  Delisioso!  The waitress was the photographer and we had a leisurely time eating, chatting, and watching people milling about below.

A Quiet Sunday

We settled in for a quiet night at Alex and Jennifer’s house and the next morning – Sunday – we were ready to get out and see La Serena.  It being Sunday, downtown was closed (much of the world works differently than the American Model...).  So we headed to the mall with the excuse that we needed to find a new power cable for Jennifer’s computer (the laptop that I’m typing on right now – so there’s no suspense, we eventually found a cable...).

To get anywhere from our house we flag down a collective taxi - a "collectivo".  These taxis run throughout La Serena and we can catch them just a block away.  They have relatively regular routes and this neighborhood is serviced by the number 70.  When a taxi approaches on the street we hold up the number of fingers that we have riders and if they have room, they stop.  Each collectivo can carry 4 people - they're small 4-door sedans.  The ones here run downtown via the mall, bus station, and other popular locations along the way – the passengers might all be heading to different destinations, but all in the same general direction.  The driver takes them to where they want to go.  To get home you watch for a number 70 and hope he has room.

 

The mall was very nice – it has all the stores one would expect and lots of people.  We wandered around, I tried to find a wifi connection (rumor had it that the mall was wifi equipped, but I didn’t have much luck), and we settled for a couple cups of ice cream as we watched the other shoppers.

 

After returning home we had an excellent Chilean dinner – beef, bread, Chilean onion salad, olives, corn, tomatoes, and vino.  Alex was the organizer of the event and the results were very tasty.

A Simple Trip from Seattle to La Serena

NOTE:  This post is monsterously long.  My apologies.  Future entries will be much more managable. Don't give up and never come back after seeing this wall of words!

And there will be pictures when I find a cable to connect my camera to the laptop...  Hopefully tomorrow.

tl;dr - We left Seattle, Washington and arrived safe and sound in La Serena, Chile thirty hours later.

OK, where to start…

Paula and I left home in Shoreline around 8am on the last bus heading downtown from our neighborhood.  Rain threatened, but we were dry standing at the bus stop.  The bus came a few minutes late (we didn’t realize at the time that this would be a theme for the trip to Chile…).  Downtown we ate a couple bagels, noticed that it had started pouring rain, and caught the light rail to the airport.  We arrived in plenty of time for the 1:50 flight to Dallas.

Then came our first surprise.  We picked up our boarding passes at the ticket counter and they had  ”TSA PRECHK” printed on them.  Odd.  At the security check-in we were directed to a special line.  I’ve done a lot of traveling and in the past the short line might mean a couple hours in a small room answering questions about my past actions and my future intentions.  But in this case it was an expedited route through security.  No shoes had to be taken off.  No bags of small bottles of liquids has to be removed and presented.  No laptops had to be opened up and shown to operate.  It was actually a good thing to be in this short line.  Something I’d never experienced!  Nice.   I'm not sure why we were TSA PRECHK - I've never applied for any special service.  Whatever.  We were through security an on our way.  It was about 10am and the first flight was still several hours away.

When I get to the airport and through the security checks I feel like I’ve stepped onto one of those moving sidewalks – from there on I’m moving to my destination with no options or choices to make.  Everything is mapped out.  We’re on our way.  Time to relax.

We found our gate and noted that the flight would be leaving 20 minutes late.  No problem.  We had a couple hours in Dallas before the next flight to Santiago – so we’d either be waiting here or there.  Paula watched an episode of Law and Order on the iPod Touch while I wandered around the airport.

Then the flight time changed to a 40 minute delay.  Still no real problem. 

Then it changed to an hour delay.  Hmmm…  Probably no problem.  We had a bit more than an hour if that held true.

Eventually, an hour after it’s scheduled departure time, we left SeaTac.  Several times at the gate and on the plane they asked that people with Dallas as their final connection to plese let those with connecting flights off first. Others were in the same situation as us.

After an uneventful 4 hour flight we landed in Dallas with a bit more than an hour until the next flight.  We maneuvered though the Dallas airport and found the gate with time to spare.  Especially since the flight to Chile was now listed as leaving 60 minutes late…

We found a BBQ restaurant and I got a barbecue beef sandwich (it is Texas after all).  Delicious.  

We hung around and the flight then was listed as leaving 90 minutes late.  This was more problematic.  Our flight from Santiago up to La Serena was leaving about 3 hours after our original arrival time.  Now that was down to 90 minutes.  Which doesn’t sound bad until you consider time that had to be spent passing though customs and immigration.  It was going to be close.

Eventually we left about two hours late.  The flight from Dallas to Santiago was long, cramped, and uncomfortable.  Ten hours.  I might have slept for a few minutes now and then in pretzel like positions.  Paula not so much.

We landed in Santiago, Chile with about an hour and 20 minutes until the connecting flight to La Serena was leaving.  Very, very tight.

I knew we had 3 stops to make before getting on that next flight.  1. Pay the Reciprical Fee, 2. Pass through Immigration, and 3. Pass through Customs.  We headed off along with the hundreds of people from our flight and got in the DisneyWorld style serpentine line for the first stop.  The line was moving relatively quickly and we were near the front when I realized that this was stop number 2 (Immigration) and not number 1 (Reciprical Fee) like I had assumed.

Oh oh.

Paula and I jumped out of line, under the tapes and asked where we could pay the reciprocal fee.  It was another short line at the far end of the reception hall.  We headed down there and got it line.  The Reciprical Fee is charged by the Chilean government to visitors from countries that charge a fee for Chileans to visit their countries.  In the case of US citizens it’s $160 payable by cash (no torn, dirty, or worn bills!) or credit card.  Visitors from other countries pay different amounts depending on how much their countries charge Chileans for visas.  A document is stapled in the passport and is good for as long as your passport is valid.  We paid our $320 and headed back to the other line.

The line moved quickly again and in about 15 minutes we were though steps 1. and 2.  With less than an hour to go we headed along to the next hurdle.  Our luggage was waiting at the carousel and we grabbed it and got into the next line with our papers saying we were not bringing in anything inappropriate.  This was another long line and went a bit slowly.  But eventually we arrived at the front.  There we were confronted with an x-ray machine to scan our luggage on the way OUT of the airport.  I’d never seen that before.  Our luggage passed through fine and we were in Chile!

Unfortunately, we were in Santiago Chile and our destination was La Serena, Chile.  And that plane was leaving in about 20 minutes.  We asked around and were told that the national flights (as opposed to the international flights) left from another area one floor above.  We headed up the stairs (steep, long stairs) and worked our way across to the security area leading to the departure gates.  There might have been enough time to catch the flight if it were to have been leaving a few minutes late for some reason.

But it was not to be.  It turned out that we needed to have our baggage checked though to La Serena at one of the ticket counters before heading to the gate.  DOH!  We were turned away from the security area and headed back into the huge departure area.  Our flight to La Serena was probably leaving the gate at about the same time…

So, now to get onto the next flight to La Serena.  We had flown from Dallas to Santiago via American Airlines.  The flight to La Serena was on LAN Chile airlines.  The American office in the departure area was closed so we asked about changing our flight at one of the LAN info kiosks.  We were told to go to window 84 and they could help us.  We headed there and, no, they couldn’t help.  American Airlines had to vouch for us before they could issue another ticket.  And she said there were only 2 seats left on the 5pm flight.  We asked again at another LAN kiosk and this time were told to try window 66.  We got in that line and again it was the same story.  American Airlines had to sort things out.

We asked about the American Airlines office and were told that it was on the second floor at the far end of the building.  Time to explore.  Paula watched the luggage while I headed upstairs to see if they meant THAT second floor.  They didn’t.  I then headed along the same floor as the departure counters and down a deserted hallway and around a corner to find a dark passageway with American Airlines displayed on several doors (I half expected a sign reading, "Beware of the Leopard").  Someone was there, but she couldn’t help with the ticket.  The ticket people would be back in 30 minutes.

Now, in Chile, as in much of the world, when someone says to you, “I can’t help but there will be people here in 30 minutes that can help you” it can mean many things.  Possibly it’s the truth.  Possibly she just wanted to get rid of me and didn’t have a clue about when people would be back.  Possibly they meant to be back in 30 minutes, but one thing lead to another and here they are 2 hours later.  Maybe there weren’t even any other people at all!  I’ve experienced all these meanings of the phrase “…there will be people here in 30 minutes that can help you.”

In this case we got lucky – they really did come back in 30 minutes!  In the meantime Paula found a gentleman that let her use his cellphone to tell our daughter Jennifer not to go to the airport in La Serena to pick us up since we missed the flight.

The people in the American Airlines officer turned out to be very friendly and efficient.  They gave us the new code for tickets on the 5pm flight.  We were back on track!

We headed back to window 66, got our boarding passes, checked the bags, found an ATM and grabbed some Chilean pesos, stopped at a kiosk to buy a SIMM card for my phone so that I could use it in Chile, called Jennifer with the now functioning phone to let her know when we’d arrive, heard that Jennifer and Alex didn’t have use of a car and that we’d best take a collectivo to their house, ate a couple sandwiches, passed through security, and found the gate for the flight.

All was well.

The flight from Santiago to La Serena was just an hour and we had finally arrived.  Sort of.

La Serena has a small airport and we walked down the stairs off the airplane into the heat.  Inside everyone stood around the only luggage carrousel while carts of luggage was ferried from the plane to the terminal.  Ours was on the last cart.  We gathered the bags and next to the luggage carrousel was a booth were you could buy tickets for transportation into La Serena.  We told them what neighborhood we were heading to and got two tickets.

Outside we found a line of minivans (aka "collectivos" - collective taxis that take multiple passengers who wish to go in the same general direction) that were loading up luggage and passengers.  They sorted things so that each would be heading to a different part of town with their passengers.  We hopped in along with 5 other passengers and the driver.

Finally!  We could relax!

Well, maybe not…

It turned out that the driver was on his first day on the job and apparently didn’t really know the city that well.  Everyone had to tell him where to turn left and right.  Eventually everyone was at their destinations except for us.  He knew the neighborhood and I had the main cross streets for him to find – but it wasn’t going very well.  We drove around and around.  We got Jennifer on the phone to talk to him.  He stopped and asked people along the street.  He used his 2-way radio to talk to his office.  We drove around and around…

Eventually we found one of the main streets on my paper and a few minutes later we hit the other one!  Eureka!  And at that same time Alex, Jennifer’s fiancée, walked up to the window of the van and said hello.  This was the first time we’d met him and it was in ideal circumstances!  He hopped in and directed the driver around a couple turns and we were home!

Finally!

30 hours from the time that we left our house until we walked into Alex and Jennifer’s house.  The trip  to Chile was complete.

Arrived Safe!

We arrived safely in La Serena 30 hours after we left home.  Computer challenges are now behind us and some posts should start appearing (after lunch...)...