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Day 3: 12 June 2002 - "Santiago Lluvioso!"

It was originally "(val)Paraiso lluvioso" but I haven't been to Valparaiso, so we have to make do, don't we?

As we prepared to land in Santiago, the crew (who this time, thankfully, did bilingual announcements) said something about turning off "aparatos electrónicos" (electronic devices), which I heard as "zapatos electrónicos" (electronic shoes). The idea of Chileans having electronic shoes amused me no end.

We landed, I paid my American Tax and handed in all of the little customs/immigration forms I'd filled out on the plane, we found our luggage (which, as it turned out, had gone to Santiago rather than Salt Lake City, after all), and met up with Pato's mommy, daddy, and tía Myriam, who showered us with welcoming signs and gifts and hugs and kisses.

We left the airport and wandered around a while, adjusting to the winter climate and looking for the car, since everyone seemed to have a different opinion on where it had been parked. Once we found it, squashed the suitcases and ourselves in and started driving, I was told that we couldn't drive on the main roads, because the car was en restricción. To cut down on pollution, Santiago has instituted these restricciones, where cars with certain license plate numbers can drive one day, then the others on the next. It wasn't our day to be driving, so we had to avoid the carabineros.

We drove to tía Myriam and tío Ismael's apartment, where we would be staying for a few days before moving on to Rancagua to visit some other relatives. They served us tea and bread with avocado (palta in Chilensis) and scrambled eggs and tomatoes. Mmmmmmm. We got to have a nap and a long-desired shower, then we went for a walk to check out Santiago and call my family and Nancy.

I noticed Chilean flags hanging in various places, which surprised me since I'd read in a guidebook that they could only hang the flag on the 18th of September, Chilean independence day. No one around me seemed to have heard of such a rule. Ha! Take that, guidebook.

The most remarkable thing about being in Chile is that it's full of Chileans. Sometimes, in the US, it seemed like Pato was the only one who spoke that funny form of Spanish where the letters S and D seem to disappear all over the place. Here I was in a whole country full of Patos.

Pato's dad had to go back to Copiapó that evening, so we took him to the bus station. We bought his ticket, then went for a cup of tea in a little coffeeshop while waiting for the bus. I ordered (or more accurately, Pato ordered for me, since we are a bit shy with our Spanish...) a té con leche, tea with milk. The idea of drinking tea with milk is rather foreign in Chile, so what I got was hot milk with a teabag in it. Everyone was concerned that I wouldn't like it, but it was sweet and creamy and just like the 5FF cup of campus thé au lait, my favorite cup of tea in Grenoble, so I was happy as a clam.

While I was drinking my tea, I realized that I hadn't had any trouble adjusting to the weather. Everyone else around me accepted that it was winter, so it seemed perfectly normal to me. Maybe this comes from being from Michigan and expecting the weather to change drastically from one day to the next (or one hour to the next, or whatever...).

We dropped Pato's dad (have you noticed that since we landed, Alex has become Pato? That is because Pato's dad is also Alex. Confused yet?) at the bus station and Pato took me up on the bus to show me. It's a 12-hour ride from Santiago to Copiapó, so he went with the salon cama, a kind of bus with seats that recline to almost 180° and lots of legroom.

After Pato's dad left, we went back to the apartment and looked for a movie to see. We finally settled on Memento. We went out to see it in a one-screen art theatre that obviously served as a normal theatre as well, because it had a huge seating area and a stage in addition to the screen. The movie was pretty confusing but thought-provoking, and was thankfully subtitled in Spanish rather than dubbed. If it hadn't been in English at all, I think I would have been completely lost.

srah - Wednesday, 12 June 2002 - 11:39 PM
Tags: chile, travel

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