Sickness, shopping and sun about sums up our first week here in Chile. We arrived safely after a 11.5 hour flight from New Zealand, and journeyed via taxi to Las Condes, a fashionable suburb of Santiago. My queasiness from the flight culminated in my vomiting in front of the hotel…discretely into a bag, fortunately! I bounced back after a few hours sleep.
The next day we discovered the Costanera Mall just around the corner from us, with six floors of stores and a huge food court featuring such American delicacies as Cinnabon, McDonalds, and Taco Bell. Naturally we opted for Taco Bell, a family favorite. After that Daniel came down with a bug that wiped him out for the next several days.
Caroline and I got out and explored the neighborhood a bit more, and did some shopping at the wonderful mall. Once Daniel recovered, we journeyed via subway to the city center, where we joined teeming crowds of people in the 90 degree heat, and snapped a few shots of the points of interest.
La Moneda Presidential Palace
Daniel’s favorite site of the day…the animated pedestrian signals, featuring a green figure striding purposefully at the beginning, and then speeding to a sprint by the end. We had to watch several cycles of this. He’s been a fan of pedestrian signals since Berlin, with its distinctive ampleman.
We try not to drag the kids through too many cathedrals, but we were all happy to spend a little time in the cool confines of the beautiful Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral.
We had the best of intentions to study up on our Spanish before we arrived, but that never really happened. Now that we are surrounded by it, we’ve been a bit more diligent in our studies! We’ve been using two great resources: studyspanish.com online and the app Duolingo. I’m not at the point where I could converse by phone in Spanish, but I’m managing to get the gist of things in person, and convey our basic needs. Fortunately, the people we’ve encountered have been friendly, and tolerant of our linguistic shortcomings.
Early tomorrow we fly south for our month long stay in Pucon. Pucon is a popular tourist destination, with a beautiful lake, volcano, thermal springs, and an abundance of adventure activities. We’ll be staying in a cabana out of town, with no internet access. This will help us to unplug from the electronic devices we have used with increasing frequency to entertain ourselves over the course of the trip. We did pick up some Chilean SIM cards for the phones, so we won’t be completely isolated!
ABCD World Travels 
Ahhh good to hear from you. I have been wondering where you were. So glad you have some warm weather as we don’t know the meaning of such. It has been a vicious cold winter that I don’t remember since childhood when going to school early mornings was so painful – not good warm boots and no slacks of long underware which I have lived in – the silk kind is so comfortable and necessary. We are counting the days until spring but of course that isn’t when it really happens which is usually mid May and have seen snow on Mem. Day weekend once so we dream of June and July and will never complain of the heat.
I believe you said this is your last country and will be returning in a month about. Go to FL and stay there until we warm up. It should be warm there by then! They have been chilly too.
Have a safe travel and healthy time. Love, Aunt Jan
Thanks Aunt Jan. Good advice to head to Florida! We actually return a few days before Easter, then we head up to TC. Maybe we’ll bring some warmth with us!
Looks like someone is fully qualified for a position with National Geographic. The imagery in all of your posts has been fantastic; as has the narrative that has gone along with it.