1. Travel and First day in Valparaíso

After a ten-hour plane trip, a two-hour customs ordeal, and an hour-and-a-half car ride, Yandee and I have arrived in Valparaíso, Chile!

            The trip was, for all that, really not so difficult. A direct flight on a weekday made things much easier, and the hold up in the customs office was due to three full flights landing at the same time rather than persnickety officials. The drive into Valparaíso from Santiago was very pleasurable, as two members of the Rotary Club of Quilpué, Iván Hernandez and René Zuñiga graciously drove all the way to Santiago at 8:30 in the morning just to pick us up, and spent the entire ride down telling us about Chile and Valparaíso. We couldn’t have imagined more generous, friendly people, and we are extremely grateful to both of them.

            Chile is incredibly beautiful. As the plane approached the Santiago airport, the sun was just starting to rise over the Andes, creating a rich orange glow behind the silhouette of the mountains on the horizon. A few minutes later, the sun had risen enough to see that the mountains were not far in the distance, but rising directly below the plane and up, no more than a few miles distant, to a height greater than the plane’s altitude. They were covered in snow, and I could see a river snaking down from the peaks into the city. Following the path of the river back up the mountains, I could see the lights of a small town nestled high in a valley before the final sheer rise of the peaks.

            Santiago itself is built in planar areas between and around the mountains. Some of them seem to come out of nowhere, like piles of earth left by someone digging an immense foundation in the relative flatness. Once we landed and could see the mountains from the ground, they looked more familiar, very similar to those in New Mexico or west Texas, kind of like Houston had been transplanted into Big Bend. Iván caught me staring instead of watching where I was going, and I had to explain that in Houston, anything taller than about twenty feet could be called a mountain.

            The mountains are very eye-catching, but I was actually struck by how similar some things were to Texas. All the signs and documents in the airport were in English and in Spanish; only Spanish was first, followed by English. The restrooms and highways could easily be transplanted to the U.S.; there are some differences, but not so much as in other countries I’ve been to. There are avocados everywhere, and everyone wants to talk about them once you realize that they call them “palta” instead of “aguacate.”

            One major difference is the temperature: Chile is much colder than Texas this time of year. This is likely explained by the fact that it’s winter in the Southern hemisphere. It’s about 40 degrees F in Valparaíso, and it feels cold after getting on the plane in Houston with a real feel of 115. Of course, I knew before coming that it would be winter, and packed and dressed accordingly, but I’ve discovered it’s one thing to know and prepare for going from the heat of summer to the dead of winter in ten hours and very different to experience it. It’s very strange to see all the trees without their leaves, and brown fields lining the highways, and to see the sun set before 6:00 when it was still up at 9:00 when I got on the plane. There will be other shocks later, but this was by far the most surprising source of disquiet.

            Other than the cheese. I woke up from a nap and our new roommate was preparing some dinner, bread with avocado (la palta famosa) and cheese. I was able to cut the bread, scoop the avocado, and make my own tea all without incident, but oh my God, every time I reached for the cheese it got all over the place. I blamed my cold hands, but I literally had to ask Yandee to cut the cheese for me while I promised our housemate I normally wasn’t like this and had also rented several apartments and never burned any of them down. I decided it would be safe to write a blog post before going to bed, but I won’t touch anything sharp until I’m a little better rested.

            Overall, this has been a wonderful day of travelling and meeting new friends. We’re settling in very quickly, or at least it feels like it, and looking forward to seeing a little more of Valparaíso tomorrow.

Next post:  First day of school, meeting with Rotary Club of Quilpué, and miraculous progress in my Spanish skills (hopefully??).