Home

Well, we made it back home without incident.  All luggage accounted for and all souvenirs in one piece!  Travel back was fairly uneventful.  We got in a little after noon on Sunday and then started the process of getting back to normal routine.  Giving some love to our dogs that said the missed us, groceries, laundry, sorting through mail and all that stuff.

I had a nice surprise waiting for me at work on Monday.  My co-workers apparently missed me as the decorated my cube for my return. 


Yes, I know it says "Happy Birthday" and it's not my birthday but there is a strange joke around here about my birthday.  I'm routinely wished happy birthday on random days.  It's been going on for months.  Don't ask, I don't understand it either.  Anyhow... it was fun to come back to a colorful desk.

I moved enough stuff to get to my computer and work and left the rest.  After I had been in and working for about an hour, the white balloon over my head was popped by a dart and a massive rain of confetti poured down on me.

About an hour later, when I thought I was save, I was attacked with silly string.  Yep, I think I was missed.  :-)

Back to my point.  People have had a ton of questions about Chile and here are some of the most common ones.

  • Yes, we could drink the water everywhere - that made things MUCH easier than SE Asia
  • Animals we saw in the wild - guanacos (think big llamas), flamingos, ostriches and other random birds, goats (not sure if wild), a ton of sheep and cows
  • Ways of getting from point A to point B - airplane, airport tram, public bus, private bus, taxi, van, boat, bike, hike, run, horse
  • Chile is developed and was not that different than the US as far as technology and infrastructure went.  Chile is far better than we are with literacy rates.
  • The language is a version of Spanish, Andalusian Spanish.
That covers some of the basics.  If I'm missing something let me know.

I'll get a post out in a week or so with the "best of photos" from the trip.  I'm still trying to sort through the almost 1000 pictures that I took.  There are some truly great pictures in the bunch, I'm having a hard time narrowing it down.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iceland day 2!

Image
Day 2 started with a beautiful sunrise. The b&b we were staying at had horses that we could pet.  Many people have these stocky, shaggy horses.  They are mostly uses for "hobby and tourists" but the also have various horseman competitions and the are sometimes used for farm work to get around or help heard sheep or cattle.  The agriculture is pretty much grass to feed the sheep and cows in the winter.  It seems like they bring the sheep and cows into barns durring the worst of the weather in winter.  In summer the sheep are left to roam free all over Iceland and "everything it covered in sheep".  The sheep outnumber the people by quite a bit.  At the end of summer everyone helps gather up all the sheep and then they are sorted and returned to their owners based on their ear tags.   After saying hello to the horses we set off to see waterfalls. Waterfalls in Iceland end in "foss".  This is Urridafoss. Here is a closeup of the gigantic hole...
Read more

Ahhhh... Time for a little relaxation!

Image
Yesterday we had a pleasant morning in Porto Notalles.  It started pooring rain which made me so glad that we had such good weather for out trip.   We got some fancy hot chocolates, second time to this shop.  We went once befoe the hike, it was so good, we went back. We took a bus to Puntas Arenas and flew to Santiago.  By the time we got the rental car, made a few u-turns and found the hotel it was pretty late.  We had dinner around standard Chilean time for once which was about midnight. After sleeping in, we did a little exploring in Santiago, picked up a couple souvenirs for friends and family and drove to Santa Cruz (yep, there is one in Chile and a San Francisco too!).  We are in the Colchagua valley which makes great red wine.  We had an amazing dinner (and wine) and are ready to call it a night...
Read more

Vino!

Image
I did it!  I actually relaxed all day today!!!  Aren't you proud? The day started with sleeping in followed by loafing and reading my book.   We were picked up by a driver for a vineyard tour at 11:30 and lucked out.  The other 8 english speakers didnt show up for the tour so Jeff and i got a private tour.  The best part was that part of the tour was done from horse drawn buggies. The tour and tasting was great.  We had lunch at the resturant at the winery and then went to a second winery for another tasting. We then had our pleasantly wined selves driven back to our B and B and relaxed for a couple hours.  I read, Jeff pretended to read and took a nap. We ended the evening by going in to town.  They are having a 4 day music festival where they close down the street, have a few craft venders in the main square and a ton of food venders and set up a stage and have free music.  We had street food for dinner and icecream and enjoyed the band. ...
Read more