Plus: A Visit to the Dentist in STGO and From Summer to Winter in 8 Hours While we never say we regret being in a place (mostly because we don't), we were ready to leave Santiago. We've also mentioned why: It's a little rundown and a little too quiet for us, although the people are …
Géisers for Geezers
Saturday we once again started late. This time, our tour started at 2:30pm and we headed to the salt flats about 30 minutes outside of San Pedro. Our first stop was Laguna Cejar, a saltwater pond. The name laguna translates to lagoon, which to me (and Merriam Webster), is “a shallow sound, channel, or pond …
Dead Person Bingo sin Steven
Plus: Decent pizza and an intro to the Atacama Desert Wednesday I signed up for one of the cultural activities my Spanish school offers because it was tour of Cementario General. My classmates, Rania and James also signed up, but warned me that the tour guide was a bit, how shall we say? ... scattered. …
One last weekend in Santiago
This was our last weekend in Santiago, while we are here for nearly two more weeks, next weekend we are heading to the Atacama desert, and then we leave the following Saturday for Mexico City. Friday night we joined two of Sue's school friends, James and Rania (friends from where she is taking Spanish, not …
Writing in Chilean Time
Oops, it's taken a bit longer to write this blog than we usually like to take, but I started Spanish school and Steven hit the ground running at work after a quiet holiday week. We were very exciting people on New Year's Eve: we binge-watched "Bad Sisters" and had a glass of wine at midnight. …
A Jewish Feliz Navidad
In Santiago, everything closes early on Christmas Eve and stays closed on Christmas, so naturally we decided to go somewhere else where everything was closed: wine country, or at least one of the many wine-making areas of Chile. We chose Colchagua Valley, mostly because there is a hotel there, Hotel Santa Cruz Plaza, that had …
Hard Landing in Santiago
Today it's time for some lessons from the road: Keep track of the compromises you made Remember where the hip neighborhood is (and that you were a few minutes walk from it) Wide-angle lenses lie (which we knew but ...) Perhaps it was partly because Patagonia was so magical, but even before we got to …
Patagonia Flat
We said ciao to the end of the earth and headed to Puerto Varas, where we started with a short tour of two towns on the lake that were settled by German immigrants – Frutillar and Puerto Octay. Puerto Varas is a pretty big tourist destination and the “gateway to the lakes region of Patagonia.” …
Onward and upward (plus a bit of downward)
Friday was our last day at the Hotel Las Torres in Torres de Paine. Steven decided to take it easy, but as you know, I never decide to take it easy and so I didn't. We had a part-horseback, part-trekking all-day trip up Cerro Paine to get a different view of the Towers and because …
Patagonia – part 2
On Sunday, we did a full day tour to La Leona Petrified Forest. It is about an hour and a half outside of El Calafate. Our driver and guide, Leon, picked us up at the hotel and drove us north through the scrub desert. We stopped at roadside hotel/bar/restaurant/gift shop, and picked up another couple …
Doing It On The Road 