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Amy ((L)) Peru and Chile! (A possibly over enthusiastic trip report)

Amy ((L)) Peru and Chile! (A possibly over enthusiastic trip report)

Old Aug 14th, 2010, 05:37 PM
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Amy ((L)) Peru and Chile! (A possibly over enthusiastic trip report)

I had posted my emails from the road, but I thought I'd better start again with hotels, photo links, and the like, rather than trying to bung them in at the end. So my apologies if some of this is old news...


Peru and Chile and Orlando, 22 July—09 August, 2010


Okay, so this trip was a heapin’ helpin’ of crazysauce in a lot of ways (like thirteen flights within two and a half weeks) but I surely did have a good time…just not a long enough one.

AMAZON RAINFOREST, PERU
The first weekend was in the Amazon rainforest outside of Iquitos, Peru. This is my third trip there, and just standing on top of the steep steps leading down to Explorama’s dock felt like a homecoming. I don’t quite know what I love so much about the rainforest, as humidity and mosquitoes are not really high on my list of favorites, but the mighty river, the lushness of the trees and plants, the ever-changing sky, and the bird song may have something to do with it. I stayed the whole time this time at the Explorama lodge http://www.explorama.com/exploramalodge.php which now has individual bathrooms…but still cold showers. I kinda miss the latrines with the bats flying in.

On my first full day we went out piranha fishing—you bait the hook with meat and just wait for one to bite—and I actually caught one this time! In fact, I caught two. Our boat had engine trouble, so we were sitting in a little waterway waiting for help, and the piranhas were biting like crazy there. There was a family on the riverbank watching, too; I think we gave the little kids their giggles for the day. A nice guy who was coming home in his boat from a job tryout gave us a lift, eventually. I tried a bit of the piranha for lunch; tasted like, well, fish. I also did some hiking, a visit to the Yanamano Indian village, and some hammock lolling while there; Explorama provides all the meals and transport, so it’s easy to relax and immerse in nature.

Here’s the link for the pictures of the rainforest: http://travel.webshots.com/album/578377317YUPbkI I have to admit that “mi hermano” Armando (my guide all three times) took most of the animal pix, whilst I managed the video camera. And binoculars. I clanked a bit.

Just as a note, I flew Peruvian Airlines to Iquitos and back; it was about ¼ of the price of LAN for the same route, and I had no problems and great connections. I had to go through www.traficoperu.com in order to buy the ticket, though; on www.peruvianairlines.pe you can order your own if you have a “Verified by Visa” card. My bank didn’t even know what that was, sigh.

For the remainder of my flights within South America I used a LAN South American Airpass package—I think. I do know that it was cheaper for me when I called and talked to the LAN rep than when I tried doing it online, but not as cheap as it would have been for a Chilean. LAN definitely does the “foreigner price” to a fare-thee-well.

Next up: Santiago, Chile
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Old Aug 14th, 2010, 06:46 PM
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SANTIAGO, CHILE

After some drama with whether or not I’d be on my original flight, (by the way, Lima airport is pretty cool to hang out in at night, especially on the domestic side), I landed in Santiago at about 7AM. There’s a bunch of taxi shills right outside the exit from customs, but, forewarned and forearmed by Fodorites (yay!) I bypassed them and went straight to TransVIP (shared vehicle service.) For CP5,500 (about 11 dollars at the moment) I got a quick and efficient ride to Chilhotel. I definitely recommend TransVIP: they’re 24 hours and certainly seem to have their act together.

Chilhotel www.chilhotel.cl is nice and cozy; I was offered and took the option of paying half rate for getting into the room right away. (Brekkie, too!) It’s located near the Manuel Montt metro station, and there are a lot of shops and restaurants right in the area. For $62 a night, it’s a good deal and quite comfy.

I got my BIP (remember that the “i” in Spanish is pronounced eee, and then you can figure where it gets its name from) and took the Metro to Plaza de Armas and the surrounding area just to wander a bit. It was sunny and cool, and there were lots of people out. Santiago has a bit of that “gritty” feel, but definitely also a lot of city sophistication and charm. The Metro is supremely easy for getting around, albeit a bit crowded on some lines in the morning and late afternoon. (One becomes rather familiar with total strangers…) Continuing my wandering, I went through the BellaVista neighborhood to the funicular in the funky castle which went up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal, where a huge statue of the Virgin Mary, a lot of people, a glorious sunset, and the first set of pink Andes awaited. I’d gotten a hotdog for my lunch/dinner before the funicular, and found the avocado, tomato, and mayo to be quite (surprisingly) good with the doggie. I would love to have had more time for restaurants in Santiago, but when traveling alone I tend not to take a lot of time with food.
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Old Aug 14th, 2010, 07:07 PM
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Enjoying reading your TR. How long were u in Santiago?
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Old Aug 14th, 2010, 08:25 PM
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Nice report, Amy! A good friend of my son's, with whom he'll be sharing an apt. this upcoming school year, just returned from a study abroad in Santiago. He loved it! Though he'd been there since February, he wasn't ready to leave.
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Old Aug 15th, 2010, 02:51 AM
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nice post great info...thanks for posting.
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Old Aug 15th, 2010, 04:13 AM
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Thanks, all! Yestravel, alas, I was only in Santiago for two days. I'd have loved longer, but this was a very "stuffed" trip--Easter Island and the Atacama are coming up after I finish Santiago here.

The next day I had arranged for a tour with “The Green Bicycle”, which is an umbrella for CHIP tours as well—I did walking, not cycling. www.labicicletaverde.com The email communications were good, and I found the place easily via Metro. (Very pleasant people there.) My tour was the “Human Rights” one, which dwells primarily on that period of Chile’s history from Allende through Pinochet, but gives you a broader view of history from past to present. I was the only one on the tour, and the guide, Francisca, is amazing: she speaks with eloquence and passion, and certainly never seems tired of doing the same tour. The visit included Plaza des Armas, La Moneda (Presidential Palace), the Supreme Court buildings, 38 Londres (former detention/interrogation center), and Cemeterio General, the burial/memorial site for many of Chile’s disappeared, for Salvador Allende, and for Jaime Guzman, the assassinated far-right senator who was one of the primary architects of Chile’s current constitution.

Of course, I would need a lot more study and a lot more experience to speak knowledgably about Chilean politics, but this tour was very informative and helpful in gaining some context. I’ve been interested in this topic ever since reading, as a teen, the fictionalized YA book “Talking in Whispers” by James Watson. The Nixon/Kissinger/CIA involvement is something I’ve always found horrifying, of course, but actually taking the tour gave me more insight. The Cementerio General with its various styles from mausoleum to “high rise” is sociologically and architecturally fascinating even without the memorials, but those give it a dimension far beyond the ordinary.

After the intense morning, I got dropped off at Mercado Central: lots of eating places, fish stands, veg, and so forth at the market, but I went through almost to the other side to get to the place recommended by Francisca, “Tio Willy’s”. The big mustachioed dude outside wooing customers in is a good way to find it, as it’s not large (and Donde Augusto takes up most of the market!) My starter was an empanada that I still dream of: the most incredibly flaky pastry enclosing succulent shrimp and cheese, and then I had congria, the delicious conger eel. I needed some more walking after that, so I toddled on to the market across the river and then to Los Portales des Flores, the flower market with its stand after stand of displays for cemetery and other flower uses. I couldn’t take too many pictures, mostly because people kept kindly warning me about the danger of having my camera out there, but as a floral designer it was a place I had to visit.

The evening was spent doing a bit of food shopping to prepare for self-catering in La Isla Pascua, Easter Island, my next stop.
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Old Aug 15th, 2010, 09:57 AM
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I like this trip report with the details and contact links. Thank you for reposting!
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Old Aug 15th, 2010, 04:08 PM
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EASTER ISLAND/ISLA DE PASCUA/RAPA NUI

By any name, it’s a wonderful island. This has always been another one of my dream geo-geek places, the so-isolated island with the wonderful mythic statues. But I think really it was the winds off the ocean that I loved the most, and the intense pure blue of the sky, and the stunning views from the volcanic caldera…But those stone dudes with the big ears are majorly cool.

I was picked up at the airport and given a little tour of the town by one of the guys from Te’ora, where I stayed: it’s a three-apartment complex, quite nice (if not quite the five-star raver that TA has it reviewed as) and not badly priced. http://easterislandteora.bizland.com/english/ I stayed in the smallest apartment, which is fine for a single traveler, and had kitchen privileges on the patio. As the prices for everything are, of course, very high in a place 2,000+ miles from anything, I’d brought along some food and bought a few things like eggs, bread, and tomatoes in town. The town is just a few (brick) streets, and has a very relaxed ambiance, other than the Rapa Nui nationalistic signs about. Te’ora is about a 10 minute or so walk outside of the town, close enough to be convenient, yet right on the coastline as well.

My first full day was a (very) full day tour arranged through Tau’raa Hotel; I was the only English speaker, so got my own (Virginian) guide who gave me a thorough introduction to the island and many of the theories. General idea is that Polynesians in huge canoes settled here with what they needed to colonize, the moai building meant to represent ancestors became a competition, all the big trees got cut down to transport the ever-bigger moai, and so they couldn’t make any more big canoes to go back. Plus there was moai-tipping going on, to the extent that all the coastal moai were tipped by the late 19th century. So, in short, Easter Island has definitely figured in environmental metaphors.

A high point of the tour was the quarry, Rano Raraku: the statues there were never transported, and stay in various positions from being still entombed in the rock to standing buried up to the neck. We visited other various ahus (the altars the moai are on) and moai, ending up at the lovely palm-fringed beach. I had to dunk my toes in for a while, but it was a bit chilly for swimming.

I walked the next day to Orongo, past the volcanic caldera lake (yes, I know that’s redundant) to the cliff edge where the followers of the “Birdman Cult” would send out divers to the little offshore island to await the nesting of a particular bird. The idea was to swim back with the first egg and get back up the cliffs. I will categorically state that climbing up to Orongo skirting the caldera was quite enough for me. I’d never have made it as a Birdman swimmer. On the way, I saw quite a number of horses (there are about 6,000 on the island, and about 5,000 human residents) and a sea cave with paintings. If you walk, do wear sturdy shoes; there’s a lot of loose rock underfoot in a number of places.

Walks along the coast and to the Tahai complex (where the only moai with eyes is found) rounded out my final day; I thought that I was leaving at noon, but it ended up being 5:30 before the plane left. This put me into Santiago too late to bother with a hotel that night, so I spent the night in the airport. Not too bad, but just as a word of warning: most things close, and Stgo airport gets COLD in the winter. I had an early flight to Calama, though, for the Atacama desert, so it really wouldn’t have worked well to go to the Hyatt where I was booked, all the way out in Las Condes, about 40 minutes from the airport.
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Old Aug 15th, 2010, 04:55 PM
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The final installment!


Peru and Chile and Orlando, 22 July—09 August, 2010


Okay, so this trip was a heapin’ helpin’ of crazysauce in a lot of ways (like thirteen flights within two and a half weeks) but I surely did have a good time…just not a long enough one.

AMAZON RAINFOREST, PERU
The first weekend was in the Amazon rainforest outside of Iquitos, Peru. This is my third trip there, and just standing on top of the steep steps leading down to Explorama’s dock felt like a homecoming. I don’t quite know what I love so much about the rainforest, as humidity and mosquitoes are not really high on my list of favorites, but the mighty river, the lushness of the trees and plants, the ever-changing sky, and the bird song may have something to do with it. I stayed the whole time this time at the Explorama lodge http://www.explorama.com/exploramalodge.php which now has individual bathrooms…but still cold showers. I kinda miss the latrines with the bats flying in.

On my first full day we went out piranha fishing—you bait the hook with meat and just wait for one to bite—and I actually caught one this time! In fact, I caught two. Our boat had engine trouble, so we were sitting in a little waterway waiting for help, and the piranhas were biting like crazy there. There was a family on the riverbank watching, too; I think we gave the little kids their giggles for the day. I tried a bit of the piranha for lunch; tasted like, well, fish. I also did some hiking, a visit to the Yanamano Indian village, and some hammock lolling while there; Explorama provides all the meals and transport, so it’s easy to relax and immerse in nature.

Here’s the link for the pictures of the rainforest: http://travel.webshots.com/album/578377317YUPbkI I have to admit that “mi hermano” Armando (my guide all three times) took most of the animal pix, whilst I managed the video camera. And binoculars. I clanked a bit.

Just as a note, I flew Peruvian Airlines to Iquitos and back; it was about ¼ of the price of LAN for the same route, and I had no problems and great connections. I had to go through www.traficoperu.com in order to buy the ticket, though; on www.peruvianairlines.pe you can order your own if you have a “Verified by Visa” card. My bank didn’t even know what that was, sigh.

For the remainder of my flights within South America I used a LAN South American Airpass package—I think. I do know that it was cheaper for me when I called and talked to the LAN rep than when I tried doing it online, but not as cheap as it would have been for a Chilean. LAN definitely does the “foreigner price” to a fare-thee-well.


SANTIAGO, CHILE

After some drama with whether or not I’d be on my original flight, (by the way, Lima airport is pretty cool to hang out in at night, especially on the domestic side), I landed in Santiago at about 7AM. There’s a bunch of taxi shills right outside the exit from customs, but, forewarned and forearmed by Fodorites (yay!) I bypassed them and went straight to TransVIP (shared vehicle service.) For CP5,500 (about 11 dollars at the moment) I got a quick and efficient ride to Chilhotel. I definitely recommend TransVIP: they’re 24 hours and certainly seem to have their act together.

Chilhotel www.chilhotel.cl is nice and cozy; I was offered and took the option of paying half rate for getting into the room right away. (Brekkie, too!) It’s located near the Manuel Montt metro station, and there are a lot of shops and restaurants right in the area. For $62 a night, it’s a good deal and quite comfy.

I got my BIP (remember that the “i” in Spanish is pronounced eee, and then you can figure where it gets its name from) and took the Metro to Plaza de Armas and the surrounding area just to wander a bit. It was sunny and cool, and there were lots of people out. Santiago has a bit of that “gritty” feel, but definitely also a lot of city sophistication and charm. The Metro is supremely easy for getting around, albeit a bit crowded on some lines in the morning and late afternoon. (One becomes rather familiar with total strangers…) Continuing my wandering, I went through the BellaVista neighborhood to the funicular in the funky castle which went up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal, where a huge statue of the Virgin Mary, a lot of people, a glorious sunset, and the first set of pink Andes awaited. I’d gotten a hotdog for my lunch/dinner before the funicular, and found the avocado, tomato, and mayo to be quite (surprisingly) good with the doggie. I would love to have had more time for restaurants in Santiago, but when traveling alone I tend not to take a lot of time with food.

The next day I had arranged for a tour with “The Green Bicycle”, which is an umbrella for CHIP tours as well—I did walking, not cycling. www.labicicletaverde.com The email communications were good, and I found the place easily via Metro. (Very pleasant people there.) My tour was the “Human Rights” one, which dwells primarily on that period of Chile’s history from Allende through Pinochet, but gives you a broader view of history from past to present. I was the only one on the tour, and the guide, Francisca, is amazing: she speaks with eloquence and passion, and certainly never seems tired of doing the same tour. The visit included Plaza des Armas, La Moneda (Presidential Palace), the Supreme Court buildings, 38 Londres (former detention/interrogation center), and Cemeterio General, the burial/memorial site for many of Chile’s disappeared, for Salvador Allende, and for Jaime Guzman, the assassinated far-right senator who was one of the primary architects of Chile’s current constitution.

Of course, I would need a lot more study and a lot more experience to speak knowledgably about Chilean politics, but this tour was very informative and helpful in gaining some context. I’ve been interested in this topic ever since reading, as a teen, the fictionalized YA book “Talking in Whispers” by James Watson. The Nixon/Kissinger/CIA involvement is something I’ve always found horrifying, of course, but actually taking the tour gave me more insight. The Cementerio General with its various styles from mausoleum to “high rise” is sociologically and architecturally fascinating even without the memorials, but those give it a dimension far beyond the ordinary.

After the intense morning, I got dropped off at Mercado Central: lots of eating places, fish stands, veg, and so forth at the market, but I went through almost to the other side to get to the place recommended by Francisca, “Tio Willy’s”. The big mustachioed dude outside wooing customers in is a good way to find it, as it’s not large (and Donde Augusto takes up most of the market!) My starter was an empanada that I still dream of: the most incredibly flaky pastry enclosing succulent shrimp and cheese, and then I had congria, the delicious conger eel. I needed some more walking after that, so I toddled on to the market across the river and then to Los Portales des Flores, the flower market with its stand after stand of displays for cemetery and other flower uses. I couldn’t take too many pictures, mostly because people kept kindly warning me about the danger of having my camera out there, but as a floral designer it was a place I had to visit.

The evening was spent doing a bit of food shopping to prepare for self-catering in La Isla Pascua, Easter Island, my next stop.

EASTER ISLAND/ISLA DE PASCUA/RAPA NUI

By any name, it’s a wonderful island. This has always been another one of my dream geo-geek places, the so-isolated island with the wonderful mythic statues. But I think really it was the winds off the ocean that I loved the most, and the intense pure blue of the sky, and the stunning views from the volcanic caldera…But those stone dudes with the big ears are majorly cool.

I was picked up at the airport and given a little tour of the town by one of the guys from Te’ora, where I stayed: it’s a three-apartment complex, quite nice (if not quite the five-star raver that TA has it reviewed as) and not badly priced. http://easterislandteora.bizland.com/english/ I stayed in the smallest apartment, which is fine for a single traveler, and had kitchen privileges on the patio. As the prices for everything are, of course, very high in a place 2,000+ miles from anything, I’d brought along some food and bought a few things like eggs, bread, and tomatoes in town. The town is just a few (brick) streets, and has a very relaxed ambiance, other than the Rapa Nui nationalistic signs about. Te’ora is about a 10 minute or so walk outside of the town, close enough to be convenient, yet right on the coastline as well.

My first full day was a (very) full day tour arranged through Tau’raa Hotel; I was the only English speaker, so got my own (Virginian) guide who gave me a thorough introduction to the island and many of the theories. General idea is that Polynesians in huge canoes settled here with what they needed to colonize, the moai building meant to represent ancestors became a competition, all the big trees got cut down to transport the ever-bigger moai, and so they couldn’t make any more big canoes to go back. Plus there was moai-tipping going on, to the extent that all the coastal moai were tipped by the late 19th century. So, in short, Easter Island has definitely figured in environmental metaphors.

A high point of the tour was the quarry, Rano Raraku: the statues there were never transported, and stay in various positions from being still entombed in the rock to standing buried up to the neck. We visited other various ahus (the altars the moai are on) and moai, ending up at the lovely palm-fringed beach. I had to dunk my toes in for a while, but it was a bit chilly for swimming.

I walked the next day to Orongo, past the volcanic caldera lake (yes, I know that’s redundant) to the cliff edge where the followers of the “Birdman Cult” would send out divers to the little offshore island to await the nesting of a particular bird. The idea was to swim back with the first egg and get back up the cliffs. I will categorically state that climbing up to Orongo skirting the caldera was quite enough for me. I’d never have made it as a Birdman swimmer. On the way, I saw quite a number of horses (there are about 6,000 on the island, and about 5,000 human residents) and a sea cave with paintings. If you walk, do wear sturdy shoes; there’s a lot of loose rock underfoot in a number of places.

Walks along the coast and to the Tahai complex (where the only moai with eyes is found) rounded out my final day; I thought that I was leaving at noon, but it ended up being 5:30 before the plane left. This put me into Santiago too late to bother with a hotel that night, so I spent the night in the airport. Not too bad, but just as a word of warning: most things close, and Stgo airport gets COLD in the winter. I had an early flight to Calama, though, for the Atacama desert, so it really wouldn’t have worked well to go to the Hyatt where I was booked, all the way out in Las Condes, about 40 minutes from the airport.


SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA

San Pedro is an oasis town in the vast and extraordinarily dry Atacama Desert. I’d decided this would be my semi-splurge area, so I booked the all-inclusive stay at the Atacamadventure and Wellness Ecolodge, not to be given its full name again in this report. www.atacamadventure.com I booked via Expedia, which gave me a bit of a discount, although of course that means you’re paying ahead of time. Not a problem for me, and I was glad I chose this haven for the last bit of my trip. I was actually there for four days, as I arrived by noon and didn’t leave until 8:15 Wednesday evening, and had my room for the whole time—a lovely thing. The rooms are large and comfortable, with huge bathrooms (Jacuzzi tub!) and a palette and sensibility that fits in well with the surroundings. Meals are a delight, good food served very professionally, and Marketa, the owner and my guide on the walks, is very welcoming and knowledgeable.

The first afternoon was an excursion to El Valle de la Luna, a lunar landscape indeed of cliffs and crags and sand dunes. It’s astounding how much variation there can be in rocks and sand, and it’s also a lot of fun to run down a huge sand dune of chocolate-color sand, slipping and sliding all the way. Pictures don’t do it justice (and believe me, with digital photography being what it is, I tried) but the whole desert experience is like that, really. I wasn’t truly prepared for the amount of stunning beauty in things like the Andes at sunset and the star-laden skies. Of course, by the time the stars come out it is coldcoldcold, but daytimes were beautifully warm without being hot and, during the time I was there, quite calm. (It can be very windy in winter, which makes it a little tough to be in the sand of course.)

The next morning’s walk was Punta del Inca, following a mountain stream that’s got giant cacti looming over. These are used for building by the locals, and the spines are used for knitting, among other things. There are even waterfalls along the way, and Leo, the Atacamadventure golden lab, had a lovely time in the water. There is a bit of parallel rock climbing, but it wasn’t a too difficult walk. That afternoon we went to the Flamingo Reserve on the salt flats, watching the huge pink and white birds come in for landing on the shallow lagoons and then totter around on their spindly legs, looking for the brine shrimp which give them their color. Sunset there was absolutely spectacular, a 360 degree panorama of changing color.

The Tatio Geysers are the world’s highest geothermal fields; the road is now “paved” (no asphalt, doesn’t work there) for a good portion of the trip, but there’s definitely a long stretch of bumpy before you get 4,300 meters up. You need to go early in the morning, as the steam geysers can only be seen at sunup in the cold air. It’s quite a sight, with the white plumes against the lightening sky. On the way back we stopped at a remote Indian town, and later saw some vicunas (the wild cousins of llamas.) The Geysers kinda wear you out (altitude/climate/really early morning rising) so I spent the afternoon leisurely wandering around the town itself, including the quite interesting archeological museum.

The final walk was through Kari Gorge, with first a panoramic view of the salt flats, and then a descent into the gorge and some interesting climbing. It was so beautiful being out in that clear, dry air, and I’d love to be able to do those walks again. I could probably have used shoes that were even sturdier, but I was okay in my Danskos (closed in ones, not the clogs. Wouldn’t have wanted to be hiking in the clogs, believe me.)

I can’t compare the all-inclusive Atacamadventure experience with staying in the town itself and booking your own excursions, as I only did Atacamadventure, but it worked really really well for me and, from what I saw of excursion prices and such, wasn’t a bad deal at all considering I was on my own. The lodge itself is a treasure, with hammocks in the yard for relaxing and an overall feel of oneness with the surrounding area.

Pictures for Chile are here: http://travel.webshots.com/album/578365518JajiRS


The next bit of the trip involved flying from Calama to Santiago to Lima to Miami to Orlando, so let me just say that you can get a $50 Admiral’s Club pass (the American Airlines VIP lounge) for a day that you can use the next morning if you’re on the same trip, and it was worth every penny! (I was in the one in Santiago Thursday morning, Miami on Friday morning: showers and Internet, oh yes!)

I had a great time at Disney with 15 of my nieces and nephews as the last three days of my trip, but that’s another story for another time.
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Old Aug 15th, 2010, 05:44 PM
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Great report Amy. I love the way you travel. I don't spend a lot of time on eating either. I grab what I can.

Thanks for posting such a great report.
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Old Aug 16th, 2010, 08:35 AM
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Amy, next time you come to Chile we will make a little have lunch together! Loved your reports.
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Old Aug 16th, 2010, 12:32 PM
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Sounds like a good plan, Huentetu! (And thanks for all your help in the planning stages.)

In the meantime, could you squish an empanada through the internet lines to me? I am having withdrawal!
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Old Aug 16th, 2010, 04:33 PM
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Oh me too! I loved the empanadas in Chile.
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Old Aug 17th, 2010, 10:43 AM
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I once sat on a flight next to a Chilean lady who was on her way back to Belgium where she lived. Her hand luggage was a cardboard box with 12 empanadas! She said she did it every time she returned to Chile. I don't know if I would go that far but my son lives on them when he comes to visit.
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Old Aug 18th, 2010, 09:14 AM
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Very enjoyable, well written report! It really piques my interest in Chile. Thanks for sharing!
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Old Aug 19th, 2010, 02:12 PM
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I loved reading your report, very informative and engaging!
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Old Aug 19th, 2010, 04:52 PM
  #17  
 
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Amy, do you think you could go somewhere soon so we can have some more of your lovely trip reports?
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Old Aug 20th, 2010, 01:34 AM
  #18  
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(Awww, thanks.)

I will be happy to go anywhere, but school just started so I'll have to bring along all the kids! I'll take all donations....

As soon as I get back from one trip, I start thinking about the next, but they're always about a year apart. (sigh)
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Old Aug 23rd, 2015, 03:02 PM
  #19  
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Sorry to be bringing this old report to the top, but I linked to it and then realized the photo link was out of use. Here's the new one:

CHILE AND EASTER ISLAND

https://missalg.smugmug.com/Travel/C...1439189_S8XV2Z

PERUVIAN AMAZON

https://missalg.smugmug.com/Other/Ra...1493558_649Kzz
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Old Aug 24th, 2015, 06:15 AM
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Hi, Amy!

Great report!

I have repeatedly reported a post which is clearly against YOUR rules, to no avail.

Can you tell me why you haven't done anything about it?
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