We got into Santiago around 4:00 in the morning, Chile time, and had to go
through customs and immigration, and from there out into the main ticketing
area and waiting room outside security.
In the left picture (big image or small),
Mark is doing exactly the same as in all previous pictures,
except that he’s also now plugged into his iPod, sitting in the
outer waiting room—this was around 8:00 in the morning. The terminal is big,
bright, and airy, as you can see in the right thumbnail
(big image or small), a big contrast
to the cramped and crowded Tocumen, where we had had to flee to the
President’s Lounge.
Once inside security, and after waiting only a little while, we were joined by Maria Allo, from the Bay Area, and soon after that by Lavon and Dennis Chorba from Atlanta, then Janice and Stan Sussman from Florida and Connecticut. We all flew to Puerto Montt, a few hundred miles farther south, and were met by a lively guy named Jorge, who led us to the van that would take us north a bit to Puerto Varas, where our hotel for the next few days was located.
The hotel is called Cabañas del Lago, and is right on Lake Llanquihue
(pronounced Yan-kee-way, stress on second syllable), second largest in Chile.
The hotel is large, comfortable, and unpretentious
(big image; small),
and we rapidly settled into
our room. The food was all right, but the bar was very fine, and we rapidly
learned to request Pisco Sours, delicious but deadly.
As tired as we were, we walked for half an hour along the lake, and then came
back, a good leg-stretch. Big image;
small.
Whenever the weather was clear enough, we could look across Llanquihue and see two
volcanoes, Calbuco, shown here, and Osorno, which would be over to the left,
but was obscured by cloud this day. Big image;
small
Mark frequently asked me to take pictures of him, just to prove
that he was there. Here he is, in the late afternoon of our first day in
Puerto Varas, standing in front of Calbuco. Big image;
small.
Previous day’s pictures; next day’s pictures
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