Homeward Bound, 1/31/16

My good intentions were to write this final posting on the plane trip home. Instead I had a glass of wine and fell asleep watching a movie. So this is a week or so after the fact...

We left the ship at 8 am Sunday morning with our passports, Chilean visas and affidavits swearing we were not bringing fresh produce or meats ashore firmly in hand. A quick trip through an old and creepy terminal where we handed over our visas and affidavits and we set off to tour Valapraiso and some of the wine country en route to the airport in Santiago.

The port side areas of Valparaiso have been devastated by various earthquakes and tidal waves over the years so most of that area is new while the people live in the surrounding hills. It's like a seedy, trash and graffiti covered San Francisco with hovels next door to mansions. Zoning appears to be a non-issue here and pretty much every where else in South America.

It was a long day driving to Santiago by way of a lovely, lively beach resort just above Valparaiso  and a ranch maybe 30 miles inland. There we were greeted with Pisco Sours and empanadas (Jim's favorite food discovery of the trip) before we watched the cowboys maneuver their horses then had a delicious lunch featuring more of the fabulous grass-fed beef.

The good news: Our luggage had been taken from the ship the night before with assurances that it would be at the Santiago airport when we arrived and, miracle of miracles, it was! The bad news: we were there at 4:45 pm only to learn that the Delta agents wouldn't begin checking us in until 6:45. Oh, well, made the wait shorter for our 9:45 pm flight.

The best news: we touched down at the ATL at 6 am and walked through our front door at 7:30 am.

It was a wonderful trip with so many special memories. I'm going to make a Shutterfly album of pictures in the next few days. I'll put up one more blog post with that info.

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